This morning. Inhale.
Began with doing yoga for myself, seated meditation, and my writing practice.
Sipping lemon water. Tart and warm. Scent still clinging to my fingertips from squeezing the juice.
Making my breakfast of local eggs, spinach, yogurt, and starfruit I picked off a tree.
I go into work from my center, from a place of being, to help others find their center.
Yesterday, my friend asked me in the afternoon if I wanted to come over for dinner. I said yes. I was able to say yes. I cried, overwhelmed with emotion that “yes” was my response.
I’m not in fairy land, I’m still exhausted; the residue of a doing life still breathes through my cells.  
 
Flashback. Exhale.
Try to inhale, but it gets stuck. Ache in my liver and spleen. That’s good information, I need to slow down. Let me look at iCal later and see when I can do that.
Obligated, fulfilled, can’t let anyone down, exhausted.
Go into work, barely ground myself at the last moment, support other people.
Try to find that one little place inside of me that is calm at the eye of the storm and operate from there. Work to find the good. Work to reframe.
Friend asks me if I want to grab a bite after work, in my head I laugh at the absurdity. I’m booking out dinner with people a month from now. Who can say yes to dinner that same night, ridiculous! I feel the longing and jealously.
 
As my dad says, my life depends on me getting out of my cycle that’s killing me. So, here I am in Hawaii. Inhale.
 
It sounds idyllic. I am set up for success here in almost every way, to heal, to exhale, this hectic, perfectionistic, exhausting lifestyle. Except for the neural pattern in my mind, and the imprint on my body of an entire lifetime that wonders: is this safe? Inhale. Can I slow down? Inhale. What are my beliefs about that, and the identity of outwardly visibly achieving, and who am I if that is stripped away? Gasp, inhale.. Not to mention, feeling scared to be healthy if that means loosing my feedback loop of liver pain which tells me to slow down… will the toxicity just creep in again? INHALE.
 
It’s scary and unfamiliar. So I do the best thing I know, I EXHALE. I breathe through the discomfort of slowing down, of trusting my body and my internal wisdom that knows this is crucial. I stretch, sip, breathe, connect. It’s okay, I’m okay.
 
It’s hard to redefine health for ourselves. I continue to battle with the sensation that slowing down means collapsing, I’m sick, I’m broken, I can't take a breath. That there is an active way to slow down and Yield, and come back to my essence which is held, restful, and okay, that the breath will come on its own. That this is my health. That I don’t have to prove anything to anyone. That I can just know I’m okay because this is the essential way that I was born into this world.
 
Our conditioning says to do shit…move fast, gasp for air, accomplish, show everyone our capacity, to get love.
Our essence says to be ourselves… move slower, healthfully, allow ourselves to be breathed, in the present, conscious of this precious life as it passes, to be love.
 
Our only job: Let it in. Trust. Recalibrate. Breathe.
 
From doing to being… my continual process as I ask myself: who am I now?

Yesterday one of my closest friends told me I’d betrayed her by making choices to move a different direction in my life, which would forever affect our relationship. It hurt deeply to hear this.  We were both being a bit reactive and intense, but the sentiment is true: my thoughts and choices lead me to becoming a different person.
 
Sometimes I feel like I’m letting everyone else down by asking the question Who am I now?  Because I continue to come up with new answers, and those answers continue to lead me away from who I once was.  And sometimes away from the people my older self was closest to.  For me, on a good day, it feels like the phoenix of my identity is rising! But, here’s the problem, as I try to continually shed my old identity (because every moment we are a new version of ourselves) it can feel like some people I love dearly try to grasp and cling to it. 
 
Here’s an example.  My parents are amazingly supportive, and have been my sounding board as I continue to ask these questions of who I’m becoming.  But then in some moments like this, right now, they are watching old video clips of me in a show I did and was interviewed for… actually my last show I did before I got sick.  I hear it playing in the background and it’s like someone punched me in my stomach. “That was such a great show, wasn’t it Zina?” I hear my mom say from their living room. “Yes mom.”  Yes it was. 
 
Could I be that person again right now, just for a moment?  Black lashes, red lipstick, heels, and dreams?  Before I knew about liver enzyme levels, and blood panel numbers that all have negatives next to them.  Before I knew about what mortality feels like in your cells battling each other.  Before I woke up.  Just right now for a moment- I promise I won’t tell anyone you let me step into my old life for a big inhale, to soak it in, how light and sparkly it was. 
 
Yes, I can take a trip in my memory, but it’s just not the same.  Which I grieve. It’s like looking through underwater, or frosted glass. I could cry right now for the weight and sorrow of it all.  I feel the heaviness in the back of my throat, the clenching. I realize I’m holding my breath, and I sigh out.  Ahh, relief. Big breath in, big breath out.  Look around. Oddly enough, the colors in this room right now are brighter than the ones in my memory.  Much more vibrant.  My breath is real.  The weight is real, but so is the color.  The past is past.  The present moment beckons.
 
