The Redheaders

I don’t know how to interact with men anymore. I don’t know how to flirt anymore. I don’t even know when a man is coming on to me anymore.

Recently, I had an eye opening experience. I was bike riding through my town on a beautiful Sunday morning, as I often do, when a bright electric blue t-shirt sitting at an outdoor café caught my eye. The t-shirt had the name of an organization I had recently begun supporting written on it, so I was curious to find out more. This poor unsuspecting t-shirt almost choked on its Sunday brunch frittata as I came up behind it and startled it with a big “Hello!” We chatted for a few minutes about how we came to know and connect with the organization. Suddenly, mid-sentence I gazed up and away from my new t-shirt acquaintance and noticed there was a man in the t-shirt… handsome, nice blue eyes, athletic build, open energy, and my age. I didn’t think anymore about him other than a passing, “Oh he’s cute” (like we women tend to do). (Okay I admit it; I do believe my eyes took a quick peek at his left ring finger...nothing there.)

As the conversation about the organization came to a close, I started to roll away on my two wheels. He stood up, said that he loved to bike ride, and asked me if I rode my bike often. I responded affirmatively, got on my bike, and started off down the street. Then he asked (a bit louder) if I liked Frisbee golf. I tossed my affirmative reply over my shoulder as I began to put some distance between us. Finally, he asked (louder still) if I liked jazz, of course, followed by my second toss-back remark of an affirmative nature. Half way down the street, I stopped mid-pedal, turned my bike around, enthusiastically pedaled up to him and asked, “Hey, do you like horseback riding?” He jumped up and eagerly replied that he, in fact, loved horseback riding!

I hopped back on my pedals and sped away with a final shoulder toss, “Great! I love it too! Well, I bike ride around here quite a bit. Maybe I will see you again sometime!” And went on my merry way.

I had happily pedaled down the street for about 20 minutes when my brain kicked into 10th gear. I pulled to the curb, thought for a second and asked myself, “Was that guy hitting on me?” DUH. I had had absolutely no clue.

I haven’t seen him (or that great electric blue t-shirt) since.

I didn’t pay any attention to this attractive and, perhaps, available man, I have since realized, because I had automatically placed him in a certain group of men I call the “Redheaders.” For some reason about 5 years ago, I decided that men who give me any attention at all do so simply because they love women, any woman, with red hair. A man smiles, says hello, offers to help me somehow, and I think to myself, (with a certain condescending tone), “Redheader!”

Talk about deliberately taking myself completely out of any part of any equation that might equal relationship. What the hell?

And not only that, but why do I feel a certain distain for the Redheader instead of inwardly congratulating him on his excellent and sophisticated taste in women? Furthermore, why would I judge men (well, at all) but especially those who are attracted to one of the physical characteristics I absolutely love about myself? I mean, seriously, how many times have I mentioned my curly red hair in this blog alone?

Just because Patty Stanger on the Millionaire Matchmaker rejects women for her bachelor millionaires simply because they are redheads (which, by the way, really pisses me off) doesn’t mean I‘m not worthy of male attention and a whole lot more.

And finally, how come I get mad at Patty Stanger for rejecting redheads, but I don’t get upset with myself, basically, for rejecting my redheaded self through men?

Get intimate with my thoughts about this right now? Sorry, not tonight, I have a headache.

(Not So) Tiny Dancer

I am in powerful denial about my body.

Like a lot of women, I have issues. I am short (5’3” give or take ½ inch), “well endowed,” and hour glassy with smallish hips. I’m going to be 59 soon, and people tell me I have a “rockin” body. That’s fine. They can tell me that until they’re blue in the face, but I still look in the mirror and can’t figure out what the hell they’re talking about (even though I weigh less now than I did in the sixth grade).

I was an overweight child and still remember the humiliation of that fateful 6th grade year when my class was escorted to the auditorium where we lined up to be weighed in by the school nurse…in front of each other. I was horrified of course. My best friend, who was right in front of me, was first on the scale. When it was my turn, I closed my eyes, and I heard my “number” reverberate through the semi-empty auditorium. To my surprise, I jumped for joy. I was elated because I weighed the exact same as my best friend. I thought to myself , ”What was I so concerned about? I’m fine!!”

