Category Archives: Health and Long Life

Character, Emotional Health, Health and Long Life, Relationships

Delayed Reaction

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When it comes to preparedness, I’m your boy scout.

I read a verse in Proverbs when I was about 13 – the verse that says, “she is not afraid of the winter, for all her household are clothed in scarlet.” I like red, it’s my favorite color – second only to black. I like sale shopping. So, yes, consider my household clothed for the winter. I like to shop ahead, make sure my / our needs are covered so there is no frantic last-minute push. We are prepared for any emergency. At any given time, there are three little black dresses in my closet. A hiking pack, extra water, PFD and swimsuit stay in the car. My purse holds an emergency sewing kit, measuring tape, wallet knife, and dimes for the potty and payphone. Dimes for the potty? Now there’s a historic artifact.

Anyway, I try to be prepared. But that can also make me overconfident. Yesterday I took my kayak out on the river for the first time this year. I’ve had it on the roof of the car just waiting since April. My kayaking bag is in the hatch. All I really had to do was switch to my swim shorts and drive away from the house and 22 blocks to the put in. A ten-minute drive. Thirteen minutes untying and unloading the kayak and I was in the water blissfully paddling upstream, against the current as usual. Three quarters of the way to my turn around point I realized something: No sunscreen. Blue sky. Sunshine. Swollen river. 80 degree weather. Immediately I was thankful for a sit-in craft – at least the tops of my feet won’t get burned. I took a few more powerful strokes and remembered something else. I usually put moleskin on the thenar webspace between my thumbs and forefingers. Do I feel blisters coming on? Both moleskin and sunscreen are in my daypack – back at the car. So much for my preparedness image.

In much the same way COVID-19 did not catch me unprepared. I was not out of toilet paper. I had food for a couple weeks already in-house. I even had a collection of bandanas to use as masks. Who cares about social distance? I was new in town so there was no one to miss. No reason to repine and whine. I was used to hiking alone and living alone and I’m an introvert. 

But the delayed reaction now, fourteen months later is about to do me in. During the long months of quarantine I practiced piano, I practiced guitar, I learned to play bass, I took some classes by Zoom, but I am woefully out of practice at this social thing. I’m fully vaccinated as are most of those in my would-be peer group, but there is no place to go, no one to see, nothing to do. 14 months later it is time to scramble and catch up with all the things I meant to do when I was new in town. Otherwise I, even I – the loner – will become lonely and blue. Intentional friend-making and job-hunting, inserting myself into the lives and worlds of others has never come easy for me. But delayed loneliness is no laughing matter, folks.

Health and Long Life, Music and Theatre, Musical resolutions, The Rules, Uncategorized

Free Music

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Yesterday, I did it. It’s taken me 14 months, but I finally played an original, complete, coherent, eight bar melody on the public chimes at the top of the sky steps at Ft Lewis College. You may well ask why it has taken me so long. After all, college music theory III required a complete Sonata of three movements plus coda in less than a semester’s time -half of which time was spent learning the rules governing a sonata. My sonata, named something prosaic like Praxis Sonata, critically acclaimed by the entire class, garnered me only a B on my final report card. A B!  In music! Even then, I knew my instructor was generous. Why? Because he knew something my classmates did not know. I had failed to analyze the piece – to mark in the jots and tittles right on the music. And though I worked frantically with my pencil on the bound and presentable copy whilst other students performed ahead of me, I had not completed the analysis before the final bell. 

Give me seven giant, floor-mounted windchimes at the top of a trail and two attached mallets, what could possibly be difficult? I’ll tell you what: They never gave me the rules. I have spent a year trying to figure out the theory of the thing. Not diatonic. Not arranged in ascending or descending chronological order. One of them is even out of tune with the other. Seven. Not six like guitar strings. Not a major scale. Not a mode. Nada. Not an Aeolian harp. I discovered the chimes early in March 2020 and played them at each passing so my ear could make out the pattern. No pattern developed. By Labor Day I could play two bars of the French Marseillaise, but after that, the available tones gave out. I pondered what I knew of world music and puttered about making incidental riffs whenever I hiked in that neighborhood. Most of the hikers and stair step masters ignore the presence of the chimes. They wear motivational earbuds so what do they care? Once, and one time only in the entire 14 months, I saw a child walking away from the chimes. Otherwise, the chimes are my oyster and mine alone, I guess. I’ve heard oysters need irritation to compose pearls. I was plenty perplexed.

