I Wish It Would Rain

Scene from my late aft beach run

After a gorgeous day here in SoCal yesterday -- sunny and 65 degrees -- the weather report this morning is forecasting rain, rain, and more rain.

The local TV station picked out a very appropriate song to mark this day, and though I don't share the sentiment (I'd much prefer the sunshine remain), it is a beauty and it's helping me remember that like everything else in this life, rain has a purpose, even if it doesn't arrive at quite the moment one would like it to arrive if one could control it:

Hmmm
Sunshine, blue skies, please go away.
My girl has found another and gone away.
With her went my future, my life is filled with gloom.
So day after day, I stayed locked up in my room.
I know to you it might sound strange.
But I wish it would rain. (How I wish that it would rain)
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

'Cause so badly I wanna go outside. (Such a lovely day)
But everyone knows that a man ain't suppose to cry, listen.
I gotta cry 'cause cryin' eases the pain, oh yeah.
People this hurt I feel inside, words can never explain.
I just wish it would rain. (Oh, how I wish that it would rain)

Oh, let it rain.
Rain, rain, rain (Oh, how I wish that it would rain)
Ooo, baby. Let it rain.
(Let it rain) Oh yeah, let it rain.

Day in, day out, my tear stained face
Pressed against the window pane.
My eyes search the skies, desperately for rain.
'Cause raindrops will hide my teardrops.
And no one will ever know.
That I'm cryin'... cryin' when I go outside.
To the world outside my tears, I refuse to explain.
Oh, I wish it would rain. (Oh, how I wish that it would rain)
Ooo, baby.

I remember when I felt like this. The first of the three years I went to a yoga retreat on Maui. It was during the first year after I left my husband, and the trip was the first time I'd gotten any real space to myself since I'd made that momentous move. And though a part of me was crushed that I'd paid all that money for a tropical vacation only to get rained on every single day of it, mostly I felt relief:

Let it rain, let it rain.
I need rain to disguise the tears in my eyes.
Oh, let it rain.
Oh, yeah, yeah listen.
I'm a man and I got my pride.
Give me rain or I'm gonna stay inside.
Let it rain.

I'm grateful I'm not feeling that way today, and even more than that, I'm grateful for the acceptance that allows me to appreciate a 60 degree rain rather than craving 80 degree sunshine since the former allows me to enjoy what is and the latter would only focus my energy on what is missing. What joy is there in that?

Nearly Lost You

Heard this song on the radio today as I navigated my rental car around LA, and when I did, I felt grateful:

Did you hear the distant cry
Calling me back to my sin
Like the one you knew before
Calling me back once again

Grateful to be back in Cali, which in some ways always feels like home to me (it's where both my parents' and grandparents grew up).

Grateful to hear a familiar song, immediately grounding me in the way that music so often does.

And, yeah, grateful that though it seemed for a time I might lose my lover, and in some sense I did, it's looking more and more like nearly is the operative word:

I nearly, I nearly lost you there
And it's taken us somewhere
I nearly lost you there
Well let's try to sleep now
I nearly lost you there
I nearly lost you
I nearly lost you there
I nearly lost you there
I nearly lost you there
Oh yeah, nearly lost you there

I Get So Emotional

Woke up with this song in my head this morning -- not sure exactly why.

Maybe because today is the birthday of my favorite friend with whom to belt out Whitney, a friend who now lives in California, whom I'm going to get to see in a few short days?

Maybe because I do, in fact, get so emotional, quite often. During the bar mitzvah on Saturday, my daughter kept looking up at me every time I started to cry. She can just sense it. I love that we have such a powerful connection.

