“Inhale….two, three, four. Hold to sixteen… fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. Exhale… five, six, seven, eight.”
Day three of the Anusara Immersion with Amy Ippoliti last November. We were practicing pranayama. I hated it.
Nothing was comfortable. I shifted from sitting bone to another and wiggling my shoulders around trying to find a spot in my lungs that did not hurt to pull air into. I was almost sure my throat was closing up with the Ujaayi I was employing. I started faking the breaths, lifting my chest when the instructor said to inhale and dropping it when she said to exhale – but in reality, had given up trying to keep up.
I could feel the beginnings of an anxiety attack creeping up in my veins; the sensation of losing control of the natural risings and fallings of my breath, the constant beatings of my heart. I had felt this a lot during my first few years in college, popping Xanax to keep my worry from spiraling out of control, and I was not keen on the idea of intentionally doing something to recreate that sensation. I don’t like not being in control.
Who, me? Yeah. Hard to believe, I know.
At the end of our pranayama practice, Amy interviewed the class to see what the general consensus of regarding the experience.
“That was great, I feel so relaxed!”
“Wow, that was beautiful the way my breath…” blah blah blah, yadda yadda.
Screw that, I kept thinking.
Finally, I could not believe that everyone was saying they had enjoyed it. It bothered me that I had apparently been the only one having a low-level panic attack instead of a spiritually enlightening experience. I raised my hand.
“Actually, I didn’t like that at all. Nor did I find it comforting. It hurt, and it was hard for me to sit still.” Amy asked me to show her how I sit for meditations. I scooted around, wiggling while I tried to find a comfortable way to sit. But I could not stop shifting. I closed my eyes and tried again. Shift, shift. Wiggle. Then I laughed, embarrassed that I could absolutely not sit still.
“Just show me how you sit, Elle…” Amy began, and I burst into tears.
That was it, I explained. I couldn’t sit still. I couldn’t find any way to be comfortable. I felt like I was choking when I breathed, I felt like my breath was not going to run on its own if I stopped leading it from inhale to exhale. “It’s fugging scary,” I sobbed, finally letting go of whatever it was that was keeping me from crying hysterically in front of the twenty-five fellow immersion participants.
I am not naïve. I know that there is a reason why the things in life that scare us the most, scare us the most. And I had sat with that knowledge in my yoga practice numerous times, but with the decline of my panic attacks, I figured maybe it was all over. But having to face it once again, and without hiding behind asana or a multitude of other potential distractions, I had to confront my fears of sitting still and breathing.
(What that may be symbolic of, I won’t even start going into here. That is a whole other conversation, and if you really want to hear it, I am happy to talk your ear off about it over sushi.)
Amy told me that like with any yoga pose, if it does not feel comfortable, then don’t do it. Simple as that. With that, I gave myself permission to not try so hard that I scared myself. I felt the huge weight of shame lifted off of my shoulders with the confession of my fear. What kind of a yoga teacher would I be if I admitted I was scared of breathing?, I had always wondered.
The answer? A human one. A real one.
Even with the freedom granted to me by the voiced acknowledgement of my fear and embarrassment of it, I could not stop my crying. For the next hour of our practice, I cried openly, tears streaming down my face, even as I held coherent conversations and laughed with my friends. I eventually gave up trying to stop the tears, keeping a wad of tissues in my hands to swab my dribbling nose.
The end of the day wrap-up came and I thanked everyone for being so supportive as I worked through my unexpected breakdown. A handful of others shared their insight from the day and we were about to close our day when one more person spoke up.
I turned around to respectfully watch Caleb as he spoke, but he kept his eyes fixed straight ahead on Amy. “I heard someone share a fear today that I had never heard anyone else admit to. I’ve never even admitted to it before – to anyone – and I didn’t think anyone else felt that way.”
It took me a moment before I realized he was talking about me. I naturally began crying again, moving my gaze to the floor out of embarrassment for my continued display of sobs.
I left quickly that afternoon, wanting to get somewhere where I could cry openly and messily. I pulled out my trusty journal and started writing about my experience, and when I came to write about my friend who spoke up at the end of class, I got emotional once more.
