A new perspective.

My mother's recipe for Tagarinies, a South American dish that is a family favorite.

My mom died on April 3, 2013 at 8:30 in the morning. My brother Dave, her sister Betsy and I held her hands and watched her take her last breath.

As my brother said, "The image of that moment is always there but I can't really stand to take it all in yet."

I can't take it all in either. I look at her handwriting and read her recipes and am only partially cognizant that she will never cook for me again. I leave dance class and reach for my phone to call her and remember she won't be there. But it feels more like she is on vacation. She'll be back. Surely she will.

Luckily, in this weird space between losing her and coming to terms with it, my perspective has been shifted profoundly. I was given instant clarity about her specific gifts to me my whole life, those that I refused to see while I was acting feverishly in my role as "daughter." I was also able to understand her forward legacy. I am now held and guided by both mom and Kristin and my other teacher/elders who have their non-linear, ineffable clarity on how grand this life of ours can be.

I have also been gifted MAD LOVE from all of you in the form of earth-shattering, soul rocking healing and food and cards and notes and flowers and plants and smoothies and fellowship and dance and so much more. You gave me a friendship bracelet. You rubbed the side of my arm when I cried because the music made me sad.

I've been inspired in two ways to continue shifting my perspective. Glen Hansard and the rest of the madly talented musicians at this year's Music Now reminded me that passion is not an intellectual, solo pursuit. You gotta go just for it. The big giant beautiful mess of it. You have to tell the truth. So that's thing number one.

Thing number two is to set my eyes on the horizon and see if I can bring it into focus, to literally sketch what I see, to discern foreground from background, to understand scale. I bought a sketch book, oh yes I did. I will finally draw a horse with not too small a head. I tried today to draw what I can see out my back door and call this sweet mess of a thing I did "Buddha says you can leave out the city."

It is a start.

I am a bit of a wayward fledgling again and I don't mind it. Spring arrived in earnest the day my mom left, filling my heart rather than my brain with a perspective of loving hopefulness and gratitude, every single second.

And for those of you who are interested, here is a link to information about the Memorial/Celebration Service of Sheila Sims' beautiful life.  http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/sheilasims1/journal

Support.

I went to see WAR HORSE on Saturday afternoon, helped out by Liz Stites who hung out with Mom so I could see the play.

I had seen it once before in New York, right before I left for LA to spend the last weeks of dear Kristin's life with her.  It was especially moving to me. I sat in the theatre a good long time after the play ended, unable to stop crying.

This time, knowing that Mom was also toward the end of her days, I was especially taken with the puppeteers, the humans who became practically invisible to make the horses move. They are so gracefully integrated they become indistinguishable from Joey and from one another. They are there to support his journey and in turn, ours becomes sublime.

The other night while Mom was sleeping, I was reading the book PROOF OF HEAVEN in which a surgeon recounts his near death experience. He writes about the thinning of the veil and presence of spirits and loved ones who await us. They help make the passage from this realm to that one not only reasonable but downright ecstatic. I have spent enough time with spiritual leaders and healers to come to understand in some way that we are never alone if we allow ourselves to be supported, either by our flesh and blood friends who will lift us up and move us if we need it or by the ethereal others who await to show us just how extraordinary unconditional, eternal love can feel.

Mom is in hospice now. Her mental clarity is gone and her heart beats on a bit longer. The nurse and I lifted her today with way less grace than the War Horse crew and got her where she needed to go, even though she forgot the point when we got there. We will stay here with her until we can pass her off to the rest of you ... to Kristin and Grandma Pauline and Brother Bill and Sandy and Steve and Zane and all those beauties you have lost too who can't wait to take her hand and help her along in heaven.

I don't need proof because I can see it and feel it. She is already talking to you, long lost friends, and reaching out her trembling hand to you. Take it whenever is the best time for her gorgeous lift off.

On the count of three ...

She is.

Over the past many weeks, I have thought frequently that I should write something. For a second, I get an inkling of what I want to say about the process of sharing the end of my mother's life with her. That is usually all I need to start a piece of writing: a glimpse of an emotion or an image I want to convey. But before it can take root, whatever sense I have made of things has vanished.

I don't know how long my mother has to live but my guess is that it is weeks not months.