Or maybe because in just about exactly one month, I'm going to get to see the man who taught me most of what I know about the shocking things love can do:

I don't know why I like it
I just do

I've been hearing your heartbeat inside of me
I keep your photograph beside my bed
Livin' in a world of fantasies
I can't get you out of my head

I've been waiting for the phone to ring all night
Why you wanna make me feel so good
I got a love of my own baby
I shouldn't get so hung up on you

Oh I remember the way that we touch
I wish I didn't like it so much

Oh I get so emotional baby
Every time I think of you
I get so emotional baby
Ain't it shocking what love can do
Ain't it shocking what love can do
Ain't it shocking what love can do

I gotta watch you walk in the room baby
I gotta watch you walk out
I like the animal way you move
And when you talk
I just watch your mouth

Oh I remember the way that we touch
I wish I didn't like it so much

Oh I get so emotional baby
Every time I think of you
I get so emotional baby
Ain't it shocking what love can do

Alive and Kicking

This number has been on repeat on the internal record player all day today. I wasn't sure why until I looked at the lyrics, which do indeed speak to me in this betwixt and between/what's gonna happen phase:

You turn me on, you lift me up
And like the sweetest cup I'd share with you
You lift me up, don't you ever stop, I'm here with you
Now it's all or nothing
'Cause you say you'll follow through
You follow me, and I, I, I follow you

What you gonna do when things go wrong?
What you gonna do when it all cracks up?
What you gonna do when the Love burns down?
What you gonna do when the flames go up?
Who is gonna come and turn the tide?
What's it gonna take to make a dream survive?
Who's got the touch to calm the storm inside?
Who's gonna save you?
Alive and Kicking
Stay until your love is, Alive and Kicking
Stay until your love is, until your love is, Alive

Oh you lift me up to the crucial top, so I can see
Oh you lead me on, till the feelings come
And the lights that shine on
But if that don't mean nothing
Like if someday it should fall through
You'll take me home where the magic's from
And I'll be with you

Maybe my mind's still at the synagogue after yesterday's Bar Mitzvah, but I think one could also read this song as being about God. It reminds me, too, of another prayer I liked that we said during the ceremony, which was about trusting that there is meaning to living our every day life even when the bigger picture is uncertain...

Picture of a Tree That Doesn't Look Okay

Today my kids and I went to our first ever bar mitzvah. It was lovely -- such a beautiful ceremony. Such a celebration of tradition, of prayer, of family, of love. It was incredible to witness our young friend become a man in the eyes of the Torah -- and, leading the service, he did seem pretty darn grown up.

I'm not going to have an easy time explaining today's song selection, but I'll give it my best shot. I stumbled on this song today, having never heard it before. When I went to look up the lyrics, I found that, like the bar mitzvah I attended, its format is different from what I'm used to, but its themes, and its questions, they are all too familiar:

Do you think the landlord's pissed? We left a car parked on the lawn again. He's looking. The porch is still and empty. We wrote our friends names on the walls inside. They're laughing. We know that this isn't home for long. The posters in your bedroom speak softly. They tell stories. So while the weather's getting worse we take shelter in these walls again and tell stories. So where did you live and what did you learn there? We watch the fallen leaves turn to frozen trees, it's been another year. Where do the echoes from the echoes go? Where does the water flow when it leaves our homes. I've been searching for this, something that I can run away with. It's a life changing decision. Should I leave or try to beat this? (I know it gets harder everyday. But the dawn will fade and our skin will flake away.) Where do the echoes from the echoes go? Where does the water flow once it leaves our homes. Live wires are like this. They hit the streets and form a beacon. It's a danger we've been warned, but we still stretch and try to reach them. Watching our planet grow on screens I spoke into a window sill and still forgot everything and it spoke back. A thousand frozen trees but still there's something burning. (I will stare while you are growing. Come with me to empty places.) They are filled with everything. Where do the pieces of our dreams recede? Into eyes shut that are opening. I never have ever decided what to think of all the years I spent in Connecticut. (Whenever, if ever I get my life together I'll apologize for all the things I should have said) So beat on the bass drum, make all the spiders run. We threw rocks at the house and it looked back. (and done. Another day lost to the setting sun. I stare at the ceiling and it looks back.)

Standing in that synagogue today, I felt, not first the first time, that I would've liked to have been Jewish, or even to have converted. But for whatever reason (quite likely because my Dad is an atheist), I haven't ever had a partner who is a person of religious faith, even if I did have one who was technically Jewish. True, I could convert on my own, but my reason for wanting to become part of something older and bigger (like Judaism) than me is to have something to help hold my family, and ideally, I'd like to have my partner be a part of whatever that is.

