Tag: Forgiveness

She is a powerful force

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I was having breakfast with my daughter recently.  We were having one of those hard conversations that ended with me telling her that hopefully, one day, she would end up on a therapist’s couch processing that.  She told me she was actually ready to do that now.  I immediately pointed across the street to the office of a local therapist that I recommend to everyone.  I asked her if she wanted me to make an appointment with her or if she preferred to go back to the one she had worked with previously.  She chose the familiar therapist.  I was so excited.  I was excited for her to have support from a professional that I know isn’t going to steer her wrong.  It doesn’t hurt that the therapist she picked is a bad ass, spiritual gangster. I wasn’t exactly sure what she needed support for, and I didn’t need to know.  I was happy that she chose a healthy way to deal with life.   The two of them connected and my daughter went to her first appointment last week.  She texted me that evening and said that she was supposed to “talk to her inner child with compassion.”  I asked her if that had been explained to her.  It had.  It all made sense to her.  Then she asked if I had any books about inner child healing.  I did.  Of course. I got the book to her right away and told her to process it with her therapist.  I was immediately excited for her.  I mean, how amazing to start the inner child healing process at 18 instead of at 40.  Wow.  Then, two minutes later, I was terrified for me.  Because sometimes I still think everything is about me. Inner child healing is all about re-parenting yourself in healthy and loving ways.  In my mind this is going to bring awareness to every mistake I ever made raising my daughter.  And there were A LOT.  My daughter was 12 when I got sober.  I wasn’t a raging alcoholic all of her life, but for a few years of it, I definitely was.  There are so many things I missed because I chose alcohol over my children.  I didn’t see it that way at the time, but today, I do.  There’s a lot of shame in that.  I can have compassion for myself, and I do, but I also realize that I wasn’t there when I should have been.  I was drunk. Then I was in treatment centers for months at a time.  I was in hospitals and psych wards.  I once jumped out of a moving car with my children in the backseat, my husband was driving.  My daughter has told me that one was the worst for her.  The worst one for me was one of the occasions when my husband had taken my liquor away.  I had a bottle hidden away at a friend’s house.  I took off walking down the street. Stomping really.  My daughter was following me and begging me to come home.  She was crying.  In that moment she was standing between me and the most important thing to me. My alcohol.  I turned around and told her to stop following me.  Then.  I told her I hated her.  Fuck.  Fuck.  Fuck.  If there was just ONE thing  I could take back, that is the one.  I would do anything to have a do over on that moment.  Because there is no doubt that no matter how great our relationship is today and how sober I am, that moment will be with her forever.  We have talked about this incident so many times, and she promises me that it’s ok and that she knows I was sick, but nothing about that moment is ok.   This is how alcohol destroys families. We were fortunate to have a lot of love and support from grandparents, friends and other family members through that period. So, yeah, inner child healing work will be good for her.  I didn’t get to be that mom who broke the cycle before I had children.  I am fortunate that I do get to be that mom who shows her children what recovery is. I am truly grateful for that.  I admire my daughter so much.  She is strong and independent in a way that I never was.  I spent years projecting all of my fears onto her.  She isn’t me.  She has shown me that time and time again. She has been successfully adulting since she was 16 years old.  Hell, this child was born responsible. I’m not sure where that comes from. Of course inner child work will be good for her because she grew up so quickly.   I texted her to tell her that she will probably be mad at me and hate me for a while through this work.  She assured me that it will be fine.  I know it will.  It’s not about me anyway and I can’t allow myself to stay stuck in the space of all the things I did wrong.   She is thriving in ways I couldn’t have imagined at 18 years old.  She is on her own journey.  She has been all along.  My job is to love and support her in any way I can.  When I take myself out of her process, I am nothing but excited for her to do this work.  Maybe she gets to be that mother who breaks the cycle by doing the inner work before she has children.  She makes good decisions.  She is capable.  She is a powerful force.  She is amazing in so many ways.  I love watching her grow into all that she is and I am honored to be her mother.  I am convinced we picked each other in another time and place because we have so many lessons to learn from each other.  She teaches me so much.  ♥️

