Epic Friends & The Light of Summer

As a woman from a paradise island I'm asked from time to time where I go on vacation. While it varies, it often involves visiting friends and family.

I somehow survived mercury retrograde and that last doozy of an eclipse, while traveling to California to celebrate a wedding and visit with special humans.

As an aside, I feel like May in its entirety was a bit of an ass kicker. Clients, friends, colleagues, people whose work I follow, all seemed to have similar sentiment that we were “in it” so to speak. Astrologer Chani Nichols described it as a kind of purging to the psychic compost heap.

All that to say, if you've been going through it, feeling all the things about life and this crazy world. It seems we're not alone.

Anyway, I got off the rock! (And boy was that an experience ).

Looking around my own community I can most definitely see the changes that have occurred over the years. But returning to the land that held my graduate years I couldn't help but notice all the changes there too, even in just the last 5 years. These life altering landscape changes appear to be happening everywhere, and I’m finding it a little disorienting.

My experience was one of visiting old familiar places where memories came flooding back, the rush of a past life returning, only to be held against the stark contrast of the differences that are there now. In place. And in me.

Is that what it means to grow older? Or are we just living through a quickening of accelerated transformations revealing much more distinct contrasts?

Maybe it's both.

The joy of the recent visit was the remembering of times past, and the beloved faces, voices, and laughter of longtime friends now.

I got to laugh with epic women I've known for 20 years. I got to look at their kids and appreciate them as sisters, women and mothers. I got to climb a mountain and overlook Tahoe with a creative soul sister and a badass of self reinvention. I got to walk along rivers. I got to cry into my lunch in the loving presence of a fellow visionary creatrix (the eclipse energy has it’s way with me you could say).

I got to watch my dear friend with his big man hands hold his month old baby daughter, while I played with his toddler. I got to sit in the sun outside my sisters house on a lavender farm where all I heard was the birds and the wind in the ponderosa. I got to sleep in a private bungalow on the coast where I walked the beach and watched birds by day. And each night celebrated the love, partnership and marriage of a sister so deserving of epic love. I got to dance and laugh and dance some more.

There was other stuff too, but this is what really mattered. The people. The friendships. The relationships that have been grown over time.

I flew home really savoring and appreciating that I am the kind of person that has developed long lasting relationships and been deeply connected to the most incredible humans throughout my life. What a gift and a blessing.

Returning home was an exhale of deep gratitude. I love where I live. With every cell of me. We are in a love affair and it felt so good to return to Her slow pace and tropical embrace.

Since, I've continued to reflect on my relationships and tune in to the ways I can strengthen connection and community as an act of love and vibrancy in the world. One small way I do this is randomly reaching out to appreciate someone, to let them know I love them, to tell them they make a difference in my life.

(Try it. It feels so good to spread some love in this way).

I've also been tending to my creativity. I am painting and collaging. Singing a little too. And after a long writing dry spell I am finding my words again, and feeling the stories and poems that are nudging forward.

And so, as we turn toward the fullness of the season, the bright expansion of summer:

I hope you lean in to your longtime relationships with gratitude and appreciation, and that you play together in joy.

I hope you grow creatively curious and stretch into mediums you don't usually use, just to see what happens. Even if that's simply to make a mess. Just let yourself stretch toward something new. Because you can. Because you're alive. Because now is as good a moment as any to give it a try.

And of course, maybe most importantly, I hope you hold yourself tenderly and talk to yourself kindly.

We are in rapidly changing times. On any given day, it can feel like too much, so let yourself be human. Feel what you feel. Ask for support or just take a time out. Nature always heals so when you don't know what else to do, turn toward Her.

Wrapping you in my aloha and appreciation. Thank you for being you and being here. It makes all the difference.