During a leadership program in 2006, my tribe nicknamed me Waterfall. We had gotten to see each other close-up over the course of the 10-month program. They spoke of my passionate personality, effusive expression of Love and affection, fluid state of vulnerability and feeling. I felt seen. It felt like music to my ears. 

One of my tribe mates, a man named Scott who I’d grown close to and still stay in touch with 18 years later, then had the courage to elaborate, “When you don't learn to turn down the faucet, you can easily flood the meadow.”

That was 18 years ago. I've been working to refine my flow ever since. Paying closer attention so I extend mindfully, aiming to never let my hugs or loving words go beyond the place where that soul can receive them. It isn’t easy. But it’s well worth the work. Just like anyone who’s on the “far end of the spectrum” in one way or another, I want to become skillful in how I blend and engage with others. 

Is anyone well served by diminishing their authenticity, the genuine expression of their unique soul? No.

Should I have just flipped them off and told them I won’t shrink for anyone? No. 

Because nobody’s asking me not to be me. They’re just telling me how I’m affecting them. Then it’s up to me to choose. ​

Have you heard the Eagles’ song Love Will Keep Us Alive? Released 30 years ago, it is one of the most beautiful songs ever written. I’ve heard it hundreds of times over the decades and yet when I listened to it recently, its beauty sent me sailing in an unexpected way. 

For many years, we’ve been hearing the outcry of the human existential song. Nuclear obliteration. Insufficient food supplies and clean water. Daily, more than 25,000 people die of hunger and more than 15,000 are children — when there’s plenty of food to feed all of us. Massive storms, floods and war. Rape, sex trafficking, genocide. Colossal use of pharmaceutical medication to combat anxiety and depression. Suicide… Repeat… Repeat. 

Souls are in despair, globally. This is not a pretty song. How could we not be afraid? ​

How about this — let’s stop running around scared of our own body’s death. To truly feel freedom, we must accept our mortality. When we do, a heavy weight is lifted off our chest. We see that life is now. We feel truly alive, filled with the beautiful desire to express our own unique self.

If you haven’t yet “seen the Light” inside of you — the galactically gorgeous spray of divine stars glimmering in your being — this is your invitation to see it. Now! Ask Spirit, God, Love, for help.
Get out of your mental head and move your body in a way that makes you feel totally alive. Before a job interview, I like to walk around at a cemetery and feel the mortality, the lives passed. It helps to ground and humble me. It helps me remember that the only time I’ve got is now. 

Love brings us alive while we’re living, and Love keeps us alive when we die.Let me humbly admit that I didn’t “get the memo” in an easy way. It took five years of horrid monthly migraines, a massive brain tumor, brain surgery and a near death experience (NDE) for me to expansively “see the Light” of the one moment we’ve got: the moment of now. 

Seeing death’s face up close helps us wake up to — 

Life! 

Life. 

Living! 

Being alive. 

​My God, what an ecstasy laden existence this is. It is also an inconceivably atrocious “reality” we’re living in, so my dearest darling you, for all it’s worth…

CHOOSE LOVE. Choose to see, breathe and live the LOVE you are.

Love is the Light that illuminates darkness. 

Choose the joy that Love wants to feed you. 

Choose people who uplift and see you, who you uplift too.

Choose to feel good, come together and enjoy Life while you’re living. 

If an extremely unfortunate situation greets us along with the last breaths we take, it isn’t a full basement of food — and it certainly isn’t a gun — that will give us Life. It is Love. When we need food for our children or a sense of safety, it is those relationships we’ve invested in with our time and attention, that will provide us with deep breaths of comfort. ​

Alas, the Eagles were tuned in — that great thing called Love will keep us alive.  

When we take our last breaths, it is a feeling of being loved that will make our final breaths peaceful, sending us into the realm of timelessness with sunlit, oceanic beauty swimming in our souls. And I’ll tell you from having “seen the other side” in my NDE, death is not actually death; what we call death is actually rebirth into a whole new landscape of Light. 

​Here’s the song. Play it loud, let it in and with every part of your blessed, breathing being, feel it. ​

P.S. Listening to music is a fantastic way to move out of our overburdened heads — where we're trying to "figure it all out" — and loosen into this moment, where truth and freedom live. For me, it's instant. Play music, feel better. Here's a song to help you remember: You're a Superstar. 

Today marks 92 days out of pain from severe sciatica. Most cases last 2-3 weeks; mine lasted 12. A mirror stands in front of me, now free from an embodiment of lightning in my rear left thigh just as long as I seemed to be imprisoned by it. Though the pain was horrific, the gifts offered by this trauma outweigh it 10,000-fold. Trauma presented a doorway to bliss I never knew existed. 

