Category: body + wisdom

Your Body Deserves To Be Celebrated (find the people who will tell you so)

Today I woke up early. ⁠

I sleep naked and the morning light in my room is some kinda heaven. I was walking around making the bed before getting dressed and caught sight of myself in the mirror and, for once, was filled with a rush of kindness.⁠
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Not critique of the belly that stretched to birth two babies or the breasts that we’re not perky and lifted even when I was young and firm everywhere else. It wasn’t the kind of hard-earned self-love that had to be worked for and deserves to be celebrated, not even a ‘damn girl, you’re FINE for 44″ moment. ⁠
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It was simply that, for some reason, this morning I felt soft and beautiful, just for those moments in the morning light. I felt kind, like I belonged all the way inside my own skin. I turned and shifted, not admiring or tearing down, just receiving the gift of my own gaze. And then I took some photos. Sitting on the bed, no attempt to hide the soft roundness of my belly, or the natural lines of my breasts. I stood and turned, stretching on my tiptoes to capture the reflection of my ass. ⁠
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I didn’t edit or filter or perfect. Didn’t take multiple shots attempting to get it right. I just snapped and then I sent them to two of my very best friends in this whole world. The two whose words and images and voices and love have been my constant companions these past two months. I shared those two naked and vulnerable shots with them — but they didn’t feel vulnerable, nor need validation. They just felt true. Real. Soft. Whole.⁠
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And I know that just as I had received myself, they would receive me. ⁠⠀
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My dear friend Morgan responded,

“Seeing you gives me a glimpse of what it must be like to be a lover seeing the beloved’s naked body because I just love you so much I could cry. And we think we’re so flawed. We are so silly. We are beautiful.”⁠⠀
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My heart filled, it is always an exquisite gift to be so wholly seen, especially by one who knows your heart so deeply. ⁠
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“You’re gonna make me cry” I said. ⁠
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“That’s what love is supposed to do.” she replied, “Make us weep with belonging.” ⁠

Years ago, I was a part of a Facebook group with 22 other women. For the first time in my life, I was given a glimpse behind the veil. I got to see these women and their lives in a way we rarely open to the world. It changed my everything.

Photo by Rodolfo Clix from Pexels

And then one day we started sharing nudes.

The women in this group — they ranged in size and shape and form — as women always do.

Tiny and petite to deliciously voluptuous.
Boyish and angular to endless curves.
Tall and short and everything in between.

And do you know what?

Not once did I spend a second critiquing. I didn’t think, “my god, she would be more beautiful if only she…(gained weight, lost weight, lifted her boobs, tucked her tummy, worked out more, cut her hair)”.

I just thought, “What a god damn miracle this human is. How glorious. How brave. How fucking brilliant and beautiful”.

I was in awe, struck dumb speechless, every single time.

I’d spent a lifetime hiding my body. I wasn’t even fully naked when I gave birth.

After this, I was never the same again.

Your body? Glorious as fuck.

Your ass? Yeah, it’s fire.

That good, good body of yours? It deserves to be celebrated, lauded, to have a fucking party thrown in its honor every damn day of your life.

Your body is soft and strong and it has done so much to get you here.
Your body is wise and holds infinities.
Your body is (as John Mayer suggested) in fact, a mother-fucking wonderland.

My god, you are beautiful.

It can be easy to forget just how beautiful.

But as my dear friend Morgan Wade reminded me yesterday, when we love someone, we look on their body as the holy grail of all good things.

When we love someone, we see their body as a miracle of hills and valleys and soft and hard, lines, and curves of wonder.

Think back to the last time you looked at the body of a lover that you were head over heels undone for.

A friend who is nestled as close as another human can be to the center of your being.

Remember the awe? Remember the tremor? Remember the grace?

It can be hard to love ourselves like that.

Some days, near impossible.

This is why we have to seek and find the ones who can see us.

The ones who love us full force, no holding back.

The ones who gaze at us with eyes of love and gratitude and wonder.

The ones who can undo all the damage done with their tenderness and their love and the gifts of a gaze bent on truly seeing and honoring what is.

And no, that doesn’t have to be a lover.

In fact, I’d suggest that even if you DO have a lover, you should open yourself to being seen that way by others.

By the friends who know you without pretense. Who see and hold and honor the ugly and messy of you along with your beauty.

By strangers in safe spaces who get just how unprecedented you are.

Humans (near or far or in the next room or across cyberspace never to meet in person) who, upon opening a text or DM or a page with your gloriously naked form would never leave you on read.

Who won’t give a quick emoji reaction and move on with their day.

You need the people (friends or lovers or strangers even) who will pause and take a deep breath and let the honor of the gift of your form stop them in their tracks.

Who will stop what they are doing to write back right away and to say that not only is your ass fire, but that the all of you is holy.

That you are divine.

Worthy of Shakespearean sonnets and epic 80’s love ballads and the walls of any museum.

Image of the author by Julyssa Schenk | used with permission

Humans who will tell you that the soft overhang of your belly is a prayer.

That the angles of your hips are art.

That the fall of your hair across your breasts is worthy of a national holiday.

(In fact, if you are sending nudes to anyone who is NOT doing all of that and more, I’d highly suggest asking yourself if they are making themselves worthy of the honor, because love — your body is a rare gift, and should always be treated as such).

It took other brave women to teach me that my body was worthy of being seen.
It took other brave women to bring me out of hiding and into a place where I was willing to ditch the religious shame and the patriarchal bullshit and the messages from a culture that always told me I was too much something and not enough something else.

It took worshipping the unhidden forms of other women with my eyes and skin and mouth for me to learn to worship my own.

And your body, my dear, is worthy of worship.

Every single moment of every single day of your life.

If you don’t have someone to tell you so, come to me.

I will remind you again and again and over and over again.

Your body, love, is glorious.
amen to your perfectly needy heart.

We humans, we are needy as fuck.

It’s how we’re made.

But somewhere along the way, we buy into the idea that we shouldn’t need so much. Shouldn’t want so hard.

Put on the armor.
Place another brick on the wall.
Practice your poker face.
Never let ’em see you sweat.

You’ve probably seen that post that got shared everywhere. The one about how ultra independence is a trauma response. And yo, last I checked, not many of us get through this ride called life without at least a dash of trauma.

It makes so much sense. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me, amiright?

We live in a culture of individualism.
Batten down the hatches.
Every human for themselves.
Don’t worry, I got this.

Right. Except we don’t got this. Not alone. Not really. It just isn’t how we’re made.

And when we start wanting and needing as we inevitably will (as perfectly designed as we are for the collective and communal experience of living) the voices in our heads can get awfully loud.

You know the voices.

The voice that says we are asking/wanting/needing/seeking too much.
The voice that says we ARE too much.

And at that pivotal point of extension into whatever lies on the other side of safety. At the outreach. At the possibility. At the space where we are asked to leave the safe harbor and venture into unknowing waters where we absolutely cannot go it all alone, even if we wanted to (and let’s be honest, we really don’t ) those voices can get terribly loud.

They say that this much needing is not safe. Way too vulnerable.

Our alarm systems start blaring and the self-destruct warning flashes a yellow-orange-red threat of incoming DANGER.

This happens to me as much as it happens to anyone. I feel so deep and want so much, so often, that it takes my breath away. Inside of the strong and confident and sovereign woman is a tender girl who burns with needs and hopes and the wildest of wishes.

