I’d asked my roommates for a little reflection.  It’d been an interesting few weeks on the dating front.  I’d gone from nursing a broken heart, to not wanting to date anyone, to playing around with online dating, to realizing that I value the shared experience of a long-term relationship, to finding myself in a love triangle, on a date with a straight woman, considering dating women living in other states, and falling for a wonderful, but unavailable woman – all as I prepared to continue my personal journey on two other continents.  It was a bit much.

My poor roommates.  I love them so very much.  They’ve watched me through all of this.  And the roadblock comment seems pretty right on the mark.

I’ve been identifying my warning labels, sharing my limitations, and holding back the parts of me that might overwhelm.  Or pushing them forward as a kind of test to see if they will.  It’s like when I get someone a present.  Or make a fabulous dinner.  I lead with an apology. “They didn’t have what I really wanted to get you, so I got this…” “The onion isn’t exactly what I’d wanted, but I hope it’s okay…”  It takes the sting away if they don’t’ like it.  And it’s the same for me.

If I don’t give my full self, and I’m rejected, the other person isn’t rejecting the real me, so it’s not so bad.  If I overwhelm the person on purpose, I’m getting what I expected, so that’s not so bad either.  If I throw up a roadblock, or make sure there’s one in the way, it’s a bonus if I can find a work-around.  But it’s only what was expected when it falls apart.

I’m done with that now.

So here’s my statement to the universe:  I am ready.  I am ready to accept into my life adventure and passion and abundance.  I am ready to unleash the full me and to welcome with open arms all of the beauty that comes.  I am ready.  For a life of radiant love.  For a life of wonder.  I am ready.

Oh, and also thank you.

There’s something that happens in situations where a person is being programmed. It happens slowly in the course of our lives, over years as people and situations shape us into the people we are. But it happens more quickly in intense situations where the programming is intentional. Take the military, for example, or a gang – or a cult. People enter with all of the pieces of their lives that they’ve accumulated, the preconceptions, the social and political views, the masks and games and walls that they use. They are stripped of all of this, as quickly and thoroughly as possible. Their relationships are removed, their possessions stripped, they leave their homes and enter into a new society, a new family, where, after being torn down, they are built back up. They’re taught to speak a new language, and to interact in a specific way, using a distinct thought process.

It’s a lot like law school, actually.

When I entered law school, it was like I had found a refuge. I didn’t need to be torn down or reprogrammed, because I was already using the language, thought process, and methods of social interaction that are cultivated in law school. Don’t get me wrong, this didn’t make me a great lawyer, but it did make me a great law student. While other students were dealing with being torn down by the process, I was able to put that part aside and focus on the studying. No tear-down needed. But the process of law school, and bar exam is, in my humble opinion, a professional example of the programming that happens in gang and cult situations. It’s just one we idealize.

So, anyway, I didn’t really go through that in law school. I watched it though. And when I decided to take a leap and shift into a new life, I didn’t fully realize that I would be entering a tear-down, build-up cycle. But oh, honey, have I ever.

I’ve talked about removing my home from my life, and the sense of freedom and groundlessness that has evoked.

I’ve talked about leaving a long-term relationship and embracing the friendship that remains.

I’ve talked about leaving a job that brought stability but great discontentment.

I’ve talked about abandoning the language; the words and humor that I use as both sword and shield in my life.

I’m not sure I’ve talked about the cumulative effect, however. There seem to be some people who think that my journey is something to be idealized – like law school. So I’d like to set the record straight. It’s a journey that I am glad of, but not one I would recommend to everyone.

Imagine selling your home and quitting your job to pursue your dream; discovering that you would like to have a home again – and then finding that you can’t get a mortgage because you’ve left your job to pursue your dream.

Imagine getting yourself into the best physical shape of your life – and then finding out that you’re not insurable.

Imagine discovering that you would like to share your life with someone, then finding someone who feels like they fit into your life – and then having the whole thing crumble in your hands.

Imagine experiencing all of this in the course of a few months – repeatedly.

It’s like believing that you’ve found a real answer to the great questions you’ve been asking yourself – and then discovering the “answer” is really a punch line to a joke you haven’t even heard.

Then imagine knowing that you have to let go of it all. Of the desires, and the expectations, and the judgments, and the results. That everything you have been programmed with needs to fall away, so that you can start again, this time with intention.

It’s hard.

