Walking With My Intimate & Accepting Friend

In her response to What is your approach to self-discovery? How did you explore your "inner you"? Sue Mitchell says that Nature has been essential. And in particular she sites walks. Specifically "solitary walks or walks with an intimate and accepting friend." 

Spending time out in the Natural World, the one that is growing and wild, this has been essential to me throughout my Life, too. Since moving back to the East Coast after 26 years in California and Arizona, I noticed that my depression and general lack of feeling alive sort of imploded.

At first.

Well, throughout my first year here. You see, I arrived here in summer and it was HOT HOT HOT and when we found the Wee Cottage, Gracie and I were both just tickled pink that she had a yard. Grass. Trees. Cool shady trees. Totally Awesome, Dude!!

And day by day we lost our walking habit. We tried a few times, but laziness took over, I suppose, or mayBE it was our collective lack of attention and the overdose of driving we'd done while crossing the country.

You see, I think self-discovery has to BE intentional. It has to BE cared for, nurtured, encouraged. And, as Sandi Amorim said in response to how she explored her "inner you," she asks questions.

The one question that she asks whether the something has "worked out successfully or failed" is "Who was I being that had it go this way?" 

If I am bold enough I can look at all that went wrong in that first year and see that I was BEing someone who stopped caring about self-discovery. Someone who was simply too much and too raw. Someone content to enJOY the What Is and just NOT wanting to venture out BEyond that.

After that first year, the second year seemed to have gained momentum, but Gracie and I still weren't walking. And we weren't DOing other things that we'd always done either. We were, well I was, trying to CHANGE. Like from nothing into something. 

I'd lost any sort of focus. I was really out on the far limbs and spending an incredible amount of time quite contentedly ALONE. I thought this was what I SHOULD DO and how I SHOULD BE. I mean, it only made sense after my relationship of the past 16 years, at that time, had been called, Time of Death: little by slowly from October 2006...

In the mindset of administering Life Support and Extraordinary Measures, I had FINALLY BEGUN to accept that turning off the respirator was The Next Right Thing. 

The next ONLY thing!!

In the fall of 2010 Gracie and I BEgan to walk. We ventured out and discovered the World around us. The World that is Our Home. Now.

We found beautimous neighbourhoods and homes that inspired me to dream again of what my Life could BE, if I would step into the Light of Right Now again. NOT that I needed a huge honkin' house at all, but that I was so in love with the Wee Cottage. And with making my art. And writing.

And there, right outside our door, BEyond the lovely BIG yard we thoroughly enJOYed, was oh so much more than we could have imagined. 

Each morning we'd wake up and start our days with writing and then a good long walk. Wherever. Everywhere was possible. What a wondrous place the one where we live.

For a long while there was work going on with the bridge, so we didn't get ourselves to the ocean for awhile. But oh the places we went and the ideas we birthed there...

Once again I realised that walking with Gracie was the thing that could heal me. So walk we did, and how amazing that we have both grown, put deeper roots down, and once more discovered the simplest way through Time, Life, and the Eternal CHANGE that is is a walk with a friend, an intimate friend, and an accepting one.