It is a gorgeous, horrendous, serene and sacred time. It is intimate. It is mainly private.

If I tried to describe to you how I feel or how she feels it would be a mirage. Transparent. Shifting. Chimeric. Which does not mean it is anything less than profound.

Here is what I can tell you right this second.

She is beautiful. She is breathing. She is kind. She is funny. She is constant. She is graceful. She is my mother.

Soon I will have to use the past tense on all of those attributes except one.

She is my mother.

That one is forever.

Not the end.

Maybe my favorite photo ever and one of the top sweet moments of a lifetime.

I have avoided writing this post because it signifies the end of my adventure in Asia. And while I am completely ready to be here in Cincinnati to enjoy/endure the journey to the end of my sweet mother's life, I am completely unready to let go of JANUARY 2013. That's all caps because it deserves it, every last second of it.

Theoretically, we take healing journeys to understand something about ourselves so we can more fully enjoy the world we live in. Right? So a successful adventure in, say, Cambodia and Bali, is a part of a continuum of juiced up living experiences that we can fall back into whenever we need of dose of lovely inspiration. Right?

So as I take teeny tiny little steps from my car to my house so I don't fall on the ice that has formed on the sidewalk because it is FREEZING outside, rather than succumb to frustration and regret I can skootch my way into my perfectly warm house, sit in my comfy chair, and look at my Dream Catcher that the beautiful mums at Sacred Childhoods made. And that might lead me into ...

Riding from Ubud with Jessie and Sarah and Liz, learning about Sacred Childhood's work with mums in the slums, hearing about how Wayan and her young son Agus were recently diagnosed HIV positive. How they hoped Wayan had contracted it (via her abusive and often missing husband) after her two older daughters were born as they had yet to be tested. 

And how when we arrive the ladies cleared the small space of dream catchers and fairy wings so I could offer them some things to help their bodies feel better and ways for them to share energy with each other. 

And how after I started putting my hands on the women, they went to gather children, Agus in his super hero shirt included, and how the children, the tiny children, surrendered themselves to me in a way I had never experienced and can't really even think about without crying.

And how no matter what, we all have something to give if we just show up.

Or when I slap the cable TV remote control into the palm of my hand for the 800th time rather than replace the stupid thing because I cannot quickly enough get to the re-runs of "my shows" that I  did not miss one bit while on the road for a month sans television, I can instead recall ...

Standing in the courtyard of Transitions' Dream Home, one of the girls shows me her notebook full of lyrics of popular American songs and proceeds to sing to me, sweeter than Celine Dion ever dreamed possible.

Far across the distance
And spaces between us
You have come to show you go on
Near, far, wherever you are
I believe that the heart does go on

There are a hundred more moments.

A Balinese taxi driver cupping a butterfly in the palm of his hands. Talking to a beautiful young woman who lost her mom last April. Staring into a terraced rice mountain/field trying to get a visual handle on the beauty with new friends. Sitting on a bench at the Killing Fields, learning about how a young, educated Cambodian woman processes this staggering human loss. Watching a Transitions' house mom wipe away tears as she reads a thank you note from one of the girls about how important she is. Seeing a day-old baby get his first bath in a free clinic for Balinese moms.

All of this has prepared me to be 100% present to new moments of beauty.

My mom's bald head and gorgeous blue eyes. Enjoying Capoeira with new and old friends. My son, happy. My dad, well.

The only thing I can offer to you is to suggest that the next time you travel, find a way to get off the beach or the mountain and spend a little time volunteering or learning about an NGO or non-profit in a new place. It is amazing how much we can do and how much we get back if we just show up.

Dream catcher materials!

Mums name their workshop space.

You have to understand that hair does weird stuff in hot tropics.

Wow.

Gathering for a True Body workshop.

Agus. My little love.

Sweetest little girl ever.

We learn how GOOD it feels when someone "has your back."

The gang at Sacred Childhoods Mums in Slums program.

Explaining about my hair. No, really, explaining how heavy the skull is. :)

BAaaahhhhLI.

Deep breath in, deep breath out.

That's what this place is. Over and over and over again. Soul expanding, marrow loving, consciousness spinning, joy dancing lovefest. Bali.