Sometimes it is easier for me to choke down my fears, worries, concerns and opinions instead of dealing with the reaction they may incite. What I learned was that my unexpected admission granted someone else the courage to come face to face with their own fears – and feel safe enough to speak up.
The second Caleb and I caught a glimpse of each other the next morning, we hugged each other – hard. I held on him as if to the lifeline that I did not know I needed, like I had found myself in the middle of the ocean and suddenly realized I could no longer swim. We both had the courage to try again, and to find new life in the midst of our breath.
These days, I have developed a fairly regular meditation practice. As a matter of fact, I have even grown to prefer it to asana, finding sanctuary, stillness and balance in it. Although there are times I stumble across a pranayama practice that invokes the whispers of anxiety, I instead let the breath fall to normal and call upon the trusted face of my pal Caleb. Then I can rest, assured in the rise and fall of my breath and the magic it creates.
As shared on Facebook by a friend of mine. Author is unknown.
One night I had a wondrous dream,
One set of footprints there was seen,
The footprints of my precious Lord,
But mine were not along the shore. But then some strange prints appeared,
And I asked the Lord, “What have we here?”
Those prints are large and round and neat,
“But Lord, they are too big for feet.”
“My child,” He said in somber tones,
“For miles I carried you along.
I challenged you to walk in faith,
But you refused and made me wait.”
“You disobeyed, you would not grow,
The walk of faith, you would not know,
So I got tired, I got fed up,
And there I dropped you on your butt.”
“Because in life, there comes a time,
When one must fight, and one must climb,
When one must rise and take a stand,
Or leave their butt prints in the sand.”
We lay on the grass in the park on a warm October afternoon, watching the colors of the sky change after the sun had set completely behind the mountains. As the pale blue turned into a deeper sapphire, a shining light seemed to come more and more alive against the dark sky. We watched its increasing brilliance with admiration and curiosity, resting amidst ripples of blowing leaves.
“How beautiful is that?” I asked rhetorically. “And that we can see it from so far away, light shining for gazillions of miles and years before it reaches us.”
My friend fixed his gaze on the star, winking wildly back at us. “I wonder,” he began, not shifting his line of vision, “what you would think if you knew that star was up there, looking back at you right now and thinking how bright and beautiful you are.”
I looked at him from the corner of my eye, pretending like I had kept my sight on the shimmer above us. Smiling, I rested back more fully into the grass.
“Well, we are quite a beautiful pair. It would be silly to think the admiration wasn’t mutual, wouldn’t you say?”
I had kept the box of letters in a shoebox for nearly three years at this point. They no longer brought me joy to read, nor did I find comfort in knowing they were nearby. We had written to each other almost everyday without fail for the weeks he was in boot camp, and I had always said that I would compile the letters into inspiration for a book about our romance. We both agreed ours was the kind of story worth telling.
And then, a couple years later, that story had changed into one much different than it had started as, and I was ready for the cyclical story of heartbreak and betrayal to no longer be mine. It just so happened that this feeling began to surface on Beltane.
Beltane is the point between the Spring Equinox and Summer Solstice, when the earth becomes rich and ripe and pungent with the burst of full bloom. Giant bonfires were lit during ancient Beltane rituals, encouraging the participants to dance around it, throw things in it, and spiritually lighten their load by making sacrifices to the flames.
Naturally, I wanted to light something on fire. The time had come for svaha – offering it up to the divine fire so that I could make room for a new story to begin in my life.
I put my old pot roast pan on the back porch when I got home from teaching that night, filling in my roommate with my plan while I went to the freezer to retrieve a long abandoned bottle of Bacardi 151. I wasn’t messing around.
I pulled out all the letters from their envelopes and unfolded them. There were probably about one hundred pages of handwritten notes, song lyrics and doodles and not once did I stop to take one last peek at the words that I had once known by heart. Somewhere in the back of my head, this startled me and I realized I had just assumed this would be hard. I thought this story was such a part of my life that I would have to fight to release it. But it became very clear to me at that moment that I was already living a new story.