Tattoos and Freedom

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EE8BD19E-0227-4798-A822-E9462D48AF13Tattoos tell a story.  Ask anyone about their tattoos and you will likely hear the story of their life, or at the very least a very personal piece of their “story.”  I got my first tattoo when I was 21.  The tattoo that will forever be known as the tramp stamp.  Which is total bullshit, but whatever.  The low back tattoo that every girl my age got in the 90’s.  I wanted to get tattooed as soon as I turned 18, but I spent a few years getting pierced instead and waited for the desire to pass.  It didn’t pass.  I had that one tattoo for years and years without ever needing or wanting another one.  But then I fell in a hole.  A hole I couldn’t climb out of.  I have lots of mantras tattooed on my skin.  Those mantras helped me climb out of the hole and truly represent what it was like, what happened and what it’s like now.  It goes like this.  Once upon a time, I was a raging, hot mess.  I was hopeless.  Hopeless is the worst feeling in the world and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.  I had been exposed to the words hope and faith quite a bit in AA meetings.  I wasn’t sober and I had neither hope nor faith in my life.  I was also attending group therapy.  Dialectical Behavior Therapy.  To treat my Borderline Personality Disorder that I don’t actually have.  Being Borderline was better to me than claiming alcoholism and having to give up drinking.  I rocked that Borderline Personality Disorder too.  I owned the shirts and I wore the awareness bracelet.  I gave a face to Borderline, “normalizing” it, much like I do today with addiction and recovery.  And, I got to keep drinking.  The best part of the whole deal.  But, I was dying inside.  Failing at life in every possible way.  Even my liver was struggling.  Every day I would tell myself that today I won’t drink and then every day, usually before 8 am, I would be drinking.  I HAD to.  It was the only way to keep my body from shaking.  Every day was the same and every day was awful.   I was reading a self help article about Borderline Personality Disorder when I came across the acronym for Hope. Hold On Pain Ends.  I fell in love with that idea and knew I needed to carry that with me.  My first mantra tattoo.  I really don’t remember getting it.  Most of those first tattoos blend together in a gray kind of memory.  But there it was.  On my hand where I couldn’t miss it and was reminded constantly that I could get through this.  I was able to get clean from methamphetamine addiction.  Nothing could possibly be harder than that.  That’s what I told myself.  I have since learned that addiction is addiction and it’s ALL hard.  I was going to AA meetings regularly, although I still wasn’t sober.  I was starting to like the idea of being sober.  I kept thinking one day I would be ready and I would just stop drinking.  At this stage of the game I was having little spurts of “sobriety.” Or, rather, I was managing a few days in between being drunk.  Or, maybe I was just waiting until 5:00.  Again, it’s such a blur.  AA people use the term One Day at a Time.  I always hated that term because I knew it was bullshit.  I knew if I committed to a sober life it meant every day for the rest of my life.  I was seeing a therapist who was teaching me about mindfulness.  She kind of, sort of convinced me that it simply meant living in the moment.  I could live with that.  My second mantra tattoo is on my foot.  One Step at a TIme.  That’s how I was going to dig myself out of the hole.  I am fairly certain I wasn’t drinking the day I got that tattoo and I probably thought I was done with alcohol.  I assure you, I wasn’t done.  On another day I was in my therapists office freaking out about something. That was a common occurrence.  I had been drinking before therapy.  Another common occurence.  She always knew when I had been drinking.  Most people didn’t notice strictly because it was my norm.    I am sure she yelled at me a bit because that’s who she is.  Then she taught me about a practice called “calm abiding.” Calm abiding is a Buddhist practice of stilling the mind of any thought that might arise.  I promise you I wasn’t able to reach the place of calm abiding, but I fell in love with the concept and knew that’s what I needed in my life.  I left her office and went straight to the tattoo shop and got the word Calm tattooed on the topside of my wrist.  Not sure why I didn’t throw in abiding, but there must have been a reason.  It’s on my right wrist near my hope tattoo to remind me to be calm and have hope.   Not long after that tattoo healed, I was leaving my house to go somewhere, who knows where, and my husband told me to try not to come home with any tattoos.  I am sure it wasn’t my intention to get tattooed that day, but those words lit me up.  It sounded a lot like he was telling me not to do a thing.  In my mind, on that day, it meant I had to get two tattoos.  What I recall about that incident is that it started at a local gas station.  The gas station was right beside the tattoo shop.  I went inside and bought a cup of ice and a can of ginger ale.  I came out to my car, where my 1/2 gallon bottle of bourbon was, and mixed myself a drink.  As I was mixing the drink there was a knock on my window.  I looked up to see a woman I knew from AA.  In my mind she was a sober woman.  In reality, she was anything but.  She was struggling like I was struggling.  I had no idea.  She got in the car with me and offered up Valium and Xanax.  