And much of what I want and need I may never get to have. I know this.

This is what it is to be human, of course. Not a single guarantee and a hell of a lot of wild unknowns and some crashing heartbreaks along the way. None of us get out of this clean.

But the story of being here, alive and human, is more than just that. So much more. To allow the truth of wanting is to allow the possibility of having.

This human thing? It’s also full of stories of the sort of magic that can happen when we trust our knowing, wanting, craving selves.

When we remove the stigma of being ‘needy’ and instead acknowledge that for any of these dreams to come true we HAVE to know and name our own needs.

We have to be so intimate with our wants that we trust them to live outside the safe confines of our tender hearts. Even when we might be judged or fear we won’t be met. Even when the crash and burn seems inevitable.

And you know what – we do that. Again and again and again.

Holy hell, how can that not be an act of bravery, of sovereignty, of solidarity of self?

So amen to your perfectly needy heart.
Amen to your grasping hands and your tender longing and the way your body spills over with desire.
Amen to the wishing well pennies and the shooting stars and the crossed fingers and the wood you can’t seem to stop knocking in spite of yourself.
Amen to the want and the crave and the burn.
And hallelujah to the having, when it comes, to the wholeness when it arrives, to the spaces where it all comes together, if only for a moment.

To be human is to have needs.
To speak them is a wild reclamation.
To be met inside of them is a holy miracle.

Every. single. time.
Come Out Of The Closet (Your Body Is Here To Feel Good)

Once upon a time I got embroiled in the comments section of a thread written by a woman I admired.

She railed against polyamory as trauma bonding, no different from humans who enjoy a ‘vending machine of lovers’ and avoiding real connection — claiming that ‘sacred union’ was only possible in the context of monogamy.

My commitment to ethical non-monogamy is new, but after 12 years as an out queer woman, this post felt all too familiar.

A sweeping, blanket judgment against an entire group of people and the ways and hows and whys of their love (and their love-making), written by someone who planted herself firmly outside of this group.

This is not limited to polyamory or queerness, this sort of projection occurs over and over again, whenever we creep closer to the edges, leaving the exalted center of heteronormative sex occurring within the realm of committed (read: monogamous + vanilla) partnership.

man + woman + till death do us part (or some version of) + missionary + conventionally attractive + private + babies + happily ever after = acceptable.

Exist outside the gender binary? Got a collection of collars and restraints and like it hard and rough? Want your lover to have the same parts as you? Desire more than one human or more than one gender at once? Have a secret, kinky turn on that people think is weird? Have a primary partner and one or more secondary partners? Blow the hierarchy out of the water entirely and embrace relationship anarchy as a positive force? Dream of a great big orgy of hedonistic desire?

You dirty, deviant little freak, you.

Truth: Sex is only palatable to the masses when it’s heteronormative, perfectly vanilla (no kinky shit, please and thank you), safely monogamous and fits into the fairytale of heading straight for marriage and babies and happily ever after.

Anything else?

Suspect.
Dangerous.
Shameful.
Questionable.
Wrong.

We’ve all lived too damn long lugging around this puritanical notion that pleasure must be villainized to protect us from ourselves.

Fuck that.

Seriously.

The only question you need to ask is this:

Is everyone involved in full personal safety and enthusiastic consent?

Ask it loudly and repeatedly if you need to.

Yes?

Then you go with your bad, brilliant, beautiful, pleasure-filled self.

Fuck the masses and what they deem acceptable.

Fuck the projection and judgments.

We’ve all wasted way too much damn time in the closet.

Our bodies are here to feel good.

And what makes that happen isn’t for anyone else to decide.

Just you and your partner(s).

End of story.

Remember…

your body is not the enemy
your sex is not a scandal
your skin needs no censor
you are not here for denial
your pleasure is
what the universe
demands
it is the purpose
of your
creation
anything else
is
blasphemy

excerpt from | Treatise of Touch
You Are Allowed To Receive

“All day long I expend
I hold together, I lift up, I give out
I pour life for the food supply, irrigate crops in my mouth
It is a rare occasion where I just take in.”
Lauren Zuniga, Submissive.

Dear Human

You are allowed to receive.

No. You don’t have to have a counter move.

No, you’re not being asked to come up with a specific act of reciprocation.

No, in this exact moment you don’t have to plan your give back or return the favor or pass it on or pay it forward.

You just have to receive.

Really and fully and entirely receive. I’m talking throw yourself back on the bed, open yourself wide, close your eyes and take it all the way into your being.

I’m saying holy-wow-“I’ll have what she’s having”, prepare-to-feel-the-earth-move.

I’m saying, you get to AND you have permission to AND you are allowed to accept what is being offered AND feel damn good about it.

Not guilty. Not sheepish. Not unworthy. Not uncomfortable. Not undeserving. Not conflicted.

I’m saying that if you breathe with me now you can relinquish your hold on control. Just for long enough to feel that goodness for no other reason than because you want to feel it and there’s someone ready and willing to offer.

(Because when that equation lines up, love, that’s miracle enough to celebrate, right there).

So, right now, maybe someone, somewhere just wants to give you something. Something big or something small or something logistical or emotional or financial or ridiculous.

You’re struggling like hell with that, aren’t you, my sweet?

Yeah. It’s scary, I get it.

It might not feel safe, not at first.

Not when all you’re used to is give-give-giving to those who just show up to take.

Not when you’ve experienced gifts that only come with expiration dates and loopholes and paybacks with interest.

Not when you’re used to holding up the whole world in the palm of your hands and it’s been a damn long time since anyone has come along offering anything.

But is there is someone in your life right now showing up in a position to give, freely and wholeheartedly?
Without unnecessarily taxing themselves?
From a solid and grounded place of gratitude and respect?

Someone who comes without expectation or condition or and agenda. Someone who sees you and your beauty and your goodness.
Someone who honors your work and your value and your purpose and your offering to the world.
Someone who acknowledges the wonder of you and who simply wants to offer something in return…

Something real?
Something you want and/or need?
Something that would make your life more beautiful or easier or bring you joy?
Something that would offer you enough breathing space to get through another day?

Yes? Wonderful!

So tell me, dear human….

WTF are you doing blocking that shit?

Guess what?

You don’t get points for refusing goodness.

There is no gold medal for struggling to do it all on your own.

No prizes awarded for not allowing yourself the gift of what you want when it’s being offered with open arms.

You don’t earn extra lives by making the one you’ve been given even the slightest bit harder for a single solitary minute.

That’s some bullshit baggage we’ve been handed by this deeply broken, fucked up, transactional, tit-for-tat culture. And it needs to end now.

Yes, I know you’ve got wounds from past lives, and triggers and baggage and trauma and a ridiculous measure of stubbornness and enough pride for ten people.

We all do.

But if you’re still having trouble, remember how good it feels when you get to give from a space of solidity and truth. When your tank is filled and you know you’ve got something to offer. When you love someone or want someone or look up to someone enough to want to give them what you have. And (and this is important) when they accept it with gratitude and grace.

That shit feels AMAZING.

Truth: blocking what the universe is offering (when you know you really want and need it) you is kinda an insult. It muddies some really beautiful waters with a tangle of past shit that doesn’t have any place in your current reality. It blocks the energy flow for both the giver and the would-be receiver — and nobody gets to take in the gift.