Watching today how being a Jew helped hold the family celebrating their son's bar mitzvah, I wondered anew what's holding mine, and hoped whatever it is, it is as strong, wise, and good a container as the one I witnessed today.

While I figure that out, I'm going to borrow this prayer that I jotted down during the ceremony today:

We pray that we may live
not by our fears but by our hopes
not by our words but by our deeds

I Miss You

Here's another song for which I didn't quite get the timing right to mark my day:

To see you when I wake up, is a gift I didn't think could be real
To know that you feel the same, as I do, is a three-fold utopian dream
You do something to me
That I can't explain
So would I be out of line, If I said
I miss you.

I see your picture, I smell your skin on, the empty pillow next to mine
You have only been gone ten days, but already I am wasting away
I know I'll see you again
Whether far or soon
But I need you to know, that I care
And I miss you

...because my love has been gone a lot longer than 10 days -- it's been almost 8 months. It's hard for me to believe I've tolerated being alone for that long. I really miss being touched. I miss having another body in my bed.

Now that we're talking again and have a visit on the horizon, I know that this time apart is finite even if it feels infinite sometimes. I also know that these feelings about what's missing are most acute when I don't like what's right in front of me now.

So I'm just going to try to hang in there, deal with what comes when it comes, and hopefully, before I know it, I'll be back in his arms again...

Don't Let It End

I had kind of a weird day today. It started off well, with a run and a yoga class with a friend this morning, but the afternoon was filled with little bursts of work (all I could muster) followed by multiple naps. In part I think the sleepiness had to do with the germs my kids currently have that I've definitely been fighting, but I also felt sort of a general psychological malaise that I couldn't pinpoint.

After rousing myself from nap #3, I decided to drag my ass to an Alanon meeting. I knew a friend of mine would be there, and I thought it might lift me out of my funk or at least illuminate it a little further.

I wasn't disappointed. I got to hear people talk about how they deal with the desire to control the things they can't control, and that was helpful. And then this woman starting talking about the death of her mother, and her adolescent's lack of appropriate response to it, and then I both realized and shared (complete with tears) that in a way I'm a bit like a 42 year old adolescent when it comes to my mother.

I don't like how things were when I was a kid, I don't like a lot about my parents' lives now, so I try to avoid having too much contact with them. This gives me the illusion of control (plus some real control) but it comes at the expense of what might be a more authentic relationship.

I say might because I don't know that for sure. It might not. I do have the sense that if I can let go of this hardness I have toward my mother, it will allow something to soften in my daughter, and that feels worth the price of admission even if the show is not pretty.

On the way home from the meeting, I heard this song on the radio:

What can I do
Pictures of you still make me cry
Trying to live without your love
It's so hard to do
Some nights I'll wake up
I'll look at your pillow
Hoping that I'll see you there
But I get up each day, not much to say
I've nowhere to go
Loneliness fills me up inside
'Cause I'm missing you
So if you'll give us a chance to remember
The love we had once together
Wait and see
Time is all that we really need
I'm praying you won't say no
I mean to tell you

Don't let it end
Baby we could have so much more
Don't let it end
Honey please don't walk out that door

And I felt so much gratitude for the fact that although my honey did walk out the door, now he's saying things like this:

I'm telling you baby, I made my mistakes
But I'll make you this promise to do what it takes
I'll be there to protect you and hold you tight
You got my lovin' baby every single night

I'm gonna have to wait for a while for the every single night kind of lovin', but it really looks like it's coming, and I'm damn glad. Because as he was leaving, I was saying:

Don't let it end
I'm begging you, don't let it end this way
Don't let it end
I'm begging you, don't let it end this way

Last Mile Home

Tonight I went to see August: Osage County with a friend. Wow. Incredible acting, but it almost feels like too much to take in. So much dysfunction. So much anger. So much hardness. So little redemption.

