Sitting on the ground, I am surrounded by bird song. The ancient willow next to me is offering shelter as well as companionship. My dog is here too, and he poetically walks around the fields, sniffing and just being Zen. I stare across the valley, and watch the occasional car drive behind the rose brush on a quiet road. The sky is spotted with white fluffy clouds, and as they move across the blue abyss, I watch the green grassy fields illuminate with sun patterns. This place where I sit has become home over these last few years. I visit frequently, and sit on my blanket with my legs crossed, connecting with the earth. I look to the left at the mountains that vary in their snow cover, and on my right is the massive old willow. Ahead of me is a rusted barbed wire fence that marks the edge of our nine acre property. I come here in the mornings with my blanket and my bag filled with books, a jar of coffee, my tarot, and also my phone and cigarettes. Sometimes I listen to music. Sometimes I listen to the geese, the small birds, the ravens, and the occasional eagle, hawk or woodpecker. I read poetry, AA literature, my own writing, or another inspirational book. I gather my tendrils, I connect deeply down into the ground on which I sit, I mediate, I sing, I listen, and I love on my dog, Lionel, who is always there with me. It is important time for both of us to bond with nature and eachother.

These last four years have been quite the journey. Along with getting sober, and coming out as Moon and non-binary (both to myself and the world), I have struggled repeatedly with mental health episodes. I have changed and adjusted medication after medication, and have prayed that I have not done too much ‘damage' while ill. I have continued to write on this blog, write poetry, and meditate in nature. 2016 until present, my husband Steve has dealt with a spinal disability, and for the last year or so has become very ill with a type of COPD. In many ways, along with the pandemic, we have honed in our energies and simplified our lives. With Covid, we did not experience too many drastic changes, as we were already living quiet reclusive lives due to our disabilities. Now that I am doing better, I long to have friends over in the backyard around a fire, and yet neither Steve nor I feel that we have the energy to entertain like we used to. We have become different people, new in many ways, and we have grown closer to eachother and to my immediate family in the process. Through breaking down, we have learned to heal. Because of recent mental health challenges, I have learned to take healing seriously. Because of Steve’s disabilities, he too has slowed down and become more aware of taking care of himself. The flower fades, but the roots remain. We only hope that there are blooms yet to come for our humbled lives.

We must stop, and slow down, to see the hard realities of our lives. If we do not slow down and feel the sadness, it will come out and scare us in unpleasant ways at inopportune moments. One cannot continue to suppress the difficult realities of their lives forever. When we do our personal work, our healing, we find that in these slow moments we are often met with grief or deep, deep sadness. Anger and rage can show their faces. Once one begins the process of truly witnessing their pain, one may find that they choose to return to these unpleasant places and begin the life-path work of healing. Sadness, grief, rage and death are real. The matter of our impermanence is frightening, yet true. In the battle to quash the ego, humble ourselves, to grow and to heal, we may find that joy, acceptance, and happiness can now find their way in. We may find that chronic illness such as depression, anxiety, and post traumatic stressors, all begin to fade as we learn to listen to the strong and deep tendrils of our beings. Our resilience can now prosper because we have taken the time to get real with ourselves. We stopped distracting, and instead gained the courage to look at ourselves head on. We then can find the beauty in all that we were trying do avoid.