It didn’t occur to me until many months later that she was a good 4 inches taller than I was.

Denial…it was powerful then too.

The first time I remember feeling different because of my weight; I was 8 years old in my first ballet class. It was me, a rolly-polly redhead in a pink tutu, adrift in the middle of a sea of little teeny tiny blonde girls (at least that is how I remember it but there must have been a brunette in there somewhere). The other little girls were nice to me. They didn’t seem to notice or to care about my size, but I did. However, I did love dancing, so I stayed with it for about six months until the recital came around. I quit the class a week before the performance. I couldn’t bring myself to be on stage with beautiful little fairy girls.

By the time I reached my freshman year in high school, I weighed 160 pounds. I was miserable, had had enough of the teasing and the struggle with clothes fitting properly. I went on a diet and lost 45 pounds. That was in 1965.

How ridiculous is it that I still (often) see myself as a person with a weight problem?

I have recently come to understand that it is not the memory of garder belts snapping open in the middle 7th grade English, or blouse buttons being launched from my chest when I raised my hand too high, or being sung to with “fatty fatty 2 by 4 can’t fit through the bathroom door,” or a host of other embarrassing moments I endured because of my weight. What has its unrelenting grip on my self-image is the lack of acceptance I still carry for that little rolly-polly redhaired girl.

I never accepted her as a part of me, and she feels it. We have no relationship. And, clearly, her hold on my self-image is much more powerful than any I have been able to generate. She is insisting I see her, acknowledge her, fold her into my Self.

I decided to spend some time with my 8 year old me last weekend. I acknowledged her to both of us and let her know that I was sorry. I talked to her for a long time about all the wonderful things she has given me: my absolute abandon and joy when dancing, my redheaded sassiness and playfulness, and a whole pot of sunshine whenever she comes out to play.

No response from her. Her denial of me was powerfully palpable.

I have continued talking to her as I go through my days just to let her know that I am not a woman who asks for forgiveness without expecting to earn it. This morning out of nowhere, while in meditation, she emerged and sat on my lap…just sat there looking around my home. She eventually turned around to face me. In her eyes, I saw that pure forgiveness that I sometimes think only children are willing to radiate out. We looked at each other for a long time.

I told her that in looking at her I recognized there was so much to love about her (no pun intended). And we laughed at the ridiculousness of my sorry attempt at a joke and my denial of one of the absolute brightest parts of me.

She head hugged me, cautiously. And I head hugged her back.

Then I signed us up for a Salsa class this weekend. We can’t wait.

I Need A Hug

I need a hug. A head hug. I love them. Those hugs we parents give and receive when our little one is up in our arms. Child gently places head on shoulder. Parent gently rests head on child’s. To me, there is nothing more sweet and unique to our species as the act of cradling our child between the divine consciousness of the human mind and the love of an open heart.

I found that my son’s head, from the day he was born until that sad day when I received my last beloved head hug, always fit perfectly in the crook of my shoulder. One day old to maybe 7 years old…same shoulder, different child sized head…perfect fit. Amazing. How do we parents and caregivers do that?

I discovered that if you look closely enough when moms and dads hoist up their young children who are nearing the end of head hug days, you can see the parental shoulder instinctively morf itself into the exact right head hug size to perfectly cradle their child’s head. Yesterday, I actually witnessed a normal mom-sized shoulder transform into a beautifully grossly distorted child- sized pillow.

Intrigued, I began researching the subject. Pediatric psychiatrists have recently found that, from as early as infancy, children’s cravings for head hugs are nutritionally and psychologically based. Nutritionally, children require them to infuse the body with the minimum daily love immunization levels that are critical to maintaining an open heart while living amongst the mental chatter of the world.

Psychologically, these psychiatrists have painstakingly gathered data resulting in statistically significant findings confirming what we parents already instinctively know. As essential as head hugs are to the child’s emotional, physical and, perhaps, spiritual growing bodies, maintaining the developmentally appropriate nutritional and psychological levels as the child gets older becomes harder and harder to sustain.