With March 2021 came the advent of distanced outdoor concerts downtown every Friday. On the walk home, it seemed only natural to take in the art gallery in my path. And there I saw them; miniature, hand-held tone bars in sets of five. What were they? Freetone bells. Freetone bells made by the same artist responsible for several outdoor musical installations around the community including parks, pre-schools and Ft. Lewis College. Not one of the five tone sets is just like any other. They are all free. Each sounds its own unique pitch without regard for harmony or the chime hanging next in line. 

Do you know what that means? No rules. You are free to strike any chime you like in no particular order. But me? I’m still bound to the definition of music as organized sound. I’ve spent a good deal of time and research trying to get to know these chimes. So far, I’ve got them organized into 8 bars of passable melody. I’ve still got to figure out how to work one outstanding chime into the mix, but six out of seven isn’t bad – it’s kind of like my life. Here’s to the future; with or without rules!

Character, Emotional Health, Family, Health and Long Life, Travel

Presumed Introvert

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He was the one who went straight to the car after Sunday evening church service, often taking one of the children – whichever was most sleepy or squirmy – with him while her mother chatted with friends, attended to choir business or emergency young peoples or women’s board meetings. Oh, she had heard him be noisy, coaching from the sidelines without benefit of in-ear amplification; training basketball players who were running gym laps, calling instructions from the bench as needed. But for as long as she had known him – and that was all her life – she had presumed him a quiet introvert who favored being alone.

When she planned for a long road trip to visit family, she opted for out -of- the- way solitude, quiet airbnbs that suited her need to be away from the crowd. It was near the end of COVID-19. Old people had been vaccinated. Hope was beginning to dawn. But still, out of caution and scrupulous attention to rules and suggestions, she pursued contactless check in, single family lodging, places where families could cook their own food, avoid crowded diners, stay in their own bubble and not brush shoulders with strangers.

But Dad didn’t see it that way. On a preliminary trip to Capitol Reef, just before the second wave of COVID, while bnbs were barely making a comeback, but doing it with contactless check-in, it worried him that he never saw the hosts. Once the long road trip commenced, he inquired at every stay for the names of the hosts, worried at their absence, began to suggest stops for meals at this roadside café or that diner. A high point for him was exiting the interstate somewhere in Idaho and breakfasting at a restaurant with an intriguing name and a chatty server. Violia was of late middle-age and knew how to joke in the old-fashioned way trading cliches and rolling with whatever eccentricities came from the lips of an 88-year-old man with half his hearing intact. He remembered this as one of the highlights of the trip.

On the other hand, highlights of the trip for his 66-year-old daughter and millennial granddaughter included staying at isolated mountain cabins, lighting wood stove fires, and hiking alone to rainforest beaches. He was gleeful about having met a host accidently on a gravel walkway whilst taking out the trash. He loved to see people. He loved to see faces – even if they wore masks – but especially if they didn’t. He reveled in talking with strangers though he saw and heard only half of what they did and said. 

In reflecting on the trip, she realized that for many of the miles and days, she and her dad had unwittingly been at cross-purposes. While she had been industriously planning social distance and solitude, he had been deeply longing for close contact and society – not just with the family members they were carefully trying to visit, but with people, strangers, hosts, waitpersons, the vast outside world that had too long been withheld from him – most lately by a pandemic, but cruelly for the preceding years while he and his invalid wife became increasingly shut-in.

This was so clearly brought home to the daughter – she who craved solitude and independence – on the return trip. In Leavenworth Washington, in lieu of the desired secluded single-family cabin with kitchen, she booked an old motel turned Airbnb, complete with – well, it wasn’t complete at all-it boasted only a microwave and dishes were washed in the bathroom sink. Her dad inquired as to the name of the host. Jessica. She reminded him this was a contactless check-in and they would not see the host.

Whereupon Dad replied philosophically, “Well, miracles do happen.” 

Character, Emotional Health, Family, Health and Long Life, Spiritual Well Being

It Helps To Have Been a Mother

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The rooster began before dawn at 5:19. She had not yet fallen back to sleep after the second trip to the bathhouse was completed at 4:29 am, but it didn’t really matter. Seven hours of restorative sleep had already fortified her. She was only lying awake to contemplate her blessings. Lodging in a tiny house, 288 square feet of authentic repurposed 100 -year -old farm furnishings, every square inch meticulously decorated with cotton doilies, linens and hand-sewn quilts. No sign that says, “do not touch.” Every indication that she is to wrap up in the quilt, pull out the exposed springs on the crib-sized trundle daybed and luxuriate for as long as she likes in her 650 down sleeping bag purchased for her birthday last year and brought along on this road trip for such a necessity. 

