From Whining To Winning

I am on a train again. I had planned on going to NYC then on to Jamaica. Instead, after all of my well-made plans and efforts, I am on my way back to California. You know the way to make the God/desses laugh? Make plans.

My visiting Omega was a change in plans to begin with. I hadn’t planned on being there again until maybe September at the earliest. But even with all my bargains with the Universe, I found myself following a clear calling that defied every speck of rationale and heading to Omega before going on to Jamaica. It was supposed to be just a few days.

But instead, I was playing soccer, my foot stopped abruptly, and the rest of my leg did not. There was a pop and feeling like a rubber band snapped, followed by a searing hot pain shooting up and down my leg combined with feeling like I got hit really hard in my gut and wanting to throw up. Emergency room visit and x-ray showed no break (which I knew) and swelling and fluid which means ligament (which I also knew.) I hobbled out with a knee brace and crutches and some papers that basically said, “Something very wrong with knee. MRI needed to see exactly what.”

Only problem is MRI not deemed emergency, so I have to jump through a bunch of hoops and pay WAY more money if I stay in New York to deal with this because it is out of my “network” and therefore insurance will cover a lot less. And to top it off, the specialist recognized by my insurance has an opening in 3 WEEKS just to see me before then scheduling the MRI.

So, now, all of my well-made plans are fantastic material for tremendous giggles and belly laughs for all the Deities, and my crutching, hobbling self is on a train to NYC to fly back to San Francisco Bay Area. And my luggage had to be shipped back UPS because I can’t deal with luggage and myself.

But in the midst of all of this, I actually only had one day where my little inner girl needed to mope and whine and have a pitiful day. For the most part, I have just been really grateful for all the love and support I have received and for the fact that I even have insurance—even though it is a completely broken system. Thank my Framily (friend-family) support that I have insurance because I would be facing up to $10,000 costs (based on if I have to have surgery or not) without it!

One day, I just had a mini-melt down after being in pain for days and looking at having to reroute everything, and my lower lip protruded out pretty far, I whimpered and whined a bit, then got it out of my system and just got back to being grateful for how incredibly blessed I am.

So, in this moment, on the train, heading to NYC, I am filled with so much gratitude for all the love and support I experienced at Omega, for my new and wonderful friend Colin No Impact Man (noimpactproject.org) who is meeting me at Penn Station, and all the Framily in the Bay Area who are already calling and checking on me to make sure I have all the support I need.

Really, I have my moments where I wallow in my self-pity, but pretty quickly I snap out of it and remember how absolutely, amazingly blessed I am, and then look for how best to serve next. Even if I am on crutches and in a bit of pain, there is always a way to serve and a wealth of things to be thankful for.

Love,

julia

Recent Talk You Might Be Interested In

Hello Everyone.

i was recently blessed with the opportunity to share at the Midwest Yoga Conference and one of my talks was recorded and posted in multiple links shared below.

Sharing here in case you are interested.

Love,
julia

And Another Thing…

I am in Washington D.C. after a week in St. Louis, Missouri. I had such a great time, and my heart is filled with so much joy.

I was in Missouri for a dear friend’s wedding, and it was such a delight and honor to be included in her special day. She and I have known one another since I was about 14 years old, and we were roommates for a couple of years from around age 18 to 20. She is one of the very few people whom I keep in contact with from those days in my life, and she is the only person from that time that I keep in regular contact with.

She and I went through some very intense years together. For me, knowing what I did and what I went through during that time of my life, it is a miracle that I came out alive. Many of our friends did not. A couple nights before the wedding, we were flipping through photo albums, “That person is dead, that person is dead,” became a sad mantra as we looked at the photos from our high school and college days.

Being with my friend and her partner leading up to the wedding was such a gift. They are great together, and I saw how wonderfully they balance one another. After having seen my friend go through some really bad relationships, it makes my heart sing with joy to see her with someone who is so caring, supportive, and kind.

The wedding ceremony was wonderful and so much fun. They did their ceremony like a talk show, game show format with questions and answers, which were hilarious. It was such a fun way to see who they are together and created a sense of play and lightheartedness in the ceremony, which is the first time I ever experienced that in the actual ceremony.

