The Lines of Time

My face is graced
with the recording of time.

Etched with appointed
lines upon the surface.

Stacked horizons stretching across my brow,

the lineage of life's surprises.

Grooved verticals in-between,

the questions and the unanswered.
Disappointment, curiosity,
and determination
leaving the same deep marks.

The growing creases on my upper lip

exposing the journey of kisses.
Kisses as a mom, kisses as a woman.
All paving the way for more to follow.

Crow's feet webbed,

the channel for tears.

Eyes like the river's dance,
guided through moments
of laughter, sadness and joy.

Miles of smiles 

rippling like waves on the sand,
from cheekbone to cheekbone.

Lines drawn like those on a roadmap.
The surface reflecting where I've been.
The mirror, a snapshot of where I am.

But in my mind's eye,
a smooth surface prevails.
Who I feel I am on the inside
and spaces I have yet to discover.

Beauty and The Pain

Yesterday I was witness to an amazing experience that I believe was heightened by 27 consecutive days of a new yoga practice. I have spent hours retraining my breath and listening to my body while twisting and bending into purposefully expanding postures. Without it, I may not have arrived at the healing destination that took place on a long drive home, after a long and arduous day.

It only took three words to cut through me like a knife. Cast out through the snarled lips of the past, and out of the mouth of one of my greatest teachers in this life. Those three words triggered a painful history, leaving tears welled up and hovering at the edge of my lower eyelids. Held back like high-water at the dam's edge.

More than the words themselves, it was my surprise reaction to them. And as I enter my sixth decade in life's classroom, this particular assignment continues to keep me after school. The curriculum has been a coarse one and today's lesson sat waiting patiently behind my tears and blurred vision, as I stepped behind the wheel for the welcome drive home.

I took a different route home than was usual. One less congested and stop sign free allowing for an ease in driving. In that freedom, the day's concluding event replayed in my mind offering fully the effects of the opened wound, bleeding and raw. Recently read passages from my new favorite contemporary philosophical author, Mark Nepo, reminded me to feel these moments fully. And so I did. This, in tandem with my return to a yoga practice, had opened me to locating visceral experiences happening inside my body.

I could feel the pain, the hurt, so intensely as it first circled the area around my heart, taking a route traveling down the path along the spine, through the pelvis, reaching even further down the legs, and coming to rest at a tingling in my toes. By my own calculations about 80% of my body was fully engaged in the feelings of emotional pain—all at the same time. Connected and unyielding, heart to toes.

With a single blink of my eyes, the dam broke. In the very next moment, what laid before me, in the expanse of the sky was an unobstructed sunset in the making. I could feel my soul switching its gears, moving past the pain and into appreciation for the beautiful gift of nature. These words, like a yogi's mantra chanting in my mind, "This is real. This is the only thing that is real. Thank you." The feelings of emotion in this raw and open state, as I breathed in the expanse of sky and beauty of color, allowed the eyes of my soul to see beyond the pain of the previous moment.

I could feel the expression of joy in this moment so intensely as it first circled the area of my heart, taking a route traveling down the path along the spine, through the pelvis, reaching even further down the legs, and coming to rest at a tingling in my toes. Sound familiar? Yes! If I may answer my own question. The same physical experience of deeply rooted emotions around hurt, located in the depths my heart connected to the bottom of my toes, were exactly what I had experienced in the raw moment of appreciating beauty.

The lines completely blurred between beauty and pain. The heart-to-sole channels cracked open wide. The path of pain and fresh wound followed directly by the healing bandage of beauty. Perhaps it was in that order, or maybe it was happening simultaneously, I'm no longer sure.

What I do know or witnessed for myself is, created through beauty or pain, the sensations were the same. And with that, I believe I have found a tool for future healing. When the heart is broken open there exists an open portal of opportunity to seek the bounty of beauty that surrounds us, to sooth the wound when broken open or anew.

Consider this...it might just work for you too.

The Three Breaths

Breathing, an automatic response in rhythm, right along side the heart's own beat. Breathing, one of the most essential and life sustaining things that we do, that we must do. Much of the time it is taken for granted. Unlike the heart (unless you are a skilled yogi) we can guide and direct our breath. The amount of air on the intake, the length of the air streams filling the body, holding it in place for short intervals of time and even the direction of airflow inside our body.

During ninety minutes of a yin-yoga class, I experienced a very moving practice working with the deliberate and focused flow of breath. Breathing, an act so automatic that rarely gets a notice, yet we do have the option to be more fully with it.

Prāṇāyāma is a Sanskrit word meaning extension of breath. The word composed of two Sanskrit words, prāṇā, life force, and ayāma, to extend or draw out. The practice is not forced, it is without constraint or control. A deepening of awareness and appreciation for this thing called breathing. An exercise in gratitude for it.