I realized this week that I’ve spent the last 8 months in a period of intensive tear-down, pulling at the strings of the tapestry I’ve woven. The pretty pictures that I show the world, and myself. It seems like at this point it should be pretty completely deconstructed, but every so often I have an experience that slams me against the wall and seems to shout at me in loving tones, “no, my child, you haven’t quite gotten it yet.”

And that’s where I find myself now. On the down-stroke of a difficult lesson. One I know I need to learn if I am to move forward. One that I thought I’d already learned. And one that makes me seriously wonder what is left to deconstruct. What part of my foundation have I failed to shake. Because every time I start to rebuild myself, to look at the ways that I can move from tear-down to build-up, it seems there are a few more threads that need to be pulled, and vast areas of tapestry still intact, hiding the parts that I didn’t even know were there.

So I lean into the hurt, pulling gently at the threads while part of me clings to them, trying to salvage the parts that are authentic, and working to let go of the judgment that rises up within me every time I find another thread.  Because when I finally enter the rebuilding, I want to know that what I build will be solid.  That I’ve shaken all I can out of the foundation, so that next time maybe I won’t have to dig so deep.

Because there’s another where that the tear-down, build-up cycle is used – abuse.  And I wonder, at what point does the tear-down move from self-growth to self-abuse?  How deep is too deep?  (I know, it all still sounds so glamorous and self-indulgent.)

Even then, I’m not sure I know how to rebuild. I’m pretty sure it has to do with listening to the little voice. Hearing it, and listening to it. Nurturing it until it becomes not just a little voice, but a clear, respected rudder. I know the rebuild won’t be easy, necessarily, but I think I’d like to get to that phase now, because the tear-down is just hard.



That got me thinking about my sister.  I’m headed to Idaho this weekend for her baby shower.  She’s having the first baby in the family in quite a while.  She and my bro-in-law don’t know if it’ll be a boy or girl, so we call it UBC – short for Un Born Child.  When UBC is born, it will come into a small family, but one full of love.  I’ll be an aunt – that blessed position that will allow me to support unconditionally, spoil unmercifully, and return the child to its parents when it gets gassy from all the sweets I’ve fed it.

Until now, that’s how I’ve thought of my relationship with UBC.  The child is scheduled to be born near my birthday.  A beautiful and challenging time of the year to be born.  At a beautiful and challenging time in our history. After today’s conversation, I started thinking about how my life will impact UBC.  And about what I can offer to this child.  Here’s what I came up with:

I will listen.
I will offer support.
I will encourage your dreams.
I will take the time to answer when you ask, “why?”
I will live my dreams so that you know that you can live yours.
I will speak my truth so that others won’t be so surprised when you speak yours.

All I ask in return is that you love and trust and dream, that you live fully and speak the truth you know, so that the next generation will find this world a little softer, a little more peaceful, and a little more ready to love.

In my estimation, it is critical that we embrace the fear.  Celebrate the connection, yes –  the feelings of lightness that come from knowing that you share something deeper with the rest of human existence.  But don’t hide the feelings of fear.  By bringing them into the open, discussing them and sharing them, we find that even those feelings of disconnection are shared by everyone at some point.  That the feelings of disconnection are, themselves, a point of connection.

That, to me, is the essence of being human.  That even in our darkest moments, there is light.

I know this is nothing new, but I think it’s something important nonetheless.

The woman at the crystal shop had greeted my mom with a bright smile.  Now, she was looking at her with awe.

“You actually HEARD the whales?”

On our way out to the old Hawaii town of Hawi, we’d yelled for my dad to pull off the road.  The whales are active off the coast in January, and we were seeing flashes of dark and white plumes coming from flat spots just off the shore.

My parents have a time-share on the big island, and they usually come for about a month every spring.  This spring, my little sister is having a baby, so they’ve come early to the island – and I’m tagging along.

On our walks along the resort beaches, we’d seen whales breeching alone and in pairs – something beautiful and exciting – but this day, we were seeing something different.  While the whales we’d seen near the resorts were on the horizon or well off shore, where the turquoise sandy bottom meets the darker, deeper water, these whales very close to the shore in the deep water that comes right up to the land.

We walked down the lava-dirt path that led from the road out onto the little shelf above the scrub-covered hills that roll down to the water.  A light breeze blew off the water, bringing the sounds of the water to us, a mile or two away.