Armed with a box of matches and the bottle of flammable liquor, I marched outside to begin. The letters were heaping over the top of the pot roast pan and my roommate sat off to the side with a fully loaded SuperSoaker, just to keep things in check. I drizzled the 151 over the top of the pages and lit the first match, jumping back as blossomed with a whoosh into a blue flame. I threw another match, and another, until all the pages were glowing with fire. I danced around the makeshift fire pit, spinning in circles and feeling just as warm on the inside with a sense of release.
This was more than just a heart-broken teenager lighting an ex-boyfriend’s photograph on fire after a break-up; this was radical recognition that I was free of stories I had been telling myself for three years. Stories that I wasn’t good enough. That I would never be able to trust anyone again. That without him, I couldn’t be strong. That he owed me. That he was my inspiration. That I would never find anyone else.
The fire simmered out and I peered into the ashes at the barely distinguishable pages and giggled. I poked at the charred bits, only to discover that there was still another layer of perfectly unscathed pages beneath. I cursed. And I lit it on fire again.
This time, I used more 151. The blue flames leapt and flickered and I whooped and hollered. “Almost fooled me, didn’t you?” I shouted, drunk with the increasing freedom. “No more! I’m telling you, no more! I’m completely letting go this time.” I danced some more while the roommate shot little victory shots of water up into the air.
The flames died again. I knelt down. I poked and prodded, only to discover another layer of perfectly preserved pages.
The bottle of 151 had been well over three-fourths of the way full when I pulled it out of the freezer, and now I poured the last third into the dish. The papers were dowsed in the ignitable stuff and pooled in the corners of the pan. I threw in five lit matches, all at once, and barely came away with my eyebrows still intact. I resumed my dancing and hollering, although it was now interlaced with muttered curses about how of course there’s always another layer with him. Of course it’s never just been that easy to step away from someone I wanted so badly to love, and to love me back simply.
Fire died. I knelt. I cursed. I pushed unscathed bits back into corners where there were still glowing embers, frantically trying to get rid of every last handwritten word.
“Why won’t you let me go?” I asked the pages. “Why is it always like this with you? Why can’t I just be done with you and why won’t you let me? We haven’t even spoken in months and I want to be done.”
The roommate put down the glass of wine she had been sipping and laid the watergun across her lap. I was blowing on the embers, hoping for just one more drop of 151 that hadn’t been burned away yet, when she said quite possibly the most powerful, philosophical and inspirational thing she ever said to me.
“You know, Potter, it’s okay if there is still a little bit left. He’s been in your heart for a long time and he may never be completely gone. And that’s alright.” She slowly pulled her fixed gaze away from the smoldering pot roast pan and leaned back over the edge of the lawn chair for her wine glass, while the top foot of her crossed legs resumed wagging from side to side. I stared at her like she was an oracle that had appeared out of thin air to speak to me. A smile crept across my face, a movement of unexpected relief.
I slept well that night, finally unchained from the ghosts of a story I had once written for myself. I felt magical, as if I had finally granted myself permission to be independently powerful. Hadn’t I?
I knew the portals of Beltane were sacred and magical, but I had no idea just how true that was. Not only had I been granted the freedom and power of my own voice through my sacred fire, I was also given the chance to test my new boundaries. The next morning, after months of not speaking, he called me out of the blue from overseas.
Without mentioning one word about burning the letters, I told him exactly how I felt and stood firm on my decision to be released from the cycle of heartbreak and second (third, fourth, fifth) chances. After all, I didn’t burn the letters to be dramatic or to make a point or to hurt his feelings. I did it for me, and I did it with a deep symbolism that meant more to me than those letters ever could have hoped.
the socks.
It all began on a camping trip a few years back with my friend Cynthia. In our planning of the trip to the Lake of the Ozarks, we joked that we would dance around our campfire in granny-panties and polka-dotted socks like good little Pagans. By the time we got to our destination, I had all but forgotten about this – but Cynthia had not. After we finished our hot dogs and a bottle of wine, she pulled out the socks and underwear for the both of us and we put them on to dance around the fire.
The day we left the Ozarks, I had run out of clean underwear so I had to wear the granny-panties. The elastic band hung at least a full four inches above the waistband of my jeans, but on the drive back I could not stop commenting on how comfortable they were.
