compassion

today i watched the wind blow petals off of a blooming cherry tree and they created a pink blanket on the grass.



i walked to work in the rain in the silence and watched little birds spiral across the lake.

i saw pavement move.

i moved through a panic attack.

i accepted love.


i laughed.

i ate delicious food.

i came home to a plate of cupcakes and a package from my best gal.

i was grateful to be walking.

i spent 3 hours at a spa getting wrapped and facialed. my skin is singing. my two pores unclogged.

i shared.

i enjoyed being known and getting to know another.

i practiced being compassionate to myself.

i noticed that i was controlling, acknowledged it and moved through it.

i re-opened my heart to operating in love.

still no regrets.

tainted love

it's been a fucking intense day of emotional release of this sadness around my heart.

it seems that more layers of emotional depth and pain continue to be released the more honest that i am with myself.

i know eventually i will be at a place where i can embrace all of these parts about me that have caused me so much pain in my past.

this book i'm reading says that the skilled farmer will put in the extra effort to pick up his own manure to fertilize his field. the unskilled farmer will buy fertilizer from someone else.

moral is: we can only evolve if we go through our own shit, accept it as part of us and use it to create something more beautiful.

i've been diving off the high dive into the deep end of my own shit and find that i continue to get pulled down again each time i come up for air.

i can taste how good the clean air is but there's more shit that keeps pulling me back. so, i dive in again.

(note the visual of swimming in shit is pretty disgusting so i just pictured diving in bali)

i am incredibly grateful to be surrounded by amazing women in my life right now. i am fortunate to have the love and support of so many amazing people around me.

lucky lucky girl.

i'm realizing that next on the agenda is to deal with the father issues. my father was also emotionally absent when i was growing up. i always seemed to be the one that was getting hit the most. i can't imagine what i did to get hit with the belt so much. he said that we were lucky/joked/regaled stories that his dad hit him with a belt with a southwestern US scene that would be imprinted on their asses after their beatings.

i spent much of my life varying between absolutely hating him and then obsessively seeking his approval and love. it's an impossible game to get someone to love you the way that you want them to instead of accepting the love that they are able to give in their own way.

it hurts to love someone so much and feel that they are not loving you back. i repeat this pattern over and over again being in relationships with exactly the wrong men for me.

i am repeating this pattern now and hopefully breaking it by this recognition and admission of the current situation.

you can't create the love that you're given but you can choose to accept the love that surrounds you. right now i am so fortunate to have so much love and support around me. so, i'm going to embrace that. fearlessly. and continue to give myself a break in this department.

my six month goal has been to cultivate love. i think it's working. maybe not the way that i had envisioned it but in a way that's teaching me alot more than i could have devised.

so, i continue on this path and remain open.

cleanin' house and takin' names

so far today, i have....said goodbye to the coolest couch in the world. 8 ft of fabulosity was moved out of my apartment today.
i can not imagine better owners and am happy that the couch has a new amazing home. my apartment now has a big gaping space in the living room where the couch used to be. It's most apparent that i am moving out.

The past few weeks I've started significantly downsizing everything. Getting rid of old stuff/energy to allow new things to come into my life. The house cleaning includes clothes and furniture as well as the more esoteric things like self defeating attitudes and things from old relationships that i've been holding on to.

mr. big (aka mark) was my longest boyfriend-girlfriend relationship that occupied most of my 20s (22 to 29). it was a torrid love affair - full of bombay sapphire, maker's mark, hot sex, lying, cheating and every other form of codependent emotional abuse.

i finally broke it off on my 29th birthday (almost 4 years ago) when he left my birthday party sulking and told me to fuck off. i haven't seen him since.

i sometimes wonder if i need closure on this relationship and have contemplated getting in touch with him again. i never have since i don't see what exactly it would accomplish or what i need/want to say.

so instead i've been slowly clearing him out of my life. i went through and burned all of the pictures of him/us and notes from him. a few months ago i found this little box that he had given me for valentine's day one year.



it was full of little love notes that represented cute things in our relationship.



i found this box buried in the dresser at the head of my bed. when i opened the box, i realized that i had never actually taken the time to look through every single note.

so, i laid out the notes in front of me and came up with a mixture of overwhelming love and sadness. despite all of the pain, there had to have been love there at some point? and i wondered what my part in all of this was. like how completely unaware of everything i was at the time.

