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. :)

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.

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.