This practice will not only challenge your balance with standing figure 4, but also in how we meet fear as we take this shape into an arm balance, or a …

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The pièce de résistance is how this active stretch in the back of the hip will support a healthy lower back. So for me traveling this week and carrying bags, sitting in one position for an extended amount of time and doing a lot of walking, this was a perfect pick to stretch the external rotators of the hip which will release tension in the lower back.

• When your hips lack rotational mobility, your body forces the lumbar spine to twist and bend during daily movements like twisting, walking, or crouching. Because the lower back is designed for stability rather than deep rotation, this causes muscle strain.

• Tight external rotators can tilt or pull the pelvis out of its natural alignment. This structural shift alters the natural curve of your lumbar spine, compressing the lower back vertebrae.

• The piriformis muscle sits directly over the sciatic nerve. Lengthening this external rotator relieves direct compression, preventing radiating lower back and buttock pain.

After a watery full moon eclipse, we may have been more emotional, managing our feelings around the Pisces/Virgo axis.

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That is what I want you to feel in this pose, the balance we can feel when we can find an open quality to our posture while trying to find balance. Allowing ourselves to feel our emotions and not let the pain of them close us off. It is just energy and an essential part of the cycle of living. One that requires that something in must be destroyed for something else to emerge. This is the way into understanding ourselves and become even more open with our compassion, empathy, and love.

This pose asks, and teaches, how to remain steady in a small foundation, and when things get more challenging, and even uncomfortable, to expand the spine and create a brightness with a standing backbend.

I have been in the industry long enough to witness extensive change. I’ve also evolved my teaching to best serve my (very curvy) aging body, and encourage you to get curious for your own benefit. Even if you are a seasoned yogi, maybe you’ll find a new favorite way to get into or hold this pose.

As if standing on one leg wasn’t hard enough, this pose engages many large and small, deep and superficial muscle groups to hug into your center, wrap yourself in tight hugs while sink…

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And in that, my friends is where we meet our edge, the divine within ourselves, as energy is pumping through our entire body (and beyond) as we try to keep the hips in their happy, neutral place, which builds deeper mobility within the ball and socket joints.

Garudasana, eagle pose, like many postures, asks a lot of us, on many levels, and this is how yoga reflects life. As you create the shape, how do you meet the challenge? What voice shows up when you are asked to use a prop? Where is your resistance? In your body, breath, mind, your will?…

I have been in the industry long enough to witness extensive change. I’ve also evolved my teaching to best serve my (very curvy) aging body, and encourage you to get curious for your own benefit. Even if you are a seasoned yogi, maybe you’ll find a new favorite way to get into or hold this pose.

• Shift into the parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest; repair)

• Lower cortisol levels

• Reduce blood pressure

• Improve heart rate variability

• …

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He came out of left field, like a pop-up fly ball that knocked me off my feet, because I certainly wasn’t looking. Dating has been so unappealing, I decided to remain open while following the draw towards more self-reflection and spiritual activation. I haven’t been going out, just meeting up with friends occasionally to break up the solitude of developing my skillsets.

All those nights in solitude weren’t devoid of progression. I have never felt more grounded and ready, so I took him up on the offer, after a few dates getting into deep conversations, we found compatibility through real vulnerability. So I leaned in when he asked me to jump, all while trying to slow his pace down.

It was fun and exciting, and I thought it was going well, until he pumped the brakes, and I fell.

Flat on my face, left to wonder what the hell changed?

My patterns appeared instantly.

The excessive overthinking, ruminating over every word I spoke, those stale stories I told, while I wondered what I did to make him scared or lose interest? My wounded little child got sad because she felt stupid. For remembering all the ways, over all the years, she was told she wasn’t lovable.

My little girl never saw it in a father for he was not around much and wasn’t a very safe person. I had terrible adolescent (toxic) relationships, then got into a relationship at eighteen that became a controlling and codependent marriage. There I showed up as a wounded child when things got rough and our communication, along with love, broke down.

Post-divorce has been fifteen years of dating and a couple long love relationships that offered me essential life lessons, and here I am still, left hoping for that evolved man.

