I don’t think we talk enough about how hard it is to be human. We talk a lot about human potential, trauma, boundaries, dreams, but we seem to just glaze over the fact that we don’t actually know what we are doing here and we don’t actually know how much time we have here, in this human situationship. As I am writing this I am on hold with Jet Blue. I have been listening to tinny romantic piano music for over an hour. I have just transferred 45,00 points to my dead mother’s Jet Blue account, by accident, obviously. It was a mistake and I hate mistakes, but maybe the other day I read on Instagram that life is comprised of one mistake after another. But also, don’t believe everything you read on the internet.

I have explained to Gina the situation and she says she must speak to a supervisor. Romantic Piano for 30 minutes and she is back. She says I have two options. I can have my mother transfer the points back to me... Ok, I ask for the second option because I think I must’ve misunderstood her. She says, you can invite your mother to Jet Blue Pool and she can accept and you two can share points forever and ever! Now the next part is maybe lacking some grace, I say OK Gina, here’s the problem Gina, my mother cannot accept my invitation Gina, because she is dead! I am now back on hold, a gnawing feeling of discomfort settling over my bones.

Some days this is life. Some days this is your life. And some days you are on vacation on Maui, feeling the wind against your skin and huffing plumeria, thinking you understand the secrets of the universe; touching joy enough to think it’s the only emotion.

I want to feel so alive, and also a lot of days I don’t want to check in with my self at all. I can feel a feeling lurking, be it a classic, like sadness or fear, or a longing so deep that I cannot seem to get through the defensive fog to name it, or an inkling that, just maybe I am getting everything I’ve ever hoped for, and am absolutely terrified of what I may lose because of it, or that now I actually have something to lose. Quite frankly, it is terrifying to get in the game of life, but the alternative, to sit on the bench, is soul wrenching.

We die, all of us. We have one life in between the big B and the big D; one life to be as alive as we can possibly muster and it can be so overwhelming - it’s too overwhelming, so maybe instead of sitting with our selves, instead of pursuing our dreams, we play candy crush, or get caramel macchiatos, or go on an elimination diet, we text someone, we get mad at the parking attendant or the person who cut us in line, and then we tell everyone about what they did to us. We plan trips, we break up with people, we get married, and buy houses to fill with beauty and memories from a life worth living. We buy bargain bin journals and write down our dreams, because I know one thing, and that is that we all want to feel alive; we all want to feel safe in the process of living, which unfortunately feels like a real privilege these days.

And you know what I would like to say, it’s okay to be human!!! It’s all part of being alive. We are obsessed by better, we have turned our wellness into a weapon against ourselves. We are human. This is the goal, to have a human experience, to be on hold with bad music and a broken heart that is being held together by so much love and a desire to survive. All our hearts will break, on different days or different years, but maybe that is the goal - to allow our hearts to break open so that we can love ourselves, and hear me out, OTHERS more. If we lock up our hearts then we can never help others because we are too busy running from our selves. What if everything you ever wanted was inside that broken open heart?

It has been my experience that our primary work is to align to our truth; that relief, action, dreams, joy, and great healing comes from first stating our truth. Often our truth feels too scary, or ugly, or honestly just flat out mundane; often we don’t know how to articulate our truth. I like to say “I don’t know” is a feeling. I don’t know is a powerhouse, it will always trump lemme figure it out. I don’t know makes space for our souls and hearts. I don’t know is the doorway.

The initial work is to find ourselves on the GPS, to locate your self, even if you feel lost AF, even if you find out you are in Tallahassee, and you think how the f%$* did I end up in Tallahassee? Locate your self; it’s okay. It is okay to take a baby steps, to take a gentle path to change. I also want a quick fix, but have witnessed both in myself and my clients the power of gentle shifts. When we expand too quickly, we contract quickly - this is just the biological design of homeostasis. It’s not my fault - I didn’t design it; I definitely would have made the quick fix design had I been in charge.

My hope for you is that you can strap yourself in and enjoy the ride of life - the ups and downs, the boring parts, the scary parts and thrilling parts. My hope for you is that you allow yourself to live the life you know is waiting for you. My hope for you is that turning your care on your self becomes a habit and that you build so much love within yourself that it spills out onto the world, because the world needs you, it needs YOU.