Lara Vesta's Blog, page 9

On staying in the room: Are you giving up your dream?

Photo by Lorijo Daniels True confessions:  

I am a whiner.  When my faith fails me as I struggle and churn in the process of creation, I have a litany of reasons to quit.

Because I was an at home mother for seven years.

Because my children need me.

Because I'm a creative and require absolute freedom.

Because I'm highly sensitive.

Because it is just all so hard, I'm not made for this world, of this world, there's no place for me.

Because I can't articulate my vision.

Because it is too unique, not marketable, strange, handmade, messy, organic.

Because I need more education, training, something something something...

Yes.  There is always a reason why I can give up on my dream.

Does this resonate with any of you at all?

What all of these excuses do for me is pull me from my vision at exactly the critical moment where I need to push forward. Remember that as a writer I see everything in light of the creative process?  Well author Ron Carlson says in his book Ron Carlson Writes a Story: 

The most important thing a writer can do...is to stay in the room...The writer wants to read what she is in the process of creating with such passion and devotion that she will not leave the room.” 

Where is your room?  What are you creating with passion and devotion?  Can you stay there, even when the world tempts you? Primary, Fundamental, Transformation I work with a lot of women, which is great because I am a woman and we know some things about each other.  My clients and students are teachers, and I learn from them daily.  As a community, patterns emerge.  And one of the patterns I see consistently is that of self-sabotage at the edge of primary, fundamental transformation.

We want things, we want things with our whole being.  And we have to work for those things.  Sometimes for a long time.  A story:  When I was twenty-three I wanted to immerse myself in writing, to enter the world of ideas in an MFA program and devote my life to higher education.  I applied to six schools and was rejected from six schools. It was devastating to me, and affirmed all of my inner whining.

For the next six years, I wrote.  I compiled a body of work.  I grew children inside me, birthed them, nursed them, and understood a little more about living and a lot about myself because of them.  I wrote about this.  I became involved in my community and discovered a new passion.  I wrote about this, too.  When I applied to graduate school at the age of twenty-nine I was accepted.  Sometimes dreams require persistence, refinement, dedication, practice, time.

But so often we are reluctant to commit to staying in the room.  We want to relax!  We want everything taken care of!  We want security and comfort and status.  We want our dream to give us these things and get impatient when it isn't, or when we can't see the way.  So, we bail.  Without structure for practicing our new story, the new story of our dreams, the old creeps in.  And it keeps us from success.

I am writing this now because if you have a dream, I want you to commit to it.  Invest in it.  Stay in the room with it.  Practice it.  Tell the whining to shoo.  Or fuck off.  You are working here.

I've been extending invitations to The Chrysalis Class, a perfect opportunity to make a commitment to whatever you are manifesting, to articulate a vision, to invoke a dream.  Twelve weeks carries us through the summer, this time of sweet distractions.  We need each other to keep us accountable to our process, to encourage us when it takes longer than we'd like, to celebrate our victories.  Within the circle we are stronger, more potent, and our creations take on life larger than our own.

The Summer Solstice Discount is extended to June 29th.  Here, in consistent practice, we are effective. Photo by Lorijo Daniels

Staying in the room: Are you giving up on your dream?

Photo by Lorijo Daniels True confessions:  

I am a whiner.  When my faith fails me as I struggle and churn in the process of creation, I have a litany of reasons to quit.

Because I was an at home mother for seven years.

Because my children need me.

Because I'm a creative and require absolute freedom.

Because I'm highly sensitive.

Because it is just all so hard, I'm not made for this world, of this world, there's no place for me.

Because I can't articulate my vision.

Because it is too unique, not marketable, strange, handmade, messy, organic.

Because I need more education, training, something something something...

Yes.  There is always a reason why I can give up on my dream.

Does this resonate with any of you at all?

What all of these excuses do for me is pull me from my vision at exactly the critical moment where I need to push forward. Remember that as a writer I see everything in light of the creative process?  Well author Ron Carlson says in his book Ron Carlson Writes a Story: 

The most important thing a writer can do...is to stay in the room...The writer wants to read what she is in the process of creating with such passion and devotion that she will not leave the room.” 

Where is your room?  What are you creating with passion and devotion?  Can you stay there, even when the world tempts you? Primary, Fundamental, Transformation I work with a lot of women, which is great because I am a woman and we know some things about each other.  My clients and students are teachers, and I learn from them daily.  As a community, patterns emerge.  And one of the patterns I see consistently is that of self-sabotage at the edge of primary, fundamental transformation.