My more mature, rational perspective quickly kicked in and I knew the truth: that I am not stupid, I am actually quite wise. I showed up authentically, from my tender spaces, voiced my expectations and shared my feelings, while also applying my most recently learned lessons.

Like where to set comfortable boundaries to create a safe space to explore more with him, while confidently declaring expectations, using clear communication.

I didn’t do anything wrong. It’s not me, even if what shifted came from something I did or said. It could very well be that the more we leaned in, the less attractive I became, which could happen, although all of my friends disagree with this being the case (wink, wink).

What is more likely is that intentional dating (more than casual dating) brings out all of the stories, all the conversations we’ve had inside our own psyches to understand our own feelings. A pretty uncomfortable process of digestion, but a necessary aspect of growth and expansion of our perceptions.

We can think we know who we are, but if we are not aware of all the stories we tell about our own identity, we don’t grow or change, we circle the same drain, spiraling, or blocking forward flow with our thick, gunked-up, muddy cognitive water.

Yoga (as more than a physical exercise) teaches human evolutionary skills that guide us through the process of learning, unlearning, and disassembling the past, in order to do better in the present. The practices provide space to stop the spiral force of mental confusion, use emotions to walk through doorways of understanding our actions, reactions, and what triggers emotions.

So basically we can live with no regrets, because at the end of the day all of it offers a lesson.

Like for me in this experience, ignoring a hyper-fast-paced beginning as reckless, seeing only the green flags, I missed that the pace itself was a red flag. (I will file that away for next time.)

This man gave me an opportunity to be brave and speak honestly when I recognized a familiar pattern beginning, which was really hard for me to do. I am after all a recovering codependent people-pleaser, who has been conditioned to keep the peace even if that means abandoning myself, while also overcoming both avoidant and anxious attachments.

This is the work, this is what all humans must do, we have to peek into our hurt inner child wounds and figure out how to give them what they never got, and then provide it for them in the present. Being a good human is hard, it requires the healing of those young wounds, otherwise we still behave like children.

But let’s get back to the AI, shall we? The evolution of technology that seems to make huge advancements without our even noticing. What I discovered this week was that my iPhone is most certainly listening to me, but not in the way we’ve known for a decade, not to sell me an item that I mentioned to a friend or googled, then showed me ads for that particular item.

It was something else, and I am not even sure how to describe it, because I am not sure I even understand it. I do know I feel uneasy about it, like it is somehow bending natural law, or something.

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When his communication shut down and it was clear something shifted for him, I got on the app Marco Polo to workshop my feelings that surfaced, with my two besties that live far away. A wonderful example of how technology can be a fantastic tool that is super useful when you want to stay connected with loved ones across the continent.

I also sat in my local friend Kat’s home office that same day and shared both my excitement and anxiety when she asked for an update. It was unsettling to feel unsure of what was unfolding, when a couple days prior we were cruising along full steam ahead. Both of our phones sat with us as I recalled our last date, and speculated that for the first time, he didn’t care to plan our next date. Talking with her made it clear, I was now a little confused, and thus began the worry.

I have amazing friends, most are yogis and spiritual deep thinkers, Kat is my most witchy. She has two desks in her office facing each other. So when I sat opposite her at the creative and contemplative desk, she smiled at me from her workstation. As our conversation tapered off and the words fell into silence, I dropped my gaze from her face to a full lineup of oracle and tarot decks, the two cards she had picked earlier were on display along with several inspirational and motivational books.

I took a deep breath and instead of grabbing a whole deck and doing the full ritual shuffle and cut that I always do, I just ran my finger across the top of them all, and when I felt a buzz, I pulled the card from beneath my fingertip.

It was from the Wild Chorus oracle deck, a favorite of ours by a local Asheville artist. The card was so spot on that we went from jaw-dropping disbelief to teary-eyed laughter for the absolute trust that spirit always delivers a synchronistic message in this way. One line hit hardest:

“Sometimes this card marks a moment when you can access new ideas and new energy to inform and transform old patterns.” — Wild Chorus Oracle

Mind blown!

