I am completely drawing a blank for what it is I want for my life. There are so many things I love that I almost feel paralyzed with my next move. I love making art and writing and making music (God, do I love music and singing), and I love being outdoors and moving my body and dancing and having creative and intellectual conversations and activities.

Then there is this fact that living is expensive and I don’t ever seem to make enough money to squeak by whether I have a job or not. (I am in exactly the same debt this year as I was last year, but now the interest rate at which I pay my debt is higher).

My question to myself, my higher power, “What do I do next? Who is my future self? I need some help –  cuz I am having a hard time seeing anything different from my current circumstances – and my current circumstances are not sustainable.”

How can I thrive? It’s the question of a lifetime,  

And I trust, I try to trust.

I woke up today thinking – it’s all about the body. It’s about being embodied.

I spent my entire childhood (and a lot of my adult life) dissociating. When I discovered yoga in the late 80s, and really got to practicing it in the 90s, I found my body. I found home. I found my body held stories that needed to be told. 

I thought about the projects I put in hold to take care of mom, and over the years to go to work, to pay bills bills bills bills (and to not own jack shit). To have debt up to my ears for my health, my teeth (I refuse to have them pulled). And I can’t seem to concentrate anymore on work that I am good at (project management/admin stuff) but don’t necessarily like. 

What do I do? How do I make it all work? cuz this isn’t working . . .

This morning when I woke up thinking about the body, about yoga – I thought – that’s what I need to trust. My body and movement and yoga is where I find the answer for thriving. 

And then I had synchronicity in the form of this message from my sweet friend Clara Roberts-Oss – and I wanna share it. It helped me today.

She wrote:

Once upon a time, there was a woman. Curious and excited about all that could be learned and discovered through her own experience. From a young age, she loved how it felt to inhabit her own body. Walking, riding a bike, smelling food, nature and other people, eating delicious food, dancing the night away and later yoga.

Then she took her first teacher training. There she learned that many traditional yoga philosophers, Patanjali in particular, spoke about how one must transcend the body in order to experience their souls and connect to the divine.

Hold up.

This was starting to sound like Christianity.

Our bodies were not to be trusted. We needed to adhere to strict disciplines of fasting, eating “sattvic” foods and spending hours deep in meditation, not being distracted by the senses.

Wait, what?

Aren’t these bodies a gift?

A temple that houses our spirits, needing to be tended to with TLC?!

Weren’t the senses a way to connect us and remind us of the world around us?

A world that we are interconnected to?

Dogma didn’t fit into her idea of spirituality. It never had.

What fit was – everything.

Each of us are individuals – whose needs are similar but the requests or meeting of those needs may differ.

If we listen, truly listen – our bodies will tell us what they need – from sleep to diet to movement methods.

If we listen, truly listen – our spirits will share and show us the sparks.

If we’re all going to Rome, does it matter which path we take?

What may work for you, may not work for me. Is that a problem? Not at all. That’s why there are many philosophies, many paths.

Choose the one that works for you.

And switch up paths, if/when it no longer works.

Just keep walking.

Have a great day everyone.

February 5, 2023
Brooklyn, NY