I talk too much and cry too little. It’s true.

I have no idea how to knit but I’m damn good at unraveling.

Every time I wake up I get a little closer to the woman who waits to be born and reborn. Each time I am her totally.  Each time I am not her at all.  This is all finally becoming cool with me.

Regardless of looming deadlines I consider a day with nothing but the lilting cadence of poetry kissing my ears a day well spent.

I recognize that searing pain serves an vital purpose; it reminds us we are desperately, thrillingly alive when we most need to cling fierce to living.

You want something easy?  I am not the girl for you.  If you want to go deep with me, dive in.  I’ll be waiting for you.

I am an open book. Still, I sometimes doubt you will ever really know me. I think this is true of every soul on earth.  We are all beautiful mysteries.

I believe in the beauty of run-on sentences.  Sometimes words need to flow without the limitations of grammar.  Actually, I think I believe in run-on lives.  Just go with it.

I have drowned in fire, drowned in poetry, drowned in blood – but still I know I am a very strong swimmer.  Sometimes making the choice to drown is what will keep you alive.

You can own me just by knowing how to use your words.  I’m easy like that.

I hide my hard under layers of sadness, and my sadness under layers of living – but still, I am mostly happy, and soft.

If you move just me just right I’ll show you my soul.   Show me your soul and you’ll move me just right.  It will be the birth of a divine sort of chemistry.  Trust me.

I have have memories of things we have never done, places I’ve never been and lives I’ve never lived.  They are deeply real to me.

I’ve broken lives in the name of wholeness and I’ve built things that are holy from the pieces of wreckage.  We all do. This is the way of things.

I live somewhere between delusional narcissism and debilitating levels of low self-esteem.  Some days I’m fairly sure those are the exact same thing.

Kindness matters more to me than just about anything, but I am sometimes so unkind that I break my own heart.

I think I feel more than most people, or maybe I feel exactly the same as everyone and thinking we are somehow different is the one thing keeps us alone.

I was made from the ocean, and willingly get myself knocked over by the waves with my mouth open so I can taste salt water again and remember my home.

I tiptoe into my children’s rooms at night and smell them – just to make sure they are really mine.  They grow and change but with eyes closed and nose pressed to temple I relive their first moments in my arms.

I want nothing more than to make art. And still, despite knowing what life I am meant for,  I struggle with the audacity of claiming the word artist as my own.

My religion: Humanity Before Dogma.  Always.

I give thanks for dark chocolate and melatonin and for women who know the power of words.  For my teachers.  For my circle.  For the beauty in the breakdown.  For fear.  For leaps of  faith.  For all the things that move me.  For lust and for trust and for the journey in between.  For multiple orgasms.  For high heel shoes. For my strong body.  For knowing I am my own guru.  For belly laughs.  For temper tantrums.  For the way life sparkles around the edges.  For the ability to give thanks.

I am a terrible flirt, or a really, really excellent flirt.  It all depends on your perspective.  The tilt of head, the fall of hair, the upturned eyes, the gentle touch…it is art and mystery and possibility to me.

I love first.  Trust immediately.  Learn my lessons later.  Sometimes this means I hurt but mostly it means I love. And love and love.

I am selfish as hell.  I hide the good chocolate from my children and I like things my way, always.  But I’ll give you my last dollar if it means my heart stays open. Living with an open heart is the only true thing I know.

I spend my life in a constant quest for balance, but I’ve never been especially skilled at tightrope walking.

I am an experience in contradictions.  If you can’t handle that, you probably won’t like me for long.

I choose capsizing over staying afloat.  The surface of the water holds limited interest for me.

I can live a lifetime inside of a string of words.  In fact, I do.  Every single day.

I hate passive aggressive assholes, but never more than when I allow myself to be a passive aggressive asshole.

Occasionally, I am a passive aggressive asshole.  If I have been so to you, I apologize.

I believe if we all apologized sincerely more often, it would go a long way toward healing the world.  I also believe that the words “I’m sorry” can be just as much about empathy and understanding as culpability.

The most profound question of my life: What are you knowing that you don’t want to know?  Questions this big often travel with a wrecking ball and demolition team.   I’d say you shouldn’t ask questions unless you’re ready to live with the consequences of the answers, but there are some answers for which we will never really be ready – and we need to live the questions anyway.

Every time I knock down a spider web I am reminded that I have it in me to be heartlessly caviler about the life work of another.  Every time I comfort my girls in the middle of the night I am reminded that I would easily give my life for theirs.  The truth of our hearts is often in the spaces between our extremes.

I have long traded wholeness for goodness.  It has taken 36 years to realize that wholeness IS goodness, and that we have to be willing to break to become.

Everything about me is original.  And nothing about me is any different from you.  Only by knowing ourselves can we know the world.  Only by knowing the world can we know love.  And only by knowing love can we live.

And so I live, just like you.  Broken.  Whole.  Full of Goodness.  Just me.