Seventeen years.

Seventeen years ago I walked up Fairmount Boulevard in Cleveland Heights to Jane's house. A month earlier, Tina had informed me that Jane - a luminous light of a human - was sober. We had stood in Tina's cold garage smoking, me with wine glass in hand, when I tearfully explained to her that I knew I had to quit drinking. She cried too as she had been prepping to give me her private intervention speech.

Jane brought me in to her solarium sanctuary and told me a bunch of brilliant and hopeful things but the one I remember was this, delivered in a way that made me understand the words "beseeching" and "grace."

There is so much love.

Then she took me to a meeting, the second oldest women's meeting in the world. Miraculously, I kept showing up. I cried for about a year of meetings and clenched my teeth the rest of the time. I started taking Pilates. I moved, I breathed, I did what I intended to do. Like I said, for an addict, these are miraculous achievements.

I have so many tools now that I use to stay as healthy as I can. Movement, meditation, service work ... these are all in the kit of parts I have put together for myself to stay relatively not crazy. But it is so important to me that I don't forget the addict part of myself ... my inner slick trickster who made me believe that the best thing I could do any given day was to have another Jack Daniels or glass of wine.

I am one of the lucky ones. Michael was not. Jen was not. So many others who are sick and suffering are not.

So with immense gratitude, I offer myself to any of you who may need a hand. Every single good thing I have today is the direct result of this moment, seventeen years ago.

I have added to Jane's promise.

There is so much love. 
There is so much fun. 
There is so much laughter. 
There is so much to do.

Who is ready?

Do the next right thing.

Holy smokes.

Has it ever been harder to figure out how to focus one's efforts for the greater good? Is the world falling apart more or do we just have more constantly updating, dopamine-inducing evidence of what has always been an epidemic of humans behaving badly like humans who need more support?

No matter what developmental model you follow, whether Spiral Dynamics and Integral Theory or Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs or cultural and/or individual trauma theory; even if you haven't studied about how human's behave when they are not getting basic needs met for safety, shelter, community, and purpose, it is pretty easy to see that our collective community is suffering.

When these needs aren't met, when our nervous system is aroused in the fight, flight, freeze response, we are virtually INCAPABLE of moral choice making, long-term planning, empathy and other higher-level cognitive functions. So whether our clarity is mucked up due to forces outside of our control like poverty and abuse or via our dedication to constant online updates and righteous responses, we are pretty much doomed to our current scenario of polarization, depression, violence, and disorder. We are disordered. So we act disorderly.

My mind is naturally inclined to disorder, to move in a thousand directions in search of something akin to excitement in the guise of clarity. I know now from my own study of movement, meditation and the study I call "getting my shit together" plus the wisdom of countless others, I won't find clarity by admiring the problem, again and again and again.

I can only take one step at a time. I can only do the next right thing. If I am lucky, right action leads to right thinking. In the end, that matters less as that the next right thing for me tends to be a place of service and community. That's where joy is. That's where order is.

So today the next right thing was to write. First this, then my play.

Tonight the next right thing is to teach movement, to teach a few others how to embody wellness and breath.

Tomorrow the next right thing is to celebrate the successes of women in recovery with the talented staff of First Step Home, to share the True Body Project with inspiring and challenged young girls in the West End, and to spend time with my son, who is making his own difference in a school-based health center.

And so on. It just might add up to something.

What is your next right thing?

I am what you are.

Before I became unwell enough to surrender to a 12-step program, I spent much of my time hiding my panic disorder and addiction from myself and others. In order to believe this gigantic lie, I had to spin isolating stories about how DIFFERENT I was from everyone else. Remarkably, as my behavior became less admirable, my self-talk became more convincing. 

They don't know what they're talking about.

They can't see the real you.

If they knew, they wouldn't understand.

I would take a bunch of anti-anxiety medication in the morning and bookend my day with a bottle of wine or its whiskey equivalent. In between those two rituals of need,  I would carry on what might pass as a normal human walking through a normal day. Parenting, partnering, working. It is astonishing how long one can hide their true self.

I am lucky. For 16 and a half years, I have had the gift of constant sobriety. Even though my dreams tell me otherwise, where I have been drinking and act like it is no big deal, I never turned back. Yet I continued to struggle with panic attacks up until recently when I finally, upon the advice of my doctor, tried out an anti-depressant for a sense of malaise I couldn't shake. It was as though my head was underwater. I had the feeling I would never by happy again. Was it grief? Was it hormones? Was it the depression my mother experienced most of her life until she died? The depression I loathed? 

