Life can be fucking hard.   Month after slogging month.  It’s relentless really.  You are weary and worn down and exhausted.  You wonder sometimes, will it ever ease up?

And then it does.  Just like that.  The exact thing you had been longing for, wrapped with a bow and delivered to your doorstep.  Right when you least expected it.  Right when you needed it most.

The sky clears.  Burdens lift.   Old, limiting stories are wiped out.  Boom.   Long dwelled upon fears rendered entirely obsolete.   The universe smiles and says ‘Here, take this.  It’s for you.  You’ve been so brave and so patient. I’ve been waiting for just the right time to give it’.

Game change moment.  Things are possible today that were impossible yesterday.   Anything could happen.

Perfection?   Little chance.
A free ride?  Certainly not.
Smooth sailing from here on out?  Un-freaking-likely.

But still, in that moment, when the news is delivered.  In that moment the sun is shining like possibility incarnate, you’re driving down the freeway with the windows down and your hair blowing crazy in the wind.   The song on the stereo is Hollywood soundtrack perfect for the moment.  Like the universe dialed in the most utterly perfect setting just for this occasion.  And then that one piece of news shifts your trajectory in an utterly essential way and you feel yourself settle into space just a little bit differently.

In that moment your eyes shine and your mouth curves in a smile.  In that moment you let out a powerful exhale and speak some divine gratitude.  In that moment, it is perfectly clear.

Anything could happen.  I can.  And it will.  And it does.

And there is nothing to say but thank you.

The first time he knew that he missed her, he didn’t even really know her. He just knew that the ache inside him could be called by only one name.  Missing.  Feeling the loss of something he had not yet had; this was foreign.  It is uncharted territory to call familiar one who has never been known. It is tender and vulnerable to dance around the entitlement of such a proclamation.  To feel with such solidity as if he had tasted and touched and lived within the space between their bodies, when really, none of this was true.  They had no shared history, by any way of measurement.  But yet he missed her.  And In the center of his soul there were two words that pulsed in repetition.

I remember. I remember.  I remember.

~~~

It is true, perhaps, that we have always known.  But even remembering is a process.

It is possible to miss what you have never known.  For the strange to feel familiar and for the untouched lover to call you home.   There are moments in life, fragments and slivers of time or touch or experience, when everything spirals into itself.   All else fades.  There is only what there is, and nothing more.

In those moments, our memory is returned to us, and we are awakened to what we have always known.

Perhaps it is simply this:  That all of life is not a learning, but a remembering.  Remembering that knowledge built into our bones, the wisdom spliced into our genes.  Recognizing lovers from past lives, rediscovering truths long ago experienced, recalling lessons learned and learned and learned.

If we were born with the collective wisdom of the cosmos implanted in our being, our task is only this: to live and seek and love until we’ve removed barriers that unlock it all.

The most painful of this remembering is in the moment of unlearning.  Rejecting false truth.  Releasing embedded dogma.  Clearing the things that do not serve.   It’s a harsh awakening to reject limitations long accepted as certainty.  But only then can we hold to the light what we have deeply, always known.  Only then can we inhale this knowing deep into our consciousness. Only then can we call home what has always been ours.

Only then can we remember.

~~~

She knew then.  As if she had always known.  Although everything in her life until then had told her otherwise.   Although the path ahead would be difficult and pain was inevitable.  But there it was in front of her. The memory of her own divinity.   Her one true thing.  She knew it as if she had always known.  As if her entire purpose in life had been to find her way back to this space.  There was fire ahead.  A burning down and a rising from the ashes. There would be collateral damage, guaranteed.  But she was ready. She remembered how to spread her wings.   She had rediscovered a long missing part of her heart.  She answered the call of her memory.  Nothing could ever be the same again.

~~~

We live by accumulation.  Stockpiling lessons and truths and relationships and labels.  We gather them tightly and hold them possessively, give them the responsibility for our continued safe passage.  As if what has already been can guarantee safety and stability for what is to come.  As if protection is found in what is owned and completed and understood.  We ground ourselves in limitations and say thank you to all that keeps us locked in our patterns of forgetting the truths of our birth and our beings.

How often we are wrong.

How often we only meet ourselves in the midst of a great storm.  When the wind has ripped us from the moorings of all that has been.  When we are stumbling and ungraceful and foolishly unknowing.  It’s in the center of the worst that we come to the root of what is.  To the place where things can become.  To the spaces and people who can deliver us back to our memories.

It takes a long, hard fall to find the solid ground that will support our inevitable rise.

But rising requires memory, and it is memory we find when all else is stripped away.  It is memory that exists when the logical mind has been silenced.  It is memory to which we are delivered most often when life has brought us to our knees.

Listen.  Do you hear that?  It is the song of your spirit.  It is the howl of your wild.  It is the truth of your bones, wisdom born in you.  It is the words that have been waiting to be spoken aloud.  It is the fire burning in your gut.  It is the lover you have not yet met, but have always somehow known, calling you home.

It is your memory.  It has been with you always, and will never leave.  You carry it nestled deep, safe at the very molten core of you.

Be still now, love.  Find a quiet place, and let the universe blanket you with peace.  Turn your palms up in welcome, raise your face to the sun.  Say thank you to all that has brought you to this place.

It is time to remember.

