Bye Week 5.

I have had almost three weeks to write this post, and I am writing it today -the morning prior to my 6th session with Rachael- and technically, I am late (I aim to write a piece every week).  I could have tried to write this piece a week ago, or even two weeks ago, having thought a lot about the various changes and events that have transpired in that time frame, but it was not until yesterday that it was actually ready to be written.

​​It would seem that: 

the writing has a life of its own. 

(Yes- this photo is legal, No- I do not know this young lady, and Yes- I think it is hilarious.)

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With patience and presence, it is effortless.  When I try to rush it, I end up modifying my work for days, until I am left with a finished product that is 180 degrees different from where it started and has taken me three times longer than necessary to complete.

Conveniently, this has also become a swell metaphor for life;
with intention and patience, the right thing will show up at the right time.

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​I am pretty sure that this is something that I have always known to be true. 
Right along with the awareness that patience is a virtue –which- I have yet to fully cultivate.
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​Regardless, I am very sure that –patient or not- all life works in cycles; 

Wake, activate, sleep.
Plant, harvest, eat. 
Expand, contract, expand etc. 

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Throughout the course of a human life in particular, I believe the cycle to be something like this:

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​1.  Work really hard to recover or remember some key piece of      information about our soul’s mission.  (expand)

2.  Forget what we learned and return to who we were without said information.  (contract)  
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3.  Repeat step 1, re-remembering how much better we feel with said information, synthesize, and re-incorporate into our daily lives with the intention of not forgetting again.  (expand)

​If we are awake enough to see it, this cycle brings us the gifts of perspective, and the security of reinforcement; our awareness of our souls and ourselves getting more solid the more we remember, or re-remember…or re-re-remember…you get my point.

​I have watched this cycle play out time and time again, but the recent increase in my personal understanding of its importance is completely based in and upon my work with Rachael.  Thanks to her, and whether I like it or not, I can no longer deny that there IS a divine order to everything in the Universe.  It is as if the scales have tipped juuuuust enough in favor of trust (a repeated reminder from Rachael), and the belief that life is going to turn out better than I could have ever imagined on my own.  

At my core
-in the space that Rachael has helped me to clear internally-
it feels like I am remembering who I am. 
Or, more so, like I am RE-remembering who I am.  

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​Over the weekend, I finished reading the book ‘Wild’ by Cheryl Strayed; a personal account of her 100 day, 1100 mile hike along the PCT (Pacific Crest Trail) in an attempt to heal the ‘giant hole in her heart’ brought on by the untimely death of her beloved mother.  It was (and is) an incredibly moving tale of personal triumph, unwavering intention, trusting your instincts, and the incredible depth that we possess as human beings for both utter despair and gratitude.  Admittedly, I had to spend half of my reading energy, trying to ignore the impulse to sell everything I own, ditch my life, and run off to the woods for 100 days…my ego assuring me that THAT is certain to solve all of my problems.  

Those thoughts did not shock me.  

It was the sudden stream of thoughts that followed which came as a surprise.  At some point in my reading, I suddenly stopped, looked up, and thought to myself (as loud as a person can think):

​‘Oh my God! 
​I’m on my own PCT!  I’ve been climbing my own mountain, on my own journey, and I’m almost DONE!!!’

​​BIG sigh.

​Allow me to explain:

For starters, I believe that the significance of Cheryl’s choice was in the decision to dive into an adventure with little knowledge of what she would find, and no instigating force other than a feeling telling her that it was what she needed to do.  Granted, she had lost her mother and her life was in shambles, but the choice to hike the PCT was really just that; a choice.  And she made it because something inside of her was telling her to do it; to engage with this great big ‘thing’ looming in the distance, knowing that the only way to get to the other side was by going through the middle.

So, she did.  And ​just like Frank, she did it her way; with more crap than she needed, less crap than she ACTUALLY needed, and a lot of help from a lot of strangers who showed her a lot of love in a lot of ways that she had never before experienced.  She did her best to plan, and her best to overcome the many, MANY hiccups along her journey that she could never have planned for.  She lost the trail, got lost ON the trail, got sidetracked by inclement weather, faced death, dehydration and various other obstacles, lost most of her toenails, hiked for miles in shoes made out of duct tape, and lived to tell the tale.  

Today, she is super happily married with two kids and an awesome career.

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Perhaps more importantly, at the end of her journey, she was no longer:

The woman with the giant hole in her heart. 
She filled it. 
​She knew it was there, she knew how to fix it, and that is what she did.

 And that is what happened; 
She got full.​

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I want to be full.