And thus began my guilty pleasure.
When I had surgery two years ago, my sister presented me with upside-down heart-shaped balloons wearing granny-panties. This was the greatest get-well-soon gift I could have ever imagined. My most recent acquisition (because I never actually buy these on my own, mind you) was from my mom, a pair of eight silky, lace-trimmed, extra-high Hanes Her Ways. I packed them for Italy and slept in them, hidden under my fuzzy pajama pants each night.
Yep. I took a picture of them when I got them.
As I repacked for my flight home from Bologna, I stuffed all of my unmentionables into one of the exterior side-pockets of my orange-trimmed suitcase. I checked my bag and boarded the giant airplane with what must have been hundreds of French high school students for our flight to New York City.
Upon my arrival at JFK Airport, I was one of the first to get through the customs line. In no hurry, I went to the luggage carousel to wait for my bag. I stood at the end of the oval-shaped apparatus along with the couple dozen folks who were lucky enough to get in line in front of the horde of French teenagers. From a distance, I saw my suitcase tumble onto the line, resting upside-down and half on top of another bag. I acknowledged it but decided to just wait for it to come to me.
My gaze came back directly in front of me to the suitcases passing by and I saw a pile of pink silk and lace displayed between two bags. My heart stopped and I felt a hot blush move up my neck. I involuntarily began to take a step forward to retrieve my granny-panties before anyone else saw they were there – but I halted. No one knows they’re yours, Potter, I thought to myself. Act cool and no one will ever know your secret.
My pillowy puff of panties continued on its way around the corner and out of sight. I bit my lip to keep from laughing and decided it would probably be better to not pull out my camera and chase them down to even just take a picture for a blog’s sake.
Then my stomach dropped again. My suitcase was upside down when it was spit out onto the conveyor belt. Oh dear lord, what if it had busted open and there was a strand of granny-panties hanging from the side-pocket like a string of silky, over-sized prayer flags? Then what? Do I act like it is all not mine and watch all of the teenage French kids to laugh and point and take pictures for their Le Facebooks and wait until everyone has left so I can pick up my panties and save an ounce of my dignity?
Thank God that was not the case, because my suitcase was fully in tact when it rolled up to me moments later. I pulled my hat down lower on my face and snuggled my chin further into my pile of scarves in an effort to hide how hard I was laughing. I had been exposed, even if no one else knew it. I walked away from my underwear before the gaggle of teenagers made it through customs and left the fate of my pink granny-panties up to them.
A few days later, I finally emptied out my suitcase to do laundry. I cautiously unzipped the side-pocket and began to sort my unmentionables into color-coded piles. I pulled out five, six, seven… eight pairs of granny-panties, the last being a pair of pale pink.
I realized with a start that all of mine were accounted for. I didn’t lose a pair after all, and that pair on the conveyor belt had not been mine. I was silently grateful that I did not pick up the pair but simultaneously realized that someone else had the same guilty pleasure as me. It made me smile to think that I had felt exposed and a little vulnerable in that moment yet decided to choose to find humor in the whole situation. And in the end, it was my life’s reflection in someone else’s… um, underwear.
Well, you know what I mean.
Don’t be ashamed of the things you truly love, the things that bring you so much joy. It may very well be that you are not the only one.
Speed dating. It sounded like a really great idea at the time.
My friend and I arrived at the wine bar just a few minutes early, having precisely calculated the timing of our entrance as neither fashionably late nor desperately early. The second we walked through the door, my heart sunk and I very seriously considered turning on my heel and exiting the building immediately. But because I could feel my friend thinking the same thing, I was determined to prove that this was, after all, a good idea.
There were about twenty women in the room and half a dozen men. And by “men,” I mean a rag-tag mish-mosh of what I only hoped was a practical joke. We got our nametags and seat number assignments and made our way to the long table with the other women. At 7pm, the men began to migrate over to sit across from each of us. And then it began.