I have to admit that after my not-even-very-long flights here from Cambodia, after clearing customs and sitting in a taxi for what seemed like an eternity in the now-dense Denpasar traffic, I thought, "This isn't worth it."

I thought, "I can't ask people to take a day and a half out of their lives just to get here for a restorative week this summer. It's too hard."I was thinking about my COME TO YOUR SENSES retreat in June. In my mind, it was a done deal. Find another spot. Mexico maybe. What the hell? Why not book it in Ohio? Same difference, really.

And then I got out of my taxi and walked down the lane to the sweet little Ubud Aura, a stone's throw away from the astounding Yoga Barn. Five minutes after I knew for sure I wasn't coming back, I became equally sure I didn't want to leave.

This. Place. Is. Magic.

For the last five days I have settled into a languid pace of living and breathing and connecting. I have had the cleanest more glorious food I have ever had. I have met inspiring new friends and a special tender soul.

The other day, I drank from a young coconut and had the feeling that I might never find the end of the quench. I kept drinking and drinking and drinking from the seemingly endless well of the fruit. A Bali minute later, I was settling deep deep deep into my joints in an open air Yin Yoga class, experiencing the same sense of endless wonder. After that, I sat in candlelight and watched a woman become ready to offer healing with the Tibetan bowls. It seemed an endless ritual and by the time she played the bowls directly above my head, I could see the stars in the deep space of my own consciousness.

Later I walked with a friend and we found a butterfly on the pavement, sprawled out in all its beauty. We took photos. A Balinese man joined us and we admired the beauty together. He held the butterfly and explained how he would place it in his taxi, an offering.

Happy birthday, indeed.

So for those of you who are thinking about joining me, do it. Your best self awaits you here. We will conspire to bring it out together but truth be told, you need only arrive. Bali will do the rest.

And know the journey to get here is just a metaphor for how long you have waited to feel this good.

Yoga studio view.

On the ground floor of the Yoga Barn.

Sweet Ubud Aura. Where I meet new traveling friends poolside over breakfast.

Sign for my weekend workshops!

Even my laptop gets a Frangipani offering.

Just an everyday thing of beauty right off the busy street.

The meditation spot, post massage.

The walkway to the rooms at the Ubud Bungalow - spot for COME TO YOUR SENSE in June.

Imagine. This is YOUR room.

This is your pool.

This is also your pool.

A day-old baby at a Maternal Health Clinic. We will bring supplies for the babies when we come.

Afternoon rain storm? Okay, I'll nap.

We find the butterfly.

A better photo will come soon.

An aside: I think I want a dog.

Random beauty. Just every darn place.

Close up! New baby. Held by healthy mom, thanks to the free clinic.

Yorn Chea's New School or How Travelers Support Travelers

It's a big, small world out there. Yorn Chea with map.

Last weekend, I had the opportunity to squeeze in a visit to Siem Reap (and a return to the serene RiverGarden!) to serve as courier for generous donations from Ohio-based friends to Yorn Chea's new school.

A bit of a background story first.

Many years ago, I went to visit one of my favorite travelers in the world in Columbus, Ohio. The inimitable Bruce French, activist, traveler, chef, was cooking for some rock band or another and I drove up to spend some time with him. We went to dinner with an old chum of his from grade school and his wife, Jamie Rhein. Jamie and I connected instantly. She is a bundle of hilarity and intelligence and goodwill. And she is also a lovely writer.

A couple of months ago, Bruce came back through Columbus while on the road as chef for the band Rush. So I went to visit again and we all had dinner again. I told Jamie of my upcoming trip and she rallied her Peace Corps Alum group in Columbus to donate $400 of their funds plus some cool maps to Yorn Chea in Cambodia. All of this happened with extraordinary ease and very little conversation.

I recounted the tale to Lisa Stegman who accompanied me last year on my Asia service trip. She gave me a sweet donation also to give to our mutual friend, Yorn Chea.

Fast forward to a week ago. I found out my brand new friend Tamara Duarte, whom I met NataRaj Yoga Studio in Phnom Penh, was going to be in Siem Reap. And then a few days later, we were wandering the back streets of Siem Reap with our monk friend to visit his new school. As it was a weekend, no students were there but we could just imagine the 150 children on the wooden benches working to learn English, French, math and computer skills.

