This morning, I received an email  newsletter from my friend, the living-life-with-full-out-audaciousness, Junie Moon Schreiber. Like so many people I know, she takes all kinds of leaps into unknown territory. She inspires me to do the same. The theme was exploring the empty spaces in our lives and deciding what will go into them. A clear and clean white board was the focal point. I think about how many times I have wanted to fill up mine since it was too frightening to imagine nothingness.

Writing, speaking, counseling, ministering, coaching, editing, promoting, volunteering, seed planting for future events and projects…and that’s just in the professional realm.

Working out at the gym, time with family and friends, classes for fun, nature respites, travel,  housekeeping, shopping, paying bills…I’m sure there’s something I’m missing.

When faced with veg time, in the past, I have panicked since it meant coming face to face with….feelings! Sadness, anger, resentment. I have played hide and seek with them for years, thinking that I could avoid them indefintiely. It’s like the little kid who thinks she is invisible because she is burrowed beneath a fuzzy blanket. If I can’t see you, you can’t see me.

Lately, I have been more willing to leave room for what I want to enter. Clearing space around and within me. Emptying out. Tears and laughter.

This past week, I was in the presence of the kind of transcendent love that melted my tendency to hold on to old patterns and self sabotaging patterns. You know how when you issue an invitation to the Universe, it responds in sometimes suprising ways? I had cast out like a fishing line, the desire to get my work out there in the world and have someone as the wind beneath my wings, as I had done for others for many years. I had been in emotional upheaval since last fall and was ready for major shifts to occur. And shift they did, seismic in nature. A kindred spirit from the other side of the country  (Portland, Oregon) reached out and life is irrevocably changed. Tom invited me to visit, stay in his home, meet his tribe of friends and family, (that included four legged furry felines), speak at Zen Garden (his beautifully cared for yard, resplendent with flowers, trees, fruit and veggies) and helped arrange for me to teach at New Renaissance Books. At first, I thought….”What the heck am I doing?” Since the heart attack in 2014, I have been taking all kinds of leaps into a new life. This felt like one of them. Despite understandable concerns voiced by a few people, I felt totally safe. Tom and I have gotten to know each other long distance, as I have been editing his second book titled Taming the Anger Dragon. His first, called The Department of Zenitation ushered me into his world that is filled with spiritual delving. When I set foot in his home a little more than a week ago,  I witnessed that he walks the talk and is constantly going deeper, excavating his own cave, not know what he will find, but bravely facing whatever shows up next.

Paradoxically, the most challenging part of our time together was the most healing. He insisted (as strange as it sounds) that I receive. Allowing a man to take care of me has long been difficult. Still not sure of the root of that emotional infirmity, but I knew that I had the perfect opportunity to release it (hopefully, once and for all). Hours of intense and profound conversation, enjoying the fruits of his labor in his garden (grapes and plums), a flower in a vase on the tray table on which sat my laptop computer each day as I wrote articles and edited his book, nurturing hugs, being served when I wanted to get up and fend for myself. He dared me to get raw and real with long supressed emotions and memories. On my last night in Portland, we co-created a healing ritual in which I purged two decades plus, of memories that I had allowed to plague me. The decadent treat of s’mores sealed the ceremony.

He made me promise (to which I responded with a pinkie swear) that when I returned home, I would allow others to take care of me too.

Now, two days after walking through the threshold of my home that awaited my return, I am not the same woman who had packed her suitcase and headed westward to embark on a new life. The slate is clean, as I have wiped away the residual markings of a past that best remain behind me, rather than being hauled along into my future. Eager to see what I will write on my own internal white board each day.