‘It’s warm, and the sun is out
It’s like my heart’s restored…
And I’m thankful for seeing
Another spring…’
Nina Simone

actually it’s dark, the stars are out, the milky way is massive over me and there are shooting stars. it’s the end of summer and I’m 35.

And thankful.

I get reflective around my birthday, and this year my thoughts are all about how unbelievable my current life is, how I couldn’t have imagined or believed it a decade ago, or two decades ago.

I’m not looking back with longing for any younger time. And I’m not looking into the future to see something good out ahead of me.

I have faith.

I’m standing on a precipice, leaning out and trusting the wind. and everything I can feel and sense is vast, true, impersonal and miraculous.

it occurs to me from my doula work that the most shared experience on the planet is miracle. it’s how we come here.

on a daily basis I am experiencing the fire of the miraculous, fed with my attention. it feels like love, connection, inspiration, choice, health, beauty, and a sense of being alive and awake in the present.

I write, a lot…words that feel familiar to me, words that terrify me, words that come through me looking for release and home. words inspired by the people who surround me, the dreamers and organizers and believers.

I love a lot of people who are emotionally rigorous and unafraid of my love, and babies who teach me how to love while being myself, friends who see my whole messy beauty and come closer, family who watch each other grow with wonder and patience and tenderness on their faces.

my family is healthy, everyone starting new phases of life, grateful to still be here in this journey with each other, to have four generations on the planet together, special and normal and tuning in to the sweet cycles of birth, death, celebration and the blessing of having love through it all, from the mundane daily rhythms to the thrilling transformations.

I have teachers. for this I am so grateful – I am not alone in the world trying to find my way. there is wisdom all around me, and my life gets easier as I realize how little I know, how much I love to learn, and the kind of teachers I need – those who live in vulnerability and honesty and beginner’s mind.

I’m loving myself openly, as a life force…not a genius or a perfection or an observation. I’m loving my own aliveness, my breath, my body, my resilience, my naivete and my lessons.

and now, in this summer of joy, in this miraculous convergence, I can look at the milky way and remember how fleeting it all is, how many things actually don’t matter, how life is on a long arc, but our time here so far is short, a minutia of love and evolution.

in that insignificance, I’m on a precipice of joy, cognizant of the suffering that created this moment. I’m aware of the cycles that teach me resilience, the guarantee of pain, and the gift of feeling anything, and feeling so much.

I’m feeling so much.

And it’s all imbued with gratitude.

Thank you.