I don't know. But I feel better. 

What "better" means to me is that I nurture relationships and moments when I can be present to listening to the true lives of others. Not the part of ourselves that is driven by new social media and business concerns to "brand" our personae and our lives in order to be successful. But the part that is vulnerable, hurting, needing to be seen, needing to heard, needing to just be truthful about how challenging life can be, regardless of your age, race, gender or social status.

When I am better, I feed better things. I feed the True Body Project. I feed my relationships. I feed the truth.

The truth of me is complicated, as is the truth of you. I am a writer. I am accomplished. I am successful in many regards. I am also a recovering addict. I am somewhere on the mood disorder spectrum. I can isolate myself and tell myself stories that are not true.

We need to see and hear each other's complexity. Otherwise, we can isolate ourselves into an eternal loneliness, the final despair.

As Mary Oliver says, "Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine." What I know from my True Body work is that in this same space of honesty lies all of the rest of our truth: our hope, our strength, our humanity, our light.

Let's find each other soon and tell each other our stories. 

Are you a yes or a no body?

Last week at True Body class at the lovely Shakti Factory, we considered a few lines from this beautiful poem by Pesha Gertler (full poem at bottom of post) called The Healing Time.

It begins like this:

Finally on my way to yes
I bump into
all the places
where I said no

We thought about and shared something in our current life we are on the way to saying "yes" to and all the places where we are bumping into "no." We considered whether the "no's" were internal or external or both. Then we dropped into a meditation to allow our bodies to feel "yes" and then "no." We repeated it a few times, trying to track further into our sense of ourselves to see where "yes" shows up (heart opens, taller, slight smile, pulse increases, hands tingle) and "no" (brow furrows, stomach tightens, head constricts, breath constricts).

We then did a few simple tasks from our "yes" body and our "no" body. We found the tasks easy and enjoyable in our "yes" body and frustrating in our "no" body. When we were in "yes" we saw each other. When we were in "no" our heads were down, caught in frustration, not in connection with anything except our annoyance.

And then we did some restorative poses to increase the feeling of yes in the body (my pal Baxter Bell is showing one of them here below because I learned this amazing sequence from him.)

After that, we did some writing to crawl a little under the surface of the day-to-day shorthand we come to believe as our own point of view. There are few better ways to come to understand how you feel about yourself and the world than to do a fast journaling exercise to a prompt like "My mother's body ..." or "My body has a secret and it is hiding ..."

After some partner work, we promised ourselves to check in this week to see where we lived - as yesbody or nobody, in hope or in fear. It was very telling for me as I moved through my day. I was able to shift to a sense of joy in mundane, simple and even slightly annoying tasks with a bit of a somatic, body reminder here and there.

So join us tomorrow night at 6:30 pm for another True Body class at the Shakti Factory and play with us a different exercise. Or do your own "yes" and "no" reflection and let me know how it goes.

         The Healing Time

                                                Finally on my way to yes
                                                I bump into
                                                all the places
                                                where I said no
                                                to my life
                                                all the untended wounds
                                                the red and purple scars
                                                those hieroglyphs of pain
                                                carved into my skin, my bones,
                                                those coded messages
                                                that send me down
                                                the wrong street
                                                again and again
                                                where I find them
                                                the old wounds
                                                the old misdirections
                                                and I lift them
                                                one by one
                                                close to my heart
                                                and I say    holy
                                                          holy.

                                                               © Pesha Joyce Gertler

True Body Leadership Training -- Why You Should Do It!

I am so happy to report we have an amazing group of women gathering on June 7th and 8th to take part in our second True Body Leadership Training. We have a few more spots open for women who are ready to learn more about themselves in order to be present to the needs of others.

I would love to tell you more. Please email me at stacy@truebodyproject.org for more info and we can chat or meet in person.

Why you should do it? 

Here's why. My guess if you feel called to this work - the work of understanding self and other, the work of presence, stability, sensitivity and healing, the work of listening carefully to fully understand, the work of bearing witness. If you feel called to it, this is the perfect gateway for you to deepen your understanding of how movement heals and how we can create safe spaces for others to step into their best self.  No movement training required. A willingness to learn and to practice and to share of yourself are the only prerequisites!