~~~~~
And then, finally, they were together.  And in the space of their first meeting lived the energy of a thousand years and lives and loves too numerous to count.  This memory pulsed in the air between them; a living, breathing entity that demanded reverence.   It floated in the air, tingled on the surface of their skin, burned low in the center of their longing.  If you had been there, a silent witness to this moment, you would have seen not just two people.  Instead, you would have seen how such a love had cracked open a collective memory, and released the love of a thousands souls who had gone before, and a thousand more who had yet to become.  And in their first kiss they were flooded with all of this, and with a holy gratitude.  They had remembered.

As we begin the new year, I invite you to stoke the embers of your inner fire.  Coax the flames from your center to the edges of all you reach.   Make peace with the parts within you that crave that burn.  Let the flames get high.  Burn bright.  The world needs your light.

{a soundtrack for fanning the flame}

there is a girl

she is wise
and wary of flames
but still, she knows
she will survive the fire
life scorches sometimes.
she has been a phoenix before
and every time
she burns to ashes
she knows
exactly how to rise
again.

she carries
destruction grief
carved river deep in her bones
specializes in
wrecking ball
knows how to bring
the whole thing down
surveys the broken
claims it as wholeness
and names it all good
she knows well
the holy necessity
of beginning again.

she has gone mad
for beauty
found rapture in shadows
calls poetry her religion
she seduces uncertainty
like a dominatrix
bows to no god
names herself goddess
builds alters
to the divinity
of heat and sweat and sex
and claims righteous ownership of
the body she has been given.

she once held her truth
in bone marrow,
locked deep.
but she was always
prone to fracture
learned that words flowed best
at the broken spots
she wrote splinter point novellas
told shatter stories
knit words into worlds
and worlds into heat
and heat into breath
and breath into medicine
and she learned her voice
had the power to heal.

she lives transparent now
welcomes the feel
of air on bare skin
throws arms wide
holds out her heart
and says here
take this
all of it
she figured early
that far too much energy
is invested in veiling
truth
in hiding bodies
in cloaking love
she refuses
to cultivate shame
she saves her effort
for vital things.

she knows that
love is expensive
and always worth
the price
she knows home is not
where she lives
but something
inside held
and sometimes
only found by leaving
she knows that walls
are imaginary
and that open doors
are everywhere
and that eventually
we will all
make our way
back to the sea
back to the crashing waves
back to salt water truth

she does not believe in one day
no happily ever after
or black and white
hard truths
her forever is now
she finds her rapture in the fullness
of this moment
humanity is her only dogma
kindness her communion
and church a mountain top
in the center of the desert
while the city pulses below
she speaks amen
in every holy fragment of existence.

she always knew she’d have daughters
knew she would mother them well.
she teaches them the value of their
outside voice
their no voice
their yes voice
their my entire being is a temple voice
she teaches them that their spirit
is truth
and their truth
is strength
and their strength
is vulnerability
and their vulnerability is a gift.
she knows too many girls
are broken before they
become
she has done battle in the name of rebirth
carries her scars with fierce grace
she finds beauty in the breakdown
and wholeness in the shatter
strength in the fault lines
and goodness in everything.

she is not afraid to name her gifts
knows the magic in her words
knows the spiral in her hips
she has a vital spark
at the center of her longing
she has secrets behind her eyes
and will share them
with anyone
who asks
but she only wants those
who commit
to asking.

she knows that compromise
is for vocations
and that spirit
is non-negotiable
she accepts no labels or limits
build her a box
and she will dismantle it carefully
use the pieces
to create a stage
and sing her own wild song
knows there is a power
in the melody we carry in our
bones.