The very next time I opened my favored social media app to catch up on any notifications, I saw a new theme spewing out a similar empowered message, video after video. There weren’t any of my staples: crazy cute cattle dogs and cats doing funny things, ripped women in their 50s and beyond teaching me a new core-shredding move, or astrology on the upcoming celestial events.

The algorithm shifted to psychological interpretations of men’s behavior in dating and information and inspiration to take power back, and also looking into immature reactions with wisdom, seeing beyond what is presented in the common behaviors of immature men in new relationships.

The fourth video piqued my interest, and then I started to pay real attention. One had a literal parallel to a line in a poem I wrote about what I was feeling (before the shift and things went adrift). And I thought, wow, okay, the oracle card, and now a few reels… I am fucking so tapped into source collective consciousness right now.

I don’t believe in coincidences, again, everything is energy and vibration, but what exactly was my feed feeding me? Help on a new lesson, recognition, validation, information to steer me in a specific direction? Regardless, they were thought-provoking and helpful to see I was at a threshold of making a decision that helped me put a new lesson into action.

On top of all those nuggets of wisdom, there were reels from men’s healing accounts and therapists stating how an evolved man shows up in a relationship. Something I had never experienced before, and I thought how nice that must feel to be met like that. There is where true intimacy exists, and that is the man I have been searching for my whole life.

The immature man hides at first, tells you all that you want to hear, talks a good talk, then disappears. I can speculate that like teenage boys, they can’t get past the physical need. They aren’t looking for intimacy, probably incapable of it. Some reels declared that these men are just seeking sex.

Holy shit, is that what just happened to me? My inner child grew sadder, adolescent me became angry, then adult me can see that any number of things could be true.

I have definitely encountered many of what these reels were discussing, many times before, but believed what I was made to think from what the said to me. That I was the problem (too much), or that they just weren’t that into me, or at the very least I wasn’t a good match, which could still very well be true.

He was unable to communicate what was going on for him, only that “some things had come up” and I can have compassion for him in that.

Then my Marco Polo besties weighed in, reminding me of the order of events: he came in hot and pushed for a quick commitment, then put in so much effort with words, grand gestures, and continuously making plans, that got me very interested.

“He fucking love bombed you,” one friend annoyingly shared in her analysis. He really did, he put me in a girlfriend role very quick, and we daydreamed with ideas of what we wanted to build, and everything he said aligned with the plans I had shared.

Then suddenly his became disinterested.

So I stopped waiting for the call he said would come, and I dialed his number. My heart was racing with an intense build up of heat in my chest, that traveled down my arms to almost create a numbness in my fingertips. I was so nervous.

My narrative is so well-rehearsed, it’s stale and boring to me, that is why I take time in rewriting it. His doesn’t seem fully comprehended, and (I feel) he needs to revisit it. Which is completely fine, it is his work to do, not mine.

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Whatever the reason, he no longer thinks I am a good fit for pursuing, I am not interested in any bread-crumbing and denied the invitation to continue to spend time together.

I can remain friendly, I genuinely care for his well being, but I have enough friends to share adventures with, and have zero interest to add him to that list.

I feel good about moving on. Not stupid, I am courageous.

I am grateful to have been more brave in my communication, which is literally the most important aspect to any relationship. I am also glad we only wasted a few weeks of each other’s time. We shared a lot in that short time, and man, I am so proud and grateful that I did not share my body.

Maybe that was what “lost the spark” for him. But I wasn’t going to have sex with anyone, until I felt a real soul connection. I was very forthcoming and honest about that boundary and he easily agreed, claimed he was willing to go at my pace. If he wasn’t, I hoped he would have trusted me enough to have had that conversation.

I am certainly not sitting here thinking woe is me.

I am no longer thinking anything about it, actually. I am allowing myself to feel any emotions if they surface again. After writing this piece, I can say that I honestly feel at peace with it all, and him. I have no hard feelings and certainly no regrets.

I don’t care to learn more about his reasons. I trust myself, my gut, my spirit’s messages, and even the uncomfortable feeling from technology feeding me relationship guidance and personal validation.

I guess I should be grateful for the information, even though I didn’t actively seek it out. It did align with my mental processing. I wonder though, can it still be thought of as a message from the universe, if it came from a data center somewhere?