A screeching, sucking sound made us all stop.  I thought it was tires on the loose lava behind us.  Another car had pulled in to watch the whales.  We looked around and then continued out onto the bluff.

Out came cameras and binoculars.  We watched as two or three whales, all very close to each other, bobbed and flashed out of the water.  Glints of shimmering ribbons played around the whales – spinner dolphins dancing through the air.  The celebration continued as we watched, and we began to wonder what we were seeing.  Whales both mate and birth in January.

And then we heard the sound again.

“Is that coming from the whales?!”

We all looked at each other.

The screeching, wheezing song sounded again.

“Holy shit.”

I started recording, hoping I could capture something as we watched in complete disbelief.  The spinners surrounded the whales, hurling themselves twirling through the air, the sun glinting off their slick, laughing forms.  And the whales waved their fins.  Then they splashed their tales, and bobbed their heads, straight out of the water.  And they sang.

As my mom shared the story with the woman in the crystal shop, we all started to realize how strange the experience had been.  “That is quite a blessing,” she had said.

And we believed it.  We heard whales singing above water.

Here’s the video.  You can hear it at 0:38 and then more clearly at 2:00.  You have to listen in between our excited babbling, but it’s quite a blessing, all the same.

When I returned to my temporary home in Fornaci, I was deeply pensive, and more than a little withdrawn.  A couple of medical issues with pets and family at home made me wish, with tremendous force, that I was there.  Which made me examine the choices I’ve made.  And that made me more than a little unhappy with myself.  I didn’t want to examine my choices!  I wanted to be happy, damn it!  Who was I to ruin my own fun – again?!

Truthfully, I don’t know the last time I was so upset.  I thought I’d found a new path.  One that would allow me to live more freely and examine myself less (I can be a little rough on myself).  Funny thing is, even when I’m in a beautiful, amazing place, it’s still me who is here.  Even the magic of Venice can’t mask that, it seems.

Like anyone, I’ve gone through periods of self-reflection, and questioning.  They can be tough and usually last quite a while – grey periods of wondering what I’m doing with my life, how I’m making a difference in the world, or how I’m improving myself.  Usually I work through them in the context of career and relationship and whatever else I have to distract me.  One of the great gifts of being so far away from everything I know is that I’m stripped of the usual distractions.  I can’t hide from myself.  I can’t use humor or intellect or team sports, or anything really.  It’s a great gift, and a new challenge.  It’s something I asked for when I took this leap, for sure.  But, now that it was here, I realized that I hadn’t expected it to be so hard.

This period of reflection was black.  Not Grey, black.  I cried so hard I couldn’t see when I woke up the next morning.  Cried so hard I gasped like a child, hyperventilating in my self-examination.  It sucked big time.  I really worried it would go on for the duration of my trip, or that I’d have to pack it up and leave early.  Or that I’d stop leaping.  But I have friends here, too, loving friends who sat with me while I cried, and rubbed my shoulders.  And it passed.  Two days after it came, I woke up, and it was gone.

I know now that I won’t stop examining myself.  I’m not sure I’d want to.  It might be that, now I’ve taken a leap and put myself in a new context, these periods will be dark.  More intense.  But maybe they’ll be quicker.  Maybe I’ll be able to learn from them more easily.  I mean, maybe not.  Maybe they’ll just suck and I’ll end up crying alone in a crappy hotel room.  Who knows, but this time it passed quickly.  And I’m still here enjoying myself.  I’m still here loving what I’m doing.  And I’ve shed the unreasonable, irrational belief that, by changing what I’m doing with my life, I will stop examining it.  I’m still the deeply-flawed person that I was when I left, but I’m finding ways to make peace with those flaws.  And I’m having far more light days than dark ones.  Maybe for right now, that’s enough.

As a new friend of mine said to me this week, “a beach in Hawaii or Australia isn’t a bad place to ‘find yourself’”.  I couldn’t agree more.

TWO YEARS!

Yeah, I know that’s pretty ridiculous.  I tried to sell it myself for about 6 months, maybe more, but for over a year, I did nothing to sell it, nothing to rent it, and very little to maintain it.

When I finally decided that I wanted to sell, I wasn’t able to.  I put new carpet in, made from recycled pop bottles; my parents came and helped tile the counters in the kitchen.  We cleaned, spruced up the yard and I even hired a Realtor.  Still, the house wasn’t moving.  Yes, I know it’s not a great real estate climate right now.  Thanks.