Nutritional deficiencies typically begin to surface between the ages of 7 and 9 primarily because the latency-aged child’s newly found independence rejects the head hug. They announce that they are “big kids” now. They are too busy being in the world enjoying new freedoms from their parental units to realize the importance of maintaining the nutritional balance between the mileage they rack up in the world and those crucial, replenishing, parental head hug tune-ups.

Pre-teens substitute their peers for nutrient rich parental contact. It is similar to the dreaded pre-teen affliction "Sweet and Sour Syndrome" in which our pre-teens consider gummy worms a perfectly reasonable and nutritionally balanced substitute for a home cooked meal. Observational data collected in the wilds of the pre-teen world have documented two gender specific and stereotypical pre-teen head hug substitute behaviors: the pre-teen girl’s “hang onto friend’s shoulders while jumping and screaming hug” and the genetically pre-disposed pre-teen boy’s “casual drape of the arm over friend’s shoulder and lean on him for support hug.” They are shoulder-specific and age appropriate but ineffective substitutes for the real thing.

Interestingly, while teenagers desperately recognize the nutritional need for head hugs, they often don’t know how to return to the source once the head hug dynamic has been broken. Instead, they perpetuate the historically inherited teenage defense mechanism, “It’s just not cool.” Teenagers attempt to obtain their nutritional and psychological needs from their boyfriends and girlfriends. Just watch your teenager sitting on the couch with their date. Head hug much?

However, (and this will delight those of us in parental roles) extensive research has also documented that if parents stay open to these necessary developmental meanderings from the true source, and remain open to unexpected opportunities, the beloved head hug can intermittently return (especially in times of stress). I can attest from personal experience when, a few months ago, my 17 year old son’s father and I accompanied him to an oral surgeon's office to have all four of his wisdom teeth removed. He was nervously perched between his dad and me on a small couch when it happened. He found it within himself to defy the developmental norms of adolescence. He head hugged his dad. Right there in the waiting room. In front of everyone. As if he had been doing it all along. As if it was the most natural thing in the world for him to do.

To us, it was nothing short of a miracle.

Lastly, the final maturationally-enhanced phase, the Reverse Head Hug, typically begins to manifest in the late teen years. Recent studies have shown that this final stage of development may include a new dynamic. The nutrient rich love continues to flow from parent to child, but current studies have noted that, in this stage, the child gives love nutrients back to the parent as well. The hypothesis being that this full circle of reciprocity is a significant marker for our young adult children in preparing to step into parenthood themselves.

I was the recipient of my first Reverse Head Hug last night. I had been visiting with my son at his father’s home and needed to leave. As I stood on my tiptoes to hug him goodbye, I gently rested my head on his shoulder. He responded by gently resting his head on mine. We stood there for a few minutes sandwiched, suspended, and expanded between a reciprocal flow of open hearted love and the embodiment of the human mind.

I burst into tears.

My head was a perfect fit.

Good Morning Sunshine

When I was somewhere around ten years old, I started asking myself a question. I asked myself this question on a regular basis for years (honestly, I still ask myself on occasion). What I ask/asked myself was, “What kind of day am I?” My response was always, “Rainy.” As a child, I asked myself this question over and over again because I desperately wanted to hear myself give a different response. I didn’t want to be a rainy day: all dark and wet and cold. I longed to hear myself say, “A bright sun shiny day!,” because I desperately wanted to believe it.

I have very vivid memories of my mother waking me for school in the mornings. She woke me by coming quietly into my room and gently whispering in my ear, “Good morning Sunshine.” Eventually, I learned to awaken myself early feeling blissful anticipation and a wonderful willing emptiness in my ear as it waited for my mother to come in and fill it full to overflowing with her whisper. My ear perched on itself, hungering to absorb those words and release them into my heart. It was my child’s version of that first cup of coffee in the morning. My body needed it to face the day.

For some reason around my tenth year, my mother stopped waking me in this manner. Over time, I gradually felt the clouds accumulate as they do on those beautiful sun shiny summer beach days. For me, the dark clouds rolled in from China or some other foreign place, broke open, and released their drops of wet. It seemed that everyone scattered to find shelter.

Perhaps if I had been a different kind of child or had grown up in a different kind of family, I could have talked to my mother in my 10 year-old way and let her know how much I needed my daily love transfusion. Instead, I remember consciously making the decision to stop crying because my little girl mind believed that if I stopped crying; I would also stop the rain.