We want things, we want things with our whole being.  And we have to work for those things.  Sometimes for a long time.  A story:  When I was twenty-three I wanted to immerse myself in writing, to enter the world of ideas in an MFA program and devote my life to higher education.  I applied to six schools and was rejected from six schools. It was devastating to me, and affirmed all of my inner whining.

For the next six years, I wrote.  I compiled a body of work.  I grew children inside me, birthed them, nursed them, and understood a little more about living and a lot about myself because of them.  I wrote about this.  I became involved in my community and discovered a new passion.  I wrote about this, too.  When I applied to graduate school at the age of twenty-nine I was accepted.  Sometimes dreams require persistence, refinement, dedication, practice, time.

But so often we are reluctant to commit to staying in the room.  We want to relax!  We want everything taken care of!  We want security and comfort and status.  We want our dream to give us these things and get impatient when it isn't, or when we can't see the way.  So, we bail.  Without structure for practicing our new story, the new story of our dreams, the old creeps in.  And it keeps us from success.

I am writing this now because if you have a dream, I want you to commit to it.  Invest in it.  Stay in the room with it.  Practice it.  Tell the whining to shoo.  Or fuck off.  You are working here.

I've been extending invitations to The Chrysalis Class, a perfect opportunity to make a commitment to whatever you are manifesting, to articulate a vision, to invoke a dream.  Twelve weeks carries us through the summer, this time of sweet distractions.  We need each other to keep us accountable to our process, to encourage us when it takes longer than we'd like, to celebrate our victories.  Within the circle we are stronger, more potent, and our creations take on life larger than our own.

The Summer Solstice Discount is extended to June 29th.  Here, in consistent practice, we are effective. Photo by Lorijo Daniels

Three Ways to Claim Your Truth

This is a blackberry flower.  Yes, I know, they are invasive.  Growing up in southern Oregon I have cut and burned and dug and cursed blackberries.  And in the summer I have licked their juice from my fingers and marveled at their sweetness, too.  

I also learned out of necessity that blackberry is a plant that carries its own cure.  If you eat too many berries, a tea from the leaves will ease digestive insults.  The roots more potently so.  This medicine is readily available.  The blackberry is a generous ally.

Do you see what I just did?  Perspective, that shift.

One Monday night in Magnetize Studio we got down with our truth.  And I mean low low down, to the point where I was dragging mine around in a miasma of despair.  (A side effect of empathetic facilitation is I get to go through everything the participants go through.  Again and again.)

See, the truth starts to look an awful lot like the old story--you know the one, that story you've been telling for years.  The one that says : "It's their fault." Or," why does this always happen to me?" Or any one of the timeless variations of pain.  Damn right, the old story is painful.  And if you are telling it right now, the pain is current, present, seething inside.  What is your pain?  Betrayal?  Lack?  Exhaustion? Instability? Fear?  On and on...we can name our poisons readily.  And we do.

But do we deny these truths of pain or claim them?  And what the heck is the difference there?  

This:  Can we find the gifts our trials hold?
1.  Know the difference between victim and victor. You already know this one, you really really do.  It was the reason Elizabeth Gilbert got off her bathroom floor and launched a bestselling pilgrimage.  The reason Oprah rose to her zenith, Frodo kept walking (and yes I just put Frodo and Oprah in the same sentence), the reason every hero of every film or book falls to their knees with gratitude at the end of the last battle scene.  Endurance requires a purpose, purpose requires belief that you are part of a larger story.  Yes, you.

You are the hero of this story right now.  And not all heroes survive, we know this.  Resiliency is a scientifically baffling quality.  Meaning, possibly, that it is rooted in the individual.  Do you feel your purpose?  A purpose?  Because you have one, even if you don't know it yet.  The hard knocks, Joseph Campbell says those are the call to adventure.  They come hard when the universe has asked nicely for our attention and we didn't respond.  Now, if our truth is hard, how do you respond?  When do you say yes to your purpose, yes to your strength, yes to the test?

When you get up off the bathroom floor and change your story, life does the rest. 2. Remember life is terminal. It all has been for something.  The trials strengthen us.  All you have known in your life has led you to this moment here, this chance, this choice, this receiving.  Yet, still we resist.

Mary Oliver asks us what we will do with our one wild and precious life...  That our lives are but one--as war as we know--and precious might be ready knowledge.  Yet, still we resist.

A few weeks ago I lost an amazing friend and colleague.  Her death was fast and unexpected, her life full and rich and blooming.  Then it was gone.  Just like that.