The ad for the speed date, which had promised the participants would all be between the ages 25 – 35, was sorely mistaken, but I chit-chatted amiably enough with each of them no matter what jokes my inner sarcasm was cracking. One man in a Cosby sweater told me he was a musician; my friend told me later that I had misheard him and he was, in fact, a magician. My favorite suitor was a charmingly effeminate man from San Francisco who, at barely five-foot, I wanted to carry around in my pocket.
Conversation was, for the most part, awkward and rehearsed, but I managed well enough. If a gentleman began rambling on or if I couldn’t hear what he was saying anyway, I adopted a smile-and-nod system while I eavesdropped on the couples to either side of me.
A man with what was quite possibly a fake New Zealand accent really grilled me with questions. He asked me what I wanted to do with my life, if I could do anything. I told him I wanted to travel. He asked about the traveling I had already done and I told him most of it had been done on my own.
“But don’t you want someone to travel with?” he asked, pronouncing travel, ‘treevull.’
you can only take so many pictures of yourself - Ireland 2005
Immediately realizing I wasn’t giving the right answers for someone looking for a partner, I replied, “Nope. I enjoy getting to know myself.” He pulled back from the table and smiled at me piteously, and I was very aware of some twenty years between us.
“Well, I can see that. And I’ll tell you, when I was in my twenties I did a lot of travelling alone. I have been to some of the most beautiful places in the world. But eventually, it gets tiring, not having someone to turn to and share the sights with. You’ll see.” I smiled politely, squaring my chin to stubbornly take hold of my ground.
“I can appreciate that,” I allowed. “But it’s not important to me to share it with anyone quite yet.”
That conversation roared in my head while I was in Italy. Each morning, my friend Dennis and I would wake up and get breakfast before he left for work. I would go back to the room and read, shower, do some yoga, and go back downstairs for another round of breakfast. The days would be spent meandering around the portico-covered streets of Bologna, sometimes stopping in for gelato, sometimes walking for four hours into the countryside to catch some fresh air.
hiking in Hawaii, 2005
As much as I love my independence and enjoy travelling alone so I can enjoy quiet and solitude and the power of being in charge of making my own decisions, I really did begin to miss some company. For example, my desire to have my sister along by my side would be so strong at times that it was almost as if I could feel a hole in the air beside me where I wanted her to be. There were boutiques I wished my cousin was with me at and cafes where I wanted to have an espresso and a pastry with one of my girlfriends.
My greatest passion has always been to travel, to explore and to have adventures. I used to always think it was mine, and mine alone. I feared the experience would be ruined if I shared it, and there have been times in my life where people I loved didn’t share that same passion. And so traveling became a choice – either I could have a boyfriend or I could travel. I could never have both.
Dennis, my Italy travel buddy.
Now I realize that I don’t need a traveling boyfriend. I have other people, much more important people in my life that I want to travel with – and who want to travel with me. I have already been blessed with the opportunity to travel and visit and adventure with a handful of incredible beings. I cannot wait to continue to share those experiences with them and also with the other people I hold so near and dear to my heart.
The conversation with that man at the speed date kept playing back in my head whenever I felt the lack of presence of a loved one on my solo day-adventures in Italy. I think I understand now better what point he was trying to make. Not that I needed a man to travel with me, which is how I took it and thus became defensive. Rather, the point of seeing the world is being able to share that experience with someone – anyone – that you love.
Jamie, my Ireland/Vail and soon/Turks and Caicos travel buddy
Miss out on Guilty Pleasures sing-a-long yoga last Friday night at Studio Shakta? Here was the playlist-line-up!!
giggle fest!!
| Every Breath You Take |
The Police |
| I Want It That Way |
Backstreet Boys |
| What A Feeling |
Flashdance |
| I Will Survive |
Gloria Gaynor |
| I’m So Excited |
Pointer Sisters |
| Getting Jiggy With It |
Will Smith |
| The Right Stuff |
New Kids on the Block |
| I Believe in a Thing Called Love |
The Darkness |
| Super Freak |
Rick James |
| Push It |
Salt-N-Pepa |
| Since U Been Gone |
Kelly Clarkson |
| What I Like About You |
The Romantics |
| Whip It |
Devo |
| Madonna – Like A Virgin |
Madonna |
| Single Ladies |
Beyonce |
| Livin’ on a Prayer |
Bon Jovi |
| Don’t Stop Beliving |
Journey |
| I Will Always Love You |
Whitney Houston |
| Sort Of Revolution |
Fink |
| Time of My Life |
Dirty Dancing |
“I’m going to Little Beach on Sunday night with my brothers. Do you want to come?”
