Holistic Life

“Did you ever stop to think, and forget to start again?” ~ A.A. Milne

SOOOOOO… it’s been just over 3 months since I last wrote.

To be honest, I didn’t actually set out to take this much of a hiatus.  I meant to take a little downtime away from the pressure of writing every day, some time to regroup and refocus, and…. well….

3 months later, here we are.

It’s not that I didn’t WANT to write sooner.  Any number of times I sat down, pulled up my handy word processor – sometimes, I even managed to pick the quotes to begin and end the piece – and then I stared at the screen for a while, either completely blank or completely frozen, until I shut the program down and slunk off guiltily to do something else.

I don’t know what it is about starting over that makes it so difficult…. Starting never seems to be a problem, but having to re-start… soooo not my thing.

Many of us have this problem.  Just ask anyone who’s ever fallen off the diet wagon over the holidays, or tried to get back on track with their exercise program following vacation or after houseguests have come and gone…

You wonder how something that was once second nature and an easy priority has become so difficult and effortful…

I think some of it is that the newness has worn off.   For those of us who are “NP’s” on the Myers-Briggs scale, we love a new idea, the possibilities of it, the adventure.  By the time we get distracted or knocked off track, we’ve usually discovered the daily grind of our grand venture and the fact that, yes, we DO actually HAVE to do the details.  So coming back to a task doesn’t have quite the joie do vive that beginning something new does….

This explains why I have about 35 projects lying around the house, all somewhere in process and none of them completed.

In this case, I think there’s also been an added component.  The further I got away from writing the more I felt pressured to come up with something REALLY GOOD when I started up again.  Whatever it was had to be poignant, moving, meaningful, the writing poetic, yet succinct – Pulitzer material all the way around!!

No wonder it took me 3 months to start again… oy!

But lately, the Universe seems to have taken to pretty much bashing me upside the head as encouragement to get back to writing.  The “signs” have been coming fast and furious, each more obvious and hard hitting than the last.  This level of “violence” has only been necessary, you understand, because I’ve spent… oh, let’s say…. 2.5 months or so, ignoring the much more gentle and loving signs that writing is somehow part of my own personal movement forward as well as being a good tool for connecting with HHP’s greater community and forwarding my own personal purpose in the world of helping people to recover authority in their own lives…

What can I say?  I’m stubborn… and a little thick, sometimes.  I’m pretty sure that at one time or another all of us have avoided taking action in a direction that we know full well would set us free.  I personally will avoid taking an aspirin for hours in the face of a blinding headache even though said aspirin has been proven over and over again to be 100% effective…  stupid, right?

But in the end, as always, the Universe wins and here I am – contented just to start and not worry so much about being brilliant… at least not THIS time…

To be honest, it’s a complete and total relief to be here.  It feels good to be tapping away, the rapid-fire sound of productivity, the slick texture of the keys comforting beneath my fingers.  In a way, it’s akin to the feeling you get when you are finally underway again on some long journey.  The stop and the rest were nice – but forward motion towards the goal….

Bliss!

“We should all start to live before we get too old. Fear is stupid. So are regrets.” ~ Marilyn Monroe

“I keep turning over new leaves, and spoiling them, as I used to spoil my copybooks; and I make so many beginnings there never will be an end.” ~ Louisa May Alcott (Jo March from Little Women)

“If a culture treats a particular illness with compassion and enlightened understanding, then sickness can be seen as a challenge, as a healing crisis and opportunity. Being sick is then not a condemnation or a moral judgment, but a movement in a larger process of healing and restoration. When sickness is viewed positively and in supportive terms, then illness has a much better chance to heal, with the concomitant result that the entire person may grown and be enriched in the process.” ~ Ken Wilber

One of my New Year’s resolutions is to have more faith and trust that, even in the face of things seemingly going wrong, ultimately my greatest good is being looked after.

This, like all good resolutions that push us to grow beyond our limitations, is easier said than done.

As anyone who practices intention setting will tell you, when we ask for opportunities to work on something – whether it be our concerns with money, relationships, tolerance, body image, etc. – what the Universe gives us are challenges which bring up all the false beliefs and fears we have around the issue.