This is a drastic example involving 6 years of time, illness, and change in who I am. In a smaller simpler way, though, this is happening every moment of every day, as our past selves fade from the moment, and a new reality appears.  We are constantly growing, changing, evolving.
 
I am trying to make this moment okay.  Sometimes that’s exhausting, but honestly, most of the time, it is okay.  And it’s much more exciting than the past, because this moment is still unfolding into mystery, whereas the past has already been known.  Not so exciting when I think about the past that way, it’s more like old news.  This present has potential for discovery.  For new things.  In the present we actually feel.  Feel it all.  Which can be overwhelming, but vital. .
 
It continues to feel sad to let go of our former selves, our former lives that we will be forever shedding like snake skin.  It is so hard to make choices, or to have them made for us, that make us feel like we’re disappointing the people around us that we love the most.  By becoming more yourself, in the most authentic and present moment version, it can feel like we’re hurting others who need or want us to be who we once were.
 
When I worry, I remember that everyone else around me is stronger than I can imagine, they’ll get through it too without me protecting them, and they’re growing into their present and next selves in the same way I am.  It goes both ways: I don’t want to treat them like their past selves either.  There’s space for us all to continuing to grow into the next version of ourselves.  Truly there is no one else we can be, and we’re in this evolution together.
 
And suddenly I hear myself on that video in the background and giggle, oh how naïve I was.  How sweet.  How frozen in time.  And I stretch, because right now I can actually move freely, and with choice, and am not trapped in a video box. 
 
There are some people we will let down as we change.  We just will. But we can’t take responsibility for it all, or be too afraid to take a breath and step into now.  Wishing you the continued space and courage to be who you are becoming, and to allow your relationships to shift with you.

Noun.

• Marrow- the fatty network of connective tissue that fills the cavities of bones
• Marrow- the most essential or most vital part of some idea or experience

 
Bone marrow biopsy
Bore out my vitality in a thread
Cherry red on the petri dish
The pain is excruciating
I don’t want you to see my most essential part
Taking a microscope to look at my essence
 
One more “first”
Anticipation of pain
A needle to my center
Owwww!
Sucks the heart
Leaves an absence
Deep aching left in the wake
 
It is a violation.
Perhaps the cavities of my bones will reveal
my pith to be altered
Maybe you will see
That I’m not at my core who you think I am
All pretenses and projections will be blown
 
The truth will be revealed
Perhaps it will be a relief, I don’t have to act any longer
You’ll see I’m broken, less-than, deformed, mutated, or otherwise not normal
And I’ll have to stop pretending.
Perhaps it will be my next greatest challenge, and I’ll have to show up even more
You’ll see I’m clear, resilient, scaffolded, filled with super-cells ready for action
And I’ll have to stop pretending.
 
Relief has many forms.
The line between positive and negative degrades to truth
This is more complex than results on paper
Because it is comprised of experience
 
The results will mean nothing/everything
They tell me and everyone else who I am
Yet say nothing about my hopes, desires, and capacity to love.
A life lived anchored in marrow.
 
I often wonder if I am strong enough for what I want to accomplish in this life
And now some of that strength will be removed
And then it will grow back fiercer
With renewed vigor
Intensely recommitted to being vital
To living out it’s impact and purpose
Perhaps I should say thank you
Thank you for removing a burdened cross-section
So that resolved vitality can replace it
 
 
With one more part of me removed… who am I now? 

As I sit down to write this morning I am hyper-aware of my desire to write something that could possibly encapsulate and be in service of today. To this moment. This moment that feels heightened by the anticipation of a medical procedure tomorrow.
 
Yet, I feel torn because “this moment” actually feels like the moment of “before.” It is hard for me to stay present when I am filled with anticipation. The inhale. The calm before the storm. I am at the mercy of overwhelming imagination. I am creating a whole world that will come to fruition intensely in many layers in the near future, particularly tomorrow. I am guessing what may and may not be, for better or worse, for sickness and health. The actual procedure and the implications. I am here, but my focus is over there.

And I wonder, am I missing today? How do you hold present, future, and “before” all at once without exploding?
 
And of course there are layers, it’s not just about anticipating tomorrow. It’s about at least three huge areas of my life that are in destruction for the sake of creation. And the awareness of this is compounding it all.
 
Health: Feeling strong and vibrant, yet filling out advanced directives for the hospital.
Career: My career is in the pain of an acorn longing to be a tree.
Relationship: Everything I thought to be true has changed.
 
Each of these represent aspects of the known and unknown. Of identity, change, and fear. Of the potential of relief and joy.
 