She knows the lotus blooms
in mud
she knows the phoenix
goes down in flames
she knows the rapture of lust
and the escape of captivity
she knows the center of the paradox
is where the truth is found.

she is full of sky
full of starshine
full of goddess flame
bleeds words
speaks truth
welcomes it all
howls at the moon

she is a girl on fire
she is stoking the flames
she is lighting the world
she burning to ashes

And always she is rising

And rising

And rising again.

Why are you so determined to keep your wild silently inside you?   Let it breathe. Give it a voice.  Let it roll out of you on the wide open waves.  Set it free.

 ”It’s not working.  I try and I try and I try.  But it’s no good.  My heart gets broken.  It never lasts.  It never, ever lasts.”

You’re so right, lover.  Of course you are.  It never lasts.  Things break. They fall apart.  People love us and then don’t love us anymore. We have something beautiful and then it is gone. There are endings and endings and endings.  More endings than all the beginnings in the world.

Cynicism is the easy choice.  Protective.  Sensible, even. Build yourself a safe little box and seat yourself inside it.  Shut the door.  Do what you’ve always done.  Say what you’ve always said.  Slide the deadbolt across and only open it for people you already trust. Haunt only the familiar places. Do not venture into the vast unknown.

You could do just that.  So many of us do.

Or you could do the exact opposite.  The entirely unwise, and utterly reckless thing.   The bold and audacious choice that makes heart pound and stomach butterfly. The one thing that makes absolutely no sense.  You could smash the boxes.  Burn the labels.   Step outside into the light, throw your arms wide, and lift your face to the sky.

You can vow to write a different story.

Look at me, love.  Let me cup your chin and tip your face so that your eyes meet mine.  Listen to me now; this is important.

The stories that will define you are never done being written.

It is good to become sure of who we are and what we do and how things go.  But that very certainty that makes things feel solid and sure can cause us to miss out entirely on who and what and how we might become.

“I’ll always… I’ll never… It will…It won’t…I can’t-I can’t-I can’t. “

Those are momentary truths.  They might even be the ending of a chapter. They might be the wisest things you ever say.  But they are not the end.  Your story is always in progress.

You can copy and paste the first 30 chapters of your life and use them to fill in the empty pages ahead.  Sigh a sigh of relief and climb back into that dark and familiar little box.

Or you can do the bravest, most foolish and foolhardy thing in the world.  You can turn the page, look at the stark whiteness before you and just sit with it for a bit.

It takes courage to be a blank slate.  To start clean.  To refuse the desire to fill in those empty pages as quickly as possible, with familiar words and characters and plots.

But do me a favor, dear one.  Take a breath.  Take air into the unfathomable depths of your soul, right down to your core.  Now let it out.  Exhale with the unceasing sound of the ocean. Release old scripts.  Say goodbye to characters who have served their purpose.  Reject plots that keep you playing small.

Here’s the tricky part.  You must let those pages stay empty long enough to fully come awake. Empty is the most profound discomfort, bottomless and deep.  It will make you antsy.  Leave you feeling naked and searching for cover.  But empty can also be the one thing that releases you to freefall long enough to locate your solid ground.  Awake, naked and uncomfortably grounded is where it all begins.

Have you made it to the bottom?   Good. Now just sit there.  Look around at the brilliance and beauty. Feel every tingling cell in your entire being. Notice the potential in the air.  Feel the ground beneath your feet.  Breath it all in.  Let life fill you up.

And then begin.

When you are fully ready, you will write your own story.   Write it with heart and soul and grace, the way only you can.

So fill the pages, love.  With fountain pen and broken crayons and bright orange marker.  Add some glitter and glue.  Shamelessly steal from those who inspire you and then use your own inimitable magic to mold their words into something entirely new.   Give yourself permission to scrawl across the pages, relish the messiness of not knowing what comes next.

Nobody writes in this book but you.  It is all yours. You are author and editor and publisher of your own biography.  You always were, you just needed this reminder.

And damn, girl – you know exactly how to write the epic poem that is your life.  You’re the only one who ever could. You just had to trust yourself to do it.

So, try everything. Say yes over and over. If nobody asks a question that makes you want to say yes, make up your own.  And then make up the answer.  Dream twenty different answers and choose a new one every day until you find the one that fits.   The answer that makes spirit burn with creatrix fire.  The answer that makes toes tingle and breath catch.  The answer meant only for you.