It’s a little bit like being a snow globe… there’s all your “stuff” – which you knew was there, lying on the bottom of your consciousness, mucking up the works – and now it’s flying through the air like so many flakes in a snow storm.  You can’t pretend it’s not there anymore – and remember, you don’t want to – you just have to deal with it.

UGH

In healing work, we often talk about a “healing crisis”.  It seems counterintuitive, but sometimes things have to get worse before they get better.  If you’ve been sitting on your foot for the last hour, and it’s gone numb because the blood flow has been restricted, the process of getting your circulation back before your foot falls off is going to include all the “pins and needles” tingling, pain, and cramping that go along with feeling and flow returning.  Your foot wasn’t troubling you before you stood up; it feels measurably worse now as it returns to health, but, as painful as it can be, we know that it’s necessary.

We’ve been through the process before; we know how it turns out.  So we breathe, and groan, and hop up and done until the icky sensations subside, and then we go on with our lives without fear of gangrene and amputation.

It’s the same process in psychological healing.  Unfortunately, there’s no set time line or regulated mile markers that we can take note of as we pass that tell us how much longer we’re going to be in the pins and needles portion of this journey. It can be terribly difficult when we’re awash in the sea of emotions, fears, and bad beliefs, to hold the bigger picture – that you wouldn’t be feeling so deeply if the work wasn’t working.

Breathing, journaling, connecting with trusted loved ones, sharing with outside observers who can offer their objective observations on the process… these things aren’t luxuries but necessities.

They are lighthouses and rescue crews, helping to navigate the rocky waters of our becoming.

Me… I’m going to practice faith in the absence of knowledge, trusting that by walking this road, by constructively confronting the roadblocks that come up, I will reach a point where my surrender will be rewarded, which will, in turn, make the journey easier next time.

Breathe.

“Be like the bird that, passing on her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing that she hath wings.” ~Victor Hugo

“Happiness is an unexpected hug.” ~Author Unknown

“Everybody needs a hug. It changes your metabolism.” ~ Leo Buscaglia

I was back in rehearsal this morning – a one time only (most likely) appearance as Calpurnia in one of my best friend’s productions of Julius Caesar.

It was early – very, VERY early by theatre standards – and there were more than a few people who looked like they’d rolled out of bed not too long before. I’ve already talked about how much I love people first thing in the morning when they are fuzzy with sleep with a foot still in the dream world and inhibitions dialed down, so imagine my pleasure when I was greeted with hugs by many of my fellow actors.

Ahhhh… BLISS… giant, full body, all embracing, agenda-less hugs.

Theatre people tend to be more touchy-feely than most… I’ve always joked that if anyone ever sued anyone else for sexual harassment, the whole industry would grind to a halt. If you do it right, acting is a little like doing psychology from the inside-out. You have to be brave and comfortable enough to be vulnerable, which, in turn, breeds intimacy and familiarity with your cast mates.

Especially if you spend lots of time with them at the crack of dawn.

I’d forgotten, being out of the business, how good this casual intimacy feels… how good it feels to be greeted in body.

(I wonder if the banking business might be less cut-throat if the CEOs started their meetings off with a great big group hug… )

I remember being told by my college roommate, a stage manager, how her high school director had banned “A-Frame” hugs on stage. An A-Frame is what you get when you stand 2 feet away from someone and lean in to hug them around the shoulders without actually touching bodies at all. The director was insistent that no one really hugs like that…

One can understand why high school students, with all those rushing, surging hormones complicating everything, might feel compelled to A-Frame… but it seems to me that we have become an entire society terrified of physically connecting. We’re so riddled with sexual harassment suits these days that everyone is afraid of touching. I know teachers in the public school system who long to hug hurting students, but fear the repercussions too much to risk it.

We are starving for connection, and there is nothing more visceral than touch…

According to the experts, the leading cause of Failure-to-Thrive in infants is lack of touch; how is the lack of physical contact affecting all the rest of us?

All I know is that I am MUCH better for having gone to rehearsal this morning… thanks, guys!