This is one of the songs from the movie. I don't remember when it was playing, exactly, but it reminded me of the final scene, where the bitter daughter takes off from her mother's home and heads for her own:

Take it back, I never meant it
Never thought it would come to pass
Baby know it's not forgotten baby
Know that this is gonna last

By and large I had it coming
I recall the tremble in your eyes
I just want to make it better
I just want to make it right

Driven on the last mile home, driven on the last mile home
Things are always better, when were all together
I'm driving on the last mile home

Although you don't get the sense that things are going to be better for her, necessarily. Just that however ugly things have gotten in her own life, they can't possibly be as ugly as things in her parent's life where her Dad has just committed suicide and her Mom is popping downers left and right to deal with it. And there's freedom in that. Not as much as she might like, but enough...

Hooked on a Feeling

Today I drove to Oshkosh and back for work. I listened to a book part of the way, but eventually I got bored with it and turned on the radio. Maybe it was because it's Valentine's Day, but every station that I tuned into was playing a cheesy love song.

Not that cheesy love songs are all bad. In fact, some of them are so good that the original version:

I can't stop this feelin', deep inside of me
Girl, you just don't realize, what you do to me
When ya hold me in your arms, so tight
You let me know, everything's all right

I, I'm hooked on a feelin'
High on believin', that you're in love with me

Lips are sweet as candy, the taste stays on my mind
Girl, you keep me thirsty for another cup of wine
I got it bad for you girl, but I don't need a cure
I'll just stay addicted and hope I can endure

All the good love, when we're all alone
Keep it up, girl, yeah ya turn me on

...inspires numerous covers, like this one by Blue Swede from the Reservoir Dogs soundtrack, this one from Vonda Shepard of Ally McBeal soundtrack fame, and this bizarre version by David Hasselhoff, complete with the cheesiest video you've ever seen!

A Groovy Kind of Love

I woke up early this morning, and when I did, this song was playing in my head:

When I'm feeling blue, all I have to do
Is take a look at you, then I'm not so blue
When you're close to me, I can feel your heart beat
I can hear you breathing near my ear
Wouldn't you agree, baby you and me got a groovy kind of love

I found this somewhat inexplicable, because I haven't heard this song in years. But there it was. Well, I said to myself in my semi-wakeful state, I would have to agree that in many respects, my favorite New Englander and I have a groovy kind of love:

Anytime you want to you can turn me onto
Anything you want to, anytime at all
When I kiss your lips, ooh I start to shiver
Can't control the quivering inside
Wouldn't you agree, baby you and me got a groovy kind of love, oh

Then I went back to sleep, and when I woke the next time it was with the memory of a very vivid, very sexual dream. Not super unusual, but there was something unusual about the dream -- the man in the dream wasn't anyone I've ever met. This struck me as strange, maybe partially because I remember the vivid dreams I used to have when I was married about having sex with other men. Night after night, they'd come back, as if to give me a message. This one could've been a fluke, since I only had it once, but as I laid there with an odd feeling of having sort of semi cheated on someone I'm on the one hand not in a committed relationship with and on the other hand can see myself sharing my life with, it did feel like some sort of message from my subconscious.

I think the message was something like this: Having a groovy kind of love may or may not be enough on which to build a life with someone, and it's important to keep that distinction somewhere in the back of my mind so that I don't end up in a committed relationship that doesn't have all the elements I need to be my best self and live my best life. I know that my groovy lover wouldn't want that for me nor I for him, but I also know that I can only work on making myself into the best possible partner I can be. I can't do his work for him. And the hard part of that is it leaves me without control, which, I reckon, is all part of the lesson.

Lest on the eve of St. Valentine I seem less than fully appreciative of having found such a groovy kind of love, I'm not. I feel tremendously lucky and I don't take it for granted for one single minute that:

When I'm feeling blue, all I have to do
Is take a look at you, then I'm not so blue
When I'm in your arms, nothing seems to matter
My whole world could shatter, I don't care
Wouldn't you agree, baby you and me got a groovy kind of love
We got a groovy kind of love
We got a groovy kind of love, oh
We got a groovy kind of love

Head Over Feet

Yesterday I had coffee with a lovely woman I've only recently started to get to know. We were talking, as women are wont to do, about the people we love, and I was really struck by the story of how she met and married her husband. She said that she never really thought she'd get married because she never had a relationship that made her understand why people would want to promise to spend the rest of their lives with someone. Then she met her now husband, and proposed to him six weeks into knowing him because she finally had that feeling, and they've now been married for 16 years!