and i grieved for the love that we had. because each of these notes reminded me of something happy and beautiful that we had shared. as sloppy drunk well intentioned as we might have been we could never really make it work in a healthy way.



so, i cried over the notes and then burned them.



i realized this morning that i still had two things that he had given me that were kind of anchoring my small office. one was a pastel that he drew me for my 28th birthday. it has hung in the back of my closet covered with purses and robes since I moved here 3.5 years ago.

i rarely look at it but for some reason have kept it...until today. i took the picture out of the frame and read the inscription on the back. "happy birthday pup. it is my favorite day of the year because it is the day that brought you into the world."

i thought i'd be able to just ditch this but reading that inscription made me pause again. how could such a seemingly well-intentioned thing go so wrong? so, i cried while i stared at the picture and thought about the love that must have been going into that while he was making it.

and the glass of scotch that he was probably swigging when he was drawing it. i used to think that all of the drama around our relationship, all of the ways that we completely abused or tormented each other was love.

so i burned the pastel, the remaining pictures of him/us and the chagall print of a wedding that he gave me.


and it feels good.

i moved to seattle a month after seeing mr. big at my birthday party. i was in alot of pain when i landed here. i chopped my hair, bleached it blonde and was looking for a completely new start.

i've grown so much in the last four years and so much of that growth has happened here in this apartment. i am leaving with many amazing memories and feeling healed and healing on so many levels.

as i clean house, i am reminded of the extreme pain that i was in when i moved here and i grieve for myself and for those times.

i'm really grateful that i've learned how to grieve and process these emotions. i know that we both did our best at the time.

i have no resentments or regrets. i'm happy to move out the old and make room for new love to come into my life.

the gentle man that i'm growing to love thinks that love happens when two people are grounded with each other. it feels like it.

the most liberating thing right now is that i am in love with me and if this person loves me back it's a super double bonus. but if they don't i'm going to be more than fine anyway. i'm looking forward to that magic when the person i love loves me back. but i'm already there since i love myself.

we are all gentle souls and i've learned that in order to be compassionate to others i must first be compassionate to myself. and that feels incredibly settling and whole and honest and good.

so-br-i-e-tay

welcome to my 400th post in this blog.

that seems somewhat surreal that i've stuck with a project that long. that project, namely, being me.

i went back and read some of the beginning posts a few weeks ago and was amazed at how much i've changed over the last few years.

i decided to redefine my sobriety tonight. i'm all about AA and givin' it up to a higher power and all of that. but i think how i manage my program is ultimately up to me (i think the program people would agree with this too but i'm not really sure).

anyway, i've decided to set my original sobriety date to october 13, 2007. this is the last night that i was really wasted.

it was a wedding in sonoma with cockzilla. i hadn't drank for about 3 weeks at this point.

but... i was in sonoma. for a wedding. and wtf, how could i NOT drink the wine?

a few glasses into the evening i looked at myself in the mirror and absolutely hated the person staring back at me. it was a really horrible feeling to hate myself that much but i looked at my bleary eyed slightly perspiring and obviously drunk self and could not look myself in the eye.

it was then that i stopped drinking. only to drink twice more since... once in new orleans with my gal pals before new years. and then a glass of wine a month after my surgery.

so, i've "relapsed" twice and come out OK.

i think that my actual AA birthday (2/24/08) is alot more meaningful for me because it's when i really gave it all up and asked for help. i also stopped smoking at this point which was actually alot harder than giving up drinking.

so, today i'm 76 days sober and it feels amazing. each day gets more beautiful as i become more me, let go and just dive in the deep end of wherever life takes me next.

today i had my first client that was a complete energy work session. it was really amazing to be able to hold such an intimate healing space for a person. i'm so excited to continue to practice this work.

came home and worked on myself, hot bath and now a sleepy pup. 4 more days and i am officially into being a full time body worker. = hoooray!

love is an action verb.

today rocked.

a glimpse at what the new life i've created is going to be like, full-time!

and it's a beautiful, beautiful thang.

i'm practicing being grounded with this man i'm growing to love.

i'm learning to love in a way that doesn't mean controlling or making up stories in my head.

i'm realizing that all i have to do is have compassion for myself and those around me.

i don't need to fix anything, i just need to be present.

must be present to win.
a-men.

in the words of lcd soundsystem... you gotta give it up, if you want to live it up

love in an elevator

it's been an incredible two weeks and the days keep getting more insanely beautiful the more that i let go and move out of the way of the fabulous life unfolding in front of my eyes.

not sure where to start. but a few highlights include:

1) my first sweat lodge followed by a stellar weekend with lots of healing not only of me but my relationships with my family. girlfriend needs her family and has decided to take the love that they're givin'. it may not be perfect love but at the heart of it it's well-intentioned. they did their best.

