Somewhere in this crazy mix of events I updated the Go Now and Live Shop with some new products, but forgot to tell you all about it. In addition to the signed Fine Art Prints, we’ve added Canvas prints, Notecards (available individually and in sets of five) and t-shirts.  Check ‘em out!

After several requests I’ve also started selling a Fine Art Print and Canvas Print of the ‘Circle of Women’ quote.  Just as with the original Go Now and Live piece, I had no idea when I wrote these words (in my 100 things in 2011 series) that they would resonate so deeply, with so many.  When I posted it on facebook and twitter the sharing quickly began and the comments that followed made me once again humbled and grateful for this path.  I can’t quite explain how that feels, except to say that I know it means I’ve written the truth, connected with the root of something deeply felt or desired – and for that I can only feel grateful.

This year, my circle has been a source of profound transformation.  Truly, these words belong to the women who have walked with me, buoyed me up, encouraged my own reluctant tears and helped me tease away the layers that keep me from fully stepping into myself.   These witches and wild women, overflowing with creatrix power and goddess wisdom, have held and nurtured me through the worst, celebrated with me during the best, witnessed my path and been vulnerable enough to allow me to witness theirs.   They see me in a way I sometimes have trouble seeing myself.  They allow me the freedom and space to finally get naked, and when I did I felt nothing but love and acceptance (I may have heard a whistle or two, but I’m not telling).

This weekend several of my circle are gathering again in the desert.  As I circle with Jena, Mani, Georgia, Erin (I finally get to meet Erin and Claire!!!!! and also !!!), Leigh, Marybeth,  Jessamyn, Jenica and the others and luxuriate in the gifts of their light and love I want to do my first giveaway.

Write to me about your circle, the one you have or the one you deeply wish was yours.  Tell me what you have given and recieved, what it is that you need and cannot find.  Tell me how you’ve laughed and cried and gotten naked with your truth.  Write a poem about it.  Send a picture.  Lists are lovely.  However you do it, please just share with me your stories about the power of circling with women.   One participant -chosen randomly – will receive a signed copy of the Circle Of Women Fine Art Print.

You can write me personally at contact@peacelovefree.com, leave a comment, share on facebook and tag the {peace.love.free} facebook page or give a twitter shout out with a link to the writing on your own site.   However you share, make sure I have your full name + email address to connect with you and let me know if you are open to me sharing your story here on {peace.love.free}.

Blessings, Jeanette

***

“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. }

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.

From my 100 things in 2011 series.

He called me Dogface.

No, really.  He did.  It was a term of endearment, I promise.  A long-standing joke that wound through the years, connecting my grandfather and I.

“Get me some more tea,” he demanded one otherwise unremarkable summer day.

“How do you ask?” I replied, teasingly.

“Get me some more tea….Dogface”

And so it began.

That Christmas I found a holiday card in the shape of a dog.  I peeled a photo of myself- early 90’s hot-rollered hair and short velvet formal dress- from my photo album.  A few snips of the scissors and a little glue later and my face smiled back at me from the Dalmatian-shaped card.   I grinned to myself all the way to the college mailroom, imagining his face when he sliced open the envelope.

On break I traveled home and entered the house to find him – as always – holding court in the straight-backed blue chair by the door.  He was clearly antsy with anticipation and I soon realized why.  In the place of honor on the wall behind his head hung my card, now carefully mounted and framed, with a prominent BEWARE OF DOG sign carefully placed above.

And so it continued between my grandfather and I – a back and forth of teasing comments and practical jokes.  Both of us amused with our cleverness and determined to one-up the other.  I thought it would last forever.

He was immortal, I believed.  Ten feet tall and bullet proof.  Sure, we worshiped super heroes and celebrities, but if you asked my siblings, cousins and I to list our heroes, his name always topped the list.

When other kids bought their grandfathers candy cane festooned neckties for Christmas, we bought Granddad a Pogo Stick.  While other grandpas took their grandkids for a relaxing afternoon of fishing, we got World War Two era gloves strapped on for a hard-core boxing lesson.  We got plenty of grandfatherly love, but we also ran screaming and laughing in crazed laps around the house while he chased us relentlessly with a big leather whip.  Yes, he was crazy immortal.