I hadn’t taken pills or any other drugs in years, but I didn’t hesitate for a second.  I don’t know what you know about mixing pills and alcohol, but I can assure you, it’s not good.  There is not one memory after that, but the two tattoos I got that day are the words “Forgive” and “Love.”  Forgive faces away from me, in such a way that I can hold my wrist out and ask forgiveness.  I found it easier to ask for forgiveness rather than permission in those days.  “Love” must have been for me. I am sure I wanted to feel love or feel loved or just feel lovable.   I was quite unlovable that day.  I was quite unlovable for a long time.  That was the longest day that I don’t remember.   It’s weird the few things we do remember in those black outs or brown outs.  I remember calling my therapist and yelling at her.  I was in the parking lot of the hospital wearing one of my shirts that identified me as borderline and realizing that this made me look crazy.  I was yelling at her for giving me that label and more than anything for not calling me out on wearing the shirt.  Then I woke up in the hospital room.  There was a security guard outside of my room and the nurses told me they didn’t know what I had done, but I must have done something bad.  They monitored me and they let me go because it’s frustrating trying to treat a drunk person who doesn’t want help.  I remember leaving the hospital and walking through the parking lot.  I remember the security guards but I can’t remember exactly what they said to me.  I do remember that it enraged me and I screamed obscenities  at them until they tasered me.  I woke up in the hospital room again.  This time I didn’t have a security guard.  This time I had “a watcher.”  The person they place outside of your room to watch and make sure you don’t kill yourself.  I must have told them I was going to kill myself or someone else while I was blacked out. I was “a danger to myself and others.”   I stayed there for three days, refusing food and anything else they offered me.  I was eventually moved to a psychiatric hospital.  Every morning in this hospital it was my job to wake up and talk to the Dr on staff and try to convince him that I wasn’t actually mentally unstable.  Unfortunately, my actions proved that I was mentally unstable.  Also, every other person in the hospital was trying to convince the Dr of the same thing.  Some of them had serious mental health issues.  A scary situation that lasted way longer than I wanted it to.  Eventually I was released into a treatment center and almost got sober.  But I didn’t.  I was back with my therapist and back in my DBT group.  My therapist was pushing yoga on me and teaching me weird things, like how to breathe.  I couldn’t breathe.  I hated the breathing part of yoga because I felt like the more I was instructed to focus on my breath, the more I couldn’t breathe.  It was awful and I clearly needed a Breathe tattoo to help me.  I could no longer go to the same place where I had previously been tattooed because my husband made it clear to the tattoo artist that it would NOT be ok to tattoo a drunk me again.  I want to say I was sober when I went for the breathe tattoo, but I was not.  Had I been sober, I might have thought to put it in a place where I could see it.  Instead, it went on the back of my arm, just above my elbow.  It happens to be great for people who are standing behind me.   I am happy to report that the Breathe tattoo is the last drunk tattoo I have.  A few more psychiatric hospitals and a couple more treatment centers where I finally decided I had had enough Hell and it was time to do something different.  I’ve been living sober for 5 years now and when I get a tattoo, the whole process has more meaning.  My first sober tattoo was “Let it be.”   Obviously I would let it go if I could right?   When I let it be, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t bother me or still exist, it just means that I don’t have to let it control me.  Whatever ‘it’ is.   My next sober tattoo was ‘Learn.”  The intention there is to remind me to look for the lesson.  The short form or “what the fuck am I supposed to learn from this?”  So interesting that after I got that tattoo, I started learning more than I ever imagined about my past.  Repressed memories came back and I learned how to deal with that.  I am still learning every day in every way.  and I know that won’t ever stop.  The memories have stopped.  At least for now.  Maybe I am done with that.  Time will tell.   My last two tattoos are my favorites.  At least they are my current favorites.  I have a little Tt “element” tattoo on my forearm that identifies me as a Tee-totalar.  This one is not at all original. It’s a movement.  A community of people choosing to not be anonymous and recover “out loud.”  I love being a part of a community that identifies in this way. I find it’s much better than wearing a Borderline Personality Shirt and identifying in that way.  On New Year’s Eve I got my most recent tattoo.  It’s a representation of where I am at this moment in my life.  “Free.” Along with the word, are little birds flying free.  I love it so much.   I have found freedom that I never knew was possible.  Freedom to be me, whatever that is in each moment.  Comfortable in my skin more often than not, and able to deal with being uncomfortable when that happens.  There’s a special kind of freedom that comes from living through Hell and coming out the other side.  That freedom shows up as gratitude and joy for my life.  It shows up when I catch myself dancing to the music at the grocery store.  

