Soft places to land lead to safety, expansion and our biggest truths.

Finding joy is increasingly important to our survival as humans, and I know it is tricky to feel joy, happiness, or even contentment for some of us when we are faced with the darkness in the world and often darkness in our own lives. I believe it is only through grief almost a decade and a half ago, deep grief, that I truly was able to see more light in this world.

I think about how important it is for humans to be included and belong. Sometimes, we find we belong in friendships and communities long before we realize we belong to ourselves. Some of us need to see and feel what being cared for is like before we can introduce it. The adage "You can't love another until you love yourself." I call bullshit (one of my late father's favorite words) on this. I have learned tenderness with myself from some of my most sacred friendships.

With a fresh start, we may want to forget the past or not forgive our past. Perhaps it shows up as "this year, I am going to work out five days a week," only to set ourselves up when we were someone who worked out occasionally. Sometimes, a fresh start meant dismissing ourselves rather than knowing ourselves deeper and then choosing how we wanted to begin again.

I have found that even in my most treasured friendships vulnerability has taken years to settle in.  While I do not think we need to show 100 percent of ourselves to everyone, the idea of compartmentalizing after decades of doing just that has left me craving to be nothing but transparent.  I said it left me craving wanting to be, it doesn't always happen. In a circle of friends, there may be two I know I can lay my head on their shoulder and just be. I may be able to do it with the entire circle, but I am slower to trust than I used to be and I like to be known on my terms. I am really slow to trust these days. 

Gratitude this season comes in the form of another trip around the sun. Here is my 52 not so little things I am grateful for on this birthday.

A friend explained autumn is a season of death; we witness this with leaves falling, the grown getting colder, and the last of the blooms shriveling. We feel this in our sleep patterns, waking up in the dark before daylight savings sets in. Yet, this took me by surprise. I have been here before in October. This season can hit me with a sadness, a shift, and some bewilderment.

The effort to make new again what we didn’t realize had been tarnished. And yet all that is meant is I am to feel. All of it. Celebrate this gift to feel so deeply.

As a young girl, I knew I stood for kindness, softness, writing long poems or short stories looking out at the northern California rain. I stood for bell bottoms, all the music that spoke to me as a young child in the late 70s. And then my parents divorced. I lost me. Like completely lost me. Absolute confusion and bewilderment at how quickly life can change even when we have seen the signs for years.