From him I learned political theory and a fierce sense of justice and the importance of always speaking my mind.  That innate intelligence and good old fashion common sense outweighed formal education, but to grasp tight to every single opportunity to learn, classroom or not. I absorbed his commitment to community and society.  I knew, with a depth that can only come from witnessing something for a lifetime, that family – always and forever – comes first, last and always and is the common thread that winds through everything else.

My concept of romantic love came from the way he loved my grandmother, as if the sun rose and set on her smile.  My understanding of home and the value of knowing where the ground was solid beneath my feet came from the unwavering depths of his connection to the land that sheltered my childhood summers.    My understanding that smart was good, but good old-fashioned hard work was better was absorbed from the work ethic he embodied.  We learned to dig potatoes in the rich earth, and turn rough wood into swords and boats in the workshop, he’s the only one who could manage to teach me to parallel park well enough to get my license.  Every single weekend of the summer The Saturday Night Party found us gathered in the living room, Granddad ensconced in his blue chair – reigning patriarch of a family who loved him like no other.

My grandmother, the constant glue that kept it all together, gladly took the supporting role and gave him center stage.  It was his pride we sought to attain.  His laughter we worked to provoke. The measure of anything we did or undertook, created or achieved was what Granddad would think.  His opinion was primary and his satisfaction with our achievements outweighed all other rewards.  Not a word of this is an exaggeration, and not an ounce of our devotion was misplaced.

It was my grandfather that walked me down the aisle at my wedding, handsome and debonair in a classic black tuxedo, bringing to life one of my earliest wishes. Days later I prepared to leave Nova Scotia for my new life in Arizona.  Once, twice, three times I left everyone waiting in the driveway and made my way back to the kitchen.  There he sat, in his customary place at the kitchen table by the big picture window overlooking the bay.  Not once did he appear surprised to see me return. Over and over I returned to sit on his lap, trying to absorb his essence into my soul. His favorite brown cardigan with the patched sleeves, his perpetually well-shined shoes, his thinning hair, his twinkling eyes.  Although I never could have admitted it to myself at the time, it was as if something in me knew that this would be our last real goodbye.

***

Months later a package arrived at the small one bedroom apartment that Sam and I called home.   It was curiously lightweight and marked by his familiar black scrawl.  I remember looking up at Sam quite confused,

“It feels empty.  I wonder what on earth it could be?”

He laughed and replied.  “It’s a big ole box of Dogface, of course”.

I chuckled and rolled my eyes at what I thought was a lame joke, tearing into the brown paper wrapping with the enthusiasm of a child who has never gotten over the mysterious thrill of the postman’s delivery.   And when it was open all I could do was laugh out loud.   He was right.  Of course he was. It was a big ole’ box of Dogface, after all.

The package contained small soft doll, of sorts.   With the body and clothing of a witch, a studded collar encircling her neck, the gift might not have made sense were it not for the hard plastic dog head that was perched on top.

My grandfather, living in an 81 year old body ravaged by age and by cancer and heart disease, had retained enough of his inner mischief to cook up this scheme.  Purchasing a child’s doll and a rubber dog toy, dismantling their pieces and stitching them together to create the pièce de résistance in our ongoing game.

“Brilliantly played,” I told him when we next talked, imagining the great glee he must have taken in the orchestration of this.  I immediately began trying to come up with a way to top him.

I never got the chance.  He was taken to the hospital about a half hour from home.  I remember talking to my aunt and agonizing about whether or not I should make the very expensive trip home.

“You’ll know when it’s time”, she said softly with the resolve of one who has faced loss many times, “you’ll just know”

And I did.  I knew.  And mere days later I was flying back home.  Leaving the warm, dry desert and returning to a province blanketed in the thick snow of deep winter.  And I found the most vibrant, vital man I had ever known lying in a hospital bed, unable to muster the strength to speak more than a few words.   His clan had gathered, as we always did, around him.  We occasionally fell silent and he would motion with his hands as if to encourage our voices to surround him still.