I am one of those people who believes that you make your life what it is.  I believe that when I’m ready for something to happen, the universe will align things so that it can happen.  And I was ready to sell my house – well, mostly.

I’ve done enough work on myself to know that, if the house wasn’t selling, it wasn’t just because of the market.  I knew that there was something inside me that was keeping me from moving forward.  The house was the last piece of the life I had chosen for myself – my white picket fence - and I hadn’t let it go.

At the point that I learned about Diana Reinig, I had already reduced the price of my house, and I was considering reducing again, to a point where I’d be a little less than comfortable.  Walking out of work one day, a friend who works in the same building asked how the house sale was going.  We chatted a bit, and, after confirming that I am in fact “woo woo“, she offered up the name of a woman who does energy work on houses.  That is, she cleans negative energy out of houses.

I checked out her website, and found that she did more than house clearings.  She also did work on people’s energy fields, energy healing.  Fabulous!  I had done work with other woo woo types, and especially enjoyed sessions with Sally Baldwin a woman who channels.  I got a lot of good information and gained perspective from her channeling sessions, but I felt that, with the house, I needed a little more help breaking out of the place where I found myself hung-up.

So I contacted Diana.  We talked a little over email about what type of session I was looking for and found a time to talk over the phone.  I wanted a house clearing, but I also wanted to work through any energy blockages I had within myself.  For the one-hour fee of $150 she could likely do both.  That seemed like a deal to me!  I was considering lowering the price of my house a lot more than $150, so I thought I’d give it a try.  The woman who gave me Diana’s name had used Diana for a house she was having a hard time selling, and it had sold in less than a week.

So I scheduled a telephone reading, told my Realtor not to lower the price of the house and waited.

I shared my plans with a few friends.  The biggest question I got was “how can she do that over the phone?”  I don’t really know, but here’s how I understand it: when you’re working with energy, it’s not like you’re working on a car, or on someone’s yard.  You’re not working in the dimension where touch and sight live.  You’re working in the dimension where the energy lines up.  Kind of like the way I can jump on a computer anywhere and change my website.  I don’t need to be in the same room with the server.  Once you’re working with energy, time and space don’t so much matter.  That’s easy enough for me to believe, so the idea of a phone session was no problem for me.

My session with Diana was excellent.  It was like working with the most direct, up-front and knowledgable help-desk person you’ve ever experienced.  She asked a few questions, but it seemed only to confirm that she was on the right track.  She began by working through the layers of my energy.  She was able to identify specific blockages I knew were there, blockages I had already worked through on my own and others about which I had no clue.

Not only did she identify blockages, but she was able to release them – well, the ones I was ready to release anyway.  And she was able to give me insight into and suggestions for how to handle specific blockages (specifically relationships with certain people) that weren’t ready to go.

Fortunately, the house was ready to go.

I laughed out loud when she told me that Leigh had some energy stuck in the yard.  Really, really funny, as that was the last thing Leigh was connected to at the house.  She was coordinating its upkeep and had been quite resentful of the yard for a good long while.  There were a lot of other things that were actually keeping it from selling (Leigh’s energy was just causing her some discomfort), and Diana was able to release my energy from the house and align the energy of the house with the energy of some new buyers she saw coming my way.

Aside from the house issues, we talked about my upcoming trip, my writing, leaving Libby with Leigh, and even acne.  I left the session (it ended up going an hour and a half, but I was happy to have gone over) feeling lighter.  I had immediate response to some of the work that was done (I no longer felt tied to the house or the life I had wanted to live, and I no longer felt the unnerving sense that I was just barely surviving), while effects of some of the work took longer to feel.  Diana told me it would probably take a little while for the house to move, and to wait a couple of weeks before reducing the price again.

And I waited.  On the 13th day, my Realtor called to see if I wanted to reduce.  It was a Friday.  Confident that I was on a new path and that the house would find its new owners, I told her I wanted to wait until Monday.  Against her nudging, we left the price the same.  The next day – two weeks after the reading – I got my first offer.

Hooray!

That offer was the one that would stick.  It wasn’t full price, but it was close, and I had always considered any reduction in price an investment in myself and the new path I was choosing.  Sure I could have waited longer, but there are still 4-6 other houses for sale within 2 blocks of the house, and I was ready to move on.

