I have spent so much time thinking about all the things I could make this very first blog post about, feeling all the propitiousness of launching my site at the dawn of a new decade. I have spent mornings and nights paging through the stories in my head, revisiting mountaintops and the faces of strangers that moved me as I passed through this place or that place in my wanderings… I have thought about the images I have taken throughout the years, that have become proof of my bearing witness. I have paged back through soft pink sunrises, luminous blues of dusk, moonrises, wet green jungles, fish glimpsed just below the surface and the silky slippery clarity of mountain streams. I have a list in my mind of stories, so many stories… Joe the beekeeper telling me about his home in Spain as we floated together along a river in eastern Guatemala; Lorenzo, a kid from Naples who I met in a bar carved out of a rock face in a fjord on the Amalfi Coast, wearing nothing but boxer briefs and white nike hightop sneakers, cigarette dangling out of his mouth as he mixed my bright red Spritz and who later encouraged me to “just jump” as I stood poised but hesitating on the cliffs overlooking the sea which shimmered in the light of the full moon…
I imagine the stories will be told as things unfold but I needed to choose a place to start, and of course I couldn’t start by telling ALL the stories right away, because I would never come to the end of that telling. So I will just Begin, Somewhere. Because really one can begin anywhere…
I took what can maybe be called an extended personal pilgrimage this last year, starting with a journey to Italy last summer. That eventually landed me in the Italian Dolomites, where I ended up walking 70 miles through the mountains alone. On the third or fourth day I entered a place within myself where everything got quiet and I was able to see all of my thoughts as if I had stepped outside of my own mind. I noticed clearly when my mind began to worry about this and that, little things like where was I going to go when I got back down the mountain, and how would I get there, and where would I stay when I got there and so on and so forth. I was able to observe the stress that rose in my body when these thoughts came through, and to see that I was the one creating my own stress and that there was no need for it. All I had to think about really was waking up each morning and walking. And to ENJOY that journey while I was there, because when would I have the chance again to be in this glorious place? It was a practice of being fully present in the moment, and to surrender the worries of the future to the future! When I got down the mountain I would figure out the next step. And then the next step. And so we go in this life, step by step, one foot in front of the other, doing our best to cherish every moment in this precious precious life.
It was step by step that I made this journey which ultimately led me most importantly to self love, without which I think I never would have been able to publish this site at all, and certainly not a blog sketching out the details of my own vulnerabilities to unknown audiences. In finding love for myself I am able to love the world more fully, and to show up in deeper ways for others.
I think about all the ways in which we hold ourselves back, mostly out of fear; fear of imperfection; fear of showing our vulnerabilities and being judged for them; and fear of finding the courage to show up and then not being good enough. I feel ALL of this. I remind myself daily that just because we have room to grow does not mean that who we are and what we have to offer now doesn’t have value exactly as it is. I remind myself that we must love all the parts of ourselves and sometimes that means sitting with the broken things, with the unfinished things, the chaotic things, the times we lost and grew from our losses, the times we stumbled and kept going. I do my best to stay away from comparison as I am told it is the thief of joy.
To be human is to be beautifully imperfect.
Thanks for joining me in the beautiful chaos of this ride.