I was in denial.  He would recover, and return home to white Dutch Colonial with the bright blue trim that he – a Canadian country boy – had built for his young American wife shortly after they were married. The home where she had birthed their children and together they had raised their family.  The home where we had learned all that we ever needed to learn about roots and family and love.  Of course he would return there – and be there always.  How could this not be true?  There was not even room in my heart for any other possibility.

The night before the very last my younger brother and I took our shift with him while everyone else went home.  That night we watched a man with more dignity than any I have known before or since accept our love, even when it meant that we supported him while he went to the bathroom.  We knew, even in the moment, a kind of hallowed and humble gratitude for the gift of that sleepless night.   For a long time I held on to every word we exchanged but now – trying to write of them for the first time, I find that the edges are fuzzy, and cannot be captured on this screen.  What I do recall was the privilege of being able to bear respectful witness to this man as he bore the collapse of his body with profound grace and solemn dignity.

The night that was to be the very last was a night of snow.  Heavy and white, it blanketed everything.  Howling wind and drifting high, until it was finally quiet; muffling sound and suspending time as we lived the life of palliative care, deep within the small country hospital.  And we were all there, very nearly.  Moving in and out of his room and the family room next door.  Eating and curling up together, giving love to him, and to each other as we all breathed the half-formed breaths of those who waited for the inevitable.

But still, I didn’t believe.  Didn’t really understand.  Didn’t want to know.  Couldn’t comprehend that we were in the final stages of our dance with a man who had claimed every last moment of his life as whole and solid and his to have and experience fully.

For hours it was the same.  Same quiet hushed tones.  Same cycles of in and out.  Same sharing of memories and quiet laughter and held back tears.  Same knowledge of the precious gift of this, of our connection, of what we had been given.

It was all the same until it wasn’t, and as his breathing changed so did our energy. Somehow we all knew.  Were all called back to his bedside without anyone saying a word.  And we surrounded him and filled that space.  Fully present with our bodies and hearts and souls and memories and gratitude and love.

My family encircled his hospice bed.   All of us.   His children.  His grandchildren.  His beloved wife. Together we spent our last moments with the man who had built us, a family of uncommon closeness.  A man with a life force so strong and vital that it filled the room and also filled my heart and lungs and soul the way it had always filled my life.  And we spent his last moments the way we had spent so many moments with him – together. Hands tightly clasped, arms around one another, we stood guard and witness as his spirit left the room.

This, twelve years later, stands as one of the only experiences of my life that I can name as Holy.  Where life balanced on the cusp between the physical universe and what exists beyond our comprehension.  There was a presence in that room that cannot be named or measured, and perhaps it was only what love feels like when magnified and crystalized by that sort of devotion.   Perhaps that sort of love is always Holy – it’s just that we don’t remember to stop and pay attention until a moment of irrevocable magnitude causes us to pause and open wide enough to take it all in.

Yes, it has been twelve years since that stormy night that changed everything.  And still, I remember him with an immediacy that proves to me that death is not an ending, not in the face of that much love.  It’s only a continuation really, of what has been taught and learned and lives in us always.

And still, they call me Dogface sometimes, their voices an echo of his teasing tone, their faces bearing traces of his lineage.  And I don’t mind.  It keeps him close to me.

***

We were digging through a crate of old memories last year.  Shoeboxes of letters from college roommates, concert ticket stubs and tattered photographs of old boyfriends.  Journals with youthfully loopy handwriting chronicling days long past.  “Mama, It’s like a time capsule of your life,” said my wee girlie, as she lifted bits of the flotsam and jetsam of my past from the depths of the bin.  And then there was Dogface.  Face cracked, limbs torn but still containing every ounce of his humor and love.   And I picked up that raggedy doll and held it close as tears came to my eyes and I remembered.

Yes, he called me Dogface.  And yes, it was a term of endearment.  I promise.