2) big shift in the relationship department. shifting to finding satisfaction in knowing another person and being known instead of from arousing and being aroused. i am learning alot about a specific man in particular and sharing alot with him in general. it feels good.

i'm still not sure what a healthy relationship is with a man but i know this one is honest and present and accepting. so, i'll take that in the moment for now and not need to know where it is going.

i fully enjoy his company. it's easy like and it's hard for me not to control but a good exercise in getting out of the way of myself.

3) today was cinco de mayo and it was really fucking hard not to drink. and fuck, i forgot to call my brother for his birthday... gotta get on that.

4) i now know how to make shoes! made myself a pair of mocassins yesterday.

5) i am forming a really amazing group of gal pals. the creative energy is back and blossoming again. = yay!

the move to the san juans for the summer is in full swing. life in incredibly (but not unbelievably) beautiful...insecurities and all.

wherever you go there'll be love love love

so i wanted to share the most amazing day that i had yesterday.

i drove out to the san juans for an interview for a summer gig as a massage therapist. unlike previous job interviews where i would be super anxious and getting prepped by donning a suit and getting my portfolio ready...i prepared for this interview by going on a hike at lime kiln park near friday harbor.

it was an absolutely amazing day and i met three really wonderful people as i hiked along and we walked and talked together. i left each of them with hugs and them leaving me with good luck wishes for my job interview. the energy and operating in love was wonderful.

so, i go to the spa and i love the people and the place. i can tell that i have the job as soon as i walk in and actually see my resume sitting there with a note that says "welcome letter and new employee orientation". i do the practical (was a bit nervous it was my first massage job interview but just kept breathing and dropped in and it all worked out).

got the job and i go for a little hike to check out the rest of the place. as i'm walking to my car, i hear this woman yelling, "so, did you get the job?".. it was the couple from new jersey that i met earlier. i relayed the news and they were beaming and gave me a big hug of congratulations and encouragement to take the gig.

we depart and then i'm walking to my car and hear "hello!" and it's the dutch guy that i was hiking with and he also gave me a big hug and good wishes. love is all around us and i'm learning to accept the love and support without fear.

the best part about all of this is that i'm coming to realize that these days of operating in love are just "par for the course". it feels good to start the shift from "omg i can't believe this is so fantastic" to just accepting living in this light as a normal part of life. it feels good in a really simply honest and beautiful way. removing the fear around my heart.

so this is where i will be living this summer.


simply amazing.

this is dedicated to the ones i love (that's you)

super amazing weekend of love.




guess what, you can live in this on a daily basis.

wow.

the best part about this is that there is also a youtube video on how to play this on your ukelele. i KNEW there was a reason for my drunken pink ukelele purchase in hawaii a few years ago.

shreddin' to the oldies

sitting here shredding all of my paperwork from my last corporate whore job.

i find that as long as i clean my house stuff turns out oK.

beautifully enough i also realized tonight that this is the first time that i made a job choice that was not entirely based on making money.

i received my social security benefits statement in the mail today. i'm not entirely sure why they send you these things.. it's basically a statement that shows you how much you have made in your lifetime and what you can expect as a pay out when you retire.

it was surprising looking at my work history. girlfriend has made alot of money in her time. (girlfriend has also spent alot of money in her time!)

i'm quitting my current job in a few weeks (last day is may 15th). i totally love the team that i've pulled together and the work that we all do together. it's amazing really.

but, i don't LOVE the day to day work of it. it's alot of admin work and desk stuff and the more i drop into my body, the less time i can spend in front of a computer (hence the lack of blog posts lately)

anyway, the business is at a point where it's REALLY gaining momentum and in the process of exploding. this, of course, means more money for the person who is managing the business and the EGO part of me thinks that i should stay to "reap the benefits" of my work.

but that's totally what i don't want to do in my gut. and so, i'm walking away to do what i love full time. i really believe that abundance and money comes when you're doing what you love.

shred shred.

so i don't have to worry about that anymore. i have more than i need AND i get to do what i love everyday. good deal.

yesterday was a double, well triple, celebration of graduating massage school, hitting the 60 day mark of sobriety and welcoming my polish sistah to town.