*photo by Ed Speas*

Owning It

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I have no intention of spending my entire adult life healing from my past, but I do have every intention of doing the work as thoroughly and deeply as I can for as long as it takes because I AM worth it. In the rooms of AA I have often heard it said that at 5 years the “real work” starts. I have to assume that means 5 years is around the time people start figuring out what the Hell happened in their lives to cause them to seek solace in a substance to begin with. There are those who strictly feel that nothing happened and they were born with the gene. That may be true for them. I am certain I was born with that gene. My family is full of alcoholics and addicts. Throw some “complex trauma” into the mix and I really didn’t stand a chance. Gene or no gene. As many times as I have been in therapy in my life, never have I ever addressed that complex trauma. Until recently. The complex trauma I am referring to is ongoing childhood sexual abuse. Things that were never my fault, but affected me for a lifetime. I’ve eluded to it here before but never came right out with the words. Because they are hard words to write about. I know the statistics, and I know that I am NOT the only one. Not even close. I am not writing about it for sympathy, I am writing about it because sharing my truth with the world is the best thing I can do for ME. I won’t go into details, but I will say that it seemed to me like I grew up with a stamp on my head indicating that I was the one to be used in this way. I was the one. It was OK to do these things to me. And I always wondered why. I thought something was wrong with me. I KNEW something was wrong with me. Today I know that this is just the way it goes with a child who has been sexually abused. We are either stuck in the vibration of being a victim or our body language changes in such a way that we are an easy target. And it happens again and again. To so many children. I’ve always been resistant to processing it in therapy, because I am an adult and these were things from my childhood. It seemed silly for me to go back and dig shit up. Especially since I didn’t necessarily think it was still affecting me. But, then those repressed memories started flooding back and I really had no choice. I have talked about EMDR therapy before and the fact that I suck at it. I wish I could process that way, because it seems like a quicker solution to me. I always say I suck at EMDR, but the reality is that I don’t suck at it, I just don’t seem to process that way. I happen to be really good at psychodynamic therapy. Maybe I’m even the best at it. Because that’s important. 😉 Two weeks ago my therapist and I were talking about some things that were “heavy.” That’s the only way I can describe how it feels to process those events. It feels like heavy energy weighing down on me. It’s shame. I know that today. I still have a lot of shame associated with that abuse. Intellectually, I KNOW that it’s not mine to carry and that I didn’t do anything wrong, but emotionally, it’s still there. Sometimes more so than others. This was one of those days. I left her office feeling bad about myself. I didn’t share that with her at the time. I drove myself straight to the tattoo shop. I just knew I needed a new tattoo right then and there. I was so disappointed when the tattoo shop was closed. This ended up being a blessing in disguise. I didn’t see it at that moment. It gave me an opportunity to figure out exactly what that need was about. At first I thought it meant I felt the need to hurt myself. But, now I realize that I just wanted to feel something different than what I was feeling. I have spent a lifetime wanting to feel something different than I was feeling. I am in no way against getting more tattoos, but I do realize impulsivity is something I need to be aware of. I really thought I was past that need to escape and I was good to go with “sitting with my feelings.” That experience was an eye opener for me and a reminder of what recovery is all about. It’s about healing on every level. It’s about being with uncomfortable experiences and staying present. I am not sure when those feelings of shame go away. I have read every Brené Brown book. I have read John Bradshaw’s books. I have a full understanding of how shame works. I just haven’t quite figured out how to completely move past it. I do all the reading, writing, meditating, energy work, therapy and body work. It isn’t a feeling that’s constantly there. But, when it hits, it hits hard as feelings of unworthiness. That’s a feeling that’s hard to sit with. I’ve heard the phrase “feelings aren’t facts” and it rings true here. I am worthy, simply because I AM. My hope is that sharing my truth is a step toward letting go of shame and a step toward empowerment. Empowerment is where it’s at.