I also got to see two friends from back in my Jonesboro, Arkansas days whom I had not seen in a very long time. And I got to see my friend’s parents whom I have known over all these years as well because her mom was my art teacher for many years and her dad has actually been involved and helping on the campaign to Save South Central Farm (www.southcentralfarmers.org). It was interesting to feel the time warp of on one hand, feeling like no time at all had passed, and yet on the other, feeling like I am totally different person.

Leading up to the wedding, I did media and an event for a wonderful organization, Operation Food Search (www.ofsearch.org). Operation Food Search (OFS) provides food for over 120,000 people a month, nearly half of which are children, who would otherwise go hungry and malnourished. OFS reclaims food that is still nutritious and would otherwise be thrown away and reclaims home items that would end up as waste and refurbishes them and sells them to raise money for more food. They recognize that there is no such thing as waste, no throw away food, no throw away resources, and no throw away people.

The benefit that I did was catered by two local, fabulous businesses. It is incredibly exciting to see such conscious businesses in places like St. Louis. The lunch was sandwiches catered by Local Harvest, a store and café that sources as much local food as they can. They work with local farmers and local food artisans, for things like bread, cheese, and jams and canned foods. Although they are not vegetarian or vegan, they are highlighting local farms, farmers, and food artisans, and they made a very delicious vegan and vegetarian lunch for all who came to the benefit—many of whom told me it was the first time they had heard about veganism—and that they loved the lunch, thought it was delicious, and were rethinking their food choices and how that impacts our world. For dessert, we had the most incredibly delicious vegan carrot cupcakes from a wonderful café and art gallery called, Sweet Art. Can, I say, “YUM! WOW! Freakin’ AMAZING!” Oh, MY!!!! Truly, the most delicious, moist, and light cupcakes I have ever had in my life—vegan or non-vegan. My mouth is watering just thinking about them. Can you tell?

It was a wonderful week, following on the heels of a fabulous weekend at the Midwest Yoga Conference. I had a great time there offering a talk, co-leading a workshop with the funny and great Yoga teacher and co-founder of the Midwest Yoga Conference, Jonny Kest, and being on a panel and taking a class with the absolutely fabulous and remarkable Seane Corn, Yoga teacher extraordinaire and founder of Off The Mat (www.offthematintotheworld.org).

I am feeling so filled up from my time over the last week and a half, and am really happy to be here in D.C. with 6 young leaders/facilitators and 20 young people committed to stepping up their effectiveness and leadership.

Even in the midst of the challenges and struggles I experience, I am never very far away from the gratitude I feel for being so incredibly blessed that this is my life.

Here is to my dear friends and, “Wuv! Twu Wuuuv!” (A Princess Bride reference for those of you who might have seen this classic, one of my all-time favorites.) Here is to Yoga and Service and those who recognize how vitally they work together, and here is to recognizing that there is no such thing as “waste.” And really, at the end of the day, if you synthesize all of this down, it is all about Wuv, twu wuuuuv in Action!

Wuv u,

Julia

Love Is So Much More Than A Four Letter Word

I am in St. Louis, Missouri, for a dear friend, and previous roommate from long ago, who is getting married. I am so very happy for her. Her partner and fiancé is a truly kind and wonderful human being.

I am such a cynic in the realm of romance, and at the same time, I am such a hopeless romantic. It seems that in this area, like in pretty much every aspect of my life, I am a walking contradiction, dancing in the never-ending dance of duality, of which I constantly comment on—to the point where it seems redundant and passé.

Gods and Goddesses save me from the monotony of me… and yet, here still I am. Imagine that.

I am not sure if maybe the grown up in me is the cynic and the little girl in me still believes in fairytales. Or maybe it is the little girl in me who is both… that is probably more the case.

The little girl in me witnessed one screwed up “relationship” after another—parent to parent, parent to me, others to others, and others to me (recognizing on my path now, that there is truly no such thing as “other” but you know what I mean.) The little girl in me grew up and grew old very quickly. Too quickly. And at the same time, I think and feel that she never gave up hope that there is something worth falling completely in love for. I know that is what has fueled my activism and service. I fell in love with the Redwoods, and through that experience, fell in love with this Sacred Earth and our World.

Somehow, I have been very challenged in this experience of giving myself completely to loving another human being and having that experienced in return. Growing up, and in some of my pitiful attempts at adult relationships, my experience taught me that loving people is a minefield that explodes all too frequently, causing very real physical harm as well as emotional and mental trauma.

