Gilead

I'm sitting here with no makeup on, my hair stuck back in a ponytail, in my batman pajama pants drinking a glass of wine and I feel this burning desire in my chest for honesty. I wish we were sitting face to face in my living room, watching the twinkling lights of my Christmas tree (that I once hated because they are coloured lights and I had a big meltdown in Canadian tire because I wanted the white lights but now I secretly love the coloured ones). I would hand you a glass of wine and I would talk in a way that isn't always possible on a public platform. I just recently celebrated my birthday and for the first year in a while there was no big deal about my birthday. it was another day, a Monday. I had to work, I went to yoga, I went to the recovery group we're a part of at the local church. I celebrated with my husband on Sunday but was too stuck in my head about making everything work that it didn't feel like my birthday. I celebrated with my family on Tuesday but ...

I've hesitated even writing this now because I want to savour the magic, to process it fully, to try and begin understanding the events of this past weekend. But my heart is also bursting with excitement and I want to tell anyone and everyone who will listen. Maybe this will be the first post of many, the first stage of the unpacking, or maybe this will be the only post I write on this particular event. But its a story and its burning in my chest and I need to write it. This past weekend was buti training. I've talked about buti before but for those of you who don't know anything about it you can get a quick intro here . I've written and rewritten this post trying to find the right words but I don't know if there are any. I don't know where to start, where to begin with this story. I wrote before about my buti beginnings, how my first class took my breath away (literally and figuratively) and I knew there was something in this practice for me. Since pract...

I haven't written much about my yoga teacher training. I started in September and by January will (hopefully) be certified to teach 2 different styles of yoga (My 200 hour training is from September to January and I'm taking a second training for Buti yoga right in the middle which will take place next month) I have no words to describe what this experience is like. Aside from just strengthening my own physical yoga practice I have experienced amazing connection and community. Teaching yoga has been a dream of mine since I first discovered the practice way back in high school and it is everything I hoped for and more. This past weekend was my second in studio training weekend. It's also where I got to teach my first round of sun salutations and co-teach a tapestry yoga class with 30 of my best friends. The energy in that room was amazing and by the end of the flow I don't know if there was anyone not crying. It was that powerful, that beautiful. My first weekend of ...

I've listened to Pink's new album on repeat for the last few days and I feel like its one of those albums that changes things. The last time I felt this way about an album - in awe of such a beautiful musical masterpiece, feeling like every lyric could have been written about me, the only thing that speaks to my heart over and over in such a way - was with Paradise Valley by John Mayer. I was in my teenage years and in love with a boy who never loved me back, spending my summer in the mountain town I've loved since I was a child, trying to make myself believe I was worthy of good things. Listening to Paradise Valley still brings me back to that place, every time. It brings me back to dancing barefoot in the kitchen on sunny Sunday mornings believing that I was the kind of girl good things happened to. (I was and I am. Not with that boy, or in the way I expected it to happen, but I did stop running and get my little bit of heaven) I feel the same way about Pink's album...

I went to yoga this morning still in a thanksgiving daze. I thought it was just the fog of returning to a schedule after a holiday weekend and my first day working with a new child jitters. But as I unrolled my mat and we started flowing I quickly realized it wasn't just something I could shake off. I felt like I was moving my body in this armor of cement. Concrete was packed around my bones. Every movement I tried to make felt tight and forced, and even holding the easiest of poses for a few minutes wasn't available for me. I'd only experienced this kind of resistance once before, a few weeks ago when I went to my first Buti class after injuring my ankle. Before that my yoga practice often was full of ease and while sometimes I would cry or rage I would often work through it on the mat and by the end of the class have achieved some kind of release. But these last few times I've hit resistance on the mat it hasn't budged. I could have worked poses and breathed in...

This morning was perfect. One of those mornings I used to dream about, the kind that happen so rarely that when they do I feel like I need a camera to capture every little detail. The perfect cool crispness of the air, how its not yet snowing, how you need to bundle up in a sweater and cuddle under a blanket, how the golden leaves dance and fall to the ground. The smell of apple crisp in the oven, the way the scents of apple and cinnamon, nutmeg and vanilla all mix together and tickle my nostrils. John Mayer on the radio (my all time favourite album of his no less). My coziest sweater wrapped around my shoulders and my bare feet on the kitchen floor. I was made for these mornings. I think ordinary moments like this become extraordinary when you pause, just for a second, and think to yourself how amazing this all is. The present makes the perfect. Another thanksgiving is here and I'm thinking about how much my life has changed. I'm married now, in our own little house. Marria...

A while ago my friend posted a story on her insta-stories about a show she was watching. I don't remember what show it was, or even what the context was but I remember a quote from it (If anyone knows the show help a girl out!) I paused her story, scrambling for a pen and paper to write this down because this quote, and the way my darling friend explained it, left such a huge impact on me. The quote was "You can stay or you can go but you cannot kill me. I won't allow it." My friend then talked about how this quote related to how people were treating her in her life. I've thought about this quote so many times since then, in different life situations and relationships. And these last few days its been on my mind again. I want to tell you about codependent me. The me who, when someone was upset with her, would have scrambled and lost sleep and run herself ragged trying to figure out what the problem was and keep the peace and make people ok with her. The girl w...

