Well, it has been 3 years since I posted regularly. There I was chugging along in my life and my father called. My best friend, my wonderful kind loving always there for me role model in life called feeling a bit confused. But that night we found out he had inoperable, terminal brain cancer that would kill him in exactly one month. That will for sure be a full blog post, or two. My two siblings and I provided 100% of his care, in his home, for that month, and sat with him as he died. It was beautiful and shattering. And reeling from that into a new life with all the old challenges, I just stopped writing. But it's my favorite thing to do and finally, 3 years to the day since I last sat with him in my garden, I find myself inspired. This time by the amazing incredible Joni Mitchell/Brandi Carlisle video of Joni singing Both Sides Now at the Newport Folk Festival last week. Wow. That has always been one of my top two or three favorite songs. And it always makes me cry. But watching the other women with her on the stage supporting her is what made it extra beautiful. These are women who are themselves. Who fully are themselves. And thank God because if we are not fully ourselves, we can not offer the world the irreplaceable, precious gifts that we have. If Brandi Carlisle tried to sing songs that fit in one genre as she'd been told to do. Or if Joni felt she was too old to do that set, what a loss for the world! And it made me think about the ultimate ritual. The ritual of daily living as our truest selves.
I have always been a lot. My mother said I never walked. I went from crawling to one day standing up and running. I'd run till I hit a wall, fall down, then get up and run in a different direction. That sounds like me! At 7 years old I wrote the poem:
I am like a shark,
Never stopping to rest
For fear of drowning in my ideas.
My only real fear of dying is running out of time because there are so many gorgeous fascinating things I want to do and learn and create and visit. I'm actually a pretty calm person in many ways because I just assume things will be ok. And when they aren't, I make another plan and then assume that will be ok. So I'm not an anxious person. But I am a lot of person. And for so long I've wished I were less. I've wished I was that soft perfectly coiffed and made stereotype that smiles demurely and sits quietly smiling (and there is no insult in that, that is just a gorgeous a version of the feminine as any of them). The fully feminine archetype. I still wish I were that in some ways. And in some ways I am - less the blond hair :). But mostly I'm not. I even tried and squeeze myself into that person sometimes. Not that those things are less. They just aren't me. But my fierce, passionate, joyful, silly self squeezes out of the cracks and I can never maintain it. I've given up on that contorting myself by now. Thank God. By 53 I'd hope so! But it's still there. Girls are sugar and spice and all things nice. Girls should be quiet and have no opinion unless it's supportive. And I am those things, but I am also a thunderstorm and a poet and a bawdy dirty joke teller and the person who intentionally says the shocking thing no one wants to say. I am the girl at 3 years old who only had one thing on her birthday wish list, a holster and 6 shooters. And, God bless my parents, they got it for me. And I am a healer. And to be any of those things, I must be all of those things. I must be all the things that flow without effort like all water flows to the sea. I must be my SELF that exists before any thoughts. Before, "was that nice?" "Was I too loud?" "Did I talk too much?". I must be the 3 year old in nothing but a pair of shorts and a holster with 6 shooters. I must daily practice the ritual of being my true self, before culture got in the way. We all must. For a very real, practical reason - because the world needs us. Each one of us. It needs the gifts we were sent here with and if we pretend to be someone else, we lose our gifts. We can't have it both ways. So I'm back to writing which I have done my whole life. That is an essential part of my essential self. And I'm daily practicing the meditation, the devotion, the worship of being who God/Spirit/The Universe intended me to be, put me here to be. Because to be anything else is to scorn the very creative force in the universe, to scorn God, and to scorn my own heart. So here's to being ourselves, doing what feels right, doing what flows, and embracing ourselves, the good the bad and the beautiful!
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