Any moment now her daughter will pop in from the farmhand bunk and make use of the hand-crank coffee grinder and organic coffee beans. Once the coffee is perking, they will gather eggs from the hens and have a fine omelette. Rain gently taps on the roof intermittently. Dad still snores softly from the quilted queen-sized bed nestled under an eastern stained glass quatrefoil window and concealed by an antique secretary bookcase now commissioned as china hutch. The bookcase is identical to a pair from her father’s childhood home, one of which graces her brother’s well – appointed professorial study while the other has use at the home of a cousin. It is 7:14 am and still Dad sleeps – an amazing feat for a man used to rising early on a farm, used to getting up before dawn to feed the horses and break the ice in the watering trough. But then, he has been up twice in the night for trips to the bathhouse. Trips on which she accompanied him because the path is unfamiliar and very uneven. Trips on which she, at the age of 66 and allegedly in her prime, reaches out to him and steadies him like she would a toddling child. When your parents age, it helps to have been a mother. The bathhouse has every luxury from clawfoot tub to heated toilet seat. The only thing resembling the old farm outhouse is the aged barnwood paneling the walls and floor. It takes time to enjoy these amenities when you are 88. It also takes time to wash your hands and get back into your coat. While he washes his hands and gets back into his coat, she slips behind the partition and makes use of the heated toilet seat for herself. A wise woman goes at every opportunity. She, too, might want to sleep until the sun is up!

Last night when Silvergirl pulled into the driveway about 7:00 pm the three travelers were greeted by a cacophony of bleating goats, honking white geese and clucking hens. By the time she and her daughter enjoyed a pit campfire and headed for bed the hens were cozily perched in their custom aviary and the frogs and toads in the pond were loudly singing an evening serenade. The amphibians were at it again briefly this morning once the rooster alarmed them. 

What a beautiful morning! Such is the life in Christopher Robin’s  Writer’s Cabin, next to the 100-acre-wood, on Whidbey Island, on a working farm – when she is not the one working!

Character, Family, Health and Long Life, Hiking and outdoor beauty, Metaphor, River, The Cabin, Travel

Dad For The Touchdown!

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He was a guard on the varsity basketball team, one of five starters on the first ever Warrior, the first senior class, the first Central High School – at that time housed in the WPA building on 29 Road. At 5’6” he weighed 125 pounds. He was sharp and attentive and rightfully earned the nickname “Live Wire.” They were a scrappy team, they exercised sportsmanship. That was 71 years ago.

He was the coach at Olathe Junior High and then Clifton and later Bookcliff Junior High He was well-loved. He coached a winning church basketball team. That was in the decade known as the 60s. As a player or as a coach of multiple sports he understood two important principles: Keep your eye on the ball. Tuck that football into you so you don’t fumble.

We’re taking a stupendous road trip, this 88-year-old erstwhile athlete and I. We’re enjoying the vast farmland and calculating the worth of cattle herds and mammoth irrigation systems in Wyoming and Idaho and Montana and eastern Washington. When I was young, and yes, this is a trip of memories, we always counted the cattle on a thousand hills and claimed them for Dad’s ranch. After all, he was raised on farms and ranches and he understands the value of each haystack and each cow. 

When we reach Montana, I am smitten by the mountains and conifers and lakes and rivers. Though I like to think of myself as finally in my prime and I also pride myself on averaging three miles of hiking or walking each day, we are not traveling alone. My 88-year-old father and I are accompanied by our own private wilderness guide and martial arts devotee in the person of my 32-year-old daughter. She drives, and does our cooking for us, and is there to pick us up if we fall. I am the planner and navigator – a baton I have inherited from my father – although he still figures the gas mileage and total cost and suggests routes.

Night three of our road trip, we stayed in a beautiful alpine-like cabin. I packed and unpacked. Andrea chopped wood, lit the fireplace, and cooked. Dad sat in the recliner and did the books and composed an email to my brother on his laptop. Yes, we are all internet savvy and each hauled along our essential Macbook Pro for various uses.