I have had the opportunity to take on many different identities over the course of my life, but "traveler" is one that I treasure the most. I write this post from Bali, where I will enjoy a wander-about day with a new photographer friend I met at breakfast. Last night, at an open-air screening of a Spencer Tunick documentary, I ran into Sterling, a woman I met last year. And in a few days, I reconnect with Annie, another traveler and now Bali resident I also meet here last year.

There is an ease to the flow of connecting when you have not much of the familiar to ground you besides human contact. And once you have been out and about, particular in any sort of service capacity in developing countries, you feel compelled to either go back or give back.

So thanks to my fellow travelers and for those who work to make it easier for people like Yorn Chea to do his good work.

(And double special repeated thank you's to Jeff Syroney who made it possible for me to do my good work this year.)

Getting blessing from Yorn Chea!

Yorn Chea tells us about the blessing.

Yorn Chea and Tamara Duarte in one of the classrooms.

Tamara and Yorn.

Better view classroom.

Dispatch from Phnom Penh

I tried to think of what to call this post to let you know in advance that it was not going to contain a cohesive narrative about my experiences thus far. This trip has been a particularly busy/wonderful/intense/thought-provoking/context-eluding/nurturing/depleting/heart-breaking/heart-warming mash up.

Dispatch implies I am sending this off with great speed, not enough time to process or fact-check the data. I can tell you some of the things I have done and seen and considered, but I sure can't tell you what any of it "means."

I have been in Phnom Penh for over a week now and am coming to the end of my time in this city. Today I spend the afternoon with the house moms and other direct care staff at Transitions, creating a restorative session for them. It is the last of my teaching/sharing encounters with clinical staff, girls, yoga teachers and new friends here this week. I move on to Siem Reap tomorrow and then on to Bali on Sunday. 

Here are some word illustrations of moments I do not want to forget, things I need to think about, and photo evidence of people, places and things. 

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Sitting on the floor of Transition's Dream House playing a high speed game of Uno with several of the Transitions girls, being instructed several times not to forget to say "You Know!" when I am down to one card or else I will have to pick up another one. One of the sweetest of sweet girls sits next to me and watches our game, all smiles and light. I know from my work before that she was beaten so severely that she has permanent brain injury and struggles mightily in school and with all cognitive concepts.

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Teaching ballet 101 to the girls (God I hope I got it right, ballet friends) plus a few hip hop show off moves (Gangnam style giddy-up maneuver can earn you major points, fyi) in order to get a return lesson of Khmer traditional dancing with its complicated hand gestures and strange off beat steps.

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Asking a girl who I know from all three years of my work here to demonstrate with me what happens when we put our palms out to each other, a foot or so apart, and begin to come closer so we can sense the other person's energy. She so badly wants to look at people and can't bear to be looked at so just making eye contact is hard for her. As we got close, the feeling of the energy combined with her hypersensitivity made her literally recoil, as though I had zapped her with my super powers. 

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Sitting in the Dream House kitchen, eating an incredible meal made specially for me by the house moms, watching the girls eat, while I was being watched by the house moms to make sure I loved the food. I did. 

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Spending 6 hours with the Cambodian staff of Transitions learning and sharing about how the body holds stress. This was an incredible give and take and one of my most gratifying teaching experiences to date.

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Working with the NataRaj teachers and junior teachers on a hot morning working on anatomy, posture, and movement concepts related to alignment and restoration related to stress and trauma. Leya's baby is sound asleep on a mat on the floor.

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So many new friends!! Private sessions with Ayumi and Ruth and Gillian and Caroline, women I met in my first few days of workshops. It is a thrill to learn about how lives meander and conspire to bring us to where we are.

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The past became present when an old friend messaged me that I should look up "Stony" if I am in Cambodia. I asked where he was. I was told "Equinox" - a club. I look it up. I am, literally, sitting next door to it. I walk over and voila, the 80s come full circle and we swap names and a few memories.

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Sitting with Caroline and her research assistant at Cheong Elk, also known as the Killing Fields, where Caroline is doing her field research for her PhD on cultural responses to mass grave sites. She is an anthropologist so I got to play as one for the day as we sat, watched and shared thoughts and ideas with her young Khmer assistant. It was a fascinating, tip-of-the-iceberg sort of experience in thinking about how our minds work to make sense of things, including what is and is not inviolable, from our own cultural and narrative perspective and how complex it is to truly understand life and death.