And that, my friend, is a pity.

So do me a favor and make this one word your prayer. Your mantra. Your rosary. Your meditation. Your holy grail.

RECEIVE.

Say it with me now… RECEIVE

receive-receive-receive-receive-receive.

The goodness.
The rest.
The care.
The heat.
The help.
The healing.
The offering.
The assistance.
The respite.
The honoring.
The tenderness.
The boost.
The laughter.
The money.
The pleasure.
The pleasure.
My-god-my-god-my-god, the pleasure.

From your partner. From your lover. From your friend. From the random intersection of serendipity and luck and coincidence. From your parents. From your mentor. From your peer. From your spouse. From the universe.

Recieve.

It honors the offering and the one who makes the offer. But most of all it honors YOU. Your ability to feel gratitude that overrides guilt. Your willingness to stretch into acceptance instead of control. Your worthiness. Your deservingness.

You, you bright startlight of a human. YOU.

Let it be your time.
Let it be your space.
Let the whole room and everything in it be devoted to meeting your needs.

Just for a moment.
Just long enough that you are fed.
Just deep enough that you are filled.

This is why we are all here, together.

To do what we can when we can do it.
To lift and lay down.
To offer and receive.

Whole hearts. Tender bodies. Miraculous souls.

So for the love of all things good and holy, let it in, dear human…

Lay back and surrender and let it all the way in.
I’m not interested in your well-behaved women.

“Well-behaved women seldom make history.”
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

I’m not interested in reading about “well behaved” women.

No nice girls for me.

Give me your outcasts and your witches. Your dykes and your butches and every last one who refused to conform to the script they were handed at birth.

Take me to your untamable and uncontrollable and unfuckwithable. Find me the ones who never met a rule they wouldn’t break.

I want to sit in circle with the midwives and the healers. With the whores and the dancers. The ones who chose the terms of their own inevitable exploitation and alchemized it into the keys to the cage.

Give me the ones you chained and burned and left for dead. The untouchables and undesirables. The ones who saw the shadows of their oppressors clearly, held up a mirror, and cast a spell to turn the evil back on the ones who meant them harm.

I want the women who went against the grain and pushed the limits and changed the paradigm and cooked dinner and washed the dishes and picked the kids up at daycare and did their part to topple the patriarchy in their spare time.

The nasty women. The subversives. The cast out. The sluts and the sex workers and the queens who never had a chance at the god damn crown. The glass ceiling crashers and the unlikely CEOs and the starving artists who wouldn’t compromise their passion for anything.

I want to know the ones who reclaimed the language of cunt and queer and bitch and took it back for their own and plastered it on billboards and t-shirts as a call to freedom.

Send me the princess who rescued the prince and left him to fend for himself because she had better things to do.

Show me your girl warriors and your mama revolutionaries – the ones who fought the battles and nursed the babies and made it back to the front lines in time to march. Put me into orbit with the single mamas who worked three jobs and went to school and still made time for the holiest of pleasures.

The ones who brought down regimes but never denied the truth of their own tender hearts.

The ones who turned their blood into art and refused to let you look away from the truth of their womanhood.

The women who claimed the right to name the terms of their own femininity and gender and presentation, regardless of biology or birth certificates or oppressive laws written by old men in white suits who sit in church on Sunday’s secure in the safety of their gender.

Give me the drag kings and the burlesque dancers and the queer theorists and the feminist scholars and the girls who can’t tell you how or when but know they will fight with everything they have to name the terms of their own existence.

Sit me at the table with the woman who survived violence and who named her abuser, the one who paid for law school with her Only Fans, the tattooed burner who will never fit in at the school bake sale with the other khaki pant wearing moms, the bullied 13 year old who will go on to change the god damn game for the ones who come after her because fuck if she’s going to let this happen to anyone else, the quiet ones with a time bomb ticking in their chest who are biding their time and waiting to break free.

No, it’s not the well-behaved women who call to me. Send me your sovereign, your autonomous, your wildly free.

And then, let’s make some god damn history.
We All Want. Beyond Sense. Beyond Safety. Beyond All.

“She was inexperienced enough to assume what they had was love because she wanted him, and want can be a hundred times stronger than need, and a thousand times stronger than common sense…

Desire, if handled incorrectly, could become a curse”
Magic Lessons – Alice Hoffman

Who among us hasn’t felt that sort of desire?

The sort that twists and turns and pretzels us back in on ourselves. Where the want itself is a hungry, knawing thing.

Desperate and draining, total and all-encompassing. That kind of want, it happens at the edges of things, moth to a flame —drawn to the source of my own destruction—please god burn me up inside the fire of you just to keep me feeling alive.

When I speak of want and desire, I don’t simply refer to what we get to see and know and taste in this life. I rarely concern myself with the easily understandable surface of things.

No, when I speak to you of desire, I am asking you to unearth the root, to excavate the soil, to drill down to the groundwater beneath that sustains it all.

The real answers only ever lie in the depths.

I have said before that my life has been built on a foundation of want. I have wanted people and experiences and interactions and knowledge and I have wanted the kind of pleasure that can rip an entire life apart and name it holy. I have felt the cravings in my bones and become lost in the depths of my own longing. I have been made and I have been dismantled in the center of my wanting.

Some of those wants I have received and had and held and tasted and known. Some I never will. Some have been held out before me, tantalizingly close, and yet I have failed to open my palms to receive, frozen in my own complex haze of trauma and hesitation and convoluted reluctance to change.

Each of these wants has changed me, for good and for bad, whether I made it all the way to the having or not.

And yes, in some cases the wanting and the having has proven to be my downfall. Many times I have become the instigator of my own undoing. This is just the way it is in life, where only the living of it and through it can teach us a damn thing about how to survive – or perhaps only that we were never meant to survive at all.

Right now I want so many things.

I want a giant velvet turquoise sectional sofa that those beloved to me can pile onto in a puddle of arms and legs and bodies and a sleek new mid-century modern bookshelf and to know that in one month I will have a beautiful and safe home secured for my little family.

I want invitations to black-tie affairs where I wear fancy clothing bought at thrift stores with just enough edge to keep me feeling like me, and to become a rock star serenading an arena filled with thousands of screaming fans, and to magically pay off my tax debt by next year.

I want a million people to know my name and my words and my work. Sometimes I want a partner. and sometimes I love my solitude too much to imagine it, and I want to live in Scotland where light and mist make magic on the regular. I definitely want to give myself wholly and completely over to love as many times as I can in this one wild ride of a life.

I want to know the sort of hedonistic pleasure that can bring entire civilizations to their knees and I want to rise from the orgy even more resolved to be all of myself. I want to summon you and then I want you to come to me as if compelled. I want you to cross oceans in the name of your longing. I want you to want me in a way that makes you taste your own desperation, and I want you to see me wholly, illuminated, and utterly undone.

I want to be laid bare by your insistence to know the core of me. I want to trail my hands across my own bare skin and witness the naked face of your own want. I want to lay on my bed and let my eyes follow you as you move around the room doing the most ordinary of things, knowing only that a want like this is never ordinary.

These wants are real and clear. But it has not always been so. So many times in this life I wanted things with almost blind desperation, only to learn that the object of my longing was simply a replacement for what lingered and pulsed just below the surface. A pale substitution. An unsatisfying make do. A space filler. A way to take the edge off but never quite scratch the itch.