“Hugging has no unpleasant side effects and is all natural. There are no batteries to replace, it’s inflation-proof and non-fattening with no monthly payments. It’s non-taxable, non-polluting, and is, of course, fully refundable.” ~Author Unknown

“When you look at yourself from a universal standpoint, something inside always reminds or informs you that there are bigger and better things to worry about.” ~ Albert Einstein

Tonight, a mogul skier broke Canada’s long winter gold drought… he did it by skiing the fastest and by sticking the most complicated jump.  When they interviewed him, he said that he’s done it for Canada, but more importantly, he’d done it for his brother.

His brother has cerebral palsy and spends most of his time in a wheel chair.  Yet, still he skis and never complains, nor does he let his disability stop him from achieving.  Not only does he help his brother to keep things in perspective, but he inspired him to gold.

I once watched a man, his body terribly twisted, a pronounced limp slowing his gait, make his way to the end of an EL platform.  His pace was so slow I could easily have traveled the same distance multiple times over…

By the time he reached the end, I was weeping.  I was completely overcome by the amazing beauty and tenacity of the human spirit he revealed to me.  I carry him with me to this day as a reminder of what is possible if we are determined.

I’m sure if he had known what he inspired, he would have thought I was nuts.  He had obviously made peace with the pain he lived with every day.  He was doing nothing more than I was- going about his day.

It’s really all about perspective, isn’t it?  To me- he was noble… to him- he was just doing his errands.

How much do we take for granted every single day of our lives?  We take for granted that our bodies work as they are meant to, that our minds are able to see, comprehend, decipher, connect… we take for granted the amazing fact that any of it works at all – that it truly is miraculous that the sun will rise tomorrow on Life on this small blue planet, in a galaxy far, far away (from somewhere anyway).

If we could just hold the big picture, how small would our problems become?  If we could keep a universal perspective, what could we achieve?

How many golds could we win?

“You can become blind by seeing each day as a similar one. Each day is a different one, each day brings a miracle of its own. It’s just a matter of paying attention to this miracle.” ~ Paulo Coelho

“It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it… and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied… and it is all one.” ~ M. F. K. Fisher

“By starving emotions we become humorless, rigid and stereotyped; by repressing them we become literal, reformatory and holier-than-thou; encouraged, they perfume life; discouraged, they poison it” ~ Joseph Collins

It’s the night before Valentine’s Day… a Hallmark created holiday meant to be a celebration of Love, of the people in our lives we hold nearest and dearest…

Unfortunately, for a large part of the population, it ends up being a time of sadness, of great grief and hungering for the elusive companionship they don’t have.

Longing has its place in the human experience. “It seems to me,” said novelist George Eliot (nom de plume for Mary Anne Evans), “we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them.” By hungering for more, we continue to move forward.

But today, so many of us are not merely hungering, but starving… our modern world has created a famine. We yearn for… we don’t know what….

Spiritual connection, human contact, emotional security, tenderness…

And like Rapunzel in the tower, we are waiting for something outside of ourselves to supply the nourishment our souls are crying out for…

But neediness so rarely draws others to us in order to feed our longings – at least not in any healthy way.

So we must begin to feed ourselves.

The first step is identifying what it is that we are hungering for – is it sensuality, companionship, intimacy, excitement, growth, knowledge, challenge, or something else?

The second step is starting to think about how to get the need met.

We’ve spent so long believing that someone else is the solution to our problems it can be difficult to think outside the box, to believe that we can be our own knight in shining armor. But if we want to achieve happiness and contentment, we have to be brave enough to put our own feet on the path…

Longing for sensuality may begin with a massage, companionship with joining a running or book club. Longing for growth, knowledge, or challenge might start with taking a class…

No, it probably doesn’t seem as satisfying as having prince or princess charming sweep into your life and answer all your yearnings with their presence or one wave of their hand (or their AMEX), but satisfaction begets more satisfaction, and we draw to ourselves what we are.

So if we want The ONE to show up, maybe we have to find contentment, to find our own balancing point. Maybe in order to find The ONE we have to BE The ONE.

We have to be the Love we want to see in the world.