Here are the details. 

TRUE BODY LEADERSHIP TRAINING

June 7th and 8th, Shakti Factory, Cincinnati, OH, with Stacy Sims, Founder, True Body Project

About the Training

The True Body Project (TBP), piloted in 2005, has been conducting workshops, residencies, camps, afterschool programs and staff trainings in the U.S. and abroad. This is TBP’s first leadership training to authorize and license the use of the True Body Project curriculum and workbook. Part experiential, part lecture/demo, the TBP Leadership Training will focus on helping counselors, therapists, teachers, yogis, dancers and others understand the somatics of stress and trauma, and how to create a body-centered experience in an integrative setting.
It is recommended that participants who wish to include TBP in their programs participate in the entire weekend. However, the Redefining Trauma workshop focusing on how stress and trauma habituate in the body, has a few spots open for those who wish to begin to explore the topic.

Pricing and Structure

$295 per person for entire weekend, four sessions
$95 for Redefining Trauma session only.
NOTE: In order to be eligible to license the workbook materials and run your own True Body classes, workshops and/or after school program, you need to attend the entire weekend and do follow-up work with True Body Project. Ask Stacy Sims for more information. stacy@truebodyproject.org

Schedule

June 7th – 8:00 am – 4:00 pm
8:00 am – 12:00 pm
True Body immersion, experiential session including somatic sensing work, meditation, writing prompts and partner work.
12:00 – 1:00 pm
Lunch break
1:00 – 3:30 pm
Curriculum study and workbook detail. Integration in a clinical environment. True Body leadership skills.
3:30 – 4:00 pm
Questions/Review

June 8th- 8:00 am – 4:00 pm
8:00 am – 12 pm**
Redefining Trauma – how stress and trauma habituate in the body and essential somatic exercises to do help clients integrate mind, body and emotion
12:00 – 1:00 pm
Lunch break
1:00 – 3:30 pm
Curriculum study and workbook detail. How to use the materials in therapy, one-on-one and in groups. How to fund, plan, implement workshops, after school programs, classes.
3:30 – 4 pm
Questions, closing.

Attendees who are approved to teach following this course will receive a license to the PDF of the workbook for a year and/or be given opportunities with the True Body Project after school programs (locally) as apprentices or full teachers or teaching partners and be listed as a True Body Project partner.
**This session can be taken independently

Trading emails for inhales.

A couple of weeks ago, I was teaching my True Movement class to my regulars who visit me in my home a couple of times a week. We tend to end the class the same way. They hunker down for a Savasana-style meditation, I add some Reiki to the mix, and then I return to my mat and become ready to bring them back up to seated for our final moments together.

So every session I say pretty much the same thing, which begins like this:

"Okay ladies, let's take a big inhale ..."

Only this time, I said it like this:

"Okay ladies, let's take a big email ..."

So we laughed our way out of meditation, which is plenty good medicine all on it's own.

But there was so much truth in that moment. My subconscious spoke to me and demanded I say the words out loud. "You have traded inhales for emails."

The last year has been amazing. In what could have been a lonely time, I was invited to take on a role at the Contemporary Arts Center, where I also worked 25 years ago. I started as a temporary consultant and never left, becoming a full time employee in the late summer. The CAC became my ritual, my family, and my sustenance. I let the work consume me as I am sure in many ways it was a way to avoid grief. And fear.  Needless to say, we got a lot done and I am very proud of my work there with some of the best colleagues I could ever imagine.

Punctuating this year was also a return to Cambodia to do True Body work with the clients and staff of Transitions, overseeing the work of True Body leaders I trained last year, and preparation for a second training June 7th and 8th, plus an upcoming trip to Nairobi to work with urban refugees. When I get to do this work, when I am free to listen to others and provide them resources to restore their sense of safety and confidence and hope, I am my best self doing the work that means the most to me.

I also have a novel to write and a short film to make with some incredibly talented people. Plus another play that is calling my name.

So this summer I will be transitioning back to my life as a teacher, writer and connector. I may be reaching out to many of you to reconnect. I am not sure exactly of the structure of this (and in some moments I am not even sure of the sense of it) but I have to believe that in the end, I will prefer to have focused on joyous inhales and connecting deeply with others over my daily hundred+ emails.