I have spent years, hours, minutia of minutes, and multiple amounts of money looking into, undoing, and transforming all the baggage I carried around for so long from my experiences growing up. Ah, all that luggage I was carrying around, I could have started my own package transportation business. Watch out UPS! I have since unpacked much of that musty, mildewed, so out of fashion and out of usefulness trunks and boxes, but it seems I still have more, if I am to be perfectly honest with myself… and now all of you.

The more I write, the more I am clear that it is indeed my inner little girl who is the angry, hurt cynic and the ever-so-pathetic hopeless romantic. Maybe, I, the present, here and now Julia, am neither end of the spectrum, but somehow precariously balanced somewhere in the middle—without being “middle of the road” UGH!

I want to “lose” myself to Love in order to experience whole new awareness and experience of “self” while at the same time remaining true to my path and with an awareness that there is no Prince or Princess Charming. I long for and love the feeling and experience of adoration, both when I adore someone and am adored in return. According to the dictionary, “adore” means to “love someone deeply” and to “worship God.” Maybe that is why I so deeply long to adore—to experience God/dess in that space of connection and mirroring with another human being. I have tasted the Divine in the early-morning dewdrops on blades of grass in fields and in the fog-filled canopy of the Redwoods. I have lost my sense of “self” in the Sea and Ocean and at the tops of mountains and on the precipice of canyons and in looking eye to eye and soul to soul with a wild wolf. So many experiences in the other-than-human life, I have lost all sense of “self” as separate or other than. With people, I “know” I am never separate from, but I have never experienced that complete melting with and immersion of God/dess in the human experience. There is something mystical for me in the feeling of experiencing mutual adoration with another human being.

So here is to my friends and to all who are courageous and crazy enough to fall into and rise up in love. Here is to losing one’s sense of “self” in the journey of love and adoration that grows and expands what “self” can mean and hold and share and serve. Here is to all those who choose to dance across the high-wire of love and adoration knowing that sometimes that wire is attached to explosives and yet the possibility is so beautiful that they dance anyway.

Enjoy the dance.

Love, and the ever-expanding experience of what that can mean,

Julia

Re-Emerging

i haven’t written for a while. i have been more contemplative. Every so often, i think about ending writing on my blog and closing down my facebook accounts and basically disappearing in the web world. But then, every so often, something happens that makes me think my taking the time to write, share thoughts, and sometimes ask for support on petitions or fundraising actually makes some kind of a difference– even if a small one, so i continue on.

i don’t have a crystal ball. i don’t really know how much of a difference any of this makes really. i get tired of people’s projections on me and sometimes their downright meanness and nastiness. i get tired of people’s sense of entitlement with me– as if just because i am a public figure who puts myself out there publicly– all of a sudden, their specific views, want, needs, and demands of me are righteous and right and i am wrong if i do not take them on. i know i open myself up to this by being public, and that is part of why so often i just want to disappear. i would not be surprised if i get some feedback to this posting that is going to be more reinforcement of the previously mentioned entitlement, projections, and judgments.

But for some reason, i keep writing (even if i take occasional pauses from it) and i keep putting myself back out there publicly (even though it is a lot less than i used to.) i am a human being. i am not a super hero. i am not a thing to be objectified, labelled, torn apart, or built up to some grandiose idea of myself. i am just a person who had my heart blown wide open and care very, very much about the Earth and all of its species and life that it supports. i am just a person, stumbling my way along, doing the very best i know how to live a life of loving, joyous service. i am one of millions (maybe billions, i am not clear on that one) who cares and is trying to make a positive difference.

This posting is not about asking for sympathy or complaining about people (although i do get hurt and frustrated and worn out by people sometimes.) If anything this posting is an invitation for all of us to look at our lives and ask ourselves if we are doing things because we are inspired and motivated to or because we feel like we “should.” i am not always sure which is the reasons for my choices. And at times when i am not clear, i often draw more within to try to find clarity. If i took on everyone’s opinions, i would be a very unhealthy and multiple, split-personality human being. When i need clarity, i go into the silence, i go into nature, i go into prayer. And when i have some clarity, even if i don’t have “all” the answers, i re-emerge which according to the Mirriam-Webster’s dictionary is partly defined as, “To come into being through evolution.”

May we all come ever more into our authentic being through the evolution of life’s journey.

Love,

julia