They didn’t need other people to accept this aspect of them, they simply needed to accept this aspect of themselves. The inability to belong in community was driven by an inability to belong inside of themselves. I watched the moment that they allowed belonging inside of themselves, and it felt like I was watching it in slow motion, almost as if time had slowed down just so that I got to soak up every second of witnessing this individual in their process. 

“I mean, I am not going to sit here and tell you what to do because it is your life, but I can offer you a different lens to look through if you would like,” I said with no attachment to whether he liked what he saw through the lens that I was holding.

Before my eyes had even opened for the morning I could feel intrusive thoughts rushing towards me. All of the things that needed to get accomplished before my son’s soccer game began to rattle through my mind.

There were moments where the boys were giggling like small children and then moments where they were competitive and masculine like men. I watched them switch easily and quickly between strategy on the laser tag field and giggles when they had been shot by another boy.

Each night when I climb into bed, I brush the dirt from my feet before I slide between the clean sheets. There is something magickal for me about sleeping in clean sheets, it is one of the small things that I enjoy so deeply.

Later that evening, while sitting at dinner, she watched him sailing his old and battered sailboat across the lake. There was no wind, and he wasn’t making very good time, but the longer she watched him, the more she noticed that he was happy and didn’t care that he wasn’t making good time or that his sailboat was old and battered. He was happy, he was free.

I had been sitting for a period of time in silent meditation, and the kittens had been running and playing around the room for the majority of the time. Years ago, I had learned how to keep my awareness within myself and not focus on the noises in my environment thus I wasn’t focused on them.

“Well, I was lying here wondering how quiet I could make my energy. My energy is normally loud, and it makes it easy for people to see me, so I am practicing making my energy soft and quiet. I am wondering if I can master making my energy quiet if I could be in a room and people could enter and not even realize that I am there. They would be able to see me, but they wouldn’t really notice me,” I explained. 

I didn’t need to ask for clarity. I knew exactly what she was saying to me. I had a long history of chasing whatever I wanted in life. A long history of pushing and forcing and making things happen. I had spent almost all of my life “making” things happen rather than “allowing” them to happen. I had spent almost all of my life trying to control everything and everyone rather than releasing and letting go and surrendering to what was meant to be. 

I was walking in circles in the pool while crying. I was mad, and I was sad, and I had taken myself out to the pool to force myself to slow down and feel all of my feelings connected to the situation earlier that day. I have always found water calming and an easy way to release my emotions and I have always found physical movement an easy way to connect with the way that my emotions feel inside of my body.