I look forward to dancing, breathing and connecting with you soon!

Energy medicine.

What a night we had last night!

I have been spending time with the girls at Transitions every day, teaching them various body-centered, body-reclaiming concepts and exercises. We have learned about grounding (feel your feet! stand strong like a tree!), centering (breath of fire!), orienting (count your vertebrae as you role your spine up and down!), breathing (inhale into the belly - make it big!) and connecting (sit with your spine against a partner's spine! Make your breathing match their breathing!).

We have created games to inhabit the body. I taught a fake surfing lesson and the hokey pokey.

So last night I had an hour with the girls. I asked them to teach back the various concepts and they stepped into the middle of the circle, one at a time, and without missing a breath or a beat, showed the teacher/healer within and taught the concepts beautifully. We got ourselves pretty wound up after the hokey pokey and surfing so we brought things down a bit toward the end of the session.

Earlier in the week I had done a bit of Reiki with two of the girls. Each of them had volunteered to check it out. So for 15 minutes or so, I sat with each girl, placing my hands on feet and then my hands on head. Last night I asked if either of them wanted to talk about what that was like for them - to explain it to the other girls.

The first girl got into the middle of our circle prepared to show how it was done so I followed her lead. I sat in the center of the circle and extended my legs and feet toward her. I explained to the other girls that the energy we feel when we place our palms near each other is energy you can give or receive as a sort of healing medicine.

With complete confidence and grace and power, this young girl closed her eyes, rubbed her palms together, took a deep inhale and exhale, settling into her job. She put her hands on my feet and dropped into a still space of deep, meditative focus. I may as well have been touched by the greatest Reiki master on the planet. Perhaps I was. It took every bit of my strength to not weep right then and there. That came a bit later, once I was in my tuk tuk on the way home.

The other sweet girl demonstrated the "head" position. And then the girls partnered up and took turns sharing "energy medicine" with each other. I stood and watched these power pairs settle into the experience of healing touch. It blew me away.

These are moments I will never forget. I wrote earlier this week about the complexity of healing. Last night I was reminded by the girls themselves of the simplicity of it.

Touch, breathe, believe, connect. That is some powerful medicine.

Grounding, centering, orienting, connecting.

I have spent two lovely days (out of five) working with the clients and staff at Transitions to understand how the body reflects stress and trauma. It is my hope to give them simple but effective tools to help create a culture of body awareness.

I am often eager to share the anecdotes from my days but it gets so tricky as this work is highly personal and private. The girls' stories are not mine to share. Nor are the staff stories. There is a shorthand narrative that will have to suffice.

Grounding

From 1975 to 1979 an estimated 1.4 to 2.2 million people were executed in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge under the leadership of Pol Pot. Yesterday marked the holiday that celebrates the end of Khmer Rouge. At this moment, there is much political turmoil and unrest. A young Cambodian woman I met yesterday told me she was afraid. She said, "I was born after Pol Pot but when they had the elections last year, my family was afraid it would be like before and so we packed everything to leave."

For most of us, the scary stories we heard as children reflected a reality far from our own. Hansel and Gretel. Campfire slasher tales. Wizard of Oz monkeys. Here, in Cambodia, each family narrative comes with a horrifying, real-life history of violence, death, encampment and isolation. It is a trauma culture and the "body" of the country is neither grounded, centered nor oriented. The flight, fight, freeze responses are at the ready.

I do not condone violence but I understand it. In a land like this you will likely become victim or perpetrator. It represents the same sad thing - dissociation from any reality except that of fear, whether numbly internalized or aggressively externalized.

Centering

Depending on age, the Cambodian staff at Transitions either survived Pol Pot or are first generation after Pol Pot. They have suffered their own traumas and work every day in close contact with girls who are survivors of sex trafficking. Part of the healing process is to work through the trauma narrative - bringing slow light to what has happened to be able to work through it. We are empathic beings down to our marrow. Each cell responds to what we hear and see. So each staff member gets a daily dose of visceral reminders of what it is like to live in a body that has been taken hostage and violated. It is called vicarious trauma or "compassion fatigue."

Orienting

The girls. Oh, the girls. There are currently 15 or 16 girls in the house. I didn't take an exact count. They range from the ages of 12-18. It is sometimes hard to know their age exactly.

They are sweet, they sing songs, they work on their English, they do their chores.