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​Several years ago, led by a feeling telling me that it was what I needed to do, I made the choice to move to St. Louis.  I was not suffering the loss of a loved one (thank God), and it certainly was not hiking with bears and rattlesnakes and popping off black toe nails, but it scared me none-the-less.  Figuring out how to survive in a brand new city, moving in with a man I had never spent more than 5 days at a time with, and moving to a town where I had no friends, no family and no notion of how to get anywhere frequently reduced me to the trembling fits of a five year old that lost his or her parent at the grocery store.  

​However, day by day and gig by gig, I managed to figure it out.  I met people, who encouraged me to meet other people.  I networked.  I auditioned.  I got lost…a lot.  I worked for $10 an hour, on my hands and knees, re-finishing a bar top for a restaurant that was in business for less than 8 weeks.  I borrowed $400 from my parents so that I could buy a crappy green Chevy Cavalier for $800 with no air conditioning and an exhaust pipe that was held up by a wire coat hanger.  Her name was Polly; the little green monster, she lasted me almost a year, and I cried as I watched her get towed away to her final resting place. 

I told people that I could do things that I had never actually done before…
​and then I did them.

​I remember literally shaking the first time I accepted a gig as a choreographer.  My heart racing as I taught 45 unsuspecting high school students an entire musical’s worth of choreography that I had made up in my kitchen. 
Learning to call myself a choreographer was almost as scary as actually being a choreographer, and the same thing happened when I became a director, a voice teacher, a gainfully employed professional actress, a studio owner, a manager, a consultant, and the list goes on…
When I broke up with my boyfriend and had no idea where I was going to live…                                               
When I moved back in with my parents for 8 months so I could ‘help them’, knowing deep in my heart that it was the other way around…
And all of the other endeavors I undertook that pushed me FAR beyond my comfort zone.
In each and every one of those moments, I would have been SO much more comfortable on a trail, in the middle of nowhere, with every single thing I owned strapped to my back…but I wasn’t.  I was with my fear and I was smack dab in the middle of it. 

 Every.  Single.  Time.  

​When I decided, in the face of my biggest and baddest dragons, to move back to New York City…
I stood with my fear. 

Leaving New York in search of something I couldn’t quite name, and then returning to New York led by the same feeling that took me away in the first place which means I probably have NO clue what I’m in for;
THAT scares the shit out of me. 

Feeling like the ground is shifting beneath my feet and I don’t know if something incredible is coming up or if I am going to fall in…
that feels scary as heeeeeeeell.

Every day, discovering how true it really is that;
‘the more you know, the more you realize you don’t know’. 

​Scary.  

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​It is scary to risk what feels like an entire life for an indeterminable outcome.  

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​Why the fear has been there -or even the fact that is has- is of little importance to me now.  What IS important to me is the realization that all the while, while I have FEARED my fear, and been AFRAID that it might stop me from doing any number of things –that it might, literally, kill me- it hasn’t.  I could always feel it, threatening to tornado my ass with every new choice or unknown outcome, but that’s all it ever was; a threat.  It never destroyed me.  It never even stopped me.

Since leaving New York in 2013, I have been on an incredible journey. 
​My own PCT, if you will.

​​Now, I am back in New York, where it all began. Back in New York,
after spending several years gathering bits and pieces of myself along my journey (step 1),
then, promptly forgetting most of them as soon as I got here (step 2),
​only to re-discover –hopefully- all of those things that I forgot that I knew…with the intention of not forgetting them again.  (…step 3.) 

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​Last weekend, my re-memory
​became my re-ality.  ​

​Last weekend, in New York City,
​I re-remembered that I like to hike. 

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​Scratch that…I LOVE to hike.  I love to be in nature…in the open air… enjoying the scenery and the wildlife -be it the top of a snow capped mountain, or the top of a really large hill that overlooks the Hudson River and the West side Highway (see above)- I still love it.

How I forgot this, I have no idea.
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It’s probably because there aren’t a lot of mountains in NYC… but I’ll be damned if they don’t do their best.  And while I’m not sure when my next BIG hike will be –I am currently fantasizing about hiking the Grand Canyon at New Years- I have chosen to train regardless; to put heavy weights in my backpack, and hike the treadmill.  To find the hilliest parts of Manhattan, and run them over and over again.  Not because I know I will be somewhere with mountains any time soon, and not because it’s the most tolerable form of exercise I can muster,
but because I remembered that it’s what I do.  I hike.  I climb shit.  It’s part of my soul.

​​I remember now. 
And I’m back in New York City, which leads me to believe that 
-perhaps-
I am at the end of a very long journey.

​​And I am working with Rachael, which leads me to believe that I am headed out on a NEW journey.
I don’t know exactly what it will look like, but if the last couple of years are any indication, I would venture to say that it will be nothing like I planned, and everything that I don’t even know that I need.
​
It feels so very good to remember.

​Doesn’t it?

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