Deep in Thought

I am sitting in the back of my VW bus in my hometown, with a blank iPad screen in front of me waiting to be filled. I have about an hour to kill, and I am full of -- something I can't name -- because I haven't been to this park since I was about 11 years old, the age of my oldest child now.

For months I have been wanting to write something amazing, something worth reading, but have found myself living on a steady diet of quoting others while I dredge up unoriginal stories for pay, making a living but not exactly living my dream, which is okay too. I can't say this is the day my mojo will return but I no long believe that day will never come. I feel the rumblings of raw emotion and so I open a document and slice clean through a vein, letting it find some relief through my keyboard and fingertips.

I am the kind of gal who only speaks when I have something to say, which is admittedly almost all the time, but today I was rendered speechless.

My dad and I are taking a workshop together, and it involves a nutritional cleanse, some light meditation and lots of self reflection. At the end of our first class, we pulled a word from the bowl and tried to divine its meaning in our own lives.

Forgiveness.

It was easy to align myself immediately with all the external forces to which this word relates. Old boyfriends, teachers, my spouse, my kids. Friends who take everything from me with little to give in return; those who wait patiently -- arms crossed -- for my kindness without extending any of their own. So many ways to integrate this notion of forgiveness, but always wrapped up in the actions and words of another.

And all this when the only person I have to forgive is myself.

For setting up a system of goals - in pounds and inches and units of sweat - that have nothing to do with who I am as a person and what I have to give to the universe, for failing to meet my own expectations. For failing to go about the more important job of meaning something to people, to humanity; for accepting less of myself than I know I can give. For cruising along on autopilot when I know it's my nature to take risks and live large. For trying to keep peace in the lives of others even when it causes more chaos in my own; for allowing myself to misinterpret even my own intentions, for believing that everything can be fixed with an invitation to coffee.

Yes, I have something to say now. Mostly to myself. I forgive you, I forgive me. For all of this.

I am human, I make mistakes, I stumble and have to right the course. For these things, I can find forgiveness.

The process of the cleanse has started before it's even begun and I can tell that nothing will taste any better than that.