I had heard about the infamous Sunday nights at the smaller of two beaches in Makena, Maui. Drum circles, dancing, impromptu yoga and fire dancing – all at the nude beach.
Of course I was not going to miss that.
Christian was my escort for the evening. A friend of my friend, he had just graduated as a certified EMT and I spent some afternoons at his house where he made me smoothies with fresh fruit from his yard and played the theme to Requiem for a Dream on the harp. For the record: cute boys with harps in Maui are never bad company to keep.
He used to spin fire on these Sunday nights, he told me. But it had been almost ten months since he had last been. What, with school occupying most of his time, he just had not been able to get his fire dancing practice in. Understandable.
Little Beach is separated from Big Beach by a big cliff that juts out, cutting between the two beaches. To get to the naked side, one must climb up a crude stairway dug into the scratchy volcanic rock face. (It’s not as dramatic as it sounds – but I am a writer and that is how I choose to describe it) And then there it was. Sunday night at Little Beach.
I had never been to a nude beach before. I had also never seen naked adults kicking around a soccer ball, hula hooping or frolicking in the waves like over-sized children. It was out of my comfort zone, fascinating – and absolutely beautiful.
It was too chilly to convince me out of my clothes (sixty-five is quite cold on Maui) but I enjoyed sitting quietly as others ran about. I watched the waves breaking on naked bodies and considered the many possible reasons why men seemed to be much more comfortable wandering around naked than women.
The west-facing beach gave the perfect stage for the setting sun, and applause broke out as the sun finally slipped into the edge of the ocean. If you have never applauded the setting sun before, I highly recommend it. I don’t think the sun gets as much credit as it should for each of its stunning displays each night.
With the sun gone, the residual light faded quickly and everyone huddled in to supplement the original drum circle with an audience. A circular arena was left open in the midst of the crowd, a someone set a pair of poi afire.
The first dancer was beautiful to watch and I was mildly hypnotized by the simple arcs of light. As her fire went out, Christian next stepped into the ring with a long staff, each end lit. It was incredible to watch, how controlled his movements were within the fluid expression he maintained. When a man dances subtly while maintaining the utmost sacred masculinity – well. Whether or not there’s fire involved, it’s simply hot.
He sat down, placing the staff in between his toes, shifting up into a shoulder stand and then winding his way onto his stomach. His knees pulled up to balance on the back of his triceps and he slowly, with complete control, pressed up from bakasana (crow pose) into a handstand. With a fire-stick stuck between his toes. And came back down, releasing the grip of one foot and standing on it, removing the staff from between his toes and one again, spinning it in mesmerizing circles.
Been-ten-months-I’m-a-little-rusty, my ass.
I refuse to keep anything but fascinating company.
The next dancer had what I can only describe as nunchuks. In retrospect, I am not sure whether it is because of the appearance of the things or just the way he spun them around. Either way – Christian’s brother and I both took involuntary steps backwards from the edge of the circle when this guy started dancing. He flailed and wielded his fiery nunchuks around, kicking and spinning himself in circles as well. His pants were lit on fire three different times during his performance and the circle of onlookers subtly shifted back, making more surface area for him to hop around in.
But as half-terrifying as it was to watch him fling and flail about, no one walked away. No one booed him.
One of my teachers has said, “When your life gets messy, the Kula (community) puts on its helmet.” Meaning, when shit hits the fan, rather than leaving you, the people who love and support you the most will brace themselves in order to stand alongside you through the thick of it. Playing with fire is no easy task. It takes courage and certain curiosity. And just like anything, when you begin to learn something new, there is a learning curve that is guaranteed to be a little messy. When you begin to live your life with your heart set afire, parts of your life are sure to burn away in order to make space for the new. People who are close to you are in danger of falling debris – but while they step back to give you space, your strongest support systems are the ones who still will not run away.