I too missed out on having that feeling until I met my New Englander, whom I proposed to when we were a good two years into our relationship. There's no fairy tale ending to our story just yet, but it did give me cause to reflect on what that kind of love is about -- what it's made of -- and what it makes one capable of doing and being.

And in response, the inner ipod shuffled onto this number. Not one of my favorite songs, but I must say Alanis is super cute in the video, and the lyrics pretty spot on:

I had no choice but to hear you
You stated your case time and again
I thought about it

You treat me like I'm a princess
I'm not used to liking that
You ask how my day was

You've already won me over in spite of me
And don't be alarmed if I fall head over feet
Don't be surprised if I love you for all that you are
I couldn't help it
It's all your fault

Your love is thick and it swallowed me whole
You're so much braver than I gave you credit for
That's not lip service

You've already won me over in spite of me
And don't be alarmed if I fall head over feet
Don't be surprised if I love you for all that you are
I couldn't help it
It's all your fault

You are the bearer of unconditional things
You held your breath and the door for me
Thanks for your patience

You're the best listener that I've ever met
You're my best friend
Best friend with benefits
What took me so long

I've never felt this healthy before
I've never wanted something rational
I am aware now
I am aware now

Me too, Alanis. And with this awareness, there's no going back. Thank goodness -- I would never want to...

She Blinded Me With Science

Tonight I took my kids to see The Wonders of Physics, a science demonstration on the UW Madison campus. It was chock full of really cool experiments, and after literally five minutes, my daughter leaned over to me, eyes shining brightly, and said: "I want to be a scientist!"

It was super cute and just the reaction that the Physics department was hoping to have on the youngsters.

I reckon it's too late for me. The closest I've gotten to being a scientist is an undergraduate major in Political Science, and I can tell you from where I sit these days, there aren't many cool experiments going down at the Capitol. I blame my high school Psychics teacher for the lack of consideration I gave science as a possible career path. He was one of the worst teachers I had in my entire 18 years as a student.

Not surprisingly, the song that was going through my head on the way home, dredged up from the inner recesses of the internal jukebox, was this one:

It's poetry in motion
She turned her tender eyes to me
As deep as any ocean
As sweet as any harmony
Mmm - but she blinded me with science
She blinded me with science
And failed me in biology

When I'm dancing close to her
Blinding me with science - science
I can smell the chemicals
Science
Science

Mmm - but it's poetry in motion
And when she turned her eyes to me
As deep as any ocean
As sweet as any harmony
Mmm - but she blinded me with science
She blinded me with science
And failed me in geometry

When she's dancing next to me
Blinding me with science - science
Science
I can hear machinery
'Blinding me with science - science
Science

It's poetry in motion
And now she's making love to me
The spheres are in commotion
The elements in harmony
She blinded me with science
She blinded me with science
And hit me with technology

Let Her Go

Earlier this week, I had some old heartbreak arise. It's a loss I feel like I've processed over and over again, and although the space between those processing times has lengthened over the years, the force of the grief really hasn't changed a whole lot. I guess I find that a little frustrating and I started to wonder if maybe there was something I was missing.

When I'm feeling like that, I like to talk to friends about what I'm going through and then listen to what they say and see if it rings true for me. So I tried talking to a couple of friends about what had come up, which is basically being confronted again with being treated as if you are dead to someone to whom you were once close even though you're still very much alive. One friend told me she thought it was just up for the healing, suggesting that since I've continued to evolve, maybe the me that I am now will be able to process the loss in a different way than the me I was the last time it came up.

Maybe, I said, but I'm not sure this is ever really going to heal. I think maybe it's just going to remain part of me, kind of like my first love says the loss of me is for him, like a bullet lodged in his chest, not threatening to take away his life but always there as a reminder of what isn't. Ok, so that sounds morbid and depressing and he said it a long time ago and probably doesn't even feel like that anymore, but it's illustrative nonetheless.

The other friend said the opposite. She said not to give up on this person just because she'd given up on our friendship. To keep trying. And that didn't sound right to me either, because it wasn't me who closed the door on our friendship, so it doesn't make sense to me that I should be the one to try to open it.