Healing isn't a battle, its a romance In March I wrote about death, and grieving, and healing in such a public way it caused a shift in the earth I was standing on. all of a sudden everything I thought I knew, the people I thought I knew, no longer existed. I remember that morning, seeing the results of my vulnerability, and feeling sick to my stomach. I stared at my phone for a long time not knowing what to do. I could hear my husband in the kitchen making breakfast and I knew I couldn't talk to him. I walked out of our apartment building in my pyjamas and bare feet (in March), sat in my car and called a dear friend. I didn't know who I was going to call, who would help me make sense of this mess, and by some miracle my fingers dialed her number and she just happened to have a few free minutes. I don't think I said a word for 10 minutes. I just sobbed in a way that made my entire body hurt. Today is the first day of fall and it feels like grief. I don't know h...

Maybe you've seen it. The article floating around facebook on why we should stop saying marriage is hard. I'll tell you my conclusion on this post in just a few words: its wrong. Marriage is really really hard. I wish more people had told me marriage is hard. But not just told me marriage is hard, but to be honest about marriage and WHY its hard. Because I always heard that marriage is hard and then I got married and one of my first thoughts stumbling through that post-wedding fog into the "real life" days was "Nobody told me it was hard like this" I'd heard that marriage was hard but because he would leave his socks on the floor (which he does) and because we would want to organize our house differently (which we do) or because living in such close proximity with one person is difficult to adjust to (which it is). But no one told me marriage was hard in the way that being in such an intimate relationship with another person rips open your wounds if ...

"Do you know how amethysts are created?" "How?" "Something goes wrong. some kind of wonky thing happens to the quartz... every time a quartz has a radiant colour its because something that wasn't supposed to happen to the quartz happened." ... the imperfection of the thing - that creates the beauty of the thing Glennon Doyle I've had this post tucked away in my brain for a while but didn't know how to begin writing it. I feel a lot of my posts start like that. They start as this little idea and it takes this tiny spark for them to come along and turn into this big blaze. I want to talk about living the dream. I want to talk about feeling like you aren't enough. Somehow I am both of these things. My life has taken me on some unexpected journey lately, and somehow I've ended up where I always said I wanted to be. When I would dream of where I wanted to be back when I was a teenager and the world seemed limitless after I would grad...

It's hard to believe its the end of August. It feels like summer has just started, the heat has just started sinking into my bones, I have just starting laying in the sun to dry. But already the air is too cold in the morning to venture out without a sweater and I can see the sunrise peaking over the trees when I get up in the morning. After 3 years of being together and 8 and a bit months of being married, I finally feel like I'm in a spot where I enjoy our relationship. Not that I didn't enjoy other parts of it before but they all felt like they were just this illusion, like I was splashing in the shallow end of the pool. After so much pain and grief in our engagement season, getting married in a way that didn't feel right to me (it was the only way I could have comprehended then but looking back all the decisions I made were out of pain and not at all what I actually wanted), buying a house and renovating that house and sex coaching and wondering why it wasn't w...

I think the reason people have a hard time describing marriage is that its impossible. not to describe it. I mean marriage itself is impossible. by the time you meet your person the two of you have been nicked, spun, carved, gashed and inflated in a million different ways. and now you're supposed to join these two pieces together like drops of water. I was talking to my friend and life coach this week and she was asking me about my goals for my marriage. I said to her (I wish I was joking but I wasn't) "To not get divorced." we were talking about goals and dreams and the desires of my heart and here I was saying that my goal for marriage was to survive it. sounds romantic, huh? But if you've lived inside my marriage for the past 8 months you would know that not getting divorced is a huge accomplishment. I've found myself texting married friends asking "Is your marriage this hard too?" I've looked long and hard at this issue of marriage. I...

I wanted to die. I tried to die. I thought the only way to escape the pain of my life was to check out of my life. I felt alone, and confused, and used and abused and like no one cared and like I couldn't be myself in this world that was built on making people like me swallow their stories. Maybe you feel like you're swallowing your story too. Maybe you feel like the only way out is to hurt yourself. I know because I've been there. I thought the only way to keep living was to tell my truth on my skin. And when the only way you can breathe is by hurting yourself killing yourself doesn't feel like a choice anymore. it feels like a dimly lit exit sign in a room that is closing in on you. Either way is going to kill you but at least this way you have the hope of something better. at least that's what I told myself. I was tired of the depression and the monsters in my mind and swallowing my truth to try to fit into a society that is built on people faking it. I was...