And my mother would be able to come out from under the shelter she ran to and once again remind me that I am full of sunlight.

Twenty three years later, I dreamt of one of those silver bullet shaped mobile homes. When I entered it, I noticed that the walls were encased in layers of ice. The ice was so thick that the only way to navigate through the home was via a very narrow passage down the middle. In this dream, I had a blowtorch in my hands, and I announced (to no one in particular). “On these walls are all the frozen tears I never shed. I intend to shed them now.”

But I didn’t…until this year.

In this year, I have weathered all kinds of tears. I have cried icy hot tears full of anger and rage. I have cried bitter tasting tears of hail full of old resentments. I have cried slippery uncontrollable tidal waves of torrential tears full of grief. I have cried large pendular droplets of downpour tears full of lost opportunities for love. I have cried sharp projectile sudden squall tears full of guilt that left my eyes as quickly as they appeared. I have cried strong love-rich April shower tears full of nourishment for the soil of my soul.

Until finally, and thankfully, I cried those happy-sad bittersweet sun shower tears that accompany a brightly shining sun. Sun shower tears remind the world that rain and sun can live together simultaneously, and when they do, they gift the world a beautifully colored rainbow prism full of limitless magical possibilities.

I now recognize that I am weather. I am all of it. I am full with it. It makes me who I am.

So, "What kind of a day am I?" “A bright sun shiny day!” (with a possibility of rain).

And my ten year old is just fine with that.

A Whole Lotta Nothin'

I just returned from my final Mastery weekend. All sixty-ish of us met for three amazing days at a beautiful New England style clapboard hotel in Redondo Beach, right on the water. It was a weekend of oceans of tears juxtaposed with tidal waves of belly laughs…all in the context of reflecting on the principles, practices, and relationships we experienced over the last nine months. One would think I would leave that kind of a weekend feeling full to overflowing. However, I feel quite empty.

And I am grateful for it.

One of my sisters in Mastery actually gave birth to a real, live, beautiful baby boy less than a month ago(He is now woven into the fabric of our lives). A while ago, you may remember, I wrote that for me, the program was about giving birth to my Self. This weekend I nervously and excitedly (okay and impatiently) waited for that huge AHA! moment. I wanted to be able to say, “Yes! This is what I have been nurturing for nine months! Look at my beautiful baby!”

What I gave birth to was a whole lotta nothin’.

And I am grateful for it.

Instead, the clutter is gone. The heaviness is gone. The confusion is gone. I don’t feel I need to play dodge ball with life’s circumstances in order to win at all costs. I’m no longer interested in starring in my own Survivor series or in following the rules, behaviors, and limited perceptions I concocted to keep myself small. Each and every cell in my body understands how the rigidly adhered to patterns of my life kept me unfulfilled, unsatisfied, and alone.

In these nine months, I learned to embrace the existence I came here to experience and express. I have committed to my fullest flourishing in a wonder-filled attitude of gratitude as I navigate towards my North Star. My life lived creatively and playfully chock full of tears and laughter. I know I can catch, transform, and fully contribute to anything the universe decides to lob my way because I now choose to live in radical responsibility for my life and in mutuality, collaboration, and reciprocity with the rest of the world. I somatically know that, while painful or distasteful, lemons must come before lemonade, shattered eggshells before soufflés, and breakdowns before breakthroughs.

I gave birth to an empty Self full of space, expansion and willingness. I am a wide receiver on the playing field of life experiencing unprecedented levels of joy in the simple truth that not only can’t I do it alone, I now, thankfully, don’t want to.

Transformation, I have learned, is a team sport.

Birth. It’s what we do. Givers and Nourishers of life. It’s who we are. We women are here to give birth to the magical possibilities of the fullest flourishing of all living things on the planet. It is our inherited legacy. I owe it to me. I owe it to the generations of women who paved the way and made a place for me. I share it with the women here now and pass it on to those yet to be.

And I am grateful for it.

Now all I need to do is dig out my pompoms! Go Team!

I'm Sick Of Me

How do people live with me?? I have been living alone for the past almost 4 weeks, and I'm sick of me.