“I don’t think I will ever recover.  It still hurts.  Please tell me it gets better.  Tell me I will get over her.”

http://www.peacelovefree.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/The-Heart-Loves-What-It-Loves.mp3
{audio file for this post: listen while your read}

Oh, sweet girl.  Come here and sit with me for a minute.  Right here, this chair has room for two.  Rest your head.   Let me wrap you in my arms.  Close your eyes.  Take a breath.  Now another.

Let it go.  Let the tears fall.  Relax your shoulders.  Relax your face.  Let your heart unwind, just for this moment.

“Let us not forget, that we never stop loving silently those we once loved out loud.” ~Oriah Mountain Dreamer

You’d like to tell you it’s just a matter of time, and then you’ll get over her and she’ll cease to occupy this space in your mind,  in your heart, in your life.  And that might be true.  It really might.  But there are some people we never really get over.  It does get better, or at least it gets different.  But there are certain loves that remain with us always.  Places that ache for the things we left behind, all that won’t ever be ours again.  And it ebbs and flows and changes and sometimes it helps to accept that some love really is eternal.

“When the karma of a relationship is done, only love remains. It’s safe. Let go.” ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

As for your girl, the one who has your heart, nobody can tell you to stop loving her. And you cannot tell yourself to stop loving her. The heart loves what it loves. It cannot always have what it wants, but it loves what it loves. See if you can’t hold that close and steady and dance with it for a while until the ease finds you.

Yes, you love her. Yes, you might always love her.  And no, you can’t have her.   Not right now and maybe not ever again.  These things are all true and real and solid.   And there’s a sweet spot somewhere in the center of those truths where you can find peace. Trust this. Know this.

That does not mean it won’t hurt and you won’t long and ache and cry for what you’ve lost.   No, it doesn’t mean you can turn your back on the very real grief that lives inside of you.  But if you find your way to living in that sweet spot – between grief and acceptance – welcoming the ache but not nurturing it, holding the angst but not feeding it – you’ll come to a different place.  A place where you can find the path of opening your heart to another, or better yet – to yourself.

To be your own lover, in all the ways that you can be. To be exceedingly kind to your heart, and your soul and your body and your spirit.  To know and hold all the ways and people and things that you love, all the loves that feed and sustain you. To recognize what is toxic to you without judgment, to set aside what does not serve. To know you can love, deep and long and hard and true, and still walk away to save yourself.  These are all tremendously difficult things. But worthwhile. Necessary.

Loving yourself first is the path to wholeness.  And from wholeness, we can open to loving others in fullness – even those who are not ours to have.  This I know to be true. And that this is good. You are good.  And yes, even this love you still have for her, it is good.

A friend of mine once said this: “Whatever you long for, even if it has no name, I would trust that. As you wind down and through this spiral may that longing inside you be guide and companion. And the only thing that can be said for reaching the bottom is that then you know where your solid ground resides” – Isabel Abbot

Trust in your longing. Even the part that longs for her. Because that is a longing for her, but also a longing for love. For that spirit or energy or spark that you shared that is about her, but not really about her at all. It is it’s own thing, and it exists in many different ways inside of many different people you will meet. And it will not be the same – no – it will be infinitely, excitingly, thrillingly different each time.

So  let the floor fall out from under you.  Nothing big ever happens, good or bad, unless the floor falls out first.   Let your longing wind you down through that spiral. And know that falling can be the most wickedly awesome and totally safe thing you’ve ever done.   Down, down, down – and when you hit that solid ground you’ll know. And you might touch down softly, or you might land in an ungraceful thud. But land you will. And then, when you’re ready, you can stretch your shaky legs, stand up, dust yourself off, raise your hands open, toss your head back to the heavens and say ‘Here i am. All that I am, and all that I will be.”

And your heart will still love what it loves.  And you will remember that was good in you, and in her.   And these memories will comfort and will serve you as you move through life, open to love – wherever and whenever it finds you.

There is a point when tears don’t work
to wash things away anymore.
Grabbing for breath has now broken my fingers.
I miss You so much some days
that I beg for the airplane to crash
with just enough time in the freefall
for scribbling “I Love You” across my chest.
That way – when they find my burning breast plate –
they will tell You how the very last thing I did with my life
was call out Your name.