shred shred

love and happiness

it is also incredibly interesting that my shredder has been fucked up all week but as soon as i started shredding the stuff from my last corporate whore job, it went on turbo boost.

so there you go. some words for you to read.

love from above!

a dream realized. a dream deferred. and a dream in progress.

had a sinking feeling on the drive home last night that there was nothing left to say.

the sad but sure realization that the beautiful future that i had dreamscaped with this man would never come into being.

gave it another go these past two weekends to see what was there. great day of kicking off the seattle summer driving around in his hot convertible and making out on the beach. saw him as the incredibly tender hearted loving man that he is.

but you should feel something when you're making out with someone, shouldn't you?

realized that the new me wasn't a fit with the vision of the old me and him. and that made my heart cry a bit because it is the death of a dream. time to pick another path to choose my own adventure.

re-writing the stories in my head and shifting the plot line and characters on a daily basis. working less on future tripping and more on seeing the light in other people's eyes in the here and now.

on the beach with new friends and realize how easy and right it can be when it's right. whatever the new right for me is right now. which is a completely different question and answer kind of thing.

in less (?) heady news, i saw the dalai lama on friday night. complete surprise free ticket from my friend ra which included a fabulous vip party in between the dalai lama talk and the death cab/dave matthews/tim reynolds show.

the main thing that i got out of it is:

-knowledge + heart = compassion

-the dalai lama thinks that women rock and we need more women in power because they are more inherently compassionate and our world needs more compassion today. mothers are most important in teaching compassion. the whole thing left me wanting to have babies which is a surprising and lovely realization.

pics from the weekend of fabulosity, the dalai lama in bright lights and my first hike post surgery here.

must be present to win

the present is timeless.

i've been living in the present all week and am amazed at how beautifully things work out when i am grounded, breathing and living in the now.

i've been working on balancing my metal this week. in chinese medicine metal represents self-knowledge and eliminating unhealthy parts to maintain the health of the whole.

actively directed growth.
stripping away impurities to concentrate the essence.
finishing touches
cleaning house.

recognition of a higher truth.

grief turning into resolve.
resolve being the recognition of what we have and moving forward.

reclaiming innocence.

i am incredibly grateful to be alive.

everything and nothing is changing.
the beautiful part of all of it is that i'm learning the art of patience and practice.
and at complete peace with all of it in this very moment.

no matter what happens, it's going to be amazing.

this is how it works

realized this weekend that what i write/say/do/think about other people is less of a reflection on who they really are...and more of a reflection of who i am at that time.

it's amazing how when i change myself the world and my relationships with people around me change.

case in point: cockzilla aka mike.

we hung out on saturday and sunday. and it was lovely.

and not in a sunshine and rainbows super high romantic way.
but in a wow, this person has such a huge heart and so genuinely cares for me sort of way. he is a very gentle and loving man.

it's terrifying to look someone in the eye and see so much love for you in it. my head started racing...what does this mean that we are spending time together? what's he going to assume? does this mean.. etcetc... finally a unified chorus of panicked voices in my head screaming :RUN!!!!!

when i got out of my head and was grounded and present and in the moment it was really quite amazing.

i'm pretty certain that there are so many people sending me love and many men in the past who have been genuinely in love with me. maybe even mr. big. the only thing that was common in all of those situations was me.. and my complete lack of wanting to be cared for and loved because i didn't really care or love myself.

that's a tough thing to admit to yourself. that you are the root of your own self loathing.

second lesson that i learned this morning. you have to take care of yourself first. case in point, i skipped my morning AA meeting because i had an early meeting downtown that i had to prep for. i also skipped a walk around greenlake for the same meeting.

i really wanted to go to the 7am meeting and see the group. but i chose not to in order to get ready for the busy day o' meetings and such. and..the 9am meeting just cancelled on me.

so, that's a bummer but lesson learned. if you take care of yourself all the other stuff will work itself out.

"i spent the winter with my nose buried in a book...

...while trying to restructure my character" - of montreal

working on my insides matching my outsides.

i've been working on my "insides" with therapy the last year and a half. but i got sort of stuck on the idea that the problems on my insides were because of other people's actions.

like, my father was emotionally unavailable...
my mother was emotionally manipulative...
pat raped me in high school...
mr. big told me to fuck off on my birthday...
etcetc

and all of these OTHER people's actions were why I was experiencing so much pain and so fucked up and an addict.

at the end of this last round of therapy ...my therapist said one incredibly important thing (as i rambled on about yet another flailing confusing relationship)..