I miss her.  I dream of her.  I didn't get to say goodbye, or tell her how grateful I am for all she taught me.  This loss reminds me, again, how small our stories get in the face of a true ending.  When we are gone, we are gone, moved on to the next.  So when will we finally claim ourselves, when will we stand into the lives we know we are meant to live, the stories we are meant to tell?

Why not today?  If you knew it was your last, how would that change your action?

What are you waiting for? 3.  "Freedom lies in being bold."
                                        --Robert Frost When I define my values, freedom tops the list, makes all of the others possible.  Freedom of thought is essential.  How can we be free when others are oppressed, goes the question...  I wonder, how can we be free when we continually oppress ourselves?

How many times have you apologized this week for things you didn't need to?

How many times have you berated yourself, put yourself down, doubted yourself, diminished your power, felt sad or scared or uncomfortable because of something someone else said?

Well, the oppression is only half the story.  The truth is, we are always free to think freely.  We just must remember to.

And when we free our minds from the endless cycles of the old story, we may build new stories to live by...for ourselves, others, the world.

A story (from somewhere...I can't remember...anyone?):  If you capture fruit flies in a closed jar they will bump against the lid a while, then settle in slow flying circles within.  When you remove the lid, they keep to the contained space.  They don't know they are free.

Try it.  If you have been circling, aim for up, check out the view.  

The lid is off the jar.

How to stop procrastinating and do the thing you've always wanted to do, right now.

This is a real photo of the center of our galaxy.

How many stars?  How much potential?  The view is overwhelming.  It's easier to watch TV or go out for a beer than to fathom our possibilities in the face of the infinite.

Here is the deal:  in your little life you have some big work that needs to come through you.

And it can't come through anyone else.

Maybe it is spirit work.

Maybe it is helping others.

Maybe it is artistic, musical, literary, plant-based, food-sourced, body-centered...or all of the above.

Whatever it is, you must make it, create it, give space to it. It is your soul's longing, this expression. It is your gift to the world.

But it's not like our gifts issue forth fully formed.

Nope, they may need to be cultivated, practiced, offered a hundred (thousand? million?) times before our lives are through.  Or they may need to be offered once, in an extensive work that lasts all our days.

There are as many offerings and ways to offer as there are stars in the galaxy.

So will you be overwhelmed, or will you begin the journey of discovery that is your life's work? Ceremonial Flower Bath from Magnetize Studio
Photos by Lorijo Daniels To do what you've always wanted to do, you must begin.  We tend to live in an all or nothing culture, which is why crash diets and militant fitness are sold as real options and where we embrace makeovers for every aspect of our lives as a suitable alternative to living.  But to begin living the life of your hear doesn't mean you need to abandon everything and throw yourself to the cosmos.  At least, not yet.

One of the practices I teach everywhere, the most powerful tool I know for transforming our lives, is the simplest:  ten minutes of daily self-care practice.  Practice, it turns out, even at it most minimal whispers in the ears of the universe.  Daily practice of what you love most, of self-care or creative work, daily practice that answers your soul's longing tells the weave of the cosmos that you are committed.  You are ready.

For whatever may be.

Yes, this is simple.  Ten minutes every day.  It is also excruciatingly hard.  Everything in your life that is not in alignment with your vision and dreams will intervene during your practice, challenge you to set boundaries, preserve your self, to say no.  Every excuse you've ever had (tiredness, pain, guilt, worthlessness, poverty, wealth, overwhelm, underwhelm...you name it) will fly to the surface and invite you to abdicate the practice.

So you sometimes will give up and stare at the stars and wonder.

Or you sometimes will kick your own ass in gear and begin again.

But there is a third option, one even crash dieters and fitness fanatics know: Beginning together is power-full Flower bath, shared in Magnetize Studio. Photo by Lorijo Daniels When we gather in community, when we set intentions collectively, we begin to weave a web of support for our vision that is much stronger and more sustaining than our single thread of dream.

The other night I had a dream about circles and circles of Moon Divas and Magnetize Studio classes all over the world.  When I woke I realized my work, the work of my life, in Sacred Art, in teaching, in writing, in Spirited Business, is to help women believe in themselves.

When we believe in each other, we mirror a true and enduring love.  We grow stronger together, see our setbacks as natural, not failures, celebrate our triumphs as universal, to the benefit of the whole.