As we left that evening, Christian let me carry the torch to lead the way for our group and others across the darkened beach. I had never been on a beach at nighttime before, nor had I ever carried a torch. I felt like Indiana Jones. Yet while I felt the power and prowess of the flame, I did not feel the draw to spin it, to disturb the simplicity of its warm glow. Not yet – but perhaps soon.
I was, however, honored to illumine the way for someone whose fearlessness with their fire inspired me to consider playing with the light of my own.
I used to have a book a boyfriend had given me the week I was trying to break up with him. We only ever fought about one thing – my dreams of travel. All I ever craved was the excitement of a foreign land, starting life over from scratch, finding my true character as it’s put to the test; and he thought all that was stupid. All he wanted in life was a wife, his Xbox, his cat, and his Xbox. And I thought all that was stupid (except his cat. I still miss that cat). As we fought our big fight and he called me nasty names and told me I was immature for not wanting to settle down, everything I had put off for that relationship gently made its way into my consciousness. I wasn’t mad at him – or myself, for that matter – I was just ready to stop pretending and start fulfilling.
He realized it, too.
In an effort to not lose me all together, he switched sides. Suddenly, he wanted to go places with me. He started googling information on visas and apartments and travel insurance to anywhere I may want to go (except France. He hated the French). He bought me travel books and photo albums – which leads me back to that book.
A photographic journey through every country in the world – or at least the front and back covers boasted as much. As for the inside – I had never opened it. Four months after our break-up, it was still in its cellophane wrapping. I wanted to open it. I wanted to see these pictures of places I had never been.
Maybe he had hoped to sit down with me and watch as I turned through the pages and pointed at pictures and said, “There! No…there!!!” He would have made a mental list, gone online for the research, impressed me with his gusto and told me we would go. But he would have never followed through. It was a trick – that book was a hopeful trick. And that’s why I couldn’t open it.
I wanted the world and he couldn’t give it to me – so he bought me a book.
The back of the book said that from the 1200 images within, one could form “one complete picture” of the entire world. Did he think I would find him amidst all the pages of pictures? Truth be told, I would have seen 1200 reasons I could never stay with him.
I don’t know why I was afraid to open it – like peeling back the cellophane would unleash a smoke of death like whatever it was they opened up in Indiana Jones that killed everyone who saw it. Maybe it was that only the cover that attracted him to buy it. It’s unlikely he leafed through millions and millions of books to find the best suited one for me. He knew he was losing me and it was his last-minute effort to immediately band-aid the situation.
Yet at the same time, it was hard for me to completely let go of the book. Or maybe it was hard for me to find the courage to full-on step into the flow of the life I had always really dreamed of having.
Either way, I finally took the book back to Barnes and Noble, still in package, and exchanged it for a few magazines about scuba diving and exotic islands and beaches and a book on how to flirt in French. Smiling at how good I felt, I stumbled across an open copy of the book I had held on to for so long. I leafed through the pages and had the overwhelming sense that I had made the perfect decision. I wanted to see the world on my terms, not someone else’s.
Nearly four years later, I am happy to report: so far, so good.
See me if you want to learn how to say things like “I bet that outfit would look even better on my bedroom floor” or “Would you like to be my plaything?” in French.
What, with the winter solstice, a full moon AND a lunar eclipse, I had to get my girls together for a celebration Monday night. That kind of thing does not happen on a regular basis – hadn’t, as a matter of fact, since 1638. Won’t again until something like 2094. My mom told me that the corresponding powers of the divine feminine during those three powerful acts would be so intense that any prayer or intention set forth would have one thousand times more effectiveness than any other full moon, solstice or lunar eclipse in and of itself.
It was obviously a necessity to invoke the ceremonies my best friend in college and I used to have. The kind where you are not following any guidelines, just your heart and even a half a glass of wine in a plastic water bottle and a handful of almonds become sacred when placed in the center of the gazebo next to a pond in Greeley. Light a few candles and suddenly you are a priestess, waving your hand over the almonds and saying things like, “Goddess bless your nuts” and watching the moon with a profound appreciation for the magic you pretended you felt so hard that suddenly, you really do feel it.