So then I talked to the bodyworker I saw on Tuesday morning about it, and he validated that neither of those felt right to me and put his usual wise words to the in-between space in which I found myself, suggesting I acknowledge the pain, how easy it is for human beings to hurt each other and then operate from that space of hurt instead of a space of love, and acknowledge my vulnerability. And that's it. There's no fix. Just acknowledgement.

I felt a whole lot better walking out of there than I did walking in, as I always do, but it surprised me a little that the wisdom this time seemed so basic. I guess that's because it is basic -- with love comes loss -- and it's our efforts to try to have it some other way that are convoluted.

I'm not positive, but I think maybe this is the reason why, when I woke up this morning, it was this song playing on the internal ipod:

Well you only need the light when it's burning low
Only miss the sun when it starts to snow
Only know you love her when you let her go

Only know you've been high when you're feeling low
Only hate the road when you’re missin' home
Only know you love her when you let her go
And you let her go

And for my money, the two verses with the most to say about love and loss are this one:

You see her when you close your eyes
Maybe one day you'll understand why
Everything you touch surely dies

And this one:

Staring at the ceiling in the dark
Same old empty feeling in your heart
'Cause love comes slow and it goes so fast

As for the question posed here:

And you let her go (oh, oh, ooh, oh no)
And you let her go (oh, oh, ooh, oh no)
Will you let her go?

I'll try. A little bit more every time this old wound comes up...

If Ever You're In My Arms Again

I woke up early this morning, and the chorus of this song was going through my mind:

If ever you're in my arms again
This time I'll love you much better
If ever you're in my arms again
This time I'll hold you forever
This time we'll never end

Having recently heard something along these lines from the man I haven't stopped loving since shortly after I met him 3 1/2 years ago:

Now I'm seeing clearly
How I still need you near me
I still love you so
There's something between us
That won't ever leave us
There's no letting go
(No letting go)

We had a once in a lifetime
But I just didn't know it
'Til my life fell apart
A second once in a lifetime
Isn't too much to ask
'Cause I swear from the heart

If ever you're in my arms again
This time I'll love you much better
If ever you're in my arms again
This time I'll hold you forever
This time we'll never end, never end

Yeah, I said something along those lines. We're not quite there yet. The love's there, and the desire's there, but there's some hurdles we've yet to clear. So for now, I'm trying to be in the moment, and this moment includes embracing the love that has already taken us both some pretty damn great distances:

The best of romances
Deserve second chances
I'll get to you somehow
'Cause I promise now

If ever you're in my arms again
This time I'll love you much better
If ever you're in my arms again
This time I'll hold you forever
This time we'll never end

And hoping this time won't ever end...

Recovery

Tonight I got together with a friend who is going through marital discord that has its origin in substance abuse. It is super sad to hear the familiar tale of separation of the man she fell in love with and the man she now finds herself with after 20+ years of numbing. Like anything else we do to our bodies consistently, there is a cumulative effect -- both in terms of the addling of the brain and in terms of the emotional disconnect -- and the only way to reverse those effects is to spend more time fully conscious -- i.e. clean and sober. I do believe that the effects can be reversed, to a large extent, but I also know that as hard as it can be for addicts to stop doing what they are addicted to, that part is relatively simple compared to the path of true recovery.

Many, many people who stop abusing a substance do so without seeking any kind of help for whatever it was that sent them down that road in the first place. I should know. My father is one of them. He drank heavily for the first 15 years of my life, and then he stopped. By himself.

I spent the first 35 years of my life desperately wishing, hoping, praying that my father would give me the love I knew (and have always known on some level) I deserved. I waited for him to recognize me, to see my light. And maybe he does, in his way, but never in the way I wanted him to for so long.

When I first started going to Alanon, just admitting that my father was an alcoholic was really, really hard, because it forced me to give up the facade of who I told myself my father was. The next step, which was considerably more lengthy, was becoming aware of what his alcoholism had wrought in my family and in the person I'd become. Then there was accepting that -- which would have been a whole lot shorter step if I hadn't become so attached, once I was aware of what took place, to the victim mentality -- to the "this shouldn't have happened to me" -- "this should've been different and it would have been different if my parents hadn't done such and such." Really? Who am I to say that things should be any different than they were and are? And if I say so, what good does that do?