We need each other.  I'll repeat it again and again.  To stop telling ourselves that it is too hard, that we are not worthy, that our soul's work doesn't matter.  We need each other to hold and love and inspire.  There is enough for everyone, there is always more:  more joy, more heart, more to be done.

The divine stirs the pot, and together, through creativity and community we rise.

This summer, the Moon Divas Chrysalis Class offers another opportunity to collectively begin.  Are you ready for community, for creativity, to practice together, to celebrate transformation, to believe in your own power?

The Chrysalis Class Information and Registration #MoonDivas #ChrysalisClass #laravesta #magnetize

Announcing, at last...

It is happening!  Finally, a live experience for Moon Divas everywhere.  Stay tuned for news, updates, special offers and service packages over the next moon.  For more information and to register, click here.

Three Ways to Set Yourself Free

I've been thinking a lot this week about freedom.  Many of my clients reach a place of expansion and then refuse to push further.  Edges and boundaries are uncomfortable, and expansion means destruction.  When we get big, we blow apart old, comfortable ways of being.  It is super scary, and essential.

The alternative to growth is stuckness.  We deny our possibilities and refuse our wings.  We claim stories that don't serve us, blame others for our situation, cycle again and again around the same set of self-limiting choices. 

I used to put a Keri Smith quote up on the board in my expository writing class: This is the first step toward freedom: 1. Recognize You are Already Free At any moment, in any day, we can make choices that serve us or choices that endebt us to systems and structures not of our making.  Recognizing that most of the choices we make when we feel stuck are out of obligation, obligation to people or patterns that surround us, fill us, but are not actually in alignment with our hearts and minds.

This quote changed my life and my teaching.  I began to approach the classroom with a sense of expectation rather than obligation.  My mantra became, "How much fun can I possibly have today?"  

When we explode our expectations and obligations, even the most routine tasks become opportunities.

Where in your life can you experiment with doing what you really want?

Watch out, it might just transform the way you see everything. 2.  Open to Change Embracing our freedom means making that big leap.  Taking the risk.  Changing the behavior.  Leaving the relationship, the job, the situation, having the hard conversation, revealing yourself.  If you are reading this, you know what I'm talking about.  Everyone has a leap they resist, a ledge that looks so ferocious they'd rather dally at the edge.  Even if it means misery.

Rumi said, "Forget safety, live where you fear to live, destroy your reputation, be notorious."

But when we try, we trust, we land in the arms of a universal presence that only wishes us well, that only wants for us to fulfill our vast potential.  

Since I'm pulling out all of my favorite quotes today, this is another:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people will not feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone and as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."  
                                                                                               --------Marianne Williamson

Which brings me to a reminder of an indelible mandate to live into our freedom: 3.  Remember: This is your life.   Two weeks ago, a companion and advocate of my family died.  This week, an amazing colleague and mentor of mine has died.  When death is near and unexpected we remember a critical truth:

This, this life, this work, whatever we do, it all is temporary.

A last favorite quote, one that runs in my mind daily:

What will you do with your one wild and precious life?"
                                                                                        -------Mary Oliver

Within that question is a freedom and a mandate so big it just might do the trick, just might move us from fear and complacency into the great unknown of possibility.  

So here's an exercise in freedom.  Today, write or draw on a big piece of paper what you would do if you weren't afraid, if money were no object, if you were living what you wanted and wished, if you had all the time in the world, if you had one month to live.  How would your wild and precious life be lived? 

Then do one of those things.  Today.

And each day, each blessed day, do one more.

Claiming the Snakes

Here is a dream:
you are riding in a car
down a dark road
with all the women in your life
your mother
your grandmothers
daughters
sisters
aunties
nieces
friends
ahead there is an accident
and when you pull
over
you see
emerging 
from the wreckage
a deadly
poisonous
snake.
You are 
afraid
but you know 
the snake is a threat 
to your
beloved women
that if you let the danger
go
someone else will be
bitten.
What will you do?
What action will you 
take?
Will you chase the snake,
confront your fear,
grasp it writhing
in your hands?
Will you hold it
even as it bites?
If so
you may find
you are immune to the poison.
If so
you may find
the snake you fear
is wisdom
and the women
of your life
hold a container
to keep the knowing
safe.

This is a dream I actually had six years ago on my daughter's birthday. I have two dots tattooed on the inside of each arm where the snake "bit" me, a reminder that I can--that we all can--face our fears and emerge stronger.

The last six years have challenged me to face fear after fear.  Amid joy, of course.  More than I ever could have imagined.  And the snake bites were important in the journey, a place to pull my attention when my courage was failing.  Sometimes if we can't "do the thing we cannot do" (Eleanor Roosevelt) for ourselves, we can do it for others.  

