Sitting by a Moon Beam.

"Quietly while you were asleep, the moon and I were talking. I asked that she always keep you protected." ~ Sade

I can see myself as Grace, when I was 8 years old. I'm sitting under the stars, hugging my knees close to my chest. I'm beside my oak tree, the one I used to talk to when I needed someone to just listen. I'm asking the tree about her life and I want to know what it feels like to stay in the same spot all day, and have your branches sway side to side in the breeze. I want to know if it feels magical to have a bird choose your branches for a nest, since you get to peek into the nest at your leisure and check on the new babies. The moon is out and she quietly watches over me, spilling her light through the tree branches, and over my small shoulders. I am peaceful here. The night air wraps around me like a blanket, and I am lost in the magic of being a child, and of simply being.

I realize that I am, in some small miraculous way, actually living in the moment of my life like I did as a child. My thoughts are not screaming at me. My heart is content to just enjoy the ride that is my life each day. I am moving through with Grace, Octavia, Patty, Hank, Tomahawk, and a few other chickens I haven't named yet. Presently, they're all content inside the chicken coop that is my house of fear, my brain. I feel more settled in my bones than I ever recall feeling.

Transition has been moving through me again. Sometimes I can actually hear a clock ticking in my body. Each tick requires that I pay attention to what my body is saying to me. My heart has been asking for what I recently gave her for a long time. She simply wanted to be free. She wanted to spread her arms out wide, and let that feeling of deep inner peace run through her veins. I am getting better at becoming an observer of my own thoughts. I am getting better at honoring and following through with my heart's wishes. But it can be a rough ride at times. It can mean that someone you really care about and love gets their feelings hurt badly. But what I know now is that if I am taking the best care of my heart, and following through with those feelings I intuitively have, then by doing that, I am also taking the best care of everyone around me. The truth shall set us all free. We get so foggy about what our own truth really is, that it can become our greatest challenge to gain clarity and move from that place. And so it was with me. I saw that I needed to walk out of a relationship I have been in for over a year. I saw that it would serve us both for the better in the long run if I spoke my truth and walked away with love and grace. And so that is what I did. And the truth, my truth, set me free.

I came down with a head cold the same day we decided to split up. Some of my yogi tribal women who are older than me, and watch over me in that tribal sort of way, said I was detoxing the relationship. I hadn't heard this one before, but it certainly felt right when I asked my "internal pharmacist" if that was what this head cold was all about. The answer I got was an absolute yes. And so I treated myself intuitively ~ the way I know how. I took lots of B5 - Pantothenic Acid, lots of Vitamin C, fresh juices, green powders, green tea, some Ibuprofen, and I stayed in the hot yoga room for atleast 3 hours a day, either teaching or practicing. I taught 8 classes last week. I think I practiced 5. It has been months since I've put myself through that heavy of a yoga schedule. The results were what I knew to be true. I sweated out the toxins. I sweated out my head cold, which really translated to: Grace's fear of being alone, Patty's anxiety over transition, and Tomahawk's anger over not being able to play his role of being a victim. I let the tears come in the hip-opening postures and the backbends. I stepped out of the way for once, of my own healing process. I became an observer to what my body was going through, this letting go in love, this passing of something beautiful, but something that needed to shift. I sweat out fearing the unknown, and I loved myself more and more each day, honoring my spirit, nurturing myself back to good emotional, mental and physical health. I honored that I am grieving a loss right now, and that it's necessary to feel every second of it. I'm still in it, and I am grateful for it.

It is Sunday night. My heart is peaceful. I am not getting ahead of myself. I am not letting codependent or addictive cycles step up and run my heart, my life. I am curious about how I feel, and what I am experiencing. I have never been through a "healthy" breakup, because I never understood myself well enough to feel "healthy". I do now. And the shift is amazing. The snapshots I see of me, when I was a child sitting by a moon beam, were from a time when I was peaceful, staying in the moment, and feeling a sense of wonder around just being alive, in this body I was given. And while my heart is heavy with sadness, I feel a deeper sense of peace for having honored my own wishes. I am grateful to have felt so much love in my life, and I am trusting that God has my hands through this, just like He always has.