If everything is energy, then is it still a synchronicity?

Oh and a Spotify playlist randomly gave me this ✌🏼💟

Remember we create these poses for some physical benefits, to open our energy flow, and to connect to our deep center (core muscles and also our personality and psyche) so we learn who we are, and how we show up in the world, from how we address poses on the mat. It is about the connection and uniting of all our layers!

I’m not going to lie, in all transparency if I had the time I would have recorded another (cleaner and more produced) video for you, but my day got away from me.

Holy shit as I type this, that cute stray kitty, came right through the yard with something almost as big as its lean body, dangling from its mouth! It will eat well tonight, which reminds me, I also need to go eat.

See you later in the week to put this pose into a full practice. Peace and New Moon/Eclipse blessings! Dream big from the heart, this is where we start.

I have been in the industry long enough to witness extensive change. I’ve also evolved my teaching to best serve my (very curvy) aging body, and encourage you to get curious for your own benefit. Even if you are a seasoned yogi, maybe you’ll find a new favorite way to get into or hold this pose.

This dawn is full of electricity

Your gaze and company a glass lake
Calm, serene, comforting
I want to dive deeper into the unknown,
Rippling the mirror

To discover what can hide in plain sight
Within the pages of our open books

As we swim within our compatibility
This dance we have of confidence and vulnerability,
Play a crook in the night,
Stealing moments to map your body’s nooks

My fingers gliding over every curve, tracing lines of skin
To where your hair ends and begins,
Following the perfect mole upon your cheek,
Connecting dots of what scars and beauty marks lay beneath

Only time can show me the way
To explore you fully as a lover
Slow patient respect, adoration, and friendship
Will uncover if we are right for each other

Evenings I slip into a quiet subconsciousness
Wondering if you think of me as I do you
This in-between place of daydreaming our last embrace
To awaiting the next time I’ll see your cute face

From a certain promise about you
Through the unclear newness and the chase
I want to run straight to you the second I wake
Moments later feel stuck in wait

The tug of war within the in-between
A fun torture of sorts
My mind toggles
Between what I know, and all that is yet to discover

You as my Lover, a Partner?

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Throw out what you know about this pose and come with me to new territory moving your shape that will not fit in between two panes of glass, we are going to let our a** hit the imaginary one behind us and our chest the one in front, to take triangle pose wide, side to side on the mat. If you don’t feel more stretch, tap into more engagement, and get lower and more rotation and length in the torso, then by all means go back to fitting into that linear small space.

I have been in the industry long enough to witness extensive change. I’ve also evolved my teaching to best serve my (very curvy) aging body, and encourage you to get curious for your own benefit. Even if you are a seasoned yogi, maybe you’ll find a new favorite way to get into or hold this pose.

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I have been in the industry long enough to witness extensive change. I’ve also evolved my teaching to best serve my (very curvy) aging body, and encourage you to get curious for your own benefit. Even if you are a seasoned yogi, maybe you’ll find a new favorite way to get into or hold this pose.

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Sitting crossed legs on the ground was commonplace so this pose was essentially easy for most, now our privileged and dare I say, spoiled, lives don’t allow most to get onto the ground easily let alone sit there for hours at a time.

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So we use props and adapt for our own comfort and when we do with consistency, it will become familiar and in that easier over time. Grab your favorite props to sit with ease on the ground, or if you are new to this, grab a couple yoga blocks, 3 or 4 folded blankets, a yoga bolster, or even a large couch cushion. I am sure you can be creative here to find something in your home that will work, and in the off chance there isn’t anything, or nothing allows for good enough comfort in what I discuss in the video, then please by all means, sit in a chair with your feet flat on the ground.

This is a foundational pose, again the only pose all practices of yoga were performed in, and often the common and most utilized way a public class will start and may also be the first fifteen minutes of a class.

I have been in the industry long enough to witness extensive change. I’ve also evolved my teaching to best serve my (very curvy) aging body, and encourage you to get curious for your own benefit. Even if you are a seasoned yogi, maybe you’ll find a new favorite way to get into or hold this pose.

The contrast hits you within a few moments of exposure. I can’t seem to figure out how seventy-seven degrees can feel like a hundred.

