Sometimes I sit down to write this newsletter and words just pour out of me.
Today, not so much.
Instead, I'm distracted by the beauty around me.
The americano at my fingertips, the window and the sun outside shining through the fall leaves, the kids on the playground, the yellow school buses going by. Life is so full, isn't it? It is this fullness that inspires me.
October flew by with family adventures to the pumpkin patch, travel to SF and LA to see friends and family and theatre, and a beautiful little play that is now gone. Theatre making is such a wonderful example of impermanence, whether we accept it or not, our projects leave us, our people leave us, and our time on this earth is brief. Things begin and end. The team I worked so closely with are off doing other projects. The text I spoke, now fading from my memory. The set and lights and funny sound ques, gone.
In it's place exist whole new worlds.
The ability to release, let go, and find acceptance in the letting go is something I experience in my gut.
Oh golly, I love that word, gut.
Don't you? Or maybe you don't?
I do, I really do.
Sometimes I am gutted when some horrific accidents happens, and other times when I am in touch with my gut I can make creative decisions about my life from this center. Listening to my gut has gotten easier over time. When I am truly listening, I know whether to order the double or single latte. I know when to pause to watch the sunrise, rather than continue my run. But the act of listening to my gut, is not always easy. It's easy for me to say yes to too much. Or to eat the twenty m and m's rather than just five. Since last I wrote you, I've been fine tuning my art of listening as a form of prayer.
As a teenager, my only understanding of the word gut, was my stomach. Hold it in, lose weight, run fast. Don't get too big. I'm fairly certain that much of this started around puberty, and before that when I lost my mom at ten. Nonetheless, I got my belly button pierced by a Doctor after forging my Dad's signature on the permission slip. In the moment after the piercing, I experienced great excitement, fear from being found out, and elation that I had done something I was not allowed to do, and giddiness. I felt SO cool too. My belly was now prized and protected, a jeweled center that I wanted people to see. Well see, except for my Dad. (He did find out eventually, but that's a whole other story! Ask me about it.)
I met my husband when I was twenty two. I married him at the age of twenty five, seems crazy to me now, and yet; it felt so right then as it does now.
My husband and I met at the back of a theatre during a show I was co-directing in the Berkshires. We talked briefly, flirted at a post-show party (his date gave me a death stare across the room all night), and we talked through the night (after he got rid of his date!).
The next morning we exchanged numbers, I hopped on a plane to L.A where we spoke on the phone every night. A few days later we were talking on the phone as I walked down a runway to board a plane to Australia for six weeks. He asked me to change my return flight and fly into D.C to spend New Year's Eve with him. We had met once. I said yes, changed my flights and landed in D.C to meet a man I wasn't sure I would recognize.
I don't know what made me say yes, but I do believe it has something to do with gut. The moment you trust your instinct well enough to make a decision. The older I've gotten the more my body speaks. I can tell you what food makes me fart. Really. I can tell you what foods make me happy or sleepy. I can tell you what foods make me feel like the luckiest person in the world.
Sometimes my gut speaks louder than my heart, and when it does I try to listen for the words it can not say, but for the feelings it knows and is learning to feel.
This month-
Listen to your gut as you vote. I know you will, but trust it. We need each of you.
Put your hands together for the two women, Nancy Van Vessem and Maura Binkley who were shot dead in a yoga studio in Florida this past month. Grieve for our collective loss, and the loss there families are experiencing.
Make a small choice today to better yourself for the sake of our world- look up, smile at a stranger, make the phone call you've been putting off, donate large sums of money to a cause you believe in, volunteer your time, say yes to something you want to learn more about, offer your heart or your time to a friend in need.
I hope to see you out in the community, online through emails or social media, or sitting in front of me at my next retreat offering. May you pause long enough to soak this in.
Two hands together,
Nikki