They also must go to court to confront a man who abused them. They ask to take the screen down because they are brave. And they fall apart, crying, shaking, falling to the floor.

Horrible things have been done to them and they persevere in ways that are hard to fathom.

Connecting

Somehow, thanks to the vision and constancy of James and Athena Pond and the many, many people on staff and elsewhere who have supported these girls, the fatigued heal the broken, one humble day at a time. Yesterday the staff shared it is so hard to put together a long term treatment plan and watch it crumble. They rebuild the plan and in turn, rebuild the girls. Hopefully, they also heal themselves a bit along the way. It is a slow process, this reconnecting. This is my fourth year and some girls are just now coming into themselves, embodying a fullness and hopefulness for the future.

I come equipped with tons of information to share - loads of documents and solid science and experience.

In the end, I bear witness to each and every beautiful soul here. We breathe together. I put my hands on their feet. We twist and shout. It becomes a somatic kindergarden. And that is exactly where we all need to be.

"Whole" is a beautiful thing.

Where Transitions' girls learn and thrive.

I visited the Shine Career School today in Phnom Penh where the girls from Transitions spend a full school day and/or engage in vocational activities. The staff at Transitions works tirelessly to match these girls skills and interests to meaningful education and employment.

Some girls are easier to match than others. I met one of these girls the first year I visited Transitions. In fact, I wrote about her in my first blog post about the experience. She is especially sweet and lovely and she gave me the tiny ring she was wearing on her finger. Every year I have come back she has been there, constant in her sweetness, yet struggling to find her way in school and other studies. She has been challenged by abuse and has a sort of body and mind dyslexia. Things just get mixed up for her. Even counting is difficult.

But she loves to be sweet and to give gifts and to make things.

I do not know the entire back story (and all the people who made this cool, next part happen) but now this lovely young woman is employed making and designing the most gorgeous jewelry. It is a collaboration with Abolition International called Penh Lenh - which means "whole."

The girl who gave me a ring just designed a necklace for me.

I purchased a bracelet last year and a necklace I am wearing as a bracelet today. These are beautiful pieces that not only go to a great cause but create meaningful employment for girls who need it - the best kind of social enterprise.

And guess what? This girl who struggled with math and with problem solving is now helping with inventory and going to market and writing emails. She helps design and make the jewelry. Before she could barely count to ten and now she can soar past 1000.

She is now wildly confident. Her shyness has all but disappeared. Her language is bold and funny. Oh. My. God. You know? She shines. As do the other girls that Transitions' staff nurtures, every day and often for years.

Rachel works with the girls every day to help them learn to design/make beautiful jewelry.

So buy a piece of jewelry or maybe two. Give one as a gift and wrap another around your wrist. It is a beautiful circle of giving and receiving you can feel great about for a very long time.

Some of the pretty bracelets.
www.penhlenh.com

It's Not About How You Look, It's About How You See (well most of the time anyway)

Every time I have travelled alone on these adventures I eventually hit a wall.

The first year, I hit the wall in Bangkok, underprepared and under financed to manage a city I had neglected to remember was massive and unwieldy and expensive. I skipped out of town and went to solidify my isolation on a desolate island. Maybe I freaked a little there too, but in an eco-friendly, sit-on-the-beach-with-a-book sort of way.

The second year, I made a mistake and did a home stay in Bali without really checking that out. It was really far outside of Ubud, it was raining, and my friends were all staying in uber deluxe yogi blissed out niceness far away from me. I prayed the bugs would not do me in and was thrilled the next day when there was neither electric nor water so I could justify my instant departure from the pushy well-meaning lady I had rented from.

Last year I got knackered again in Bali, wondering why I was traveling ALONE AGAIN to such an exotic, erotic and spiritual center. I bounced in a cab ride for ever, thinking "never again!" until I got out of the cab and thought "why don't I move here?"

This year I kicked off my travel month with an incredible trip to New Zealand to see my son Nick and Ellie. It was so unbelievably fun and I remembered two things that I had forgotten: traveling with others is awesome and I am an outdoorsy person. We SURFED for heaven's sake!

After that, I arrived in Phnom Penh to get ready to do my much-loved work with the amazing girls and staff at Transitions. It was a longer slog from New Zealand than I had considered, another 13+ hours of air travel plus ferry/bus/airports/tuk-tuk plus a 6 hour time difference. So I spent a day getting my bearings. I spent the next day getting ready for my workshop and five-day program with Transitions.