Next morning I readied myself for a morning exploration of the exquisite mountain property; the pond, the spring, the evergreen trees, the creek-sized river running through the lower regions. Dad announced that he would go out and walk around the cabin while I was out. The ground and steps from car to cabin were uneven and slick with an overnight skiff of snow. Dad has limited vision with his coke-bottle glasses and macular degeneration. I pondered for one quick moment and determined to accompany him on a walk first and then return him to the safety of the recliner before I meandered further. 

We walked down the decline. He wanted to do it himself. Without help. He didn’t want to take my hand lest he fall and pull me down. I showed him how to use his walking stick with one hand and place his other hand on my shoulder. We walked down to the pond with ease and stood contemplating on the tuffets of grass at the bank. The grass was the color of golden wheat, not yet greening for the spring; the buds on the weeping willow trees and cottonwoods so chartreuse they look neon yellow against the pine trees; the bare stems of the infant willow switches a brilliant red. The day was chilly and frosty like an old-fashioned root beer mug placed in the freezer overnight.

We turned and headed our laborious trudge back up the hill, always moving forward – sometimes at an imperceptible pace. Scattered about our feet were ostrich egg sized pinecones – newly fallen and still red brown. I spied a perfect one. Stooping, I picked it up for closer examination but fumbled it off my cold fingers. Dad snatched it out of the air, cradling it securely to him like a mini football.

“Well look there,” he said proudly with delight. Once again, it’s Dad for the win!

Emotional Health, Health and Long Life, Spiritual Well Being

Happy Quarantinaversary to me!

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Today is March 16, 2021. Happy Quarantinaversary to me!  On this day in 2020, I rose before dawn as is my habit, wrote a little, ate my oatmeal, showered, dressed, made my bed and prepared to sally forth and land a job in music, art, or history – just a little something fun to supplement my retirement, make new friends and get me involved in a new community. First stop on my list was the library where I would print off résumés and network. Before going out the door, I googled the library to confirm hours of operation and found the library; CLOSED. Shut down. The library, for heaven sakes. The sanctuary of writers, researchers, the homeless and the itinerate. I have not been in a library for over a year now. I turned instead to electronics and music, solitary hikes and writing.

In the 17 days immediately preceding March 16, I had completed my move to Durango, settled in a Victorian apartment new to me, made two trips to Grand Junction to visit my parents, purchase a vehicle and coordinate details with my daughter. As of March 16, all commerce came to a halt. I dug out my wardrobe of bandanas – currently known as face masks. I commenced making chalk marks on my front porch; eleven days, twenty-one days, thirty-days. And then the lawn sprinklers washed away my record of confinement. The streets of bustling, resort town Durango were deserted and quiet, fit for walking and window-shopping.  My only retail therapy was food. I found the grocery stores more crowded during senior hours than at other times. We are, after all, the baby-boomers. I shopped only when absolutely necessary.

I chose to receive the quarantine as a gift and a blessing. I savored the solitude, the uninterrupted time to write and sing and play music. True, I re-read every paperback book in the house – and all the books I had been purchasing and storing on my phone. I re-watched old DVDs. More importantly, I attended to my physical health by hiking every trail I could find.

I did what I had always wanted to do but never had time. I finished and published two books- rereleased a children’s book long gathering dust. I learned to play the electric bass. I sang with a virtual choir. I built a website for my online bookstore. I did more than survive. I am content more days than not.

Though it has been a year in which I lost my job and my mother – neither to COVID – I have found a new normal; a more stress-free way of being. I want to keep it that way. Nevertheless, today, on this anniversary of my quarantine, I have an appointment for a vaccination. Do I think the vaccination is some kind of magic potion that will fix everything? I hang my hope no more on receiving a vaccination than on wearing of a face mask, yet I participate willingly in both – because they are a comfort and encouragement for those around me; a symbol of hope to all who long for freedom; that we are doing our best. Tomorrow, may we do even better. I will live – and live well – as long as I am supposed to. And then, may I die in a beautiful place!

Character, Emotional Health, Health and Long Life, Musical resolutions, Write

Fear of Embarrassment

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She has a problem. It is a subset of fear and it is fueled by fear of rejection. It is fear of embarrassment. She knows where it came from. It is inherent in her personality type, her enneagram model; and it was actively and intentionally worked on by those closest to her as a child. Don’t embarrass your family. Let me help you be perfect so you will never have to feel embarrassed.