When my son was 8, I brought him to my hometown for a month during the summer. We were both very excited. I had planned (in my head) for his two uncles to spend lots time with him. A good childhood friend of mine who still lived at home also had a son late in life. He was a year older. My son had met and spent time with him 2 summers prior, so I was thrilled that he was going to also spend lots of time (in my head) with his “best friend” (as my son called him).

People in New England, and I sure anywhere that it gets cold and snowy in winter, start looking forward to summer the Thursday just after our second holiest of high holidays, St. Patrick’s Day. It is the officially sanctioned day New Englanders open the season of dreaming about lying on the beach. I’ll bet you that more people in New England fish out their last year’s bathing suits as reminders and go on diets March 18th, than the combined number of people around the world who begin their diets on January 1st. It’s tradition. It gets us through the icy winds of March, the freakish snowstorms of April, and the torrential rains in May.

My family home is a particularly great place to be in the summertime. The beaches are great. The empty streets of the winter are jammed with happy, smiling people who dock their boats, eat at our restaurants, and speak with heavy foreign accents. The islanders never have to travel (and most don’t) because the world comes to them every summer.

Just an overall fun exciting place to be.

Unless it rains.

Every few years, Newport has one of “those” summers when moms with school age kids get up everyday before sunrise and pray straight through until lunch for the clouds and the dew-soaked fog to clear. We make lots of statements in very shrill voices like, “ I see the sun peeking through!” or “The fog will burn away before lunch!” as an incantation or a New England style fire dance to the gods of summer. It is our collective feeble attempt to make it come true.

During “those” summers, the universe usually just responds with more rain.

So, my month with my son at The City By The Sea occurred during one of “those” summers, and for my son and I, it rained everyday from the day we flew in until 31 grueling days later when we flew out. It rained so much that the sewers on the island started backing up into the ocean, so even if the sun came out, it would have been hard to ignore the WARNING! POSSIBLE ECOLI! signs posted at every beach.

My son’s uncles only spent one afternoon with him, and his “best friend” had no interest in a boy he met two summers prior.

It was my son and me…for four weeks….straight…in the rain.

So we hiked at the Norman Bird Sanctuary in the rain and went to every beach on the island in the rain (which I love on an occasional basis). We went around the drive to the cliffs and ate a picnic lunch watching the waves crashing against the rocks(in the car) in the rain. We went bowling in the rain, to the movies in the rain, we walked along Thames Street and window shopped in the rain, and every night we shared a full-sized bed in the rain. There was no swimming, and definitely no lying carefree on the beach.

My 8 year-old son and I together pretty much 24/7 for 31 days.

At one point about a three weeks in, I turned to my son and said, “No offense, Hon, but I’m sick of you.” Without the slightest hesitation, he turned to me and replied, “No offense, Mom, but I’m sick of you too.”

So that makes two of us, because right now I am sick of me, too.

I have never in my life lived alone this long. Of course, I see my son and talk to him daily, but there is no other breathing body in my house. I specifically miss my son, but I also miss looking into the eyes of someone I love, exchanging the reciprocity of his breath, and knowing I should probably think twice before I fart in bed.

It hurts and feels odd, but I think it is a good thing. The winter thaw in my heart has arrived right on schedule. I have every confidence in the world that it’s going to be a sunny summer.

Horse Whispers

I’m just going to say it. People drive me crazy. Now don’t get me wrong, that doesn’t mean I don’t love people; I do.

They just drive me crazy.

They drive me crazy specifically when I ask them to do something and they don’t, or it comes back as something else, or they somehow “screw it up.”

As my father used to say, “It burns my Irish ass.”

So I am thinking that maybe in my last life I was Henry VIII or Cleopatra or George W friggin' Bush. Or maybe all three because I certainly have my lion’s share of arrogance and need to control.

When I was a kid I volunteered at a public riding stable near my home every weekend for years. I arrived at 6 in the morning, helped gunk out the stalls, and groomed and saddled the horses for the day’s paying riders. I did whatever I was asked to do because just being around horses made me high. My parents couldn’t afford lessons, so every spare minute I had, I stood at the rail, watched the lessons in progress, and tried to access the muscles my horseless body needed to develop to become a proper English rider. The icing on the cake was that when it was one hour from closing time, I was allowed to choose whatever horse I wanted and ride on the beach for an hour…for free!