Write  it all down.  The mistakes and the blessings and the places you cracked in two.  Write the prayers and the tantrums.  The sacred and the profane. The open roads and the closed doors. Nothing is permanent. Erase what does not fit.  Cross it out.  Write on top of the lines that no longer serve, fifty times over if you want.  The real story will always be legible to your valiant heart.

And there will still be endings.  Even the most brilliant and true eventually encounter the end. Writing these endings will be impossibly difficult.  Your jaded cynic will peek her head out of that safe little box and try to take command. But behind that weary skeptic lives a hopelessly idealistic heart.  I know this.  You know it.

And that hopelessly idealistic heart knows well that this world is the most holy alter of wonders. All of it. Every day.

Life is constant phoenix rising. The rebirth from ashes only comes after the annihilation of what came before.  This annihilation is both ending and beginning.  It is heartache and brilliance.  It is fuck-ups and bliss.  And it is all yours for the writing.

Let yourself be annihilated.  Rise from the ashes.  Be born and die and born again.  Celebrate the blood and guts and gore of it all.  It’s the stuff great stories are made of.

So go ahead, write yours.

{originally published at my home away from home, the amazing Rebelle Society}

Get up now.  Come on.  On your feet.  Out of the corner.  Don’t look back, there’s nothing behind you but the past.  

We’ve got a wild ride ahead.

Let’s agree on some ground rules right now.  The rules are that there are no rules.  And that you make all the rules.  Make them and break them and change them at will.   Actually, the only rule is that YOU are the rule.   The ground is still the ground.  The sky is still the sky.  But the limits have been lifted.

You are free.

No more playing small, lover.  Stop tucking away your brilliance into the pockets of that oversized cloak.  You’re no shrinking violet.  I know it and you know it.  If they stopped for long enough to look below your surface the world would know it.   Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise.  They might try; it’s easier for them if we don’t do this.

We’re not interested in easy. 

That slow fade into nothingness?  Pale pastels and safe choices?  Quiet corners and predictable lives?  Stagnant comfortable sameness?  Your life story written by those who have a vested interest in keeping you small?   Not now.  Not you. Not tonight.

We’ve got places to go.

Take a deep breath.  Feel that fire burning deep within you?  You’d almost forgotten it was there, hadn’t you, love? You’ve been holding it down all this time, stuffing out the flame.

Tonight we stir things up.  Rekindle the dying embers until the sparks catch and your belly warms.  Let the light spread outward until your toes tingle and hips twitch.    Feel that smirk start to curve your lips?  Sense that new strut in your step?  Good, you’re almost ready.

Now ground your feet to the earth, raise your arms to the heavens and release that goddess fire in a roar that brings down walls and shatters glass.   Let’s get messy.

There’s no need to keep things tidy tonight.

Hop in the car with me.   I’ve already got the top down for you. The music is blaring.  Some deep voiced seductress is signing your freedom song.  There’s no speed limit where we’re headed.   Our hair can tangle medusa crazy in the wind.  Tonight we’re going off the beaten track. And you are in the driver’s seat.

No, I’m not talking about some out-there wilderness.  We don’t need the inhospitable desert or the mountain switchbacks or the backwoods country roads.   Fuck the map and the GPS.   You know the way.   You always have. Tonight we’re heading straight into the uncharted terrain of you.

Into The Wild.

Forget what they told you. You are love child of a passionate affair between goddess and universe.    You were born of a steamy forbidden heat and you were made for the cyclone of unadulterated wholeness. You are a daughter of delight.  You are the unconstrained mother of all.  A fierce warrior.  A wicked priestess.  Your roots twist into this earth.  Your spirit rises in glorious asana.  You let loose with the howl of the wilderness you’ve held tight all these years.

You are the wild.  Untethered. Gloriously free.

See that little dive bar up ahead?  It’s got a neon sign that flashes ‘Open. Open. Open’ – keeping exact time with blood’s rough pulse through your veins.  Pull off the road.  Hear the hard crunch of gravel beneath the wheels.  Feel the pounding of the bass in your chest.  Throw open the door.  There’s a dance floor straight ahead and a disco ball spinning light in all directions.   The room awaits your spiral hips.  Your electric pulse. Your restless, uninhibited limbs.

It has always waited for you.

Make a quick stop at the bar. Feel the whisky burn a path down your throat and heat you from the inside out. Slam down your glass on the weathered wood and laugh out loud.    Let the beat of the music call forth the rhythm of your soul.  Know you are being observed.  Closely.   Watched by the voyeurs and the vicarious and those who have already entered their own wilderness.  All eyes are on you.