What I can understand now, after years of Alanon meetings, reading books, seeing a therapist, acupuncture, energy healing, yoga, zero/balancing, rolphing, massage -- you name it -- it has taken and continues to take A LOT to invite the trauma that I stored in my body for so long to be on its merry way -- is that the love, the childhood, the parenting that I and all others deserve -- has absolutely no bearing on whether or not we receive(d) it. None. We're all equally as deserving, but many of us were and will continue to be born to parents without the necessary level of consciousness to truly recognize and celebrate our light.

Which brings me back to recovery. Because if I had to define recovery, what it has meant in my own life, I'd define it as embarking on a path of ever-increasing consciousness for the purpose of shining my own light as brightly as I can AND being there to recognize and celebrate the light of those around me -- my children -- my friends -- my lover -- my colleagues. And even, slowly, slowly, my parents, because they do have their light too, and I can see that when it's not obscured by the darkness I carried around for so long as a result of what took place decades ago.

But recovery is not an easy path. Just ask Frank Turner:

Blacking in and out in a strange flat in East London.
Somebody I don't really know just gave me something
To help settle me down and to stop me from always thinking about you.
And you know your life is heading in a questionable direction
When you're up for days with strangers and you can't remember anything
Except the way you sounded when you told me you didn't know what I should do.

It's a long road up to recovery from here, a long way back to the light.
A long road up to recovery from here, a long way to making it right.

I feel sad for my friend and her husband, who now find themselves here:

And I've been waking in the morning just like every other day
And just like every boring blues song I get swallowed by the pain
And so I fumble for your figure in the darkness just to make it go away.
But you're not lying there any longer and I know that that's my fault
So I've been pounding on the floor and I've been crawling up the walls
And I've been dipping in my darkness for serotonin boosters,
Cider and some kind of smelling salts.

It's a long road up to recovery from here, a long way back to the light.
A long road up to recovery from here, a long way to making it right.

And I hope he will find his way on the long road to recovery. I do think that love can help facilitate healing by providing both a glimpse of what it feels like to be truly recognized and by offering an incentive, as Frank says:

If you could just give me a sign, just a subtle little glimmer.
Some suggestion that you'd have me if I could only make me better.
Then I would stand a little stronger as I walk a little taller, all the time.
Because I know you are a cynic but I think I can convince you.
Yeah, cause broken people can get better if they really want to.
Or at least that's what I have to tell myself if I am hoping to survive!

It's a long road up to recovery from here, a long way back to the light.
A long road up to recovery from here, a long way to making it right.

So darling, sweet lover, won't you help me to recover,
Darling, sweet lover, won't you help me to recover,
Darling, sweet lover, won't you help me to recover,
Darling, sweet lover, one day this will all be over.

But ultimately, the road to recovery is a path that each of us must decide for ourselves whether we will take...

I'm Every Woman

The teacher I've been primarily working with since I started practicing Ashtanga started a new job, so he isn't often at the studio anymore. One of my favorite classes is led primary, which is where the teacher counts in Sanskrit and moves through the series. It used to be on Saturday mornings, but this morning the website said "Group Practice" instead of "Led Primary." I haven't been in a couple of weeks, so I decided to go anyway.

Lucky for me, there were two other women who decided to show as well, despite the change in class format. As it worked out, we just started our practice together (complete with chant beautifully led by one of the other Ashtangis) and then moved at our own pace.

The other two women who were there are really good at Ashtanga. I know, I know, it's not supposed to be about that, but they are, and it was hard for me not to feel kinda lame when I couldn't do many of the poses that they did.

Just when I was starting to get a little down on myself, Whitney self-selected on the internal jukebox and reminded me I'm not only as good as the other women, I am them:

'Cause I'm every woman (Every woman)
It's all in me
It's all in me
Yeah

I'm every woman
It's all in me

Of course, she was singing about what she could bring to a man, but I had a Whitney-related realization on that front today too. I was singing another of the songs I heard yesterday, The Greatest Love of All, and recognizing anew that part of what's so great about finding self-love is having it to give to someone else...