I want to tell you a story from yesterday, a seemingly mundane moment that led me down a wormhole of memories from a relationship that was a great teacher, full of laughter and tears. It didn’t end well, although I believe I am currently rewriting that ending.

He crossed over, the best way I can figure, to phrase a body dying. But our relationship is being rekindled now in the ether, through a practice I’m cultivating while another anniversary of his death looms around me. A daily exercise that helps materialize our connection and re-open a line of communication.

I hope to spark your own interest to peek into the secret language of the universe and the energy that lives on, beyond a body, as part of the collective consciousness. Or at the very least open your eyes to become more aware of how everything is energy, and energy is always in flux and communicating with you.

I got so much comfort for my grief, through his energetic communication with me. It has been a blessing and a reminder to expand an awareness and perception to all of life happening around me. To take notice of what crosses my path, and the message it’s sending.

Yesterday was one of those days. He spoke to me, to let me know he’s still here, even though most would say he’s gone forever. I know better.

You know how that new age quote states, mostly attributed to Wayne Dyer: “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”

I found that little blessing while running an unexpected errand that took me across town, and back to my cousin’s to grab the new water bottle I left behind after my workout in his home gym. Like most new habits, staying hydrated is like a shitty part-time job that doesn’t pay well, but I do it anyway, hope to see it pay off somehow soon. I love that stupid bottle, it makes the task easier and more enjoyable, so I reluctantly went back out for it.

I avoided the highway to keep my windows down and enjoy the wind in my hair and still be able to hear my music, which I like loud, until approaching stop lights. That’s when I turn it down, not wanting to force my music onto others nearby.

I take the most direct cut through from East Asheville, where I’m currently staying, to his place downtown, through Tunnel Road, a main thoroughfare that has everything you need, like that one main street in most towns, lined with plazas housing franchises of golden arches, green mermaids, and purple bells.

What it has that I would bet your hometown doesn’t, is a large unhoused population. People crowding the sidewalks aimlessly walking around, overflowing the bus stops along this stretch in particular, pushing their belongings in tied-together shopping carts, while moving erratically without regard for the cars on the road.

I’m not exaggerating when I say there was a day when an unconscious-looking man stepped off the curb inches from my car going 45 miles an hour. So checked out of his body, not by accident, I don’t think, but by some quiet decision to escape it, never even saw me, or how close he’d come to being hit, or even killed, and it scared me to tears. I would have had a very hard time handling the pain of taking a life in that way.

For this reason, I drive that stretch of road slower and more watchful, because a moment like this isn’t as rare as you’d hope on this street, I’ve watched this population grow over the three short years I’ve been here in Asheville.

As I roll up to a major intersection that blends an off-ramp of Highway 240 to Tunnel Road, a common place for panhandling, I fly past a dozen left-turning cars in the close turning lane to take first position next to them, to turn left from the far lane, all the while thinking they are suckers for blindly following each other and not taking the front line. But that judgment comes from growing up around metropolitan NYC and driving way more aggressively than the locals here.

Turned out there was another possible explanation for the empty lane that I only saw when I got closer. A man was pacing the twenty-ish yards of the raised median. His head slumped down, his gait slow, then fast, then almost tripping to the ground, up and down. He had no sign, no hand extended out, no bucket (yes, some have buckets for collecting). Maybe they were all avoiding getting close to him?

He was barefoot, and looked like he’d spent a week in the desert without water. Frayed and torn clothing, skin sunbaked and so dirty it looked like he may have survived a fire. Completely disheveled, worse than I have words for.

The first time he passed, I looked away. I didn’t want him to engage; I was out of snacks to share. The second time, I looked. I felt drawn to really see him.

When I did, it was clear he didn’t see me. Or my car. Or anything beyond the ground under his feet. I’m sure of that. His face was flat, blank, void of vital life force, his gaze completely absent, and I knew he wasn’t in his body; he was barely conscious.

I saw My Sweet One, who had crossed over, in this man and I started sobbing. When we weren’t speaking all those years, he could have been exactly this, wandering some median somewhere, begging for a snack or cash, and I wouldn’t have known, yet I’d spent many a sleepless night fearing this exact vision of him.