So yes, you might say I have a little experience with sacred ceremonies. And I am a reverend, after all.
We ate an all-raw foods dinner, slurping our avocado soup out of margarita glasses and sipping Pellegrino out of wine glasses. After a quick smudging ceremony outside in which we each had a bundle of sage that we waves around each other and then the drawing of a few Goddess Cards, it was time to get down to business.
I tore a few sheets out of my journal and each of us took two strips of paper. On one, we wrote what we were ready to let go of on this dark night. That which no longer serves – the old stories we have told ourselves, the bitter scars we have carried, the worries, fears and burdens we have beared. The second page was for what we plan on growing in intensity with the increasing light of the sun. And just to make it that much more powerful, we matrika shati-fied that motha’. In other words, we used present tense languaging, as though the things we most desired had already happened, already embodying those words, dreams, desires, goals.
The four of us scribbled away with our brightly colored Sharpie markers.
Outside, we lit a small peach candle and took turns igniting our prayers, beginning with the ones of release. Folded papers dipped down into the flames and we solemnly but happily watched as each page was consumed. All that remained were the soft ashes of each page and a deep breath or two as we felt all that weight lift off our shoulders.
Swaha. Offer it up to the sacred fire for radical transformation. And from the ashes, rise anew.
“I want to open this one up,” my sister said as she bravely unfolded her second sheet. Baring her truest heart and most sacred wishes to the sky, she tipped the paper into the flame. Hell yeah, I thought. Why hide this?!
I held my manifesto over the candle, light burning bright through the middle of my paper. The teal ink looked brown, almost black, backlit as it was and the light made the words in the middle glow. The word “Love” seemed to leap out as the paper caught fire.
My cousin Lo’s burning page settled into soft ashes, leaving one corner completely untouched, as if purposely trying to make a point. “I am in love with myself,” it read.
We all felt lighter as we gawked up at the full moon, still bright white and waiting for the pending eclipse. I was not done yet, I thought. We weren’t done yet.
I snapped my gaze up from my trance on the little peach candle, conduit of our dreams. “Ima get glitter so we can dance around the fire.” No one seemed to be surprised by my declaration.
I distributed little shakers of glitter to each of the girls, tossing some up into the sky and beginning to dance in a spiral around them. Giggling and with glitter in tow, they each began following suit, drenching each other in glitter. Dancing, we blew glitter like kisses out of our palms, sprinkled it like fairy dust on each other’s heads and threw it in great arcs up to the sky above us like holy water. Everything sparkled in the mix of candle and moonlight, a genuine pagan discotheque.
Lo halted her giggling and general frolicking with a gasp. “Look!” she shouted, arms outreached and looking down at her sparkly self. “We’re dancing in the reflection of the divine!”
We were covered in the joy of our intentions. It was almost surreal to look at each other, watching everything glimmer and sparkle like a real-life dream. Honest-to-goodness magic. And it was not all just the glitter.
I looked at the women I stood with. With people like this in my life, how could I ever feel lonely? How could I ever feel any lack when my love for them runs so deep?
Even today after a shower and a solid effort at vacuuming my sister’s house, glitter is everywhere. It serves as a solid reminder of how magic I am. We are. You are. Even on the longest night, the darkest night, the night where even the full moon bears no light – I still shine. Those I love deeply reflect that love back to me and I see them. I truly see them. I see they are letting go. I see they are prepared to receive. I see how ready and willing they are for a change in their lives and how truly worthy they are for every bit of it. And how I could not have asked for better company and support as I practice the same thing.
Sparkle on with your rad-ass self.
Glimmer with the remembrance of your divinity.
Go light something on fire and dance around it with all your heart.
“Actually, I didn’t like that at all. Nor did I find it comforting. It hurt, and it was hard for me to sit still.” Amy asked me to show her how I sit for meditations. I scooted around, wiggling while I tried to find a comfortable way to sit. But I could not stop shifting. I closed my eyes and tried again. Shift, shift. Wiggle. Then I laughed, embarrassed that I could absolutely not sit still.
