Fortunately, Valentine’s Day is not a huge deal in our house.  We usually celebrate quietly and simply at home.  My husband usually gets me a card and roses (from the grocery store where they are just as beautiful and more reasonably priced than the florist).  I usually get him cologne. We usually figure out what we’re having for dinner when we get home that night and it’s not anything fancy.

Today, however, my husband spent the day in bed. Alone. Sick and miserable, body aching and head pounding.  We spent the dinner hour at the urgent care facility finding out that he has bronchitis.We had cold carry-out food when we got home. He didn’t get to the store to buy flowers or a card as he had planned, and the cologne I ordered last week hadn’t arrived by today.

Still, it was a day of celebrating love, just like every other day.  That’s what I’m appreciating about Valentine’s Day this year – the recognition that love is so abundant in my life on a daily basis.  I had an incredible day at work with wonderful, positive, appreciative people; a stimulating, creative, juices-flowing work session with my Cool Blue Souls colleague Rus Vanwestervelt.  When I came home, my older son was tutoring his younger brother Liam and putting the finishing touches on a brand-spanking-new super-fast computer he built for me. The staff at the urgent care was friendly and the waiting room was empty when we got there.  My husband was too sick to feed the horses, so Liam cheerfully helped me do it after dinner and lingered to pet the pony and enjoy the mild weather. Love was everywhere and in everything that happened today.

We don’t need flowers, chocolate, or cologne to celebrate love. Love is compassion, kindness, and affection in small, simple moments every day. Philosopher Gottfried Leibniz said that love is “to be delighted by the happiness of another.”  I wish you happiness and love, on Valentine’s Day and every day.

I walk through the forest almost daily, a meditative ritual. When I am fully aligned and centered with my soul, I can feel the energy of the trees.  Sometimes, I stop to lay my hands on the bark, closing my eyes to focus on the sensation in my hands, visualizing the vibrations, hearing the hum of the tree singing to me. When I stand there, I can believe that the trees are all watching me, waiting to see if I can understand them like that girl in Narnia, but I can’t.  Still, I know they are speaking to each other, and the birds, and the forest animals, and the wind.  So I stand there, touching the bark, eyes closed, listening from my soul.

(This post is a response to Journal Prompt for Week 3 of A Year With Myself.)

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Twenty years ago, as an undergrad English major and aspiring writer, I wore all black and hung out with other writers in libraries or deli’s before there were coffee shops. I took courses in comparative literature, Joseph Campbell’s mythology and goddess religions. We studied In the Wake of the Goddess, The Chalice and the Blade, When God Was a Woman. For one of my course projects, I created a quilt of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil as a goddess, the trunk a shapely female figure, branches and leaves extending from her arms. I was a divorced mother on welfare, going to school on a Pell grant, but it was one of the best times of my life. I was embraced by a tribe of intellectual goddesses, both professors and fellow students, all standing in our power, fully ablaze with passion and life energy.

I’ve drifted from that passion and goddess power over the years.  It was a gradual process, baby steps toward conformity, maturity, expectations, success. Losing my balance. Evolving in the wrong direction.

Through it all, the goddess fire was dormant, waiting. Now she is emerging, light bursting insistently into my life.  I embrace the balance of her fiery passion with worldly wisdom.  I’m inspired by her again, enthusiastic and fully aligned in my power to stand with her and face the world.

(This article is a response to prompt #2 at A Year With Myself, a year-long journey of self-exploration.  Join us!)

That’s the hard part, we think. Deciding. Just do it. We move forward. We may fall on our face, but even that’s progress toward the goal.

Halfway down the slope, though, I just froze. Literally stopped in between moguls and could not move. The longer I stood there, the more paralyzed I was. People skied by me complaining about idiots stopping at the steepest part of the mountain while my husband and son tried to cajole me forward.

I was hanging between two monkey bars and couldn’t let go. Fear consumed my entire being. It was such a horrible feeling that I can still remember it vividly.

Patti Digh describes that paralysis in Liminal Spaces 

The space between the monkey bars. You have to let go, fully, of one monkey bar before you can grab the next one.  Else you are stuck between, a heavy weight pulling your hands down on the bars; you’ve lost momentum.

I was stuck in that space between again last year when I changed careers. Now and Then. Broken and Whole. Whole was so far away I began to think I would not find it, but would wander around in a dense forest, losing my way, retracing the same path unknowingly.

Hanging between two monkey bars afraid to let go, the heavy weight pulling me down, I danced with despair and regret daily.

We think the leap of faith is that first movement, the reaching for the desire. Decide. Act. Proceed. Yet the hard part is still to come, letting go of all that was, of who we were and who we are in that moment in order to become who we need to be. Sometimes the hardest part is the second movement, letting go of the last monkey bar, overcoming the fear and resistance that have charged into battle to maintain the status quo.

Eventually, after much coaching from my family, I moved forward and skied down the mountain.  I had no choice. I couldn’t stand there forever.  Life is not like that, though. I could have remained stuck psychologically and emotionally last year, hanging between two monkey bars for a long time.  Some people do.  But just as they coached me off the ski slope, I had family and friends coaching me to let go of the monkey bar, grab hold of my next goal and move forward with my life.

Now that I am flying into the unknown I realize that the safety of hanging on was an illusion. Now I am wrapped in the security of this space between; it is a rich and luscious flight.

(This article is a response to prompt #1 from Patti Digh at A Year With Myself, a year-long journey of self-exploration.  Join us!)

But my soul wants to soar.

I’m standing on a ledge, holding onto the trapeze, afraid to let go. My soul is waiting on the other side, ready to leap towards me, arms outstretched, beckoning.  She is pure Love: all powerful, fun-loving, joyful light.  She wants to show off, do her tricks, make things happen. But she needs me in the air. She can’t do it alone.

I stand on the ledge, Fear looking over my shoulder at the long drop below, whispering sweet nothings about safety, security, pensions and paychecks. Fear isn’t that talented, plus she’s kind of lazy. She doesn’t like to think out of the box or take risks. She wants things to stay as they are.  “You’ve got a good thing going here. Why blow it?”

Pointing to my soul, Fear says, “What if she doesn’t catch you? You’ll be face first, splattered below. It’s not worth it.  Stay here with me. I’ll look after you.”

I’ve been standing on that ledge for some time now, hoping one of them would give up. Maybe Fear would get bored and crawl back into the shadows.  Maybe my soul will settle for life the way it is.

But my soul will not settle; she is here to expand, to coax me to leap and grow with her, to fill me with light. I will have to choose.

And I choose to leap with my soul.

What choice are you making today?

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