Fear of embarrassment is not a very good choice of fears for a writer – or a performer. When you write you bare your soul. When you perform, you put your entire heart into it. When you are a singer / songwriter, God help you. Every breath you take, every song you sing, every tone you articulate is one more embarrassment waiting to happen. 

I cringe, you cringe, we all cringe, when we hear a less than stellar music performance such as The Star Spangled Banner in 5 keys – in the space of two minutes or less. Yes, she is embarrassed for them. And she is embarrassed for herself. She wants to do unto others as she would be done to.

As a writer, she doesn’t want to write anything that will embarrass herself when she reads it later – or embarrass others. On the other hand, she loves to make people laugh. How would this fear of embarrassing herself or others fly if she was, say, a stand up comedian? Apply that thought to writing and you see what a predicament she finds herself in. 

How can you call out wrongs, injustice, false beliefs, unfair actions, as a writer if you fear embarrassment, rejection?

I published a book – and promptly withdrew, almost became flat on my back with anxiety for five days. I quaked with the knowledge there were scenes in that book where I exposed myself – even though it was fiction. There were chapters wherein I said some things with which my closest friends and family might disagree philosophically. My motivation for writing was not to call out or accuse people, but to find my voice – to speak for others who might yet be tongue-tied. Yet I quail and continue to cower at the embarrassment and potential backlash.

I went to an outdoor concert the other night. A secondary singer experienced some pitch challenges. I cringed. But worse than that, I fell back into my protective cloak of judge not lest you be judged. So, I pretended that I didn’t notice. Why? Because that could have been me. I so hope no one is looking or listening when I mess up. Let me ask you this, how is that working for you? How can you ever market your product or your song if no one is listening or looking? How can you correct your mistakes and get better if everyone pretends you don’t make any mistakes?

The singer at the outdoor concert did something very helpful – he sang with confidence, without flinching. And that is exactly what she must do; plunge in with eyes closed tightly; make a big splash whether it is a flawless dive or a belly flop. Some years her word for the year is courage, other years confidence. One year it was a motto: Onward through the fog! A year like 2021 may require a complete sentence:

There is no time like the present to teach an old dog new tricks.

Emotional Health, Goals and Dreams, Health and Long Life, Hiking and outdoor beauty, Mountains, Spiritual Well Being

Dating the Wilderness

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Have you ever vacationed in a cute little quaint town and thought I could live here? Perhaps you idly checked real estate listings. You looked at job postings for your profession. And then you realized that half the charm of the place is that you are on vacation. The novelty is that you don’t live there. You don’t have to rise with your alarm every morning and go to work. 

She found that often, when she put down roots and lived in a location, she overlooked its beauty. Why? Because she was so busy working and being dependable and trying to fix things and well, just engaging in basic survival, she didn’t have time to enjoy the place, to explore, to seek out the beauty and revel in it. Happy are those people who can live and love and recreate-daily- in the town they call home.

She loved to go to the wilderness, to climb every mountain, to see beautiful places and feel the sheer power of Nature. She loved the solitude, the being alone. She loved jagged, sheer cliffs and sandstone monoliths, and columbine and evening primrose and penstemon. She loved to feel the health and vitality that came from spending every day and quantities of minutes outside, breathing deep, testing her mettle, shedding her worries, actually enjoying herself. But did she want to live here in the wilderness permanently?  To settle down, build a brick and mortar structure and try to make a home and scratch a garden out of grey granite? Maybe what she really wanted was to go steady, to see the rocks and trees and red sandstone and river and night sky and 360 degree views every day. She didn’t want to become fixed in one place. She wanted to be in the great outdoors every day. Yes, she loved the wilderness and the wilderness loved her back, with wildflowers and solid, dependable rock. The wilderness expected nothing of her, and she took nothing but fresh air and inspiration and beauty and memories. She took a few chances. She explored with inquisitive caution.

Mostly, she just wanted to date the wilderness – and she wanted the dating phase to last forever.

Character, Emotional Health, Goals and Dreams, Health and Long Life, Leadership, Relationships, Spiritual Well Being

Glory!

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“Make it a great day!” I said as she headed out the door to a construction gig job – her way to bridge the gap until her wilderness seasonal job commences again. “Get all the glory!” she called back. “glory” there is a movie by that title-and it wasn’t just about winning. “Glory!” it’s what the little old ladies used to shout in the Pentecostal leaning church I grew up in. Glory – somewhere between joy and the spiritual feeling of being lifted right into the seventh heaven. Glory – the emotional reward that comes from pursuing a righteous cause, from living life with excellence and integrity, giving your all!