“For any woman who’s ever been told she’s too much:
You, who broke out of the mold before they even cracked it
off you. You, who came out inventing your own how-to-scale-a-wall
with only vowels. You, who fireflash in the eye of so many
midnights, so many men who want to taste your hem, who dream
of being desired by an Uncommon Woman, if only because
their dressers are empty of anything but brand name cologne
and predictable portrait. Let them call you different. Let them bait
the minnows of you heart. Show them your heart is a school
of fish, a solar system of all moons. When asked, say,
“My heart is always causing the mating season.” When they call you
full of yourself”, say, “Yes.” Breathe in their scorn and breathe out
Atlantis.”

77.  I still feel – even after ten years – that bedtime is the work of evil spirits, sent to leave me broken and begging for mercy.   Every. Single. Time.

78.  Melatonin was sent by the goddess to make it all okay.

79.  For the love of all things good and holy, listen to my friend Marybeth when she says  “Less Talk.  More Do”.

80.   I should probably start listening to Marybeth**

81.  The world would be a better place if everyone wore pretty lingerie.

82.  And even better if people matched their underwear to their outerwear.  Try it…you’ll see.  My lingerie drawer?   A color coordinated rainbow of beauty.  Truth.

83.  Even after four years of shared custody – especially after four years of shared custody – not having my children with me every day still feels intrinsically wrong.  It’s a little slice of broken heart that never leaves me.  Accepting that this is just so makes it a little easier to bear.

84.  It can take a while to find your groove. If you give it enough space and you are on the right path, the ease will always find you.

85.  The only way to know if you’re on the right path is to keep on trekking.   One foot in front of the other, all the way home.

86.  I am completely and totally addicted to chocolate and refined sugar.

87.  Being almost entirely vegan does NOT mean you are automatically healthy.

88.  When I find myself at social gatherings, unable to eat any of the food, I deal with my resentment by smugly tallying up how many extra empty calories you omnivores are consuming.

89.  Andrea Gibson is still god to me.  I see no reason to pretend otherwise.

90.  And Brandi Carlile is my goddess (and no, six concerts in four years is NOT excessive).

91.  And believing she will marry me one day is NOT delusional.

92.  I don’t confuse your/you’re and know the difference between there/they’re and their, but semi-colons may be the death of me.

93.  Finding out that Betsy Johnson bras in a particular size are the absolute perfect fit for me in every way shape and form AND finding out that they are carried at Last Chance*** for $3.97 was a bit like finding religion (and having a threesome with Andrea Gibson and Brandi Carlile).

94.  Okay, maybe not quite that good.

95.  Justin’s Chocolate Hazelnut Butter.  By the spoonful.  (refer to #86/87)

96.  It is 100% possible to get utterly and completely burned out doing something you utterly and completely love.

97.  If this thing happens to be the basis of your livelihood this creates a bit of a problem.

98.  Sometimes that means you’ve gotta get over yourself and just Get. Shit. Done.  (for clarification, refer to #79/80).**

99.  Hula hoops are not just for children.  Learning that will leave you black and blue and completely exhilarated in a way you have not been in years.

100. A circle of women may just be the most powerful force known to humanity.  If you have one, embrace it.  If you need one, seek it.  If you find one, for the love of all that is good and holy, dive in.  Hold on.  Love it up.  Get naked.  Let them see you.  Let them hold you.  Let your  reluctant tears fall.  Let yourself rise fierce and love gentle.  You will be changed.   The very fabric of your being will be altered by this, if you allow it.   Please, please allow it.

{To my circle (you know who you are) this year would not have existed in the form that it did without you.  I would not have cracked and grown and unfolded and relinquished and laughed and cried and loved the same without you.  My profound gratitude, my unending love, my heart and body and soul – they are yours.}

**In some cases these lessons will be continuing in 2012.
*** If Andrea is my god and Brandi is my goddess, Last Chance is my mecca and my holy grail.

Find Part One Here
Find Part Two Here
Find Part Three Here