The third time he passed, I saw beyond the dirt smeared surface layer, under sun-bleached strawberry-blond clumps of hair, crusted to his forehead, slightly in the way of his light green, gorgeous, albeit empty eyes. I saw his strong and beautiful bone structure, his athletic frame swimming in clothes now too big for him. His shaky fist clenched around his waistline to prevent the tattered chinos from sliding off his hips with each step.

I witnessed a young, beautiful man and wondered how he got there. Not to this stretch of road, but to this terribly sad place of despondency. I thought about who was missing him. Who he had pushed away, or who had forced him outside a boundary they didn’t want to set. I worried for the people who had no idea where he was or how he was doing. I wondered who or what haunted him so much that he became a ghost of himself, caught in some in-between place of barely existing.

Then the honking started, and I snapped back into my driver’s seat, weighted by grief, reminded of my own disdain over the past year watching what some Asheville residents and police alike refer to as “tweakers,” multiply. It’s a real epidemic throughout town, not just on Tunnel Road.

You’ll see the unhoused in the alcove doorways of vacant downtown storefronts, along the parking lots down in the RAD by the river, along green walking paths, under bridges, and even in the coveted, gentrified corners of West Asheville. I’ve never lived somewhere this population was prevalent, and accepted by residents and authorities alike.

A block north toward downtown, I passed the rehab center where I used to volunteer, teaching yoga. I stopped going after two visits. It was new then, chaotic, and I didn’t feel safe there. It wasn’t like the other three facilities I’d taught previously.

Next door to that, stands an old hotel, turned shelter with lots of people gathered out front and along the sides all clustered together. In my slow drive by I witnessed, a group of women smoking cigarettes, conversing about something dramatic by the tone and volume of their voices; men yelling at each other; an older woman sitting alone on the sidewalk, a dog tethered to her waist, laying beside her, both of them bone thin, as she spoke out loud, I’d hoped she was talking to her dog and not herself.

I caught a glimpse of the sign, it read: Homeward Bound, with a compass icon, and the tagline: A solution to homelessness. Yet, I don’t think they are coming close to fulfilling that bold of a mission. And something best addressed in its own essay at a later date so I can continue with my story and making my point.

You may not know this about me, but I’m a huge Phish fan. Since 1992, my senior year of high school, bored in Government class, flirting with a cute boy who doodled on his Chuck Taylors. I inquired about the phrase he painted, “whatever you do take care of your shoes,” and with that one line from a Phish song we started a friendship that has outlasted almost everything else from that era, the way it does for most Phans. Because for more than three decades, wherever life takes us, the bond made over this band gives us the arena to come back together, year after year.

When I can’t go on tour, even from the couch (they live stream every show), I like to see the setlist unfold in real time, to see what I’m missing, and speculate what I may catch when I do attend. Then I listen to each show, in order, on Live Phish. That’s what I was doing on this drive, playing catch up playing the second show of summer tour, from July 8th Madison, WI.

Not coincidentally, right as I pulled into pole position at that light and let my mind drift into the desolation of the man on the median, Kill Devil Falls started playing. What’s usually a favorite, bounce-in-my-seat loud singalong, flipped into the soundtrack of his bleakness, and I heard it for what it was: the message it carries about the desperation of empty promises an addict makes to stay straight, and can’t.

Underneath the high-energy hook is an all too familiar story about relapse. About the cycle of falling off the wagon again and again, about a person who intends to go into nature and clear their head, but ends up somewhere else entirely, and keeps telling themselves this time will be different, right up until it isn’t, and then they do it again.

That song always made me reflect on the great love I had with the man I am now communicating with from beyond, who was a ton of fun and taught me how to value myself and know my worth. He did this through the way he talked to me, spoke of me, and all the ways he lifted me up. He did it in the way he helped carry the load of being a single mom, and the way he kept nudging me toward my full potential, pushing me out of my comfort zone and into a spotlight, where I learned how to shine and gain comfort, while he watched from his spot on the rail, grinning with pride and joy at what I could accomplish with his love and support.