This year I turned forty and decided it was time to not only remind myself that I was immune to the venom of my fear, but that I could claim whatever caused me pain, claim it as an ally, that wildness.  For the last several years, the snakes came to me, slithering round my arms.  My son took in a ball python, and for hours let the snake show me mystery.

Women and snakes have been equally maligned and aligned through history, as dangerous.

When we claim our danger we heal the rift between ourselves and nature.  When we own our fear, we may embrace what is in equanimity.

The snakes on my arms whisper, "no more hiding."

In this, at least, we are free.

In Praise of Imperfection

Don't fear mistakes.  There are none"          --Miles Davis

I disappear from the online world for weeks sometimes, and it is usually for two reasons:

My parenting life--the creative chaos of three middle school aged children.

Or my creative life.  The necessity of space for making.

For the past few months it has been both.  Plus the ending and beginning of Magnetize Studio seasons, the vagaries of cleaning up last year's messes, the daily work of Spirited Business.  But in the midst of it all I have been creating.  And I am almost done with another creation, The Moon Divas Oracle Deck.  The cards themselves are complete, the book is in draft form.  And again, as with the Guidebook, I'm not sure what to do with what I've made.

Do I self-publish again?

Do I spend rare time and energy seeking a conventional publisher this time, knowing full well I don't fit into any existing models?

Or do I cobble it together DIY style?

The thing about my work is that it is imperfect, not glossy, not professionally acceptable.  This is its draw, a naked authenticity.  The Guidebook has now sold over 1500 copies and is being translated into Croatian and Slovenian.  Its appeal, I truly believe, is its handmade imperfection.
Before clocks and calendars and measured time, we oriented ourselves by cycles.  By the rhythms of nature, the shape of the stars in the sky.  

Before third party employment became the norm, we worked at what we were drawn to.  We apprenticed.  We honed our skills.  Museums are full of imperfect creation.

Museums are full of creation.

What are you making?

Embracing the cycle as a model for time is a return to our personal time, our mythic time, our ancestral consciousness. 

Embracing imperfection as a model for creation is a return to our authenticity, our desires, our humanness.

It is a return to our perfectly imperfect selves.

To Live as Whole: Thoughts on International Women's Day

Two things you should know about me:

I am a mother of three teens and pre-teens in a blended family.  

I've been a mother for fourteen years.  Before I was a mother I was a daughter, a sister, a niece, a wife.  I am still these things, though some of the relationships have changed by proximity, transition, divorce.  But once I became a mother, these other relational titles faded in comparison.

In these fourteen years of motherhood I've moved ten times.  I've been an at home mother of infants and toddlers, a graduate school mother, a full time working mother of school age children, an entrepreneurial mother, a homeschooling mother, a stepmother, a long distance mother, a married mother, a single mother, a remarried mother, a mother of a child with special needs.  I have been supported in countless ways by my family, friends, neighbors.  I have felt, as a mother, beloved.

And I have felt the betrayal of living in a culture where parenting is an addendum, an auxiliary occupation, a "choice", considered unprofessional, not real work.  I have felt incredible anger at living in a time where parenting is something we are expected to do in private, on the side, and where there is a necessity for both parents to work full time for economic survival without any sense of proportion to the time given to the raising of a child.

Parenting, I've learned, mothering, is a full time job.  Whether you are at work or working at home.  

My mothering life is complex.  But so is all of ours.  With varying degrees of isolation and burdens we carry when our humanness, our nature, could be nourished in community, in sharing.  

On this International Women's Day I honor the mothers, everywhere.  In every capacity.  When we can bring our mothering forward into our work, into the fullness of life, and have it acknowledged and accepted as contributing to the good of the world, creatively and professionally, we can live as we are:  whole.

Because I have lived in quite a range through my parenting years, I would say this:  being at home and working full time were for me equally hard.  I would advocate for a totally different paradigm, one where great paying part time jobs that offer both benefits and retirement to parents of any gender are not just normative but culturally celebrated.  We should not ever have to choose between our jobs and our children.  Nor should we confuse the work of the home with being the summit of our creative or intellectual capacities.  This is a both/and universe, not an either/or.
And the other thing... I am a spiritual multigenere artist.  And this looks really weird sometimes.  Forever I've resisted expressing who I am, because it is messy, silly, out there (like, far out there), scary, not professionally palatable.  Even with all of my education and experience, I am still justifying myself, thinking if I just had one more credential I could be who I really am.  Legitimized.