An unstable stepping stone on the wild and roundabout path meant to lead me to the real thing.

These are the wants that have become a curse. Where everything got convoluted and crazed, and I lost the path of my own integrity in the name of owning or possessing or having something never meant to be mine. That have left me grasping and pleading with an unforgiving universe that has always had bigger plans for me. These are the wants that have left me naked and exposed, raw and ragged on the edge of the abyss.

But even here I claim the wisdom of my wanting and name it fiercely my own.

It’s the edge of that abyss that always leads me home.

For you see, it is only through all of this that I came to understand one pivotal truth.

In the end, my wants are rooted in a sort of freedom. Freedom from constraints, from shame, from the limitations of a culture invested in keeping me from the source of my power. Freedom is the air and the soil and the groundwater. Autonomy sends the roots of me deep. Sovereignty is the rich damp earth, fertile with possibility.

I am a desert witch who casts spells out of the words that swim in the depth of me. I am a wolf who knows the sound of her own howl. I am the spider who spins a web of longing but who only ever wants to set us all free.

We all want.

Beyond sense.

Beyond safety.

Beyond all.

Our wants may curse and unravel and bring it all down.

But maybe that is only because it needed to come down so that we could see what else might want to rise.

Maybe, just maybe, our wants are seeds in the new garden of Eden where everything can grow without sin.
You Are A Divine-Earth-Shaking-Revolutionary-Badass-Of-Epic-Proportions.

This week I got one of the most badass jobs in the world – I got invited to guest read the weekly Rebel Reading for my favorite-in-the-history-of-ever tarot card deck, Rebel Deck. Now – these ain’t your mama’s tarot cards, which means I got to dust off my ‘talks like a sailor” inner voice and throw down raw and real – talking back against the negative voices that take up too much space in my head. I had a damn lot of fun writing what I most needed to read – I thought maybe you all could benefit from this reading too…

Hey you.

You are talented and fucking amazing.

Yes. I’m talking to you.

None of that looking over your shoulder, acting like I’m talking to someone else. Don’t go giving me all that false-modesty, self-deprecation, ‘this-old-thing’ bullshit. We don’t have time for that right now. You can save that shit for the mean girls from high school.

Talking down to yourself is so 1990’s (and not in the retro, everything old is new again, high-waisted jeans hipster sort of way, if you know what I mean).

If you’re wasting your precious time talking smack about your fine self, then you’re using up time you won’t ever get back, to do nothing but drag yourself down.

Cut that shit out, sugar. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

The world needs your power. Use your voice (just don’t use it for dumb shit).

And darling, any words (spoken or unspoken) that don’t reflect the absolute, irrefutable truth that you are a Divine-Earth-Shaking-Revolutionary-Badass-Of-Epic-Proportions falls into the category of ridiculously dumb shit.

(Why yes, I do suggest you stop right now and add that title to your Instagram Bio for the world to see. Done? Good. Let’s move on).

You ready for the truth?

There ain’t nobody in this whole damn world with a voice like you. Not a single other person alive has lived through your particular story (and honey, I *know* you’ve lived through some hard-core shit). This world, it needs you to speak up. To own your gorgeous self like the sovereign being you are.

In fact, if anyone out there tries to squash you into a box, you smash that box to smithereens and use the wood to build a stage. Then you climb on, stand up tall, pick up a megaphone and ditch your inside voice for good.

It’s time to get loud.

There’s some serious shit going down in the world right now. And your voice? It fucking matters.

Yes. You are talented. Yes. You are amazing.

Yes, you are a Divine-Earth-Shaking-Revolutionary-Badass-Of-Epic-Proportions.

Now start fucking acting like it.

P.S. Repeat after me:

“Watch out world, I am a Divine-Earth-Shaking-Revolutionary-Badass-Of-Epic-Proportions. I’ve got something to say and you’d better be listening.”

P.P.S. Tell those mean girls from high school to stuff it.

P.P.S. Know someone who is spending too much time not owning their brilliance? Forward send them this post and remind them just how fucking amazing they are.

Rebel Deck is no bullshit guidance from the universe, complete with bright colors, language like a sailor and a motherfucking unicorn. In other words, it’s perfect for me (and you). Head over to the website to subscribe to the free weekly readings and use coupon code ‘AWESOME’ to take 10% off your order.
Return To Yourself – Again and Again

This is my first morning without the kids this week, and predictably, I woke from my internal 6am alarm clock. But today I allowed myself the sweet grace of a little more sleep, still smiling the smile I went to bed with last night after a much needed evening with candles and music and poetry and the smallest pour of whiskey.

It’s a beautiful gift to self to come to the earth gradually and with breath and sunlight, rather than by the blare of an alarm clock. To move slowly through that period of transition. To stretch and unfurl.

And so today I decided to do something I have not done in a while, to roll out my yoga mat and give myself the gift of a short ten-minute practice.

As I do every single time I return, feeling the stretch of muscles that have been begging for release and the way breath settles deeper somehow, and the way my feet root into the earth just a little more solidly, I wonder:

Why on earth do I ever allow myself to move away from this, when there is nothing about this that does not feel needed and good?

And then it came to me, as I bent and twisted, reaching and breathing and feeling the tightness and constriction name itself, and maybe even release, just a tiny bit.

This is what it is to be human, to be walking around in these bodies of blood and bone and breath. This is the journey, to return to ourselves again and again, just as I – no matter how long away – will always return to the mat.

I’m never the star in yoga class. I don’t have the natural flexibility, nor do I usually stick to it for long enough to unlock what holds me on a more deep level. I have bent knees when others are straight. My spine curves when it ought to be lengthened. I can never quite manage to balance in crow. And so it is that I often feel the same in life. Moving slower than I would like through whatever muck I find myself in. Turning right when the rest of the room is turning left. Never quite finding the balance to master the more challenging balances with finesse and grace.

And I lose myself. Again and Again. Despite how damn good it feels when I return to wholeness and embodiment. I abandon the practice. I leave, or perhaps it is more honest to say that I forget to stay.

We all do.

I walk off the mat of my own knowing. I roll it up in the corner and I forget, moving through life without attention or intention. Becoming more constricted, more tight, more folded.

Less true.

Less alive.

Less me.

And I blame myself for that. Just as I disparage myself for not having the willpower to stick with a practice that is never anything short of a gift. I speak to myself unkindly and ask how I could be so fickle. How I could have wandered off again, leaving myself behind, betraying what I know to be true. Folding inward, tightening around my own idea of what I should be – like sails tied tightly around the mast of a docked ship that wants nothing more than to ride the open waves of the ocean she calls home.

And then it happens, as it always does. That there is a quiet night. And instead of sitting mindlessly on my phone or computer, I stop to light the candles on my coffee table. Three blood red, sitting on an Atlantic ocean stone, and one white. And I choose the music that speaks to me right then. I move a little, sliding hands over skin and remembering what it is to be here, alive. I pour the smallest amount of whiskey into a mason jar, and hold it up to the light of those candles, amber glowing in cut glass. And then I take a sip – not for the alcohol, but because there is some kind of alchemy there, in that first sip. Some sort of unfolding. A glimpse. A memory. A thread.