It turned out that, through the twists and turns of the 30-day close (during which, Mercury was in retrograde almost THE ENTIRE TIME), the buyers were so in love with the house, that they were willing to hold tight as all manner of insanity ensued.  Several things came up that would have allowed them to walk away, but they didn’t.  In fact, the insanity pushed the closing just outside September, which is exactly what Susan Miller (and my mom) had been telling me to do.  Last Friday, we recorded, and ownership passed from me to the new owners.

My mom laughs every so often and says “who sells their house in two months in this market?”  Good question.  Answer:  someone who believes they can.

I have been waiting to post about my experience with Diana until the house was sold.  I wanted to see how it all played out.  I’ve recommended Diana (and also Sally) to a number of my friends and co-workers.  Some have already contacted her and had lovely experiences.  Some of them are people I would never have expected to be open to energy work.  I’ve put links in my sidebar to their websites.  I’m starting to think of sessions with them the same way I think of doctor’s appointments:  I can go to them when I’m really hurting, but if I check in every so often for routine maintenance, maybe I won’t find myself really hurting as much.

As I said, Michele is a champion.  Just about a year after creating the website, she got an email from Toni Childs, a famous recording artist who has put together the Cause: You’re Beautiful project that focuses on the beauty within all women.  She wanted Michele to contribute to the project as a featured author, telling her story of beauty.  Let me say that again:  one year after developing a project to help her through a rough time, Michele was calling a famous recording artist on her cell phone to talk about collaborating.  How wonderful!

Take a look.  Here’s Michele’s page.  Right now it tells the inspiring story of how she walked through a very challenging part of her life to find joy.  It will be updated monthly, and I can’t wait to see what she and the other authors have to share.

I love these projects.  It’s wonderful to know that there are people in the world following their dreams, and finding their joy.  It helps me remember that everyday is a gift, and every step I take a choice.  I can choose to live in joy and in beauty, and when I do, I’m in wonderful company.

Today, on the way home from work, I stopped to by toilet paper and tea – you know, the staples. I considered whether I had all the ingredients at home to make my no-sugar super-yummy cookies, as there are currently none in the house. As I was leaving the store, I walked past what I think was a lesbian family in a Volvo station wagon. Coming from the car was a song cranked up loud on the stereo. I was mildly annoyed until I realized what I was hearing: “C is for cookie, that’s good enough for me!” It was Cookie Monster! I love him! “C is for cookie, that’s good enough for me. C is for cookie, that’s good enough for me! Oh, cookie, cookie, cookie starts with C.”

Awesome! It totally put a smile on my face as I climbed into my car singing, “cookie, cookie, cookie…”

I got home, greeted the animals and put up the toilet paper. I changed into shorts and a bikini top and headed out to level the backyard with the dirt we’d dug up this weekend at our work party. It was an awesome day – 90 degrees, and in the shade at 5PM, it was glorious! Shovel in hand, I was still singing about cookies.

Then I smelled it…

Not a mile from the house there’s a Kraft/Nabisco plant. They make Kraft Macaroni and Cheese and Keebler cookies. That assessment is based on the smells that come wafting by every time they fire up the plant. Sometimes, there’s cheesy goodness on the air. Other times, it’s the Elves and their cookies that you can smell. Today, as I shoveled, the Elves taunted me.

I was good this morning. There were brownie samples at the bagel place, AND I DIDN’T HAVE ANY. For a recovering sugar addict, that’s a big thing.

Smelling what I imagined to be vanilla sandwich cookies, you know, the rectangular ones, I cursed the Keebler Elves. Usually I’m a fan of elves, but these bastards were just being cruel. It was like I was Charlie Buckett living in the shadow of Mr. Wonka’s factory, ONLY THERE’S NO GOLDEN TICKET.

After about 30 minutes the Elves were done, or the wind shifted, or I became immune to the sugary smell. I finished the yard work and headed inside to cook dinner. The Elves could taunt me, but they couldn’t break me. I have my cookies, my beautiful, wonderful cookies – and they don’t have uber-processed sugar or preservatives. I considered making a batch tonight. Sadly, however, I spent three hours playing Rock Band instead. I bet elves make that game, too.

While at a friend’s birthday party, I was introduced to a woman who does energy work. “Kristin, this is so and so. She does energy work!”