"You are choosing to be in this relationship. And you can choose to leave it."

This is not rocket science. But, to me, this was a huge realization that I had the power to choose what is best for me.

Part of AA is that you take a personal inventory of your drinking history and people you're pissed at etc.. The idea is that you've got to clean your own house before you can grow.

So, I've been doing this inventory the last few weeks.

I finished it this week and it struck me what harmful choices I've been making for myself. When I look at my "outsides" through my actions... I see how out of sync they were with my "insides".

The last half of my life was filled with getting wasted. Starting with the occasional nips from my parents and grandmother's bottles when I was 12... moving to smoking up in high school...

turning into raging angry alcoholic freshman year of college (complete with endless blaring of rage against the machine and an angry boyfriend - what did i have to be so angry about?).. combined with more smoking.. throw in some acid, mushrooms, ecstasy, speed, moving up to things up my nose this past year... Progressively more toxic.

I trace what I started drinking.. MGD in pennsylvania summers... to Bombay Sapphire gin through college.. to nightly bottles of wine and maker's out of the bottle by myself in seattle. Progressively more toxic.

As I became more toxic to my insides and moved more out of line with my true self, my outside actions became more toxic. Anesthetize the insides that were crying out for expression with outside toxins/dangerous sex/addictions/abusive relationships/other people's problems moving to complete fucking blackouts.

What's interesting is that when I started making a more serious effort at matching my insides with my outsides - the big moment was quitting the corporate whore job in august - the rest started sorting itself out.

Doing my inventory with myself, I also realized that I have been making an effort at conscious living for a relatively short time. This reminded me to be patient grasshopper.

Now that I'm stripping away the "outside" behaviors of getting wasted all of the time, I am left with these raw dripping ugly "insides" to deal with.

There is alot of pain there folks.
And people say that "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger".

I think this is cheesy but a decent description of that sense of renewal that comes after dealing with your shit. I read somewhere this morning that the problem with this saying is that "this expression excludes the awe and wonder that are the gift of raw suffering" (ref: wood becomes water, chinese medicine in everyday life)

I am dealing with alot of raw suffering and it feels really incredible and I'm grateful for this chance to shed my past behaviors and agreements with myself that no longer serve me.

Constant renewal, can't ask for much more than that.

girl power. i get by with a little help from my friends.

the best part about breaking my leg is slowing down and taking time to be with my friends and family. tonight i had 4 awesome gal pals over for dinner.

it was so wonderful to be around such lovelies and geeking out on massage talk and eating delicious things and good conversation and me being sober.

i feel elevated to another level of consciousness (which indicates people were speaking from their hearts) and the evening was timeless (which indicates that i'm living in the flow).

why i was always "too busy" to do this before, i have no idea.

i'm realizing that this is a major opportunity to change my lifestyle. as i've gotten alot healthier the last few years, i also realize that i have a ways to go. specifically on the narrow minded work a holic front and the physical fitness front.

instead of focusing on taking care of everyone else and focusing all of my energy on being infatuated with emotionally unavailable men i've decided to turn the program around and focus more on me.

specifically in nutrition, building my awesome gal pal base and community around that and getting my exercise on.

my blood pressure is really high. something i've been ignoring perhaps as a last piece of teen angst (to prove to my father that i could control it through sheer stubborness)

i think if i lose more weight and chill on the sugar that should help alot.

so, here is goes. the big leap into ME on the physical side.

and off i go to bed.

post op #3 - healing with a ways to go

i'm off of crutches and putting weight on my busted bionic leg.

this progress led me to the conclusion that my xray today would show a completely healed bone.

such is not the case!

so, my bones are still broken. but they are healing on/ahead of schedule.

i'll write more about this tomorrow when i'm less spaced out on vicadin and more awake.

as i was leaving, the doctor asked me if i wanted anymore percaset.

to which i replied, no thanks man, i'm off of that stuff - it's like crack.

he stopped short of the door and then replied, yeah. it actually is a close derivative.

i found this funny and we both kind of laughed.
is it funny to be prescribing crack?

i think my surgeon and his assistant think i'm nuts. i always have like seven million questions and then call in between visits. i think i might bake them brownies next visit.

more deets on the leg and next surgery and all of that tomorrow.

happy to be alive and back to baking cupcakes.