If I follow it, if the space is right – I can speak or write or dream or dance my way into truths I don’t fully understand yet. I can live inside of the questions and let them be sacred and fertile. I can allow the wanting of what is wanted, in that sliver of space and to name it and know it as good.

And those nights – I realize that I can return, again and again, to the spaces that are wholly me. Just like I can return to the mat. And that it isn’t the leaving that is worth all the attention, nor even the time away. That one moment of choice. It is that simple step. The stepping back. To the mat. To the music and the muse and the glow of candle light into the darkening night.

To the self.

Perhaps we don’t need to worry so much about the spaces in between. The vastness of the desert we wander through, searching for the way home. Perhaps that

time is vital in ways we will never understand. And perhaps we can find space to accept that the journey toward and away from is a part of the dance. Part of what makes the return so deep and so sweet and so whole and so holy.

This morning, on the mat, instead of blaming myself for all the days I had lived in constriction – I gave myself ten minutes to unfurl. To feel the newness of my body – different every single time I come home. To be fully in that moment of return. To fill my own sails with the air I’ve been carrying in any own lungs, all this time.

Get Lost. Breathe. Return.

This is how we live. And fuck if it isn’t beautiful.
Over and over and over again

I set the alarm last night thinking I probably wouldn’t to it. Up too late writing wild. Too tired. I don’t usually follow through. The alarm was a half-assed thought, really. Another way, maybe, to feel badly about myself for not doing what I say I will do.

But when it was time, and the alarm sounded – 5:15 am, full on darkness. I did it. I got up. and I got dressed. and I found my way to the car and to the studio and to the mat while most of the city slept.

tadasana, urdhva hastasana, uttanasana,
anjaneyasana, plank, chaturanga dandasana,
urdhva mukha svanasana, adho mukha svanasana.

over and over again.

The room was warm enough to calm the chill in my bones, and the music was soothing and alive, and the message with true.

Flow with me here. Right to the edge of you. When you reach the point where you want to give up -surrender. On your exhale, leave behind all that is not needed.

And we moved through asana in near darkness, as the light rose outside and within.

tadasana, urdhva hastasana, uttanasana,
anjaneyasana, plank, chaturanga dandasana,
urdhva mukha svanasana, adho mukha svanasana.

over and over again.

Grounding down and rising in warrior and twisting and lengthening and growing into self. Balancing and focusing and rising. Vertebrae on top of vertebrae. Fold. Rise. Let go. Inhale to lengthen, exhale to twist or fold or go deeper.

If the breath is lost, no matter how perfect the pose – you’ve lost your way.

Ujai pranayama. Opening my throat and becoming one with the sound of the ocean that unceasingly calls me home.

Rest now. Go to the mat. Breathe your way back.

No matter what, you can always go back to the mat.

tadasana, urdhva hastasana, uttanasana,
anjaneyasana, plank, chaturanga dandasana,
urdhva mukha svanasana, adho mukha svanasana.

over and over again.

Two years it has been. Two years away. Two years without bending and stretching and connecting to breath. Two years commuting in traffic. Two years at a desk, in a cubical, separated from purpose and self. Two years of contraction. As I find my way back to mat, I find my way back to self.

The flexibility and strength will take a while, but my body remembers. Our bodies always remember – it is only our minds that forget. With yoga, it’s never been about pushing my body to do what it cannot do, but rather giving myself the space and the grace to allow it to do what it can.

Sometimes, I think, this is the embodiment of freedom. Familiar sanskrit fills my ears, muscles move into poses without conscious thought. Not as elegant or powerful as before. But elegant and powerful and comparison to past have never been the point of practice.

The point of practice is now.

tadasana, urdhva hastasana, uttanasana,
anjaneyasana, plank, chaturanga dandasana,
urdhva mukha svanasana, adho mukha svanasana.

over and over again.

Lay down in savasana, now. There is nothing more to do. Legs fall open, Palms up. Eyes closed.

Continue that same breath. It is what connects you to all things.

There is nowhere else to be but here.

Open your eyes. see how the sky has turned the deep blue of beginnings?

This day is yours.

om.

The class is silent, but I still hear it. Inside of me. The sound of the universe. The sound eternal. The vibration rises and rings. Three times, rolling through. Bones hum. Energy is gathered. Do you feel it?

om shanti, shanti shanti.

The light has risen. My body has settled into itself, and now I begin.

Honor the divine.

In me. In you. In the day ahead.

Hands to heart center. Bow deep.

Namaste.

(originally written in February, 2016)
the week the unfolding began

This was the week of the whole and the holy.

The week of wine in mason jars and the tears that hit so hard I became salt water for a while and as the night grew deeper I pulled a chair into the kitchen to reach high on tip toes to search for the cigarette hidden so many months ago. The week of sitting on the patio at midnight feeling the desert heat blanket my body and pulling smoke into lungs and watching the embers burn.

This was the week the shots went down smooth and hard and the sun baked bones and I jumped in the pool and swam with all my clothes on under the light of the desert moon.

The week that both bank accounts surrendered to the pressure and flared red and overdraft charges lit up my phone, ping, ping, ping to announce just how far I am from my ideas of where I think I should be. And it is also the week that angels appeared, out of the blue, and said, “Your art, It is good. Thank you for making it. Please do not stop. And here is some money to show you I mean this.” And the week that I cried from the mercy of that.

It was the week of friends and laughter and the burn of whiskey mingled with the tart sweetness of berries and walking city streets and feeling all the way alive.

It was the week of the two step floor and the return to self that only ever happens in the center of the quick-quick-slow-slow and the way my being knows to follow the slightest pressure on back or arm without thought. It just does what bodies are meant to do and we spin and spin and spin under the neon lights.

This was the week the words returned. The week the pen began to find it’s hungry path along page and she said to me that the desert turned ocean. The week of poetry flowing liquid honey smooth, without hiding its jagged edges – like truth spilled hard into fractured light.

The week of chipped nails and carefully painted lips, the color of dark red wine and old blood and the deepest and richest of memories.

It was the week of the beginning of an unnamed reckoning, which is different than a reckoning itself, but a beginning nonetheless.

It was the week I lit the red candles and burned the black silk and opened a cigar box filled to the brim with reverence and lessons I imagined already learned returned – as they always do – to teach me more.

This was the week of cut off jeans and black spaghetti strap tanks and the lightest kimonos that trailed across my skin and danced around my legs as I walked. The week of bare feet in wet grass and honest sweat and a soft, almost impossible tenderness to self in the moments it counted most.

It was the week of standing up and rooting down and saying here I stay, at least for a little while, at least until the ground becomes firm beneath these feet of mine. The week of testing out the beginnings of a path that leads to some mysterious somewhere that might be a sort of one day home. The week of recentering and of finding the beginnings of my own knowing and naming it good.

It is the week of craving the hard asphalt of the streets and graffitied grit of a city that does not yet know me. And wanting a crowded dark and bodies against bodies against bodies and taking in the things that make the edges blur and being there, right there, and falling into an abandon that encompasses everything.

This was the week my body, finally, let go just a little. Just enough.

The week the feather and the light and the far away earth quake came to teach me of the ways we make meaning of things and what the word truth really means and to remind me why.

This is the week that the melody rose from my skin and my home filled with music again. From the time of waking until sleep – so that the week, in its own way, turned into a dance. The week of that one ‘I’m On Fire’ cover played on repeat – hundreds of times, or maybe more. Until it moved itself through me and filled the space around me and spoke to me of the way I am always wanting.