Taste the freedom. Revel in the attention.  Gather it all to you and welcome it home.  Feel the lust and the respect and the waves of divinity connecting you to everyone here.  Lay claim to sex and sensuality.    Experience deeply your duality and autonomy.  Find the ecstasy that lies at the intersection of all that has been and all that will be.  All of this exists on that dance floor, just as it does the space between your ribs that your heart calls home.

Right in the wild of you.

You’ll dance the way you’ve always danced when the audience was gone.  For hours.  Under the staccato lights and the pounding beat and the primal drive of reckless heat.  You are rhythm rediscovered.  You are sweat’s salt sheen. You are tangled hair and smeared eyeliner.   You’ve stopped caring what anyone thinks.  You’ve gotten a little louder.  A little more brazen.  A whole lot more of who you’ve always known you were.

When you’re done here, you’ll know you’re done.  And you’ll go. Straight cut, easy exit.  In the wild nobody will try to convince you to stay. Here, when your heart says leave you answer it by leaving.   In the wild of you there is only one voice, and she speaks in the tune of you.

You are fully ready now. Embrace the disorderly conductivity that flows like lifeblood through the heart and root and white hot heat of you.  Forget the car.  We’ll do the rest on foot.  The terrain has gotten deeper.  Darker.  Less hospitable to those looking for an easy pass to the next destination.  There are no roads. The only path is the one you create.

The journey is everything.

But do not fear.  You won’t need a map.  Your heart is your compass.  The stars light your way. You have the key to every door.  You will be tired and raw and ache with the depth of discovered truth. You will be irrevocably changed.  You may not recognize yourself by morning, but you will always be granted safe passage.

There are deep, gaping chasms.  Intimidating tangles of bramble and brush.  The unknown eyes of other wild creatures glowing at you from beyond the darkest dark.  You’ll go in circles here, guaranteed.  Looping into and out of yourself.  You will come to know the sweet spiral of surrender, the lushness of the yield.

You will discover when to push forward, and when to stop completely.  You will greet with delight the multitudes within you.  The ones with pretty, acceptable faces and the ones you  keep hidden from judgmental stares. You will be seduced by each one and make peace with them all.

Every last one of your wild souls.

The terrain is climbing now.  Huge boulders lay before you.  You’ll need to use your entire body and mind to continue.  But you will and you must and you do.  You climb at precarious angles and across narrow peaks where your hold is so precarious that only the tenacity of your drive will keep you from falling.  Climb until every muscle screams defeat and your gremlin mind calls persuasively for quitting.

And then you’ll be there.  At the summit.  Where  it all lays, spread out before you.  Your life.  Your stories.  Your pretty, safe disguises.    The most frightening places within.  Your million breathtaking truths.  The lies and the failtures and the shame.   Your triumphs and dreams.   The wild, unconstrained wholeness of you.

By the light of a glorious full moon you will see that all the walls you ever built were imaginary.  Made of nothing but air.  And you can soar over them all right now if you choose.  Here in the wild your power is infinite.

Always, your power is infinite.

One more time now, from the top of your world.   Arms to heavens, head thrown back.  Let your eyes reflect the light of the cosmos.   Let your wild spirit free.  Howl from the depth and root and heat of you.  Roar with the desire and desperation and power of you.   Scream the demons and the passion and the very core of wild magic within.  Let it all go and call it all home.

I will leave you now.  Don’t worry, you didn’t ever really need me.  I am but a guide.  I can be called back at anytime, because I am in you.  Because I am you. Because you are the wild.  Because the wild is you.  Because you had the courage to take this journey.

Into the wild.

I want to travel to cities around the world to wander alone.

I want to raise my face to the warm sun, a flowered sundress swirling around my thighs, bare feet on hard earth.  I want the floppy hat on my head to blow off in a sudden gust of wind  just so I can chase it down the street, giggling the entire way.

I want a purse that holds a well-used journal and a really good pen. What more could I need?

I want enough money for food and dusty books and things I want because I want them.  Wanting because I want will be reason enough to have.

I want no timeline, no agenda, no company. I am free to watch and absorb. To talk only when I want to. To turn cartwheels in the street, or laugh out loud, to make love to a delicious stranger, to let the delight of random things roll through my body and take me over for no other reason than that they delight me.