Truth be told, I was already feeling dispirited.  I missed Nick and Ellie and the constant adventure of New Zealand. In Phnom Penh, you can spend a lot of time not talking to anyone and getting a little too existentially wound up about aloneness, time, grief. So by the time I was getting ready to teach my workshop yesterday, I was READY to connect.

Enter martial law. Or some version of it. Two days short of the holiday that celebrates the 1979 end of Khmer Rouge, there was more bloodshed in an altercation between the ruling party, Cambodian People's Party (CPP) and the opposition party, the Cambodian National Rescue Party.  Hun Sens has led the CPP since 1998 and last year's election has been widely disputed.

There is a garment worker's strike and the political situation merging to bring hundreds of thousands of CHRP protestors to the streets. On Saturday the CPP used military force, at least three died, and they called an end to the protesting. The U.S. Embassy in Cambodia suggested that we should not leave the house today as they expected violence to erupt and road's to be blocked.

Well, shit.

So I freaked out a little bit. Not like it is a wussy thing to do in an unstable, developing country with one airport on the other side of the fighting and Delta Airlines on terminal hold dealing with cancelled flights due to snow, ice and global tundra. But it was definitely fueled by my annual dive into loneliness on the road to adventure and service.

I figured out how to get out of town just in time for everything to settle down enough for me to believe, at this moment, I can stay for the week as planned and start my work tomorrow.

But today was weird. We cancelled my workshop at NataRaj in the moments when it seemed everyone would be stuck indoors, before the opposition party cancelled the planned demonstration and called for non-violence. So I had another day to wander around in the heat, again, and find various hangouts to check out Twitter feeds about Cambodian breaking news. I am extremely happy to report that for now, it seems things are okay in Cambodia. I am not sure how long it will last or what it all means, but peace has been temporarily restored.

But it didn't necessarily uplift my mood and by the end of the day I had to do something to shake things up, to set a new tone. I zig-zagged the streets in my neighborhood, seeing if there were any new shops or restaurants that seemed interesting. I took some photos. I stared in a lot of windows.

And that's where I found it, my stuck-in-a-rut-again-but-this-time-in-a-rioting-country cure!

Eye. Lash. Tinting.

Most of the time, I believe 100% in this wonderful saying I found on a sign in Raglan, New Zealand: It's not about how you look, it's about how you see. Today, I needed to care about how I look AND how I see.

I can't control the political situation or knowing when I will leave Cambodia or the ultimate fate of the girls here. I can't will a relationship into existence, no matter how hard I might have tried.

Tomorrow is a new day. I will teach the girls and Transitions' team about grounding, centering, orienting, breathing, connecting and nourishing. And I will be nourished for it. Tomorrow night I am sure I will be back on cloud nine, assuming peace rules both Cambodian parties.

Tonight, I am happy to be reasonably less afraid with my new dark and alluring eyes.

:)

Christmas morning. Cleansing, clearing, hoping. Plus fire.

I am prone to hyperbole but it is not an exaggeration to say I have an edge on Christmas this year.

I am on glorious Waiheke Island, off the coast of Auckland, visiting my son Nick and his girlfriend Ellie on the farm they are managing for a year. Since I am in what they call a "sleep out" (aka pretty much the outdoors is indoors) I rise with the sun 18 hours ahead of my Eastern Standard Time friends.

Nick and Ellie are still sleeping and the stormy rain they promised has arrived in bold, pioneering New Zealand style.

I have had several days to slow down and remember the earth and silence and family. I have had time to see beautiful, mind-boggling things and to read inspiring literature.

Two things strike me this Christmas morning, both of which I found in the wondrous "Signature of All Things" by Elizabeth Gilbert.

First, there is a Dutch word "uitwaaien" which means to walk against the wind for pleasure and/or to let the wind cleanse you physically and spiritually. So I like to imagine that this morning storm is doing just that, cleansing and clearing the way for an abundant holiday and new year for all of us.

Second, Gilbert writes an incredible passage where an Italian astronomer orchestrates a model of the universe with human bodies as heavenly bodies on a hot summer night, teaching party-goers their correct celestial path. (Please note that the best phrases here are not mine, they are Gilbert's.)  Alma, the protagonist of the novel, then only a girl, begs to be in it and her father insists "Give the girl a place!"