Ever since I decided to go I've been thinking about leaving. Giving in my 2 weeks notice seemed to trigger something in me, and since then my heart has been heavy thinking about leaving. All the times I left, all the times I didn't leave when I should have. As I walked out those double doors for the last time on Friday I was hit with a sudden pang of missing. sometimes, even when one is leaving for the right reasons, good reasons, the leaving can feel almost bittersweet. Because as much pain and toxic air that was held within those walls, there were also smiles and laughter and genuine care being given. I never expected to feel sad. For weeks, maybe even months, before I left I would run around in circles talking about all the things I didn't like, the ways the system was corrupt, the huge flaws in the way things were run. and then as I walked out those doors I noticed myself crying because this place had taught me so much. that's the way it is with endings, right? ...

"If you want crappy things to stop happening to you then stop accepting the crap and demand something more" Cristina Yang OR "You want to stop feeling like crap? Then stop accepting the crap and do something about it." The words that have been running through my mind for the last few days Sometimes love asks you to do scary things. Really scary things. The kind that make you want to drop this whole healing journey process and run back to the safety of the known. I came to a realization a while ago that if I wanted to live the healing journey I talk about living on instagram with the same kind of courage I admire in others something needed to change. I couldn't shake the feeling. It's been lingering in the back of my mind since the beginning of this year but in the last month or so the thought roared so loud I couldn't quiet it, could no longer ignore it, could no longer pretend this calling wasn't for me. See when you listen to the voice of Di...

"People will disapprove of you. you'll be misunderstood. those who wanted to control you with their words or their rules will come down harshly on you. people you so desperately wanted approval from will raise an eyebrow or look the other direction. this is a part of the great liberation" I wrote recently about finding your tribe. I lost a lot of things during my season of deconstruction, one of them being my tribe. My beliefs were changing, where i fell politically was changing, what i believed about God was changing. And that change was too much for some people. I was shamed, both publicly and privately. people pulled away from me because i just wasn't the same anymore or they disapproved of the choices i was making or my growth somehow threatened them and what they thought they knew or they were convinced i had gone off the deep end. i pulled away from people to, because they just didn't get it anymore, because they were unable to support me on my journey in...

when i started this blog, i knew i wanted to be honest. i'd spent too long filtering myself, not saying things because i was afraid of how people might react. i've spent so long sitting down and biting my tongue and standing in the background because i was afraid to rock the boat. but when i made this blog i knew i was ready to start telling the truth about my life and owning the things that had happened to me (i'm learning there is a difference between owning my story and stepping on the toes of others. i own every single thing that happened to me, and can talk about my own experiences. what i cannot speak to is the other person's experiences, thoughts, motives... It goes back to keeping my eyes on my own side of the road). But something happened as i began telling the truth about my life in such a public way. I wrote a post that ruffled some feathers. It tipped that boat right over. I knew there would be feedback when i decided to post such intimate details of my li...

I've been separated from my body for a long time now. It's strange in a way. How growing up everything can be about your body but you can never really live in it. When I was younger, everything seemed to revolve around what was happening to my body and in my body and what I did or did not put in my body and how my body looked. And I never really lost a sense of having a body, as some women do, but I lost the sense of being connected to my body. I knew I had a body, but it felt like something I had or something that was happening to me as opposed to something that was a part of who I was. I cursed my body, spent hours upon hours wishing it was thinner or flatter or more sculpted, eating and not eating my body into submission. I moaned about countless hospital trips where everyone seemed to scream at me there was something wrong with my body. The message I received about my body growing up was that it didn't belong to me and that there was something wrong with it. I got an ...

I've been thinking for the last 2 days how I wanted to write about this, knowing from the moment it happened that I needed to write about it. I returned to church this Sunday, Easter Sunday. I went because it was Easter Sunday and because we were visiting my husband's family and I felt the obligation of going with family to an Easter Sunday service and the desire to not be left alone in a home that is not mine with no real ritual or tradition on Easter Morning. I also had this voice in the back of my head that whispered "How bad can it be?" To tell you the truth it wasn't that bad. Sure I had theological disagreements with what was being taught from the pulpit. Someone said something that sat the wrong way with me and I smiled and nodded (and tried not to roll my eyes) while taking another sip of my coffee. I bit my tongue in places where, if situation or timing had been different, I might have said something. But the whole time as I sat there, staring at the w...

I've been thinking of this line lately that I heard in a podcast I was listening to on Sabbath. It was talking about how the Israelites left Egypt and then God created this rule that they needed to honor the Sabbath day so that they could get Egypt out of them. I've sat with this idea for almost a week now, knowing I needed to blog about it but not quite knowing where to begin. I stopped attending church a number of weeks ago (I don't know the exact number anymore but I know my 'fast' started the first Sunday of Lent) and until recently I feel like I was holding my breath. Waiting to go back to a church building, to be fed theology that I may or may not agree with, to stomach watered down Christianity that is less about following Divine Love and more about an institution with rules and a set way of thinking and being. This past week I feel like I finally exhaled. And while I left a while ago its taken this long - these many Sundays of observing Sabbath and listeni...