Succinct isn't my middle name. I write like flowers bloom. My heart writes for me. She is unlimited. She spills, she's wide, she's vast. Yet sometimes brief is worth a try. So here I go.

When it takes nine hours of heavy opiates to cut thunderous pain from your thigh, you are then gifted with patience while standing in a grocery store line. 

​Thank you, trauma. 

When your pain is on such hellfire you either ask for help 200 times a day or suffer more, you never hesitate to ask for help again -- and are gifted now, with eyes that see Love's constant motion via the act of giving and receiving. Giving and receiving. We were born to serve each other. 

​Thank you, trauma. 

When you wonder if dying would be better than feeling pain like this another day, and you breathe, and you breathe, reminded that all you can do is your best in this. moment. now... You've been given a heavy dose of Wake-Up! And on those days when you're stressed out or grumpy, afraid our planet is dying and our species is going extinct, well... then again you remember that while you might not be able to save the planet from sinking, you can still do your best in this moment now. Healing doesn't live in tomorrow. It lives now. 

Thank you, trauma... for endless invincible truths that offer freedom. 

All I can do, I now see, is choose Love over fear in one moment and then the next. Even if the limitless version of me -- the Oneness in which our truth resides -- is pain-free, I love being here in a body for now. I choose this Life, and Life chooses me. I am breathing. I have walked through trauma's doorway, holding hands with the divine. 

Thank you, trauma.

Today I choose to focus on where the glass is half-full, not half-empty. Brain surgery for a massive tumor followed two months later by severe chronic pain? OK. Well guess what? I've never been raped. I wasn't abused as a child. I've never been physically locked up or chained in enslavement. I have food to eat and a safe bed to sleep in. My daughter is alive and healthy. OK? 

Thank you, trauma. 

Empathy in me is oceans deep. For those of you who've experienced sciatica or other forms of striking pain, I wish you peace of mind and ease in body. One day I will finish Ten Steps to Heal Sciatica. For now, here's Step 1 out of 10 and Step 2 out of 10: Reduce Pain and Inflammation. 

Today I celebrate the gift of Life in a body, and the glorious gifts trauma has given me. How about you? What are you celebrating today?​

It's been a long winter in California. While grateful for rain, it seems everyone was out hiking or otherwise soaking up the sun this weekend. Finally, spring came. 

Spring has a way of inviting humans to open up like flowers: our smiles, our sidewalk hellos, our eagerness to create and connect.

​Spring says, "Come, try something new, let me see your petals too."

One way I show my color, my petals, the life inside of me -- is through letter writing. This spring I'll begin a yearlong workshop guiding participants to create or deepen intimacy with key areas of life: your body, food, family, friends, money, ancestry, home.  We'll write letters to all these areas, these places where we are in relationship. 

Life is relationship. Just as we can share human experience and deepen connection with a close friend or spouse, we can do this with non-human relations. Truthfully relating with anything or anyone -- in this case, through letter writing -- brings enhanced mindfulness, communication, and personal power. 

Participants can join in person north of San Francisco in Sonoma County at Literic Petaluma, where I will lead the workshop. Those unable to attend in person can join the  separate (but similar in content) online version, which I will post the week after.  

Oh, letters... 

I've written thousands of cards and letters in my life.

Some delivered, some not. Some graceful, some clumsy. Some potent with love and wisdom, some flapping in a sea of insecurity.

Each letter has given me greater clarity about who I am and what I want. Each piece of hand written correspondence has conveyed to its recipient, however short of long, that I value them and want them in my life. Some friends have hundreds of letters and cards from me tucked away in a box. Not emails, as those can't be touched.

Letters please the senses. Letters say spring. 

If you want to deepen intimacy with key areas of your life, infusing your world with truth telling power and vision in ink, on paper, for the senses, for the fullness of life... Join us! If you're in Petaluma, call or email Literic at [email protected] / (707) 658-1751 to sign up. Cost per workshop is $30. 

Over the course of my lifetime, I'd guess I have written somewhere between 1,000-10,000 cards and letters. Starting at age five, the art of hand written cards and letters became a devoted practice. My mom role modeled the way with her gorgeous, kind hearted penmanship and patient hands. 

With every piece of mail I send, someone smiles on the other end. The receiver feels loved and valued, and I enjoy every part of the process: choosing paper or a card and a pen, the feel of the pen on the paper, making the envelope beautiful, however simple. It's all so yummy.

A hand written letter is a ritual of sensual pleasure, self-worth, therapy and self-awareness for the writer. ​