Balance

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I was getting really good at writing consistently for a minute. Until I wasn’t. Writing is the one thing that always feels like home to me, and yet, sometimes I avoid it. I missed all of April. It was a good month full of really high highs and some really low lows. I’m not bipolar and I don’t need medication. I just feel all the feels in a big way. It’s a good thing. Especially for someone who spent a lifetime numbing all those feels. I hosted Kirtan in the studio last month. It was powerful and it was beautiful. I am so in awe of this life that it occasionally takes my breath away. This was one of those times. To be in my studio surrounded by an entire collection of people I love and am loved by from all the different areas of my life was beyond amazing. AA peeps, yogis, Goddesses and a few friends from way back when. It was pure love. The vibration of that evening was so high that it took me a few days to recover. It was a huge crash after an outstanding high.
That weekend, Leon took me out to a rooftop bar for a concert in Wilmington. I wasn’t feeling it at all. That’s just not my scene anymore. But, Leon has loved the band that was playing since college and seeing him in his glory was fabulous. It was crowded and loud and as the evening wore on people were more and more obnoxious. Read drunk. I was well aware that I used to do the exact same thing, and I really tried to not be judgemental. I stepped out of the crowd and found a corner to chill in. Away from all the people. At that moment the Azalea Festival down below was coming to a close and the festivities ended with a huge fireworks display. I stood away from the crowd watching the fireworks which were phenomenal. What was even more phenomenal is that at that moment, I heard the lyrics of the song from the band. They were singing “Jesus Christ” over and over. They were calling out to THEIR Higher Power. It was like rock and roll Kirtan with awesome fireworks. It was so powerful that it’s hard to put into words. In that moment, in the sea of drunken chaos, I felt God. I shared it with Leon, but I’m not sure if he got it or not. I’m also not sure it was for him or anyone else to “get.” I got it. Loud and clear.
Then there are the lows. The lows for me last month came in the form of more repressed memories surfacing. I no longer feel crazy when it happens, but I do feel violated. It takes my breath away in a completely different way. My therapist assures me that eventually I will start to recover joyful memories once I clear out all the shitty ones. I can’t wait. For now, I’m still dealing with the shitty ones. They leave me feeling raw and vulnerable and afraid. When this happens, I want to hide from the world. Sometimes I can and sometimes I can’t. Sometimes I have places to be and things to do that I can’t put off. Those are usually the exact things I need in my life to distract me and put me back into the present moment. I’ve always thought gratitude was the quickest way to raise my vibration, but after an experience I had working with another woman last week, I think selfless service ranks right up there. Those AA people were right again. Who knew? Life goes on and I move forward with an entire network of awesome humans who love and support me. I let go again and again and again. As many times as I need to. I remind myself that I am safe. The present moment is a beautiful moment.
My month ended on an incredible high. I was asked to sub “Yoga Church.” People who know me understand why this was so huge for me. For those of you who don’t, here’s a little backstory. The woman who teaches the Sunday morning “Yoga Church” class I attend used to be my therapist. I paid her a lot of money to sit in her office and bitch about how much I hated my life and almost everyone I knew. There were times I would show up drunk for therapy and be a complete asshole. I called her in the middle of the night on the emergency line on more than one occasion because, clearly, I needed her. Her response to those calls was always “oh, it’s you.” Then there was the time she called me out for wearing a tiny skirt by telling me she could see my vagina. Because, obviously, nobody else was going to tell me. I’m sure I called her and bitched at her for telling me that after I got home. I could go on and on with the ways I loved to hate this woman. She was hard on me and she was exactly what I needed at the time. She’s so special to me. Eventually, I started to hear the things she was saying to me. I trusted her and she didn’t steer me wrong. She introduced me to yoga, meditation and a complete different lifestyle. A (mostly) wholesome lifestyle. Sitting in her seat to teach was one of the highlights of my sober life thus far. Not because I did an amazing job and taught a packed class. I didn’t. The class was tiny and I hopefully did alright. The fact that she asked me to do it was everything. I was so emotional on Sunday morning as I drove to that class. I experienced love, compassion and forgiveness for the girl I used to be. I also experienced the soul explosion of joy and gratitude for the woman I am today and this beautiful life that I have worked so hard for. In fact, the soul explosion was so huge, that I took a three hour nap on Monday and used the day to recover. Balance eludes me. I have big emotions. I think it’s just who I am. I know for sure it’s better than being numb.

When I am Open, I am Able to Receive.