I love the recent story circulating of the two world class runners, the one where Kenya is leading by several yards, but quits, thinking he has crossed the finish line. Spain follows, but, instead of shouting, “Yes! I am the victor!” and charging toward the finish line, the second-place runner grabs the leader and ushers him across the finish line.

Because. Because. What glory is there in finishing first only because your rival stumbles? What glory was there in injuring Nancy Kerrigan in order to clear the field and advance Tonya Harding?

“If you compare yourself to others you will become both vain and bitter.”  What happens when you become bitter? Destruction is what happens. So, if you annihilate everyone better than you, does that mean you are the best? What glory is there in winning if it is only because the better man didn’t show up?

I have never forgotten the story of two swimmers as recorded in a high school literature unit. The first was a steady-eddy, meat and potatoes, diver the coach could always count on to finish strong; the other an amazingly talented athlete-the sort of shooting star that delivers a spectacular win. While the two boys were rivals with regard to placement on the home team, they were teammates at district competitions.  The Talent would almost always finish first; and Steady Eddy would bring home a second or third.

The inevitable day came when Talent met his Waterloo at a big regional competition.  Steady Eddy took one look in the face of his teammate and saw that Talent was frozen in fear. Now! Now, was Steady Eddy’s chance to grab the first-place medal. He was prepared. He was relaxed and confident. His homeboy rival was petrified. Yet, instead of giving Talent a “tough luck bro,” look and striding ahead to the diving board, Steady Eddy commenced a game that had spurred them on to excellence in practice rounds at school. It was ridiculous. It was childish. It was Narnian in both genius and innocence, but they forgot their fears and made joyous fools of themselves – and they won again. Gold and Silver. Only this time our steady-eddy homeboy got the gold. He was so intent on pushing his teammate higher and better than ever before that he himself excelled. 

When you build a gymnastics pyramid, you gotta stand on someone’s shoulders or someone has got to stand on yours – maybe both. We are all circus performers, we are all gymnasts, we are all swimmers and divers and runners. Let’s get each other across the finish line, shall we? 

We all need a worthy opponent – a worthy rival – what none of us need is a cheater or someone who cheers when we fall – let us not weaken ourselves by gloating over an enemy. 

What glory is there in that kind of win? When you win only because someone else stumbled?

No, we spur each other on to greater and greater victories.

Break a leg!

Make it a great day!

Do your best!

Give it your all!

Get all the Glory!

Emotional Health, Health and Long Life, Holidays and Traditions, Relationships, Spiritual Well Being

Valentine’s Day Approaches

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Love makes the world go round. Love is all you need. Love conquers all.

Love is a basic need as surely as food and shelter. But what of the wall flower who has never had the chance to dance? What of the woman or man who has tirelessly put others first, giving and giving and giving love with no reciprocation until his or her well is empty and dry? What then? Does their world cease to go round? If all she needs is love, yet her emotional wallet is flat, and no one is handing out alms, how broke is she? Maybe he fought valiantly, believing love conquers all, but he lies slain by the lack of it, no reinforcements in sight. What then?

Valentine’s Day approaches. Some of you are going to have to learn to love yourself. For me, this has been a hard concept to grasp, but here is what I have concluded: Good religion teaches me to love my neighbor as I love myself.  If I honestly endeavor to love my neighbor as myself; which scenario results in more love to my neighbor; loving myself less? Or loving myself more? Further, I must learn to love myself unconditionally; to understand that I am not perfect, that I make mistakes. Once I understand and love myself unconditionally, I am able to extend that love to others.

Is it possible to declare, “I will love myself (and therefore others) unconditionally,” and just do it? Maybe it is different for different people. In any case, I find that the decision to engage in selflove has to be made over and over each day. Consider the main character in my work in progress:

She had to remind herself to engage in selfcare. To do it consistently until it became a habit. In the same way, she had to remember to love herself – unconditionally, lavishly, until it became a habit – until she became so loving that she was besotted – a soggy, full sponge – so that anytime she was squeezed, or pressured, or pushed, a little bit of love dripped out. 

Valentine’s Day approaches, are you feeling wrung out? May the only thing that comes from you be love.

May you love yourself lavishly and may you love your neighbor as you love yourself.