“Those that go searching for love, only manifest their own loveless ness. And the loveless never find love, only the loving find love. And they never have to seek for it.” ~ D. H. Lawrence

“To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the making of bread.” ~ James Arthur Baldwin

I love summer in Chicago… the sun beating on my body, the wind in my hair, cool water on my hot skin.  I love the smell of the lake, the crack of a bat, the pinks, oranges, and deep purples of the tulips lining Michigan Ave…. sipping a cold drink on a tree covered patio while a gentle breeze tickles the back of my neck and hot tunes trickle out from the jukebox…

I could be perfectly happy to spend the rest of my life in sandals, cut-offs, and a tank top…

The sensual pleasures of summer in Chicago are ecstatic… and I am fed by them.

So what’s a hedonist to do in February?  Especially if you’re single (fussy, my grandmother will tell you) and not interested in ending up as big as a house before the crocuses make themselves known again?  The opportunities for sensuality are definitely limited…

Oh sure… there’s the joy of sliding into a warm bed on a cold night, the taste of hot chocolate drunk outdoors, the smell of new snow, not to mention the feeling returning to all your limbs after standing on an EL platform or at a bus stop for longer than usual thanks to new budget cuts… (sigh)

But there’s just not as much pleasurable sensual experience to be had – at least in my opinion…

So today, I pulled out the big guns.

Workout, hot tub, steam room, herbal wrap, massage… ahhhh…

Feeding our senses is critical to our humanity… From a spiritual perspective, I keep coming back to the idea that we have bodies for a reason.  They are our vehicles on this plane of existence – the method by which we make contact and connection. Teilhard de Chardin  said, “You are not a human being in search of a spiritual experience. You are a spiritual being immersed in a human experience.”

Sensuality is the human experience.

So get out and get some!

(I got a recommendation if you need one… )

“Your body needs to be held and to hold, to be touched and to touch. None of these needs is to be despised, denied, or repressed.” ~ Henri Nouwen

“When tears come, I breathe deeply and rest. I know I am swimming in a hallowed stream where many have gone before. I am not alone, crazy, or having a nervous breakdown…. My heart is at work; my soul is awake.” ~Mary Margaret Funk

It seems like transition is in the air… lots of people are feeling unsettled, out of sorts, “betwixt and between.” There’s a sense that the ground beneath their feet is no longer solid; it’s a little bit like being Bambi on mental/spiritual ice…

I wrote back in December about the process of metamorphosis in which a caterpillar becomes a butterfly (Holistic Life: Butterflies Are Free). When a caterpillar enters the cocoon, its body actually breaks down into its basic chemical building blocks from which the butterfly is then formed… kinda like taking apart your Lego ferris wheel in order to use the pieces to build the Eiffel Tower.

During a lifetime of work, Polish psychiatrist and psychologist, Kazimierz Dąbrowski* developed a theory of personality development he called Positive Disintegration. (This sounds like a non sequitor – bear with me)

The Theory of Positive Disintegration states that “psychological tension and anxiety as necessary for growth.” Each time we are about to shift or move into our next stage of consciousness, our current beliefs “disintegrate” – just like the caterpillar’s physical body. “Truths” that have been the bedrock of our present state are no longer certain. We experience a breakdown of all that we have “known” as the energy and knowledge used to maintain them is essentially cannibalized to build our new self.

No wonder transition is so uncomfortable! And interestingly enough, the discomfort itself serves a purpose.

Human beings, in many ways, are essentially complacent. We would much rather stay in the place we know – even if its painful and unhappy – than move into the unknown – no matter that the unfamiliar space holds the possibility of joy and fulfillment. Positive Disintegration holds that the distress we feel in the process of change actually propels us onward into our new reality. Things grow so uncomfortable where we are that we are compelled to move forward and complete our transformation. It’s essentially the equivalent of forcing a baby to walk on its own by heating the wall up to red hot… it can be painful and abrupt, but it gets the job done.

Just like childbirth comes with work, pain, discomfort, and, ultimately, a lack of control over the process, so too, the birthing of our Selves can be distressing. Plus, unlike childbirth, we have no idea what we will have when the birth pains end. When disintegration starts, we are on an express train going I-don’t-know-where.

At these times, what we do have control over is our thoughts about the process. Instead of becoming overwhelmed by the discomfort, we can choose instead to have faith that our pain has a purpose for our ultimate good, that, with work and care, with gentleness for ourselves, we too can grow wings… We just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other, through the pain, through the anxiety, trusting that there is an end within our grasp…

and don’t forget to breathe… and remember that there are people who will walk beside you through the process – all you have to do is ask.