He also taught me about worthiness through the drama, and turmoil of having to set strong boundaries. A lesson I came to value in order to protect my peace, and my child from the destruction that comes with someone fighting addiction.

A battle that led him down destructive paths that could easily have pulled me into the wreckage. Those bad times cost me sleepless nights, buckets of tears, reserves of my life force energy, complete heartbreak, and sometimes even the cash in my wallet.

I choose to remember the good times, and thankfully they are plentiful. Out of thousands of memories including lots at Phish shows together, one in particular stands out. Not just for the song it contains, but for the point I really am trying to make here in this storytelling. Stay with me, I promise I’m getting there.

This memory was the first sober show after he got out of rehab and probably why it is so memorable. It was so much better for me, being way more my speed. Sometime over the course of our eight year relationship, I stopped drinking altogether (and have stuck with it to this day).

I’m not sure what year that was, but I know it was summer, because we joked about me dressing like a teenage boy and having matching vans. The laughs around our antics continued as we noted how different the whole experience was with him sober, and all that changed.

The wasted mornings, in both definitions of the word, that used to lead to hungover afternoons and rushing to meet up with his crew (and get party favors), gave way to leisurely mornings of coffee and yoga, a slow stroll through Shakedown, and walking through the gates before it got crowded to watch the venue slowly fill in.

No chaos, anxiety, drama, or confusion, just us, and the ease we always had with explorative conversations about everything and nothing, that provoked deep belly laughs. The kind that gain momentum and you can’t stop, even when you try, they just keep on going. So much so, that your core would be sore the next day. We didn’t need substances to create those experiences, and it was wonderful to know he understood that truth.

On the setlist that night, you guessed it, was Kill Devil Falls.

In one note, I call it and start jumping from one foot to the other like a ‘90s cardio step class. Singing loudly along, through a toothy grin that sprawled from cheek to cheek.

I catch him pause to look at me with a smile, the way he often did when watching me shine. He pulled me in tight for a quick hug, kissed my neck gently, and whispered “I love you” in my ear, then spun me around freeing me from his embrace, slapped my ass, laughed as we got back to boogie-ing down.

Later I bring up the lyrics to that song, he looks at me, genuinely confused, and tells me he doesn’t actually know the words. My perplexed expression gives way to question: how then had he sung every word all along?

He explained he never registered what they were singing.

That might sound crazy if you’re not a Phan, but it isn’t that far-fetched, when you know many of their songs are complete nonsense, singing about weird shit that literally means nothing. Which is another reason why I love this one song so much: it is profoundly saying a lot about many people’s struggle with sobriety, a lot about his lived experience, so I was shocked it never hit him as hard as it did me.

To my point: for decades, he sang that song without hearing it, without knowing it was describing exactly the pain and consequence he was living, the slow damage of denial, of hiding his shame with compliance to the cycle, pleading it won’t happen again, until it very well does.

I don’t think he ever heard it the same way again after that night. I don’t think he liked it much going forward either, but then again he didn’t remain sober much longer. That new awareness of its message would only poke his wound.

If only he’d given it another shot, allowed himself the conscious connection to the pain, and leaned into the wound, he may have discovered, as I did/do, that is where the healing happens.

To me healing is just higher conscious living, and it shows us how aspects of life (and spirituality) exist beyond this body, beyond experience, and somehow that makes the hurdles of life smaller, so they are easier to clear. When you trust and have faith in allowing yourself to feel the full spectrum of emotions, you can get more familiar with creating higher and higher frequencies, and no drug can get you that high; those that do, don’t last. Only alignment with source will get you there, time and time again.

He and I broke up more times than I could count, for the last time in 2020. Then he died in June of 2023. This year’s anniversary hit harder than the last two, almost as hard as the year it happened. I wasn’t in a puddle on the floor the way I was then, but felt a heavier grief and a guilt around my heart. Something I hadn’t felt since the last time I saw him, or the first time I listened to the last voicemail he left, that I never returned, and the one I replay often.

I’m wearing one of his t-shirts as I write this, which isn’t that coincidental. I wear it a lot. I think of him tons, so much so that he’s the reason I started that new practice of talking to spirit. It felt important in the progression of my healing, of deepening my spirituality and a desire for a more nuanced, witchy kind of conscious connection.