She is assigned the role of comet and given a torch. Gilbert writes:

She had never before been entrusted with fire. The torch spit sparks and sent chunks of flaming tar spinning into the air behind her as she bolted across the cosmos--the only body in the heavens who was not held to a strict elliptical path.

Nobody stopped her.

She was a comet.

She did not know she was not flying.

This is my inspiration for my year. I want to cleanse and clear what I need to in order to bolt across the cosmos. I want to insist for others that they are given a place!

Here is to your path, elliptical of otherwise. May it bring you great and abiding joy.

Thankful and hopeful days.

This is the time of year I usually recap my 16-year-ago decision to quit drinking.

In short, best idea I ever had.

Slightly longer version: I moved from profound soul sadness to some sort of first-year bardo state where I hovered between pink cloud giddiness and a complete loss of identity. Each year, I reconstituted myself with more purpose and began to move into a place of joy or its close cousin, acceptance. I became capable of doing what I intended. Believe you me, that is an astonishment for an addict.

I am always so grateful at this time of year when I think back at my bleak, dark, blah, panicked, heavy heart and spirit. Whew!

And this year a new theme emerged for me to consider: loss. My cousin was killed last November and my mother was given a terminal diagnosis in the same month. They told her 6-9 months and she made it four. As most of you know, the shorter duration was a blessing in the end. (And never ever do I forget you, Kristin.)

So what to write this year? I have been reading all my go-to books for clarification, turning to the poets and philosophers and artists for inspiration. It is not that I didn't find a ton of beauty there, it's just that I think you already have your own sources to feed you.

I'll make it simple. I am SO GRATEFUL for this life and for those of you who make me feel loved.  I am thankful for my family (Nick! Ellie! NZ soon!) and to you, yes you, for making this time of year when I consider my place in the universe of things so incredibly joyous and exciting.

Breathing.

Hmm.

I haven't really been inclined to write here much since my mom died. And now, as I cozy up to this post, I am not sure where I am going with it.

As I walked up into the Boulder red rocks this morning, I was more certain. I was going to be poetic and smell the sun and taste the quiet applause of the leaves and feel the scent of the pine. I was going to do a chakra ascension thingy that aligned body to nature. I was going to speculate that the heart can open in a thousand ways and the mind can make a story around how fucking GREAT it is: whether it be the instantaneous love of a tiny dog or the shocking beauty of nature. I was going to write about Opinion as Religion.
And that was all before 11 a.m.

Then I met a lady because she had a couple of dogs on the trail and now that I am a dog person, we started chatting. Within the time it takes to pet a barking dog to silence, I learned that her place was damaged in the flood the week after her man left her for another woman. It had been a hard month. No, a hard year. No, actually, it had been a hard five years. That is what she said as we moved down the hillside together.

I realized I was lucky. Even in this year of my mother's death, and in the years prior where I was not sure where my next paycheck was coming from, I didn't feel like I was being tested or tortured.

So then I was thinking about writing about my parents and how they both gave me the gift of positivity. Neither are/were inclined to speak or dwell on the negative. Both are quietly thankful and helpful to others.

And then I ate and I shopped and I got blue gel nails that will not chip for several weeks. Plus I ate breakfast for lunch then got new lotion that smells nice. Soon Steph, whom I met in Cambodia, is coming from Denver to take me to a vegetarian restaurant for dinner.

Maybe I will write about that. Maybe I won't.

Maybe there are times that life is meant to be lived not interpreted. Maybe that time is now. Or maybe not.

You can go home again.

Shepard Fairey's Patti Smith

In 1990, I began my first museum job at the Contemporary Arts Center in Marketing and Public Relations, leaving ad agency world to check out the non-profit world. I started one week before the CAC went to trial for showing the work of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. I can assure you, I was not the one responsible for talking to the national and international press but I learned a lot about strategy and messaging clarity from our crisis communications advisors and everyone else who was involved.