What???

One of the greatest gifts of my work with Moon Divas, Magnetize Studio and my business consulting clients is that I get to notice patterns, stories, ancient and cellular that play again and again through us all.

This is an old story, one I'm sure is rooted in the denial of the feminine, the repression of natural knowledge and spiritual connection with the earth.  It is a story of fear, that if you don't fit the model you won't be heard.  That if you stand out too much you will be cut down.

For women many places in the world we know this is a reality.  To stand up for themselves or for others is a tremendous risk.  Yet, what do we risk here?  Our reputation?  Our livelihood?  Do we really believe that we cannot stand in the power of who we truly are?

Listen, please, sisters daughters mothers everywhere.  You are perfect, right now.  This world needs YOUR unique gifts.  You don't need more credentials, more certificates, more degrees, more experience.  You must do it now, that thing you have been wishing your whole life to get to.  The voice you have been trying your whole life to access.  The art you have been needing your whole life to make.

Be you.  Big, bold, beautiful, messy, silly, way out, scary.  Real.  Let's use our privilege and power to rise up against the systems that cause women everywhere to be at risk.  Let's teach our daughters and sons that their true goal in life is nothing more than to BE WHO THEY ARE, so that they can help others everywhere do the same.

In our wholeness, healing.  In our healing, the mending of the wound that is just a story.  Stories, even thousands of years in the making, can be changed.

Together we make a new story, together, we make the world.

With love--

The Cycle Path

Me at four on East Evans Creek Road in Wimer, Or. Photo by my grandmother, Barbara Rosenlund. This post first appeared on The Spirit That Moves Me blog at Spirit Moving Narrative Consulting.  Thank you Kristen for giving me the opportunity to reflect on my cycles...

This is my fortieth year.

My birthday tomorrow will mark its end.  Forty years I have lived and breathed.  Forty years I have occupied this body, this flesh, this form.

Forty years I have hungered for the blessings of the earth, and found them, and hungered again, and found again.

For cycles, and circles, and spirals have been my teaching.

Cycles, circles, spirals are my honoring.

So forty is a cycle, not a march, not a linear road of time I step along.  Because cycles are simultaneous.  

The dark moon holds the crescent, the waning and the full at once, what is revealed is what is beheld.  The winter holds the secrets of the year:  the dying rot of autumn, the sprouting of new growth, the aching fruit of summertime.  Thus my living holds my ending, my birth, my death, my fruiting and flowering.  For one day I am a child, the next an elder, the following a mother, at last the spirit breathes out of me and this illusion of separateness—the assumption of my culture--is gone.

Honoring, honoring the cycles, honoring this forty, this year, the ending and beginning of what some call youth or middle age.  If I were to walk back along my years I would meet myself, and I can in a way do this. I’ve been a writer nearly my whole life, kept a journal since I was five.  I can peek in and out of the consciousness of my pages and see the child/girl/woman I was.  But this I rarely do. In these forty years my trials and accomplishments are many, and are the trials and accomplishments of many, too.  The carrying, birthing and nurturing of babies, the mothering, the bravery of differentiation, the cohesion of family, the press of daily chores and delights.  The illness, the exhaustion, the grief.  Our lives are common, and when viewed from afar they are lived with stark simplicity.  We eat, we sleep, we eliminate, we fuck, we partner, we procreate, we die.  All in cycles, some light and beautiful, some dark and smelling of decay.  This is the balance that unites us, the animals, the plants and stars.

But what makes us unique, why we must honor and celebrate, each day, each year, is because they’re ours.

You, reader, are the only you.  Your life is the culmination of infinity, of all life macro to micro, operating even now in your cells.  All of history is in you, all of humanity, too.  And this preciousness, this incredibly unique gift, rising from the commonality of all existence, this you will never happen again, not in this way.  Because the simultaneity of time does not mean it is necessarily repeatable.

Mary Oliver asks, “What will you do with your one wild and precious life?”  And I try my best each day to answer, to make an offering of who I am.  To celebrate myself, like Walt Whitman, unabashed in my pleasure at being exactly me.  This celebration is more than candles on a cake.  This is the necessity of ceremony, of gathering together in community and singing not “Happy Birthday” but the unique song of each life we love, each presence we marvel at.  It is encouraging each other to take risks, to bring into alignment and being that totally individualized expression, that signature that only each of us can produce.  That we are is holy. 

That we are is everything and all.