I hadn’t had my rear in a saddle for over 30 years when, about two years ago, I started riding with a friend on two amazing mares. They are sisters, half draft and half thoroughbred, very big, very muscular and very fast. They are, in equestrian terms, "a lot of horse."

What I eventually noticed was that my friend and I had very different riding styles. I rode from a “control” position, always alert to correct a move I did not want my horse to do. I also noticed a churning in my stomach, a clenching of my legs, and a lack of forgiveness in the way I held the reins. My friend, on the other hand, rode from a “collaborative” position, always ready to respond to what her horse was telling her. My friend and her horse were living in the power of a fully embodied, like-minded, mutually sacred union.

It humbled me.

It blew my mind.

So I asked her to teach me.

I gradually moved from Commander to Communicator. I began to feel how the slightest shifts and changes in my body position affected not only my horse’s response but, more importantly, her level of trust with me. I released my legs so I could give her more gentle yet clearer and more powerful cues. I let her have her head, and she stopped fighting for it. My body heard her when she told me things, and it responded back.

I let go of my need to control, and my horse taught me relational skills and capacities that were somatic and divine.

But in the two legged world, how do I collaborate, really listen, and release the death grip of control and the lack of forgiveness in my heart? If I could do that, I know the churning in my stomach would take care of itself.

I am told that awareness is the first step, but what exactly is the second one? When I feel that churning start to happen, should I do what I did watching riding lessons from the rails? Should I imagine myself mounting people one by one, gently disengaging my thigh muscles, and letting loose on the reins? No, I don’t think so.

I learned that collaboration creates relational magic with my horses. Collaboration gives me access to an experience that is more beautiful, more fulfilling, and more sacred than I could ever have imagined.

Now if I could just learn how to do it with humans.

Twinkle Twinkle

On Easter Sunday, I sat down for dinner with three (3! I won’t do that again...I promise...I’m tired of it too) of my closest Mastery sisters. As we sat down, I noticed that our hostess sister had placed a small gift at each of our places. She had purchased us North Star pendant necklaces. Very simple. Very beautiful. Very giving. Very meaningful. Because in the work that we do, we have all created our own North Star which expresses our biggest vision of our contribution to the evolution of the world.

Conversely on Easter, we spent a good deal of the evening talking about how much we need a break. While amazing and enlightening, the work has been a challenge: difficult on the emotional, physical, and spiritual realms. We also discussed how recently each of us had hit our own “wall” of sorts and had to make the difficult decision to stay in the work (although we all wanted, at some point, to walk away).

Since then, a question has been sitting on my mind because the discussion brought back memories of the pain from which I had recently emerged. There were nights that I laid in bed submerged in a level of anguish and agony that I had never before experienced. And while I never considered harming myself or anyone else, I did inform God, the Universe, (anyone with any clout) that if there was a heart attack in my future, I was fine with having it now. And I meant it.

All of these thoughts led to a Monday 3 a.m. awakening with the thought, “What if the North Star in our galaxy just got fed up with the world, decided that life was too hard to maintain itself as everyone’s fixed and reliable beacon, and decided to blow itself out?” (Yeah, I know. Try living inside my head.)

Now if THE one and only North Star decided to throw in the celestial towel, everything in the universe would sit up and take notice. Living organisms have relied on its constancy since the beginning of time. How would we know which way was up? How would we navigate? Would we find clumps of moss frantically growing willy-nilly in the forest??

Without this stellar lighthouse, would the sun perpetually ping pong itself across the sky: rising in the South one day and setting in the East the next? Does the North Star have some kind of magnetic quality? If it were gone, would the other stars, the constellations, the Milky Way all go a little coo-coo crazy (to use proper astronomical verbiage) and lose their sense of placement and direction? How would the earth know which way to direct its axis?

Seriously, it would be an event of catastrophic proportions.

So here is my question to myself. I created a fancy-dancy intention for my life (it’s right over there in the darker column to the right of this blog), and while I no longer feel the need to leave the planet permanently, what would it be like if I decided life was too hard to shine my own unique fixed and reliable beacon?