I want to give myself over to an orgy of desire and hedonism. I want to dance naked on a beach with a group of wild lovers, slide my bare body through the slick coolness of my ocean home until my gills return.   I want to eat things I have never heard of, let the juices from unfamiliar fruits drip down my face and lick my fingers and let it all dry in the sun.  I want sit at a long, well worn bar and tell my stories to an ancient bartender who does not speak my language but knows that my story is his story is everyone’s story.  I want to let the whiskey burn a path down my throat as I lock eyes with a brown-haired goddess whose hips move with the rhythm of the ancients.  I want to ruthlessly claim the joy of all experience, take it right to my center and taste it’s rough edges.

I want to recite poetry on a street corner, turning my floppy hat upside down to collect change from passersby. I want to throw these foreign coins in foreign fountains and wish for nothing but an extension of  reality.  I want to spend the last of my earnings on a glass of fine red wine and a loaf of crusty bread and some pages of blank paper and see what magic comes from that.

I want to follow my ceaseless longing, wallow in the lonely ache until my own company becomes the most exquisite companionship. I want to belong to no one and contain myself wholly.  I want to give myself over to every last thing that makes itself available to me with the knowledge that i am only becoming more.

I want to spend so long without speaking or hearing voices that the only sound in my head is the truth of the poems that are waiting to be born.

I want to sleep in a room with tattered wallpaper, overlooking a square in a town older than memory. I want to perch on my windowsill and spy on old men riding rickety bicycles and lovers having petty quarrels and roaming dogs and children playing hopscotch in the street below.  I want a bed that has been used by lovers and mothers and babies and old people and to feel them there with me as I sleep, living and breathing and fucking and birthing and dying in the space where I take my deepest exhale.

I want the rush of sweet sin and the holy hush of ancient temples.  The worship of bodies and the profanity of prayer.  I want to be brought to my knees by both.

I want to disappear into a crowd and reappear in the spotlight of a burlesque show.

I want to live ruthlessly.  To invite because I want to invite.  To sever because I want to sever.  To trust with reckless abandon my own intrinsic knowing.

I want to ride dusty trains to destinations I cannot pronounce, dive into conversations with lost souls and found souls and everyone in between.

I want to walk so far and so long that my body aches and my skin is covered in salt sheen.  I want to end with my toes dancing in the waves and my hair blowing wild around my head.

I want to receive a spontaneous invitation from a ridiculously handsome man to attend the wedding of people I have never met.  I want to dance with him under unfamiliar stars to songs sung in an unfamiliar language.  I want to close my eyes as he whispers in my ear words that require no translation.  And then I want to leave him, abruptly, and spend the entire evening letting the bride’s raunchy grandmother regale me with tales of her her younger years  -  stories of crazy adventure and tortured suitors and unrequited love and fevered, desperate affairs.

I want to spend endless days in musty antique shops discovering memories of my future in relics of other people’s past.  I want to hold them to my ear and listen to old love stories in the whispers of dust and long ago,  building my own memoirs from the lure of things discarded and things yet to be known.

I want to smell like fresh dirt, yellow roses, steamy sex and exotic perfume. I want to taste like oaky wine, and trails of tears and dark chocolate melted in the desert sun. I want to feel like gritty sand and smooth silk after a rainstorm and the skin of a peach by moonlight.  I want you to be able to catch a glimpse of me from across a crowded square and instinctively know these things and be filled with your own yearning for yellow roses and gritty sand and desert sun without really understanding why.

I want to be lit from within by the unending intoxication of this blessed life.  An internal bonfire of all I have been given and all that I have claimed and all that I have let slip away in my quest for wholeness.  I want to burn down in the fire of selfish desires and selfless sacrifice and use the flames to light the spark that moves you toward your destiny.  I want to live in the glory of the ashes that remain.

I want nobody to be waiting for me, but everyone to trust in my eventual return.