The week that we three found some measure of equilibrium, finally, in the topsy turvy that has been life. Where darkness fell and found us in the marshmallow bed, me in the center, one head on each shoulder and one of my arms wrapped around each one. Their weight against me, hearts falling in sync. The week I knew enough to name this feeling peace and grace and the reason for all.

The week we shared the near perfect rendition of Bust-a-Move together while driving to hockey. Each word delivered on time and in it’s place. And we smiled at each other as we sang and I knew in my being both the memory and experience of joy.

The week that the coffee tasted like gratitude and I conjured the ghosts and chose the terms of my own haunting.

This was the week the unfolding began.

And this was the week that I danced. Finally. All alone in that dark room, while the candles cast their shadows against the wall and the music undid something way deep inside.

This was the week that finally, I danced.
You Are Here to Heal

Come here. I’m going to tell you a secret.

It’s okay to hate today.

To hell with all that positive thinking mumbo jumbo. Toss your gratitude journal to the side, just for now.

It’s okay to wallow.

It’s okay to feel like PMS and Mercury Retrograde and your hour and a half commute and your tantruming nine year old and the headache that won’t go away and the fight you just had with the one you love and the 28 dollars left in your bank account till payday and the dirty house and the way you can’t quite seem to make your purpose in this world a viable option are just too much.

Because guess what. It is too much. Way too much.

And yes. We both know people who have it much worse. Who lay awake at night worried about having a roof over their heads or doing battle with an illness that could take it all away. Who live in uncertainty and violence and everything that is the opposite of safe.

We know that this earth of ours bears witness to things that are beyond words. That people are sleeping in cold, hard streets and children are dying and people are hated for the color of their skin or what god they believe in or who they welcome into their bed at night.

And it sometimes seems there is never, ever enough compassion or action to change it all.

You see and feel all of that. All of that deep and painful reality. All that exists within and beyond you that is so, so much harder than any of this stuff that is getting you down.

And you feel minuscule and impossibly irrelevant in the face of it all.

It can be tempting to write off your own very real experience in comparison.

Because truly, most days your too much is really not all that much at all. Not in the face of homelessness and genocide and fatal car accidents and deep dark depression and sexual violence and all the rest of the deep ache of our wounded planet. In the face of civil inequality and brutality and racism and natural disaster and a nation divided.

It’s absolutely true. In the face of all that, your daily stresses and irritations are next to nothing.

Even your deepest heartache… totally survivable.

Perspective and compassion are infinitely important. You wouldn’t be who you are without these things. They live at the core of your strong and tender heart.

I know this. You know this.

Your empathic soul soaks in the aches of this world and spins them infinitely inside, so close you could touch and feel and name every individual slice of pain.

You feel and you feel and you feel. You couldn’t stop feeling if you tried.

You can take so much and keep standing back up. You can absorb and absorb and absorb and still have room to give.

Nobody is going to argue with that – not for a second.

But sometimes – you strong and tenderhearted soul – you’ve just got to sit down in the corner with your favorite cozy blanket and the saddest possible music and give yourself over to the ugly cry.

You’ve got to wallow and tantrum and feel hopeless and grumpy and disillusioned.

You’ve got to, because that’s what’s real in that moment. Because in that exact moment, there is nothing real but that.

Because that moment, right there. It sucks. It’s hard. Life is not going according to plan or wish or desire. Your heart, she is hurting. The stress and the worry are weighing you down, deep and dark and heavy. No way around it.

And you don’t need the pain Olympics or a complex a relativity equation for bravery or the my-struggle-sucks-worse-than-yours game to help you sort it out.

Because of course you know – even in the worst, there are always blessings. And when you play the comparison game, someone will always win and someone will always lose. We can use it to make ourselves feel better. Or we can use that to make ourselves feel worse.

Or – we just give ourselves permission to feel it all.

If you need permission. If you’ve been waiting for someone to say here, stop for a minute. This place that you’re in? It’s not easy. It hasn’t been easy for a while. And I see that your hurting and I see that you’re tired and damn, I know how the worry eats away at your gut. And I know that today, all you want to do is find a sliver of space and a moment of silence and some open arms.

Consider this your invitation.

Lay it all down love. Here. My arms are outstretched and waiting to hold it for you, just for a bit. I’ve got space for you here on the sofa next to me, and I’ve queued up my best heartbreak playlist. The candles are lit and my heart is open to hear your stories.

And you don’t need to worry about holding it in. Or worry that I’ll judge you. You don’t need to listen to that voice inside that tells you that you shouldn’t, that levels criticism for daring to complain when you’ve got nothing to complain about.

Tell that voice to hush. There’s a time and place for that.

But now is time for you. And if you need we’ll sit and cry together. Or I’ll just listen to you vent and whine and moan and complain – because darling, those are perfectly valid things to do sometimes. If it comes to that, we can wail and moan and roar together, eat ice cream and watch sappy movies and listen to sad songs until those much needed tears finally fall.

And not once do you need to fear judgment for just feeling what you’re feeling. Let the bad stuff suck for just a little while. Take a minute without searching for a positive spin. Stop trying to convince yourself that because others have it worse you don’t deserve to feel what you feel and say what you think and wish it could just really be all sunshine and roses and rainbows and unicorns.

Don’t we all at some point just wish it could all be sunshine and roses and rainbows and unicorns?

And when you’re done, when the weight has lifted a little – we’ll walk out into the sun together. And we’ll be grateful, and we’ll remember that it’s up to us to change what we are able to change and send the deepest love to all that we’re powerless to impact.

Because it’s hard to offer peace to the world around you when you’re doing battle with your own heart. And it’s hard to feel what you need to feel if you’ve labeled some feelings unworthy or unacceptable.

What we all need is to feel a little more okay with what is. Not just the pretty and blessed and grateful, but also the gritty and messy and raw.

Because love, you are here to feel. You’re here to love and mend and take action and make change.

You are here to heal.

So give yourself permission to feel the fullness of your emotion, good and bad and cranky and wallowing and full of self-pity sometimes.

Because in doing so, you free the space in yourself to offer the same to others.

Because in doing so, you send a wave of acceptance, inward and outward.

Because in doing so, you open your heart to the world.

And if there is one thing this world needs, it is more wide-open love. The sort of love I know lives inside your beating heart.

So go ahead. Let it suck, just for today. Let someone be there for you, not because your world is falling apart, but just because this moment – the one you’re in right now – is kinda tough. And it’s worn you out. And you’re tired.

Give your heart a rest. Let someone else pick up the slack for a bit.

And then, when you’re ready – go offer yourself again, a little bit lighter, a little bit more supported – and a whole lot more ready to take on the world.

xo

Jeanette
The Body Knows: Honoring the Primal Wisdom of our Animal Skin

It was just a voice, on the phone in the other room. I sat straight up, heart pounding, whole body on alert. The burning in my gut started right away. It was fire. Consuming. Churning. Right in the white hot root of me. There was no information. No logic. Just the reaction itself, it all of its immensity. It warned of danger. Run now, it said. Do not stop to understand. Do not wait. Do not second guess. Go.

***

And that’s the thing. The body knows.