“I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it.” ~Harry Emerson Fosdick

* For more on Dąbrowski, Wikipedia has a great intro… click here!

“So much has been said and sung of beautiful young girls, why don’t somebody wake up to the beauty of old[er] women?” ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

Have you watched Meryl Streep lately?  If you’re lucky, you’ve seen It’s Complicated or her amazing performance as Julia Child in Julie and Julia, or, better still, both…

Because she’s gorgeous.

In both these roles, she is so comfortable in her own skin that she’s able to fully let go.  She embodies such joy and love of life that I couldn’t help but be swept off my feet by her grace and beauty.  Whoever decided that women don’t get better with age?

I know some phenomenal older women who give me hope for what I might become someday, women who’ve taught me what it means to be true to who you are…

After her first session, on her way from my room to our chiropractor, one of my clients, a grandmother of three, swept past me wrapped in a sheet, her bra swinging from one finger.  “I just couldn’t stand to get dressed,” she said to me with a wink, “I feel too marvelous!” We giggled madly, and off she went.

My mom, after a lifetime of feeling unathletic, has taken up hiking and kayaking in the last decade and now she revels in her strength and capability.  She also went back to school to become a teacher, graduating with her Masters 2 years after I graduated with my undergrad, and has been known to go swimming in her nightgown… ☺

And then there’s Sara, our Executive Director and Life Coach Extraordinaire, who is the epitome of poise and eloquence, and is one of the kindest, most generous people I know… and this spring she’s finishing a degree and is easily the best, most committed student I’ve ever seen.

Somewhere along the line, someone convinced us that “letting it all hang out” means being… sloppy… as if owning and making no excuses for who and what we are is akin to having spent the night drinking vodka and Redbull till we’re blind.

But Meryl, my mom, Sara, my fabulous client, and all the other wonderful, wild women I know all prove that there is nothing more gorgeous than a woman who is holding back nothing of herself, who is giving her all, and taking life’s challenges and opportunities as they come, with style, and humor, and no apology.

Oh yeah, I know who I want to be when I grow up…

“A succulent wild woman is one of any age who feels free to fully express herself in every dimension of her life.” ~ Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy (SARK)

“The Depth of your Mythology is the Extent of your Effectiveness.” ~ John Maxwell

I love mythology. My mother’s love of stars awakened in me an insatiable hunger for the stories the constellations represented, which in turn led me to study the myths of any culture I encountered. I am always amazed at the similarity between stories told by peoples thousands of miles and milleniums apart.

I mentioned Pandora a few blogs ago… she is still part of our cultural consciousness, but for all the wrong reasons. Here is the myth as we know it:

• Zeus, infuriated by the theft of divine fire and subsequent gifting of it to man, chained Prometheus to a rock where he was doomed forever to have his liver eaten out by eagles. But Prometheus was immortal and could not die. His body repaired itself by night, only to be devoured again the next day

• But this was not punishment enough for Zeus. Mankind, too, had to pay – for not only had Prometheus gifted humans with fire in order to make tools, but he had also lit a spark within their minds that they might grow and learn. Zeus feared that the race of man might someday rival the gods

• So he gathered the Olympians together and between them they created… woman. Aphrodite made her beautiful; Athena gave her wit and charm, and Hermes… Hermes filled her heart with curiosity

• They named her Pandora – All-Gifted- because each of the gods had contributed something of themselves to her

• Zeus gave her to Epimetheus, who, upon seeing Pandora, forgot all the warnings he had ever received about accepting gifts from the King of the Gods. With her, Epimetheus accepted a box, which he was warned never, ever to open

• All went well… until Epimetheus left his bride at home alone. And then Hermes’ gift reared its head. Try as she might, Pandora could not stop thinking about the box… what could be in it that it must be forever sealed?

• The need to see for herself grew in Pandora until it was a physical pain. At last, unable to bear her curiosity any longer, she threw open the lid, and when she did dark, horrifying, demonic shapes leapt skyward, scattering to the wind… many more than could logically be held within the confines of so small a chest…. These were famine, fear, toil, prejudice, war, dischord, and disease; all the griefs and hardships that have plagued mankind ever since

• At the last moment, Pandora found the strength to slam the lid closed once more, locking within its walls the last of the god’s tortures… Hope

• Hope… which would forever be man’s one comfort against the sea of misery unleashed by Pandora.