I want to travel to cities around the world to wander alone.

~~~~

Tell me, lover, what is it that you want?  For in the wanting, and the naming, your truth can be found.

It was a red couch.  Clean lines, modern design.    It sat in her living room, flooded with light from her big glass door.  Faded in places, the leather worn soft from years of use. The seat was marred by primitive spirals in ball point ink, doodled by budding toddler Picassos not yet constrained by silly ideas like art belongs on paper.  Sometimes our thighs or hands would stick, temporarily glued by dried juice spilled from forgotten sippy cups.  The kids ran in and out, climbing all over it and all over us, naked, covered in mud from the backyard, warm from the sun.   Hour after sweet, simple hour we sat and talked and laughed.  

***

“Are you happy?” they ask.  The question comes from concern, a need for affirmation, desperation for a guarantee that they will one day reclaim that word for themselves.

Happy, I ponder?  And try as I might, I can’t make the word fit.  I let it roll around on tongue, slow and mellow.  It feels foreign, belonging to another time and space.  Perhaps I left happy sitting on that red couch with my two soul sisters, warmed by the afternoon desert sun, knowing nothing of the seismic shifts to come.

Happy is a sweet, pretty word. It is the domain, I think, of people that have not yet had shit happen.  Life is layers upon layers of brilliance and pain and loss and gain and grief and guilt and celebration and rapture.  Happy does not have enough substance or grit to encompass a life torn down and an existence built from the rubble.

***

The ache never leaves, you know.  You just tuck it away tenderly and hold it close because sometimes the ache is the only thing left of something that was once beautiful.

Sometimes I want to tell them things – the women who write and ask if I am happy, or if it was worth it, or if I would do it again.

I want to tell them that someday you might see him in some random coffee shop, enjoying an Americano.  And you will exchange meaningless small talk as if you couldn’t trace the map of his scars with your eyes closed.

I might say that it will be all that you can do to stop yourself from reaching up to touch his cheek;  your fingers aching for the memory of that eternal five o’clock shadow.  You’ll want to tell him this, but instead you will fill up with unshed tears. They will build in your chest and explode – a million tiny pinpricks of painful light blooming outwards  and trailing like fireworks across your skin.  Because that touch will not be yours to have. Those tears not yours to cry.  Those words not yours to speak.  Not out loud.  Not to him.  Not in that random coffee shop over a steaming Americano.

And  I would say that this ache is not the ache of mistake, or regret or quick – let-me-go-backwards-and-do-it-over-differently.  Not necessarily.  Sometimes it is just the ache of an unexpected reminder of what was good, and the nostalgia brought on by a table that holds one cup of coffee, not two.  And you welcome that ache because you have learned to welcome all that is real and true, even when it hurts.  Because it is yours to have and know and hold.   Because what is real is also solid, regardless of all the rest.

And when you walk across the room to sit at your own table, only a few steps separating this life from that one, you will finally understand.  Happy is no longer enough to contain the totality of this life that you have claimed.

***

Will you have happy moments?  Oh yes.  Moments of such pure and simple happiness that you will be made still and humble and profoundly grateful.   Moments so sweet and so good that you will bubble over with childish giggles.   But more often the moments will too vast to be contained.  Moments so brilliantly beautiful that your heart will pound with their magnitude.  So bittersweet that your heart will ache with their complexity.  So life-altering that for a moment or two or ten, your heart will appear to stop entirely.   Because this is life.  The moments and the moments between moments and the moments after the moments when you see the world with clarity so brilliant it is blinding.

This life?  Sweet baby jesus, it’s a wonder.  It’s an intense, magical, steal the breath from your lungs, bring you to your knees roller coaster ride.  It demands reverence and humility and penance and gratitude shouted loud from mountaintops.   It will have you wailing at gods you don’t believe in, scratching for a hold in dirt too dry to plant yourself.  It will bring you to the gift of your humanity and the core of your tenacity and the very center of your grief.   It will leave you rejoicing in the kindness of strangers, in the devotion of friends, in the way your lover moves your body to rapture.  It will teach you to stake fierce claim to what you know to be true and to be infinitely tender with your precious heart when your truth slips from your grasp.

And sometimes you will be blissed out. Or sad.  Or pissed.the.fuck.off.  And you will grieve. And laugh. And love.  And experience ecstasy.  And come face to face with demons and fight the battle of your life.   And at some point along this wild ride, someone may ask you if you are happy.

And you’ll smile and say simply “Yes.  I’m happy.”  And you’ll dive into the depths of your magnificent life, knowing that you are so much more.  And so much less.  Just so much.  So very, very much.

***

“The red couch is still in my shed”, she told me on my last visit to her home.  “It’s totally trashed, probably ruined beyond repair.  I just can’t bring myself to get rid of it, you know?”