This world teaches us to disregard the wisdom of our bodies. When it hurts, we push past the pain. That swirling sense of unease we call gut instinct? Woo woo mumbo jumbo. Our kids feel run down with a minor cold – we push them to school; no sick days unless you have a fever. It aches? Take a pill. Tired? Down some caffeine and push through.

We learn suspicion is the correct response to the signals gifted us by bones and guts and skin. At best, they are an inconvenience to be silenced. At worst, a lie determined to hold us back. We can’t read the signs because we’ve decided that our bodies speak a language not worthy of fluency.

But that’s the thing. The body still knows.

The body knows what the mind does not. The body knows what we are not ready to see. The body knows what we do not want to face.

The tightness in your throat? The one that makes you feel silenced when she comes home at the end of a long day? The way your jaw clenches and your breath feels stuck in your chest? You are not being heard. Your voice has been stifled. You need wide open spaces that let your spirit sing. You need someone with a wild steady heart who is ready to listen. It will not happen here.

Listen to the tightness.

That tug deep in your gut? It cuts right through your not-quite-inhale when you first catch his eyes. He stands across the worn wood counter at the hipster coffee shop you’ve recently begun frequenting without knowing why. He likes obscure independent documentaries too, and he’ll bring you gone-to-seed dandelions in bed one lazy Sunday morning just so he can memorize what you wish for.

Listen to the tug.

The primal burn that declares danger? The way his name makes a silent refusal rise from deep inside. His breath makes the hairs on your neck stand up in a way that alarms and pulses with menace even though there is no reason to believe he means harm. He will disrespect your boundaries. He will take what is not his. He has done it before. He will do it again.

Listen to the burn.

Because that’s the thing. The body knows.

Some people have a sixth sense, and some are duds at it. I believe I must have it, because the moment I stepped into the house I felt a trembling along my skin, a traveling current that moved up my spine, down my arms, pulsing out from my fingertips. I was practically radiating. The body knows things a long time before the mind catches up to it. I was wondering what my body knew that I didn’t.
~ Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees

Our bodies are sacred shrines of wisdom. The knowledge and truths of generations; spliced into our DNA and knitted into the fibers of our being. They are finely tuned instruments of insight and awareness and they speak our mother tongue, if only we are willing to listen.

But again and again, we ignore the insight. We discount the silent hush along our skin and the ache in our heartspace and the way our leg muscles twitch run-run-run despite our brain overriding with a sensible stay. In doing so we turn our backs on truth and expansion walk head on into danger, or complacency or the slow quiet death of living small.

But we don’t have to.

It is time to start honoring the ancient pattern of call and response gifted us by our animal bodies, by our heart pound and blood pulse and primal burn. It is time usher back your sacred knowing.

It is reclamation time.

So gather close the wisdom in your bones.
Honor the fire in your belly.
Offer gratitude to the tug and the tightness and the way the chills rise across your skin when her finger trails down your arm.
Give blessing to the heat of fever and the churning of rage and the ferocity of fear.
Bow before your holy body.
Listen to its voice.
Remember the language you were born knowing.

Remember how the body knows.

***

In the end, it almost took me out. It caused a fire that eventually burned down all I held dear. Pushed me off the deep end of jealousy and insufficiency and lack. Brought forth demons who were not content until I was on my knees, hoarse and screaming and afraid. And I could feign surprise or shock or dismay. But I knew. If I was honest with myself, I knew from the very start.

Because you see, the body knows. It always knows.
claim partnership with the divine

Wisdom from yoga class. My entirely divine teacher Mary Bruce at Urban Yoga paraphrased Rumi in class a few weeks back. The perfect reminder to stay in tune with our own divinity. So go ahead, you exalted goddess, you. Shine on.
no matter what

No matter what…I will continue to live from the center of my wide open heart.

It is mantra. It is promise. It is prayer.

It is not a choice at all.

It is all there is.
The View From Savasana: Whispers from Yoga Class

The mind says ‘mistake. regret. punishment’.
The heart speaks ‘long. ache. grieve’
The body pulses ‘want. want. want’ 

Yoga answers ‘you are nothing but your breath. exhale’ 

The legs scream ‘go. run. escape’
The ceiling fan whispers ‘you are still here. be present’

The critic declares ‘not enough. do more’
The practice replies ‘exactly right. infinitely curious. eternally gentle’

The hips protest ‘no. I can’t’
Yoga says ‘release the stories. they do not serve’

The hands grasp ‘hold tight. don’t let go’
The pose demands ‘loosen. relinquish. release’

The tension says ‘do not move’
The breath says ‘you are free’

The habit pushes ‘control’
The mantra answers ‘surrender’ 

The spirit cries ‘scared. so scared’.
The music sings ‘every little thing’s gonna be alright’ 

The head whispers ‘afraid of shadows’
Yoga answers ‘you are nothing but light’  

The muscles complain ‘so tired’
Savasana responds ‘rest now. be still.’ 

The fear says ‘ordinary’
Nameste reminds ‘divine. divine. divine’ 

The self says ‘I am here’
Yoga says ‘yes. yes, you are’

om shanti shanti shanti om
i am rooted, but i flow

Dig deep.
Sit still.
Root Down.
Open. Accept. Surrender.
Discover Grace.

It is from this space
that everything flows.
Life + Running: 12 lessons learned by lacing up my shoes and hitting the road.

Every summer I run several times a week along the country roads that have known me since babyhood. I can read them with my eyes closed. I know where I have to dip my head to bypass low hanging branches and where I can count on a breeze from the incoming tide. I stopping running for years, and it feels good to be back.

Running teaches me, clears way for thoughts that needed a space to be born. There is an education to be had along this path, and I am reminded daily that the lessons of running and the lessons of life are one and the same.

1. Don’t give up too soon.
It takes a while to find your groove. Don’t quit too quickly, even if it feels like misery, even if you hate every step along the way. Stop too early and you’ll miss all the magic. Give it some time to ripen, wait for the ease to find you. And it will. If you give it enough space and you are on the right path, the ease will always find you.

When effortlessness hits you’ll smile in spite of your burning muscles and throw your arms wide to catch the breeze. That’s the sweet spot, right there, where things get juicy and delicious.

2. Breathe.
Don’t forget to breathe. There is nothing in life not made easier by breath. Those cycles of inhale and exhale are more important than we think and not near as automatic as we sometimes believe. There will be times when every breath is an effort, or where you’ll be so caught up with your struggle that you’ll forget to take the air all the way in.

Find your way back to your breath. No matter where you are in life, your breath is your center. Honor it.

3. Keep your eyes on the middle distance.
Look too far ahead and you get caught up the difficulty of upcoming terrain. Keep your eyes too close to your feet and you miss important things ahead. In the immortal words of Ani Difranco, “When I look down, I just miss all the good stuff. When I look up, I just trip over things”.

The middle distance is best; far enough ahead to keep your eyes open for potholes and oncoming cars, but not so far that you get intimidated by the hill on the horizon. Don’t get so far ahead of yourself that you miss what is right in front of you, and don’t get so caught up in right-now that you’re not prepared for what’s coming.

4. You won’t be climbing forever.
There will always be hills to climb. They will seem to last forever. They don’t. Your legs will scream and your heart will be pumping like mad and you’ll want to collapse in a defeated puddle on the side of the road. You’ll think you can’t make it. But you will. Those killer hills will be followed by gentle valleys, or straightaways that give you space to run full tilt.