I was guided through an experience that left me with filled with grace. Lying on the yoga mat drawing in purposeful and deep breaths, eyes closed, with the first in the series of "the three breaths" directed toward the area of the lower belly. An imaginary, in my minds-eye, triangle formed on my inside. I could see it being painted like jet streams in the sky, with solid lines at first, disappearing into thinned air. The foundational breath starting at the base of the belly, stretching and expanding out to the sides of the ribs, spiraling upward at mirrored angles to the top and center of the chest. 

A perfect triangle, drawn with equal sides in breath trails. Reversing the sequence from the chest, out toward the ribs, coming to rest at the belly base. The continued sequence of "the three breaths," happening easily with an intentional mind in cooperation with the body and spirit. Bringing to mind a clear connection to cross-cultural threes. The Trinity in Christianity—Father, son, and holy spirit. Heaven, man, and earth in Eastern Philosophy. The Triquetra of Celtic Wisdom—earth, air and water. And right there on the yoga mat, through "the three breaths", the connection between body, mind and spirit. 

What also came to mind were the three organs receiving the sequence of breaths. The stomach, the lungs and the heart, equal partners in the nurturing and sustenance of our living and breathing self. The holy trinity within the body.

Breathing is not an option, but breathing fully and deeply is.

Paving my Way

After a long two year period of being very tethered to home, wondering where did my enthusiastic, motivated and I-can-do-anything, self go. I remember. Oh yeah...she was grieving. Two losses in less than two months of each other, both equally soul shattering.

The second one stripped me to my core. The unexpected passing of my eldest son's bestie, of sixteen years, who was in all ways but one, a son to me. Receiving the news that he, at the young age of 37 had left us, is underscored here as shocking. It couldn't be, this must be a sick joke. The date ironically, was April 1st.

There is a long list of pain around this loss—feeling the emotions empathically from my son, those that belonged to me and the incomprehensible loss from his parents. Thinking about what they must be feeling, well, it took my breaths away.

From the moment the call of disbelief came through from my son, through the moment I made the call to his parents, delivering a parent's worst nightmare of news, our block-long house of cards came tumbling down. All of us—forever changed.

The road back from grief has not been as smooth as a newly paved one. With those neatly painted straight lines in bright white and bold yellow, stretching out the distance of boundaries and direction. It has been a bumpy ride, full of potholes, lots of noise under the tired treads and faded of a clear destination.

The corner turned into a new year. The view ahead started to feel much clearer, as acceptance—the final step in the process began to settle in. Not without times of hitting a little rough patch along the way. Kicking up some loose gravel of emotion, only but a temporary loss of traction. "That is life" as they say.

The signs ahead indicate I am paving my way back. Exciting new terrain to explore, with windows washed, radio up and a full tank of gas.

On the bright side of my road.

Do Bold Things

The truth of this statement, if I had to sum up my life's mission right now, is all I would need to say. There is nothing like the passing of friends, especially when they are young, it's unexpected or when they are your own age, to send you into a cerebral head-spin around a few quintessential questions. "What's it all about?" "What am I doing with my life?" 

With the first friend, in this trilogy of loss, I was hit hard, very hard. Only a few days prior we had lunch together, making girly notes of her new coif, she was the epitome of her joyous self. With one single blow, that memory was knocked silly when another friend delivered the news that she had taken her own life. I've never known someone personally who made that choice and it shook me to my core. I stared at the portraits I had taken of her and combed incessantly through her social media pages looking for answers. Between the note she left (eight pages), her two brothers' crying her history of pain during the memorial service (one they didn't fully understand until after) and a quote from Niccolo Machiavelli, which I found favorited on her Facebook page, I came to understand. Mind bending.

“All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger (it's impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively. Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer.”

Some people feel that taking your own life is an act of cowardliness. I disagree. I have come to view it is an act of courage. My friend, whether you agree with it or not, made a bold move. When I read repeatedly Machiavelli's quote on her page, all I could think of was that she was letting us know, right there in two lines of text, that she had taken an action of risk, calculated and chosen very deliberately, not to suffer. "There, but for the grace of God, go I." With unabashed understanding and no judgment on her choice, I cast myself forward to take in all that she no longer would. In some strange way, I felt it was my obligation, more than ever, to live a larger-than-life existence, since I am still here. Bathing in the millions of colors in the sunrises and sunsets, taking the dreams of some-a-day and doing them, quitting on the things that silence my spirit, taking flight and mingling with the clouds. Doing bold and earthly things—now.

This is not where I thought I was venturing off to with my writing today. I imagine that this commitment to one year of writing is also taking a bold course of action. I've come to understand, more fully than ever, what it means to remain gifted with this life. She and the others are a consistent reminder to do bold things—in this life I am living. In loving memory of my beautiful friend, Anamarie.

What is on your "Do Bold Things," what I like to call my "Live it List?" What are we waiting for?