self portrait today
The other day I was driving down a coastal road and the song Dream by the Cranberries came on the radio. A rush of memories swirled through my mind. That song seemed to carry me through so many enormous transitions in my life. Somehow it would end up playing at just the right time. I remember it being on repeat when I would take jogs around downtown in Northern California or on a hike with me in the hills overlooking the valley or when I would pull the top down on my Tracker and ride to Santa Cruz with my long ponytail flapping through my denim Gap cap. Still...the other day, it came on and I rolled down our windows even though it was raining and I looked back at Cedar with his eyes shut and a huge smile on his face. I had one of those happy cries. The kind where you giggle to yourself and a tear follows and your breath deepens and it just feels goooood.
I needed this moment. Life has felt intense lately. I've really pulled in and am in a space of peeling layers of old. I told a friend tonight "we grieve over things lost even when they are not good for us. even when we no longer want or need them in our life, we still hold love in our hearts for them. its a shedding, a peeling off and it hurts and leaves us raw and in time, some longer than others, it heals." I am in that space where in order to live in this new life fully present, I am needing to let go of old ways of being and there are so many layers to that. It involves how I move my body, what I put into my body, the relationships in my life, in my family, the way I share myself with others, the way I communicate and connect and its not just one big thing its tiny little things among each of these that add up to feeling enormous right now. But its beautiful. Its hard. Its ugly. Its vulnerable. Its frightening as heck. But its also so very freeing and grounding all at once. And I feel so very blessed because I have had new and old dears come to me, without me seeking them out, that have been so very patient with this process, and I feel like each of them have been aloe to my soul...to the wounds that are left from the peeling. I am a sensitive being and I know that cannot be easy for others at times but man, the gentleness this attracts into my life is mmm mmm good.
I see a lot of peace coming around the corner for the new year. I see a lot of change. I see being the change.
yummiest. parenting. book. ever.