It’s the tail end of summer. The evening felt warm last night but the world felt cold.
I was walking the anxiety away. The pressure on my chest from the passage of time and the news of my mother’s illness weighed on me like a boulder.
So I whipped out what I always do in times likes these…
Pema Chödrön. One of my favorite Buddhist teachers.
I put on my headphones and listened to her calm, soothing voice remind me of impermanence. Remind me to just sit with the discomfort. “Humans don’t just feel good” she said. “Breathe into the discontent.”
I started to again reflect on attachment. How I must accept that nothing is forever. Life is not forever. I can’t hang on too tightly. Not to my youth, not my belongings, not my titles, not the people I love. I must learn to be with what is while it is and to let it go when it is time to let go.
ROAR!
I get it…I hear it. I know it. But it doesn’t make it any easier.
So let me sit with all of it. The part of me that knows better and the part of me that wants to squirm, complain, and throw a little tantrum.
—
On other news…
Lately everything reminds me of you.
There’s a canyon sized hollow without you here.
Sigh.
I am longing to soften.
To rest deeply in my body in powerful surrender. To fill my lungs with sweet, juicy air in full trust that it is all working in divine order. We are not late, we are not early, we are exactly where we should be.
Can I trust?
Can I really, really trust this time?
I am wanting to take the wild leap.
I am starting to think we live in a simulation. Or something sort of similar to it. Life’s too weird, too magnificent, too damn trippy not to lift a brow in suspicion that perhaps something’s up.
Too many strange coincidences leave my radar on alert.
I think I am ready.
I don’t know for what. But I am ready!
What really matters in love? Truly?
At the end of the effing day, when it is all said and done — what’s left?
What actually matters?
I keep circling back to this phrase: the full package.
But what does that even mean?
It’s hard to say when there are different types of love.
Love from mother to child.
Love from friend to friend.
Love from person to object.
Love from person to God.
Sibling love.
Romantic love.
You name it…
but what is IT?
Does love have a core?
Are these just branches on the same sprawling tree?
Is it a feeling?
An experience?
An idea?
An act?
An expression?
A combination of these?
A thing which cannot be explained in words?
GAHHH.
Why are we humans so complicated?
Is that part of the fun?
Relationships can be complicated.
When we love, we ache to keep it. We lay claim: my boyfriend, my partner, my person. And in that claiming, fear creeps in. We don’t want to lose them. We don’t want to see them laughing in the corner with someone else. So we make rules. We get jealous. We clutch tight.
Maybe that’s just where we are in our evolution. Still learning. Still human. Still attached.
And still, I wonder: at the core, what is it we really want?
Connection?
Safety?
Something else?
Some say love is a drug. Taste it once, and suddenly you’re hooked. Restless, aching, feening for another hit. You find yourself staring at your phone waiting for that text to come through. One little buzz, that name flashing on your screen and the rush floods in; sharp, fast, like a bump of cocaine.
“I miss you” they say.
You feel high.
But that’s it. No follow up. No change.
You feel low.
Oh, so low.
Sigh.
Hm…
Perhaps there isn’t one neat answer.
Life is too dynamic, too wild, too fluid to be contained by a single defining answer. What may be true today may be false tomorrow. Someone can say “I love you” today and drop you tomorrow. In the wise words of Snoop Dog, “It do be like that sometimes.”
Perhaps love is less of a one size fits all answer but more an art. Perhaps it’s not a thing we can shove into a neat little box slapped with a label that says “love is THIS.” Perhaps it’s more a force that can’t be contained. Perhaps it takes many forms, many names, many flavors, many sounds, many textures, many shapes.
And somehow, all of them different yet all of them true.
What a ride. What a ride.
Every now and then, God seems to send me little surprises. Winks that whisper, “I’m still here. I’m still watching you. I’m listening. I care.”
Like today, when there was an unexpected knock on my door.
In this world, people rarely knock unannounced so obviously I was filled with curiosity, “Who could that be?”
I peeked through the window and saw her—my upstairs neighbor’s mother who’s been visiting for the month to help her daughter. My neighbor is from Brazil, like me, which is something that has bonded us in a tender way. Her mother is a small woman. Her round frame carrying the kind of softness that makes you instantly think of comfort food and unconditional love. The kind of figure that reminds me of an Italian nonna, only in this case, a Brazilian mãe.