I talk to him. I talk to him in a way that is guiding him on how to talk back. And he does. This has been the practice I recently added to my days.

His communication is not with words, though I have heard his voice once recently. I heard his signature shout, the one he’d send off to our favorite band while they did their thing on stage. It wasn’t him saying an actual word, but it was distinctive and couldn’t have been explained away as anything else.

Mostly he talks to me in signs, and they have been showing up every day, whether I ask for them or not.

A white feather directly in line with my steps on a path or street. I find them on the floor of my car, or on my driver’s seat when I get in. Even in a random indoor spot, like on the weight rack at my cousin’s house, today!

I’ve also asked him for specific signs that will relay certain things, and although those come less often, they always appear when I need them most.

I’ll keep the details of that particular language private, to make him smile, as I protect a secret for just the two of us to share.

I wrote about him before, once in 2020, an essay that got published, was an editor’s pick actually, that got lots of traction online. His friends saw it, read it, and led him to it.

I can’t say he was happy about it. It was an uncomfortable truth of mine that didn’t paint him in the best light. I can’t say he was angry about it either. He told me his feelings about it over one of the last meals we shared together.

He’d just come out of another hospital stay, scared straight by the doctor’s warning that another drink could kill him. Sober again, smiling at me from across the table, good color in his cheeks and a light shining from his aura that I hadn’t seen in a while. He of course made light of his dire situation and of the hurt my words in print had caused him. If anything, he told me he was proud of me for standing in a spotlight I never used to have the courage to step into.

He was that kind of man, a very kind person with a gentle soul. He didn’t want to argue or fight, just sought peace and understanding, and wanted to feel free moment to moment.

He said what actually stung was that I’d written how he called me his angel. He said he wished that was kept ours, a sacred secret only we shared. I felt that. If I could go back and take one line out, it would be that one. But it’s the only thing I’d edit.

Tomorrow I go to the first of four shows I’m catching this summer. I hope they play Kill Devil Falls, so I can jump and sing and feel him lean in with that same soft whisper, because I know he still means it (feels it), wherever he is now, as I do too.

My life looks nothing like it used to. I’m not tethered to a place. I don’t have a home of my own. I drift, not chasing anything in particular, yet diligently working a job that allows me to save for whatever will arrive. Trusting that it will be much grander than anything I have ever planned for.

I keep my eyes and heart wide open, consciousness fully aware of what I see around me, watching for signs and meanings that guide me toward what is meant for me. I just let the days unfold, protecting my peace and looking for laughter, moment to moment.

If you take away anything from this essay let it be the reminder to see every human, every sentient being living today with empathy. You don’t know their story, their pain, but you know your own, and those of your friends and loved ones.

See them in the stranger who is struggling, offer some help if you can. A snack from your car, or a smile with a kind glance in their direction. Validate that they exist and we are here at the same time in the same place together, even if they aren’t doing well or close to their best, they are still here and deserve to be recognized.

That man on the median gifted me this lesson. I saw my loved one in him, and my disdain for this issue in this little city vanished into compassion. And deep gratitude that I’ve transmuted my own darkness to live and continue to shine my light. And that is a direct choice, every day.

I know he’s working on something with my guides, on the other side, in whatever collective current moves things in my favor for my greatest good. He’s told me as much himself, and I have no reason not to trust him now that he’s free from his addiction.

Free to be exactly who he was underneath it all along. An intelligent, charismatic, funny man with the biggest heart and an endless determination to let others shine, even if the credit was his, he so easily and generously gave it away.

Don’t let another day pass sleepwalking through it, the way I watched him sleepwalk through the words of a song about his very own undoing, oblivious to the message and the lesson it offered.

Pay attention to what crosses your path. Let it wreck you a little, if it needs to. That’s not a detour from your path; it’s the guide to becoming. Where ANYTHING is possible.

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I have been in the industry long enough to witness extensive change. I’ve also evolved my teaching to best serve my (very curvy) aging body, and encourage you to get curious for your own benefit. Even if you are a seasoned yogi, maybe you’ll find a new favorite way to get into or hold this pose.

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