I have a mediation garden in my backyard.  Mostly, I avoid it.  I built it to support this whole yoga, meditation, relaxation lifestyle...but mostly I avoid the space.  I go through spurts where I am in it every single day.  But then I also go for long stretches where I treat it like it is some haz mat zone and stay away, far away. It is outside and not shielded from the elements so all this rain we have been having has made it less available...but that is really just an excuse for me.  I have been having a hard time meditating or being still and so this place serves ..read more

Sometimes the beauty of a landscape is so beautiful the only response I can manage is tears.  Tears do not come easy for me.  Even after all the healing and therapy, tears exist in the remotest part of me.  And I am only able to access every once in awhile. I cannot count how many times I have felt like crying about something going on in my life and I am denied access, like some stray puppy outside a warm, food filled kitchen.  I want to come in but the access is not mine to grant.  It is like someone else holds the key and they are decidedly against inviting me in ..read more

I don’t think that I truly understand what it means to let go.  I mean in all the way?  Forever?  I don’t know that I have ever let anything go, all the things, all at once.  I can let go physically, that is the easiest.  Just cut people out of my life and move on.  I have a much harder time letting go of my thoughts about them.  Those fuckers persist for years!  And emotionally, letting go and moving on is so much harder.  I have all these, what I now know to be dysfunctional emotional patterns and it is like some sort of spidery web from which I c ..read more

I was born with this.  Like everyone else (or most everyone else) is born with 200 horsepower.  But me, I have these extra 300 fucking horses that I barely know what to do with.  They cause me so much angst and heartbreak and cost but there is nothing I can do about it.  My life is just drawn by all this fucking horse power and the fact that I want to slow down and walk or sleep or what the fuck ever, is just not possible with all this extra horse power I have all the time. All this extra I was born with or created to cope with life, I am never really sure which it is...ca ..read more

They are the natural result of hard truths...and I had mine yesterday.  Just like that, the hard truth landed...I could not stay in the relationship with the guy.  I have tried and tried and tried to have this work but I am not dealing with someone who is all there, and while I know that on so many levels, I have so wanted to believe him when he said he was more capable.  He isn’t. It is amazing to me how very far I will go to make something work.  Something that I want quite desperately.  And the love of a man who sees me and hears me and wants me and shows up for me ..read more

I hate them.  I have done some pretty death defying mental gymnastics in order to avoid seeing these hard truths.  And I have gone to even greater lengths to avoid feeling them.  I still, despite years of work, like a fuck ton of work, still feel like my feelings are trying to kill me.  It has gotten better and I don’t feel that way every single day of my life, but there are those days where it feels like, “fuck, today might be the day my feelings actually finish me off...” But I have this ever evolving relationship with hard truths.  Mostly what I have learned can be ..read more

I sat in a comfortable living room as the snow fell silently all around.  The fire burning in its place, creating a warm glow that acted to counterbalance all the tiny frozen flakes coming down outside. Snow has always been magical to me.  I love the hush it brings to life and living.  I feel like snow was given to us to slow us down and give us time to reflect.  And that is exactly what I did this past weekend as the snow came fluttering down. I went outside and looked up at the frenzied path of the falling flakes.  No where else in this life do I see so much activi ..read more

Did you know that running away was a trauma response?  Well, good for you.  I may be a little slow on the uptake but it just occurred to me yesterday that I have deployed this particular coping strategy forever.  I am not a stayer.  I am a runner.  And I am quite adept at making it look like I am staying when I have totally and 100% left the building.  See my runs are always mental and they start months before I know they have.  And perhaps years before you know they have. Intimacy is uncomfortable for me.  Closeness, while something I crave, it is some ..read more

My daughter turned 17 last Tuesday.  And she is an amazing kid and someone I admire.  So for her birthday, I rented a place in Mammoth and brought she and a couple of her friends up to spend the weekend snowboarding and being teenagers.  It was the first time she drove up with friends and not with me.  While I enjoyed the time for just me and my guy, it was a trip thinking that five teens were making the six hour drive alone.  We weren’t caravanning.  We weren’t in the same car.  And so another vestibule of childhood vanishes... They made it all intact and f ..read more

I have always loved punk rock.  The music.  The culture.  The clothing.  The hair.  The pogo.  All of it.  I think, even though I may not have always appeared to be very punk rock on the outside, my insides have always been loyal to the cause.  Deep within my psyche and soul, there is an anarchist just endeavoring to survive the day within the establishment.  I have made my peace along the way and you can judge all you want.  Truth is that punk rock is about more than how you look, it has and always will be about how you feel. And for me, the ..read more