“Thank you”, I said “That makes me happy”.

This is your time.

Yes it is.  Right now.  This day.  This moment.  This now.

All yours.

You don’t have to wait.  It doesn’t have to be perfect.  You don’t always have to finish what you started in order to begin something new.  And there is no more room for playing small.

Small is so very last year.

You’ve been gathering momentum for a long time.   This is a year of tipping-point greatness.  Your year.

What are you waiting for?

That’s right, ease into it now. Pulse with the life force that has been waiting just for you.  Feel that rhythm vibrating through the universe and running through your soul?  Undulate with it.  Let it carry you away, ecstatic dance style.  Spin a dervish whirl until you are dizzy on the wonder of life. Ditch the layers that are holding you down. Get naked. Come on now. Don’t be shy. Right now, in this exact moment, you are free.

Keep your eyes open wide to witness all the fierce moments of grace that surround you.  Reject that not-enoughness that has been desperately grasping for a hold on your magnificent spirit.  Choose authenticity over approval.  Be done with trying to fit into someone else’s notion of who you are.  Get comfortable with entitlement.  We’re done with asking permission.  No more of that, missy.

You’ve got to claim your right to rapture.

So, love too much. Way too much. Live from the center your wide open heart.  Know that you don’t have to push yourself to expand in order to fill the space you are in. You are already infinite – just as you are.      Let your freak flag fly. Every last thing about you is perfect.  Even the weird bits.   Especially the weird bits.  Those, my dear, are exactly why I’m already head over heels in love with you.

To hell with self-acceptance. That’s way too small an order.  I want you practice radical self-celebration.  Throw a party in your own honor.  You don’t need a wedding or a baby or a new job.  You are reason enough. You are ALWAYS reason enough.  Make today the anniversary of your arrival.  Rent the ballroom.  Open the bar.  And whatever you do, don’t forget the piñata.  Fill it with every last piece of magic inside you and around you.   Now. Knock. That. Fucker. Down. and invite the world to gather you up again. To hell with the blindfold – you don’t want to miss a second of this.

Know that every time you get beaten down and emptied out, you are also spreading the fragments of your divinity into a universe that desperately needs you.  Let the kindness and the raw, aching beauty  of the universe shatter you over and over again.  Find peace in the knowledge that your whole is composed of the sum of all of your beautifully broken pieces. Beacause breaking is becoming.  We never lose ourselves.  We don’t break forever.  We just find new configurations of wholeness.  And every one is breathtakingly beautiful.  YOU are breathtakingly beautiful.

That thing you’re afraid of?  That label you shy away from?  That word that seems too bold?  That audacious goal?  The life you think you don’t deserve?  Aren’t talented enough to have? Aren’t brave enough to claim?  Fuck. That. Shit.  None of that baggage you’ve been carrying around has a place this year.  Kick to the the curb.  Now.   This year only has space for the bold and the audacious and the brave.  Don’t try to convince me you are not those things.  I know better and your excuses hold no weight here.  You are brave and bold and audacious and one hell of a goddess.  Always have been.  Always will be. 

So fill every step you take with intention.  Then remember that intention is worthless without action – so get a move on, sugar.   You know that whole ‘there’s no time like the present’ cliché?  Actually, the ONLY time IS the present.  Stop holding back.  Let yourself go.  Right now.  All way way.  You’ll be soaring before you even realize you’ve taken the leap.

Deal resistance a death blow and make sweet love to your art all night long. Put on your fishnet thigh highs and your patent leather stilettos and your special occasion lingerie.  Seduce the hell out of your own creative soul.  It’s time for an epic lap dance.  Dance for your paint and canvas, for fingers tripping across keyboard, for the open arms of motherhood, for the layers of flavor in the meals you create.  Wind your hips down for the click of the shutter, for the 3am bathroom poem, for the late night lesson planning.  Spin around the pole like fingers stringing beads into necklaces, for bodies twisting into asana, for holding a mama as she brings life.  This will not be a quickie, love.  No wham-bam-thank you ma’am.  No – tonight is for slow, deliberate kind of love-making that changes everything.

And when the morning light filters in and you slowly leave sleep behind, you’ll awake with the vague sensation that something has changed.  Give yourself time to remember that something has.  That EVERYTHING has.  Revel in it.  You are here now.  Fully present.  Fully alive.  Fully claiming your rightful glory.  A Radical goddess.  An Audacious Artist.  A Mystical Mama.  Celebrating the beauty that can only come from you.  Flying high.  Owning It.

Nothing will ever be the same again.  

And damn girl, you throw one hell of a party.

{But for the love of all that is good and holy leave the discarded fishnets and the paint spills and and all those dirty dishes from the party for someone else to clean up. Because you’ve got places to be and things to do.  After all, this is your year.Get moving, chica. }