This is the myth we know. A thousand year old story that is still relevant today because of the advent of writing. But it is also a conqueror’s myth…

One of the most insidious ways of undermining a conquered people is to corrupt their cultural stories and spiritual symbols. For example, the apple, serpent, and tree of knowledge were all symbols of the Goddess’s love before corrupted by the Father worshipping warriors who defeated her followers.

It was no different in ancient Greece. The gentle matrilineal, Goddess worshipping culture was defeated and their mythology turned against them.

This is their version of Pandora:

• The Great Mother loved all of her children; so much so that she sent to them her Kore, or earthly embodiment. The people called her Pandora, for she brought to them all the gifts that they would need to survive and thrive. She brought them abundance, vision, creativity, intuition, self-esteem, communication, and loving relationships. All these gifts, when combined, created such balance and hope within the people that they cried for joy.

The gifts of the original myth became the demons of the second; they are the shadow side of the Goddesses’ generosity. The promise that we, as human beings, have everything we need within us, became the admonition never to venture inside, to ignore the still small voice that drives us to seek more and obey the outside authority…

But what neither story denies is that, at the bottom of it all, when the demons are unmasked and the gifts recovered, when we clear out the box, what we are left with is Hope.

Maybe it’s time to come back to our roots?

“Hope…which is whispered from Pandora’s box only after all the other plagues and sorrows had escaped, is the best and last of all things. Without it, there is only time. And time pushes at our backs like a centrifuge, forcing us outward and away, until it nudges us into oblivion.” ~ Ian Caldwell

“It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.”~ Joseph Campbell

“Nobody loves me.  Everybody hates me; I might as well go eat worms.” ~ Camp Song

It’s ten o’clock and, quite frankly, I’m glad this day is almost over.

It started badly – anger, anxiety, frustration, feeling disrespected, let down, and as if my time didn’t matter – all at an hour entirely too early for what was supposed to be my day off.

By the time the whole issue was resolved, I was 45 minutes late for a commitment that I’d made and I knew I was in trouble.  Anyone coming close as I bolted to my appointment would have been treated to a just-under-my-breath muttered tirade about my own worth.  Occasionally, words and phrases would burst forth.  A snarled, “It’s not FAIR,” being the most common.

Thank god I had a reprieve while hanging with my god kids.  I giggled, drew flowers, tickled, hugged… I really thought I was beyond my morning.  But after leaving and going home, I just… tanked.

All that anger and ire had resolved itself into this stagnant puddle of grief that just seeped into all my thoughts… oh yeah, the pity party had begun!

This doesn’t happen very often.  My usual demeanor tends towards being fairly upbeat and terminally positive.  (I actually had a boyfriend once who, in the midst of an argument, threw at me, “What do you think it’s like for ME living with someone who’s so CHEERFUL all the time??”)

So on the rare occasions when I find myself in this place, all I want to do is take a vacation WITHOUT MYSELF.  If I could find a way to unscrew my head and leave it’s whiny, crabby, self-pitying self behind and take the rest of me to the beach, I’d do it… ugh

I’ve been reading Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies again, and, at the height of my pathetic-ness, I remembered something she said.  She was talking about forgiveness and about letting someone off the hook.  She actually pictured herself reaching up, and taking the offending party down from where she had hung him for punishment.  And that’s when I knew…

I needed to let myself off the hook.

I’m human; I’d had a really not fun morning that had flooded my body with all kinds of unnecessary chemicals and left me emotionally wrung out at the end.  If anyone had come to me in a similar situation, instead of being angry and disgusted with them, wanting to get as far away from them as possible, I would pet them and soothe them and help them to feel whole again.

So, I took myself to my favorite used bookstore and bought a fluffy novel by one of my favorite “beach read” authors.  I went to the gym and ran myself clean; then sat in the steam room till my body and heart went soft again.  I bought a beautiful salad, and came home to watch one of my favorite tv shows.

I forgave myself…

And, to quote one of my all time favorite cranky bitches, Scarlett O’Hara, “After all…. tomorrow is another day!”

Thank God