Essentially, after spending all this time and effort clearing away the smog and the ozone layer of my inner life so that I could REVEAL my small but (I hope) mighty light, would anyone (besides me) really be affected if I blew it out and continued on in a little pint-sized vision of my life?

Would anyone even notice?

Do I want to answer that question?

I no longer have answers for my life, but I do know enough to ask this.

How long am I willing to sit and wait for someone else to slip my own personalized version of It’s A Wonderful Life into that big DVD player in the sky so I can see the results of my life before I live it?? How long am I willing to passsively wait for evidence that the risks I take, in shining my light and living in my North Star intention, had meaning (have meaning, will have meaning) to some people?

And I know one more thing. It ain’t gonna passively happen to me. It’s going to actively happen through me. I have to actually write, star in, and direct my own life.

"Lights, camera..."

My Yellow Brick Road Less Traveled

I feel a bit like Dorothy and her 3 (there's that number again!) evolutionary partners on the way back to Oz to present the Wizard her trophies of success so she can finally go home.

Here I am, nine months after the start of Mastery, consciously choosing to reflect on my journey on my own yellow brick road less traveled. My Metaphor, My Muse, My Magician (or as I like to refer to them, my M3s), and I have encountered what has felt like obstacle after obstacle, challenge after challenge, and (thankfully) miracle after miracle.

However, despite the fact that the end of this part of my Mastery journey was coming into view and despite the fact that I could feel the radiance, the allure, and the warmth of that Emerald City on my face, much like Dorothy on her journey, I couldn’t take another step. After my last post five days ago, the physical and emotional toll of this road took hold of me. The sweet fragrance of the poppy field called to me; its flowers offered me shelter, comfort and safety. I stepped off the road and collapsed into sleep.

I recalled a dream I had some 30 years ago. I was driving an old VW van circa 1969. I was very serious and very focused on getting where I was supposed to be. I was feeling a tremendous urgency and, therefore, driving extremely fast (especially for a VW in those days). The scenery was whizzing by. All I knew was I had to be “there” (wherever “there” was), and I had to be "there" 10 minutes ago. Suddenly 30 feet or so in front of me, a train safety gate dropped out of nowhere and landed across the road blocking my passage. On the gate was a huge, red, octagonal shaped sign. Across the sign, in very VERY large letters, was written “STOP!!”

AARRGGHH! I can't tell you how much being stopped really pisses me off, especially when I'm on a roll, but since I didn't have much choice in the matter, I got out to see what was going on. I looked around to see why this obstacle had been put across my road.

Nothing was there...well, not exactly nothing.

There were open fields on either side of the road as far as my eyes could see. In these fields grew the most beautiful array of flowers I had ever seen. Their aroma filled me with something akin to grace. In that holy instant, I realized that these last 9 months have shown me that I am always making a choice. I can choose to barrel down the roads that lead away from the Emerald City and let the scenery, the beauty, and the grace of life whiz past my head on the way to…where??? Or I can choose to walk, savor, and deepen into what I have learned on my yellow brick road less traveled.

This morning, I awoke more peaceful than I can ever remember, expressed my gratitude to those giving flowers who helped me awaken to my life, and consciously made that step back onto my yellow brick road less traveled with my M3s.

I am thrilled that I’m not feeling the tug of acceleration to reach my destination. Instead, I feel the vibrancy of color around me, the exchange of reciprocity in every breath, the remembrance of the soft touch of flower petals on my cheeks, and, for some strange reason, the taste of warm fudge-y brownies topped with coffee ice cream (accompanied by a very cold glass of milk).

For once in my life, I am in no hurry. I intend to relish each step on my road while the sun adjusts itself to my exact body temperature, and the faint sounds of the City, as it prepares for my celebratory arrival, greet my ears.

I am suspended in that weird place I find myself in at the end of a great book: looking forward to finishing the last chapter, wondering what will happen in the sequel and resisting saying goodbye to those characters who do not continue in the story.

And I finally understand what Dorothy learned (and what Cheryl tried to teach me 27 years ago). Home…there is no place like it. It is just a click of my heels away.

And it is best reached arm-in-arm with those I love, singing and skipping towards all the wonder of The Emerald City (and beyond) on my own yellow brick road less traveled.