Health: Am I sick; or am I healthy.
Career: Am I to be fulfilled in my capacity to move, inspire, and reignite people to their own awakening process through my life experience, and be a success (grow into an oak); or am I going to be lost in an inability to act and move forward into my own professional fears and finances, and by default fail (stay forever as an acorn).
Relationship: Am I responsible for creating a crisis; or am I in the messy birth of a relationship that is so beautiful it is too much to receive and take it all in.
 
These are questions of identity. Of slowing down and sitting in the unknown of the “before.” Of making meaning, and enriching the stories and labels.
 
Health: I am creating my version of health that includes me being sick.
Career: I am fulfilled in my successes and failures. They teach each other, and I’m nurturing my own soil.
Relationship: I am in a crisis of beauty.
Anticipation: I can be in the heightened state of the “before,” and already be complete and present right now.
 
One side is not at the expense of the other. I can say yes to it all. And that is what is true. Confusing, overwhelming, intense, uncomfortable, and true. I can say to myself, I know these things are coming, one as early as tomorrow morning, and yet here I am, taking this breath right now, and I don’t want to miss it because it is just as precious. I don’t want to just merely get through today, because I know tomorrow is coming.. I have plenty of space and time to be fully in those other breaths later., so I give myself permission to be fully in this breath now. 

​I can be present in my anticipation.
 
How is this for you to stay in today, when you can feel a big moment coming? 

This past week I had the great fortune to go to Las Vegas and witness the ending of an era as the show Jubilee, which has run in Las Vegas for the past 35 years, had it’s final show. I was a performer in Jubilee for almost 2 years.  
 
My identity as a performer, dancer, and showgirl is something I have grieved repeatedly since I became sick. Unable to walk up a flight of stairs, I remembered walking up and down thousands of stairs a night, with 4 inch heels and a headdress on in Jubilee.  I cried and cried in my bed, night after night, feeling like I didn’t even know who I was without performing. It’s all I ever wanted to do. It was my identity. And now what? Goodbye rhinestones.
 
I slowly began to realize that there were other things that I could do, such as become a Dance/Movement Therapist, which incorporated many of my interests. I began graduate school, but still felt a hole… the nagging feeling that it wasn’t the same as performing. There is always that comparison. 25 years in my performer identity, and only a couple years in grad school not yet fully owning a therapist identity didn’t outweigh each other yet.
 
And then an odd thing happened. I began to feel better, and stronger, and, wait … maybe I could perform again? I think that time was maybe even worse, in that it was so confusing. Like a carrot being dangled in front of my nose, while I was already moving down another path. So I thought, maybe I could go back to Vegas one day, and be a showgirl again, because now I was feeling better. The previous identity was rearing it’s head again.
 
And then I got sick again. Damnit! There is no way that I could rely on my body to dance through 12 shows a week again consistently for years. So, I began to grieve again. Goodbye rhinestones, and feathers, and lashes.
 
Was I at the mercy of my identities? Where did I get to take the responsibility to choose… but what do I choose? It seemed like there were only two options:
1.  Don’t give up- be the person that goes back to their prior identity, doesn’t let things get them down, fights for it, and becomes greater at it than ever before. Plus has a physical illness… impressive! Or:
2. Brave new world- become the person who grieves, lets go, and chooses the new scarier unknown path, and shines brighter than she could have ever in her prior identity. And, PS, she did this all after an illness… also impressive!
 
Either or, either or, either or.
 
Then I got quiet enough to get out of my own way, and see what was already happening. The truth is, performing/old identity is known, this new career is not. Do I want to spend my life doing what I already do, or growing to what is unexplored and create that? And most of all, how can these maybe, actually, work together. News flash: de-compartmentalize!  These are both threads (and contain many other threads) to who I am… how do I integrate them? Is there space for the past to become present again, in a whole new way? Can rhinestones live in therapy?
 
Seeing Jubilee I felt nothing but proud, and excited, and grateful to be part of an amazing lineage. I was reminded by someone I love dearly that no matter what I am doing in life I will always be a performer, a dancer, and showgirl. So for the first time this was not an experience filled with grief. It was an experience filled with deep reverence for the part of myself that is still me. And brought up a lot of questions around how this part of me still gets to shine, sparkle, and be in the spotlight today.
 
We all have parts of ourselves and our identities that seemingly die with illness or other set-backs, and we have to try to make sense of who we are now. Now that we’re not who we once were, but we aren’t someone new yet either. Instead we’re in the very uncomfortable and messy in-between.  We may not get to choose what happened to us that made us sick, but we do get to choose how the threads of our past identities get to live in the present.  It may be a rough road of realization, but with support, creativity, and (for me) glitter, we can “figure it out.”   
 
So, does this feel true for you?