She was beaming, holding up a blue-lidded Tupperware like a trophy. Inside: a generous slice of carrot cake covered in glossy brigadeiro icing, our national chocolate treasure. The sight alone felt like home.
Her gesture was so simple, yet it landed in my heart like a divine reminder: You are not forgotten. Not by God, not by humanity, not by life itself. At least that’s the story I chose to believe. And it’s far better than the other one where miracles have dried up and the heavens have turned away.
Because the truth is, life can be unbearably dark sometimes. Heavy enough to crush and test my faith. But then, in moments like this, an old-fashioned knock at the door, a motherly smile, a Tupperware of sweetness…I find myself believing again.
So when in doubt, choose kindness.
Sometimes I feel so much awe and gratitude for this epic life experience my heart wants to burst.
I’m fascinated.
Speechless.
There is so much that is already working. WOW.
You are all truly amazing. Works of art.
I am blown away by your talent. Your intelligence. Your creativity. Your genius.
GAHH.
Look at us.
Look how far we’ve come and how much we’ve done. I am basically an evolved ape typing on a computer. C’mon now. LOL what!? Don’t even get me started on the fact that we even exist in the first place.
I just want to fall in love and dance my heart away.
Take my hand ~ let’s love and dance.
I think it’s time I go buck wild.
Intentionally, mindfully.
Post the content. Take the trip. Tell the neighbor he is so damn hot it should be illegal to be that hot.
We’re all dying…time and space just hasn’t caught up yet.
Don’t waste your life freaking out. Worrying about things that life will sort out anyway in time – believe that. Even if you don’t know the way forward, don’t you worry darling, life does. Life does.
So dance. Love. Laugh. Smile. Do a nice little thing for the next person.
You matter. You’re magnificent.
—
I don’t want to live some boring life, pay some bills and die.
Nah… I want to send little messages out in the world to SAY YOU ARE MAGIC.
I want to dance on the sidewalk, drink a little too much wine on a Wednesday night and wake up early anyway to go to yoga. I want to book a random flight to Italy. Get a tattoo in Bali. Drive across the country and scream “I LOVE YOU” to the stars out of the car window. I want to tip the barista a little too much just because. Hey, I’ll even text my ex. BUCK WILD BABY BUCK WILD!!!
I caught a glimpse of the new moon resting gently in the sky.
I felt her energy remind me, it’s time to step into the new.
Shed, shed, shed the old.
The old patterns
The old fears
The old stories that keep you small,
The traumas
The worries
The doubts
and walk, walk, waltz.
Dive, dance, melt into the new.
EMBODY IT
Embody the version of you you wish to be.
Let the energetic frequency be so clear, there is no mistake.
There is no confusion, no nonsense, no halfway energy.
Embody the joy, the peace, the love, the abundance.
YOU ARE IT!
Feel the frequency of heaven and BE IT.
Be what you wish to see.
Be, do, have.
We create our reality with the choices we make.
Every day we are choosing.
We choose the clothes we wear, the foods we eat, and whether or not we snooze the alarm.
We make the rules, the laws, the bread, the systems, the everything we have here in this world — collectively, together. We do it. It’ us.
If there are wars — it’s us. It’s our fault. WE are doing this. We we we we.
If there is poverty, it’s us. We’re to blame.
And we are also the solution.
It’s tough to save the whole world. There isn’t enough time in the day to address all the BS going on. But if more of us address it on a personal level, that will ripple. If we each choose peace individually, we will have peace collectively. Imagine that?
“Imagine all the people, living life in peace”…..
“You may say I’m a dreamer, but I am not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us. And the world will be as one.”
—
Gahh…. I could burst sometimes. In sheer, magnificent, juicy AWE.
What is this experience?? What IS THIS??
Apparently we’re all energy? Mostly energy vibrating in space. Trippy shit.
Let’s have a good time, folks!!
—
Do you ever just want someone even though you know you’re not compatible?
Today I also caught a glimpse of you…
and you looked like Heaven.
So close to you, yet so far
Open door, thick walls.
Do you believe in magic?
In manifestation?
I think it’s better when you don’t force it. When you let the magic itself unfold.
How do I let go and forget?
I don’t want to care. But apparently my brain has other plans.
The journey is the destination. This process is the whole point.
I need to learn to enjoy it more. Even when you are so far.