When you’re on a hill you can’t see what is on the other side. Don’t even try. Just know you won’t be climbing forever.

5. Appearances can be deceiving.
Never put too much stock in what you think you see. That huge hill may be a gentle climb that won’t even stress you. That gentle slope might be a bitch of an ascent that will kick your ass. Sometimes the horizon hides the biggest challenge of your life. Just when you think you’ve got it figured out, life will throw you a curveball.

Rely less on your eyes and more on your heart. Whatever is coming and however it looks from a distance, you already have what it takes. Don’t worry too much about what you have not yet reached; it’s probably not going to be what you think anyway.

6. It’s all a mind game, baby.
You think this is all about your body? The strength of your quads? Your cardiovascular health? How much protein you ate for breakfast? Your body is the easy part of the equation. It’s really all a mind game, darling. Let this sink in for a moment and you’ll really start to move. You think your burning leg muscles are your biggest challenge? It’s really the power of mind, spirit and heart that will power you through the rough spots.

You want to sprint that hill you think you can’t sprint? Change your mind. You want to change your relationship? Your job? Your eating habits? Change your mind. You want to change your life? Change your mind.

7. Lead with your heart.
Proper running posture is important. Head up, shoulders back, chest high, arms pumping front to back to propel you forward. What this really means is leading with your heart.

Your heart will lead you into things, and if you pay close attention it is your heart that will lead you out. When your legs give out, and your mind is tired, when you feel like you were crazy to ever begin it is your heart – your perfect courageous heart – that will carry you home.

8. Do it in the rain.
Last week I was already running when the rain began in earnest. It was the last hill of the last mile of my run. Big fat drops hit the pavement and bounced back up against my legs. Mist rose off the road and swirled around my legs. And even though my heart was pounding and my legs burned, a grin spread across my face. I swear my heart cracked wide open in that one, perfect moment.

There’s a whole lot you should experience in the rain. Singing. Dancing. Making Love. The rain brings life. Wakes us up. Quenches our thirst. We spend a whole lot of time and money trying to keep from getting wet. Sometimes we need to just get over it and let the rain drench us until we realize what a miracle we are living.

9. Be your own motivation
There will come a day when you are running up hill. Against the wind. Your phone will run out of juice and you’ll have no tunes to pump you up. A car will drive by and drench you from head to toe with dirty water from a giant puddle. You’ll get a big ole’ stitch in your side. It will appear the world is working against you. There will be nothing on the outside that you can pull from to power you through this. The only thing you have is you. You’ll have to stoke your inner fire from gut to heart until you feel your intensity build from within.

There will always be moments where external motivation dries up. Know that everything you need to cross the finish line is already inside of you.

10. Know when you have something to prove.
Sometimes in life you’re chasing the burn, other times you’re aiming for ease. On Monday you may be sprinting for first place and on Tuesday praying just to finish. Do you run through that painful stitch in your side or stop and lean into it until it eases? Do you push yourself to go faster, longer, harder – or do you just satisfy yourself with moving the way your body wants to move? Do you keep fighting the fight, or just curl up with your tears and some hot tea?

Sometimes you have something to prove, sometimes you don’t. It is helpful, before you begin, to know which space you’re in.

11. Be your own DJ.
I always exercised to music with an edge. White Zombie. Nine Inch Nails. Eminem. This summer I made my customary soundtrack and hooked up my headphones, ready to rumble. But something was missing, the music was not connecting me to the experience. So I switched it up, entirely. Twangy country mixed with Coldplay? Vintage Shakira following Tegan and Sara? Whatever, it works. Everything in life needs a soundtrack. Your monotonous desk job. Your workout. That crazy clusterfuck of love triangle in which you’ve entangled yourself. The right soundtrack makes everything flow – it clears your mind, energizes your body, heals your broken heart.

Don’t be afraid to edit your soundtrack (read: friendships, lovers, office space, the voices in your head) as needed. Life does not always call for the exact same beat.

12. One foot in front of the other.
Running, love affairs, building a business, healing a heart, shattering expectations, climbing mountains, getting your groove on, surrendering with grace. First place finish or slow and steady – the process is the same. In the end it’s always a matter of putting one foot in front of the other, until you reach your home.

Ultimately it always comes down to this: it’s just one foot in front of the other, baby, all the way home.
a particular kind of worship

Chaturanga dandasana. Uttanasana. Tadasana. Savasana.

My body has developed muscle memories and attached them to the rise and flow of these Sanskrit words. I bend and straighten, lift and lengthen in response. I don’t often look to the screen anymore – just the sound of the words and the rhythm of my breath guide me in a practice dedicated daily to love.

Yoga is unlocking me.

I long resisted the mysterious otherness of this practice. Yoga belonged to people who were not like me, who were more than me. I negated my ability to release that fully into anything, not just bending and twisting into pretzelesque shapes, but giving myself over to something so far beyond physical. Despite being surrounded by teachers who could have brought me here years ago, I held back. I was not ready.

Now I respond to an inner call to move deeper. Into the otherness inside me, into my physical body, into the depths of my heart. Yoga called me.

So I bought a mat and began.

Cobra. Warrior. Triangle Pose. Standing Forward Bend. Downward Facing Dog.

My body twists and bends. My legs ground and steady. My heart lifts and soars. Muscles soften and strengthen. I root into the earth and stretch toward heaven. My mantra – open, open, stay open – never more necessary than during my time on the mat. Losing my way requires only a return to breath.

My throat releases in the ocean sound of pranayama and I am free.

I feel the tearing of my right hamstring, an old dancing injury that will never fully recover. I am aware of every bone of my back, the tightness of my legs. I sense the tension in my hips, the way my limbs attach to my torso. But my heart craves this as much as my body. My increase in strength and flexibility seem irrelevant compared to the work this is doing on my soul.

There is no judgment here on the mat, only mindfulness. Growth does not always require insistence and force, sometimes we must merely learn to soften and release. I am beginning to understand what it is to be infinite.

There is a point where my practice shifts into a particular kind of worship. There is holiness here; a scared power in the zone where body meets heart and they move as one. I am near tears and I feel myself opening from the inside out and expanding from the outside in. Strength and vulnerability mingle with a sweetness that makes me fully aware of my own divinity.

Life has a way of bringing me back, over and over, to the mat. I begin to grasp that all of life is practice, and that this practice is all of life.

Yes, yoga is unlocking me.

Nameste

Category: body + wisdom

The only question you need to ask is this:

Is everyone involved in full personal safety and enthusiastic consent?

I’m not interested in reading about “well behaved” women.

No nice girls for me.

Consider this your invitation.

You are here to heal.

Wisdom from yoga class. My entirely divine teacher Mary Bruce at Urban Yoga paraphrased Rumi in class a few weeks back. The perfect reminder to stay in tune with our own divinity. So go ahead, you exalted goddess, you. Shine on.

Dig deep. Sit still. Root Down. Open. Accept. Surrender. Discover Grace.

It is from this space that everything flows.

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Dig deep.
Sit still.
Root Down.
Open. Accept. Surrender.
Discover Grace.

It is from this space
that everything flows.

Are you ready for prose, poetry, and badass creative inspiration?
I'll email weekly(ish) with words of creativity love uncommon sense.