My task was to communicate about all the exhibitions and programs that were on deck. I worked with the most amazing staff including director Dennis Barrie, Carolyn Krause, Mary Magner, Jan Riley, Liz Scheurer, Jennifer Adams, Amy Banister, Bob Swaney, Nancy Glier and many more. The exhibitions that stand out in my mind are the Starn twins, Mechanica, Mel Chin, and Jana Sterbak. (And just this week I met a couple at the CAC who recalled how much they also loved Mechanica!) We brought in Eisenman and Gehry for a lecture and I got to hang out with Toni Morrison for a talk she gave at the Mercantile Library at our request. I created an event the TODT artists referred to as "Whoville" on Fountain Square to celebrate the opening of the Dale Chihuly show. These moments are the tip of the iceberg for a couple of years of awesome.

I went on to work with museums and artists via my work creating traveling art exhibitions. Later, I was director of Public Programs at what is now MOCA in Cleveland. My novel's protagonist is the curator of photography at a midwestern museum. I was the first writer on the International Spy Museum project. My play AS WHITE AS O is set in a museum. I have produced two other theatrical works at the Brooklyn Museum and the Folk Art Museum. Clearly, I love artists and museums.

But it never occurred to me that my new professional home might be exactly where I started. This summer I helped out the CAC in PR and Marketing while they were in transition after a staff reorganization. I had been the artist representative on the Board for a year and it seemed a good part-time fit. Last week, I interviewed for the "real" position and was offered the job on Friday. I gratefully accepted it.

So I am back! Once again I am wowed by the director and staff: Raphaela Platow, Steven Matijcio, Drew Klein, Jaime Thompson, Josh Mattie, Susan Berliant, David Dillion, Joel Armor, Dave Gearding, Marty Karp, Erin Sansalone and more. I am also ecstatic about the upcoming exhibitions, programs and opportunities. JR opens an exciting exhibition season and you will soon fatigue about all the programs I will be boasting about. They are SO GOOD. So you better just join and start hanging out with me.

This year is the 10th anniversary of the building. Next year is the 75th anniversary of the CAC. And the following year is the 25th anniversary of the Mapplethorpe exhibition. It is a truly momentous time to be there.

And not to worry. True Body Project will continue. Stay tuned on programs to come in the next year with my new partners in the work.

JR

Mel Chin

Mike and Doug Starn catalogue

The Space Between.

It has been two months since my mother died.

We had a life celebration service for her and it was wonderful. We cleaned out her apartment and it wasn't terrible. Everyone has been so patient and lovely and considerate. Mother's Day was sweet. No problem.

So I was thinking, "Grief ... not so bad."

I  have also been thinking that the language around grief may be insufficient. "How are you feeling?" is the usual question, always asked with the most honorable and kind intentions.

"Fine." "Good." "Okay." is what I usually say.

And it is totally true and not true at all. I think grief should be put in the same sort of category as love. If you exclaim, "I am in love!" you get asked for the details - the who, when, what, where, why of the delirious fall.

Grief is also a delirium. "I am in grief" would be more accurately encompassing. It is easier for me to tell a tale of the strange landscape of my mind than to categorize the "good" or "badness" of my feelings. To understand your feelings is to understand delusion while you are stuck in the messy, compelling middle of it.

So here is a tale. The last several nights my mom has decided to make an appearance in the extraordinary, ephemeral space between awake and sleep. There, for the briefest second, I watch her laugh so hard she almost spits. I watch her place the heels of her hands into her hips and rub the pain out of them. I watch her play card games on her iTouch. I watch her stare out the rear window of her apartment, cigarette in shaky hand, wheelchair in the parked position.

And there I appreciate that I am 100% unprepared to acknowledge the loss of her just yet. I feel the weight of what I am NOT dealing with as though I am wise therapist to my own reluctant psyche. I can see the grief I am not feeling as plain as day. Who would enter that tsunami willingly? Not me.

Usually, my space between is dreamy and forgetful. Short an imagined erotic encounter or two, that which happens in that everyday, split-second thinning-of-the-veil interlude tends not to stick with me for the long night of circus-worthy dreams nor into the next bright day. Notably, that space is where all my genius literary epiphanies occur then vanish.  Poof!

But these glimpses of my mother are not vanishing. My mother is in that space between for a reason and I know I will continue to find her there as long as I need her. Or maybe as long as she needs me.

It really does make perfect sense. My mother loved to sleep as much as -- sometimes more than -- she loved to be awake. When she was alive, her sleep lust bugged me; it represented depression and absence to me. Now it's okay. Now it is more than okay. For now, it is everything I need.

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. :)