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Always, always, always: my mother on my mind. Thinking of the sanctity of bones, the in's and out's of life and death. Happy now to know she is with her sister sitting in the sun (well hopefully not IN the sun as it is not good cuz of the cancer treatments).

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Whew!! Dad's surgery went great and he got more massage this week than I did, I hear!

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I try to tell Cambodian pharmacist through my Pigeon English and miming movements: "My stomach hurts, need antacid." She hands me a pregnancy test."

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I sat on a porch swing in the enclosed garden of the Dream House. A girl gave me a bracelet she made and another one braided my hair. The house mother told me I was beautiful and outlined on her own face why she thought so, tracing her eyebrows, cheeks, chin. They tell me 52 is so young!!

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I share Reiki with so many this week, laying my hands on feet and heads and bellies and backs. I sense the energy of hope, of brokenness, and the broken hopeful. I feel courage and I give back my gratitude and love.

Early morning workshop on anatomy of stress and trauma with NataRaj teachers!

Leya's baby. This is the face you want to be looking at early on a Khmer Monday morning.

My host yoga studio in Phnom Penh.

My new pal Caroline and I at Cheong Elk.

Caroline and her assistant.

Bracelets left by visitors to one of the mass graves at the Killing Fields.

This tree was used for purposes of horror and brutality. Bracelets adorn it now.

Monks in morning on Street 278, Phnom Penh.

Color, symmetry, pretty things all in a row.

Small world story. I learn that "Stony", a  friend from the 80s (in case that nickname didn't give it away) works in Cambodia. I find out his club is a few feet away from where I am staying in Phnom Penh.

The end of the world.

Today is perhaps the most auspicious solstice in our lifetime, so auspicious the Mayans considered it the end of the world as we know it.

I observe the transition in Tampa, Florida with my mother and my aunt. We celebrate my cousin Steve's life tomorrow in a memorial service.

Last night I cozied up to the end sleeping in my cousin's old room. We had to move his surprisingly heavy ashes in their sea foam green biodegradable gift-box container to the dresser to make room on the day bed. Tomorrow his motorcycle buddies will spread his ashes on a commemorative ride.

I went to sleep thinking about his life and death, his ashes, and my grandmother Pauline who also died in this house.

I went to sleep thinking about the energy of the living and the dead; of the past and the present. Earlier in the evening I tried to see what relief I could give my mother's aching hips and shared Reiki with her as she lay on the floor, her legs up on the couch.  I put my hands over my cousin's ashes too. There is something still there, I tell you.

This morning we sorted through my mother's papers, trying to decide if she needs both a Living Will and Power of Attorney in Ohio and Kentucky. Her diagnosis matched what we expected: Stage 4 non-small cell lung cancer. They estimate she has 6-9 months to live with a caveat that if she does a round of chemo or two it MIGHT or MIGHT NOT buy her an additional 6 months. She has yet to make the call on that crap shoot.

My aunt made us breakfast and we sat in silence watching the TV bells toll for the victims of the Connecticut mass shooting. We mourned for my cousin too.

But not my mother.

Not yet.

We are too busy filling out the time we have left.

Today we will put together a photo board of Steve's life. And in our search through all the old family photos, I discovered that not only was my mother and my cousin a dancer, but my aunt was an early modern dancer and we found contact sheets with a photo of her dancing in a Life Magazine advertisement.  And as I started combing through my cousin's drawers (boy do I love to go through other people's stuff!) to find a zip drive to get the scanned photo of her dancing to my computer, I found more photos: photos of family, young and beautiful, kicking off their lives without a hint of the wonderful and less-than-wonderful things to come.

So I am off to a Palm Harbor Kundalini and meditation class before I do my Staples' shopping for poster board, guest book, etc. for tomorrow's service.

I will say a prayer for the living and the dead. I will say a prayer for what has passed and what is to come.  I will say a prayer for the dance and the dancer.

My cousin Steve. A dancer and a dreamer.

Aunt Betsy. middle strip, second from bottom, girl #2 (face hidden by dancer #1,  forever her nemesis.)