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When I am open, I am able to receive. I can hear the message intended for me from anywhere and anyone. IF I am open. This week I heard the message loud and clear. Last weekend. I was at a Y12SR training which was being led by an amazing woman named Nikki Myers. I love so many things about this woman, but mostly I love that she walks her talk. She is so real and relatable. She threw out the term “Namaste Mother Fucker” which, as you can imagine, I freaking loved. She went on to talk about what “Namaste Mother Fucker” means. It’s looking for the light, the Namaste, the God in every mother fucker that comes across her path. Every shitty person and every shitty situation as well as the good ones. All of it. Look for the Namaste. I loved that so much. Fast forward to yesterday, I walked into my therapist’s office and got comfortable on her couch. I suspect she was having a difficult morning, or maybe a difficult week since this was Friday. The window and the wall of her office were jacked up because someone had crashed their car into it. The first words out of her mouth to me where how she has decided that her job is to look for God in every person she sees and every situation she’s in. My jaw dropped a little, because damn! Damn! That was the second time I had heard that this week. From two completely different people. Boom! Thank you Universe. I hear your message loud and clear. Synchronicity, it’s the language of the Universe. Some people call these God Winks, or coincidences. I don’t care what you call it, if I am paying attention, and open, I receive. During that hour, the amount of work I do on myself, for myself, “might” have came up. And it “might” have been brought to my attention that maybe I don’t have to do all that “work” on myself because I am already perfect as I am. In God’s eyes. I usually have such an aversion to the Christian speak, but yesterday, it didn’t bother me in the least. It felt right. When I am open, I am able to receive. The message was one I needed to hear. One of my favorite quotes from the Zen Buddhist Monk Shunryu Suzuki Roshi is this. “You’re perfect just as you are…and you could use a little improvement.” Maybe there’s a happy balance there. Maybe I don’t have to constantly “work” on myself. Maybe shit comes up and I handle it as it presents itself. Maybe I don’t have to look for it. Whew! What a concept! And maybe, just maybe, while I am busy finding God in everyone, I should start with myself. Because I am already perfect. I am already whole. I forgive myself for not knowing that sooner. ❤️
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EMDR Therapy

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I recently started therapy again with a new to me therapist. I have been hesitant to mention this on social media, but I’m not really sure why. I openly share my story of recovery and this step is part of that process. Never have I ever gone into therapy when I wasn’t in the middle of a crisis. Until this time. I am a strong, sober, emotionally stable woman. And yet I still struggle with a few things. I’m sure that’s natural. Especially for someone “like me.” My new to me therapist thinks it might be time to heal some past trauma. A lot of what she calls trauma, I just call normal shit that happens when you are an addict or an alcoholic. A lot of what she calls trauma is actually real, unhealed trauma. She suggested we go the EMDR route. I don’t know if any of you are familiar with EMDR, but a quick google search will fill you in and save me the trouble of posting a link. I have this desire to be the very best EMDR patient EVER, get through it quickly and heal completely. All in record time. However, this isn’t the way it’s going. In fact, I would say I suck at it. My therapist earned my complete respect today when I completely shut down (again) and wouldn’t/couldn’t share with her. I learned a lot about her while I wasn’t talking. I learned that she is patient and kind and willing to walk me through this process that is painful and not nearly as simple as I was hoping it would be. She’s also a bit of a hard ass which is good for me because I need someone who will push me. Gently. I am strong today and ready to do the hard work. I say that as I sit here writing this blog instead of writing in my journal actually doing the hard work. And this makes me laugh. I do know for sure and certain that the one thing that always helps me is sharing with the world. Even when it makes me feel vulnerable and scared. There’s always that one reader who sends me a “me too” message. That helps the most.
Today in therapy we talked about shame and forgiveness, and really, who the fuck wants to talk about those two? Not me. Not today. So I closed completely, feeling FULL of shame and not ready for forgiveness. I left there having accomplished very little. I stopped by the Buddhist temple on my way home for a few minutes of quiet time with the giant, green Buddha. It’s been a while since I’ve done that. And I have missed it. The monk noticed me and was kind enough to point out that I haven’t been there in a while. I told him I would be back on Sunday. Now I pretty much have to go back on Sunday. This also makes me laugh. All are welcome to join me Sunday! After the temple I went to the studio to teach my 4 o’clock class. We began our practice by pulling an oracle card. I got the forgiveness card. Of course. Thank you Universe. I hear your message loud and clear. I am not sure exactly who I am supposed to forgive, but I suspect the list is long and difficult. I have done the acceptance work. I guess forgiveness isn’t necessarily the same thing. So here I go. Diving in. Attempting to stay open. Doing the work. I have no doubt it’s going to be hard before it gets easy. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are days that I want to pluck my eyeballs out. My hope is that I won’t. Wish me luck.