I’m a recycling freak and a fan of sustainability, so I thought we were talking wind turbines. “Oh great! What kind of energy work do you do?”

She looked a little taken aback. It turns out she’s a spiratual healer. (Oh, THAT kind of energy work.) We had a lovely conversation about her practice in energetic healing and some changes in the field. I don’t know a lot about energy work, but I find it fascinating, and this woman was talking about it like it was any other industry, describing new R & D and the efficiencies yielded by new processes.

While we were talking, another woman came and sat on the chair that was about 6 inches from the stool I was perched on. I didn’t pay much attention, but when my conversation was over and I turned around, she was looking at me. We’d met earlier in the night, and she seemed cool so I just smiled.

“I tried to eavesdrop a couple of times, but, for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what you guys were talking about. What does that woman do?”

“Well,” I said, “I’m not sure how to explain. It kind of depends on your background and my understanding.” She laughed. The other woman had told me about identifying her clients’ limiting beliefs and how she had moved from extracting the seed beliefs before transmuting them to directly “blasting” the beliefs in place. Evidently this is an improvement in the field of energy work.

I wasn’t sure that the woman I was now talking with had any idea of the answer she was about to hear – and I wasn’t sure how I wanted to answer.

“Well, I guess you’d say she’s a healer.” Now, I’ve had my fair share of exposure to energy work, and I believe in energetic healing. Still, I felt like I was telling someone else’s dirty secret. I kept looking back at the healer, trying to catch her eye to bring her into the conversation – to tell her own story.

“OH!” was the response I got as my new friend recoiled a little, eyes wide.

“Yeah” I said, feeling a little like I should defend the healer, “it’s pretty interesting stuff, but I don’t have enough knowledge to really explain.”

The woman laughed a little nervously again. “From the way she was talking, I thought she might help people with getting their passports. Sounded like she was talking about working through layers of bureaucracy.” It was true. We both laughed a little and then, I don’t really remember how, we started sharing our own experiences with things energetic in nature.

I’m in the process of selling my house, and, as the result of another random conversation with a friend, have recently contacted a woman who does energy clearings for homes. We talked a bit about that, the chakra clearing that I had done as well, and my upcoming travels.

She shared her experiences in the Peace Corps with the “bushman telegraph,” and indigenous people who, without use of any modern device, could sense when a family member would be arriving in the village.

We talked about the ability of the bushmen to “fly” over landscapes and project themselves into distant locations (and the US Government’s “remote sensing” program that taught the skill). We talked about our own experiences with flight dreams and how she wished she still had them.

As our conversation drew to a close, she expressed how interesting it is to know that there is so much more going on than what she can see, and I expressed how much I enjoy finding people who are willing to talk about their experiences. We so often stop ourselves for fear of sounding “woo-woo” or being marginalized because “you just don’t talk about those things.”

Before we said our goodbyes, she told me a story about a friend of hers who she described as “mind-expanding.”

“One day we were talking about these types of things, and she said that pepole don’t talk about all of the experiences that they have. I said ‘oh you mean like the green balls,’ and she said, ‘Yes! Exactly like the green balls.’” Green balls? I had no idea what this woman was talking about. She continued, “I remembered, as a child, having experiences where it looked like everything in the world was made of green balls. When I shared this with my friend, she told me that it’s a fairly common experience for people to have when they are beginning to meditate. I had no idea. I thought it was just me.”

Bingo. I thought it was just me. Now, I’ve never seen green balls, but I have had other interesting, puzzling experiences that I’ve hesitated to share. On the way home, I talked with another friend about the conversations I’d had at the party. Her response was, “Yeah, it’s like the woman in the kitchen. When I was growing up I didn’t like walking through the house at night, because I was sure there was always a woman in the kitchen.” Yup. When I was a kid, my sister and I didn’t like going into our super-nice, finished basement, because we were sure there was always someone down there.

Almost everyone I’ve ever talked with about these kinds of things has had a similar experience, whether it’s feeling a strange presence in their house when they were growing up, or flying to remote locations in their sleep. Most people, though, didn’t just volunteer the info unless it was around a campfire or at a sleepover as a “scary story.”

So, I’m going to start talking about it – about my experiences – because I really feel that, when we hide pieces of our human experience, even the pieces we don’t understand, we invalidate little parts of ourselves. We isolate and devalue. And I’m not so into that.