Woke up yesterday in steep hangover. Total alcohol intake for my birthday toast? Two ounces of champagne. Nested safe under cover, I reflected on all the celebratory fullness, so not the ocean-filled decade passage I’d planned. Yet being with all my children and grandchildren then six-foot front yard mingling with friends I hadn’t seen for weeks…truly brilliant. A memorable day, for sure.

There’s a narrow plot south side of my studio, the only remaining place receiving full sun in a yard purposefully forested over the decades. Twice a year I double dig the earth-wormed soil, add nourishment, cultivate hope.

Exactly a year ago I was moving through a gloomy health chapter. Post-surgery, post-radiation, lengthy bronchial infection,15 day unexplained fever. Each exacted their toll pressing me to build back my decimated immune system. If some prescient angel whispered in my ear, foretold the scenario we are moving through exactly one year later…well I would never have believed. Would you?

Leaning in. Right? That’s what’s called for. Mostly I’m plunked down right in the discomfort, tenderness, vexation, despair, confusion, distress. It’s breath-taking to bear witness to such a variety of emotional onslaught.

Captivated by a headline: A Brooklyn I.C.U. Fighting for Each Life I sipped a steaming cuppa, sank into the nightmare of front line health care delivery. Because this is my work. Health care delivery. And I really wanted to know what the reality was out there. This bird’s eye read fundamentally shifted my perspective. Contributing to this shift is my formidable opinion about the state of our national health care delivery. An opinion that has been brewing for decades.

I hoisted the two-wheeler on my shoulder, descended the first flight of stairs. Made a half turn at the landing, surprised at the revelation of a second flight. Each subsequent landing led to the next descent. My breath was labored and I wondered how long until I reached bottom. And what was down there? And why was I sure this was the way? After an untold number of flights I paused. I looked up. I knew there was no way I could return to the top. There was no elevator. I didn’t want to go to the bottom either. I woke up.

In the old days (like two weeks ago), coffee in hand, hubby and I perused the newspaper, tossing stories back and forth across the breakfast field. You could count on a “hell in a hand basket” story periodically. Sad tales of planetary suffering, travesties perpetrated by leaders in a position of trust, indications that things were moving downhill at an accelerating pace. That a global crisis loomed was evident. Belly fear undercurrent always simmering for my children, my grandchildren, all youth. Calamity has hovered imminent, but I kinda assumed I wouldn’t live long enough to experience it.

I’m home. Maybe you are, too. Feeling life spread out in a volatility that seems different than my own history with chaos. Any childhood innocence about predictability was shattered at age eleven by the death of my sister. Which coincided with the erratic uncertainty of omni-present nuclear annihilation: drop drills, backyard bomb shelters, food hoarding. The theme of unforeseeable continued: assassinations, civil rights riots, Viet Nam war. In California several years-long droughts. The death of my mother, my brother. My son’s cancer. 9/11. Deadly fires. My cancer. The death of my papa.

Little did we know Wednesday night was our last time at Clara in March. The venue is closed until a tentative re-open April 1. We pause for a while. Breathe. Feel. Wonder. My friend Carrie at the front desk stopped me on my way in that night. Smack dab in mid-life she ushered a friend over the threshold and the experience moved her in fundamental ways. She wanted to know of my recent time with my dad and seemed curious about my perspective from an elder standpoint.

I’ve no memory of the first time, pencil in hand, I parsed letters together to form words on a page. The spell of this magic must have been seductive, potent, a way for my wee voice to be heard in the world. I still have verse written to the tooth fairy and a small collection of other early poetry. I’d give anything for that diary I tossed in a fit of teenage angst, filled with musings from age eight to fifteen. I started journaling around twenty. I have volumes.

Really, who am I to teach a workshop titled Cultivate Being? Me, the living embodiment of all things doing. With the never completed to do list. Whose sure indicator of illness is a reclined posture of nothingness on the sofa. Well, actually, given all that, I’m probably a good person to offer this particular workshop. I was born this way and moved unconsciously through the early years with this drive. What an incredibly mixed blessing. I got a lot done at a significant cost. Slowly awakening to this tendency over time has been humbling.

We all have our personal version of time consumption. The way we habitually utilize energy, how hours of any day fill and empty, how we spend the coinage of our life. Sometimes these patterns are unconscious until something shifts. I wasn’t prepared for an evolution that snuck up on me in January. I just woke up one day and realized it had arrived. There’s always a back-story, right?

Esalen…land of alternate reality…Day 6. By night I nestle in my bunk bed cocoon, synchronous dreaming with the assistants with me in this workshop. By day I soak these bones, revel in beauty, seek alone space, drop into connection, dance my heart out. Daily chapters in the dance dome with fifty souls: witnessing, caring for, playing music for this practice of presence.

Still soaking in four days of utter quiet yoga retreat, Orr Hot Springs. I knew the teacher and one other participant, a rare escapade cloaked in anonymity. There was absence of polite engagement, lack of demand for my time, zero obligatory social updates. I came and went as I pleased, unbound as it were. Introvert that I am---the one who has learned how to be out in the world---totally honored, supported by gentle asana guidance and balm of hot water. And I was surprised by what arose from silence, emptiness, spaciousness.

Collaging. I love this art form. Quiet hypnosis rifling through images, listening for what calls, what evokes visceral, sometimes repulsive, response. The visual inspiring magic. I don’t fancy myself a visual artist, but I revel in reframing someone else’s creativity. Sometimes I turn to this form because something specific needs expression. More often than not, it’s a form of guidance, almost tarot-like, a reading of juxtapositions. Post-reflection or interpretation is often surprising. Such was the one up top

My heart is raw this morning: tender scared clear confused raging depressed hoping against hope. A hard time reconciling the beauty of these children with current reality of the world. How can peace such as this be possible? And how can we go on if it’s not? I simply just do not know and that has to be OK.

Perspective: the capacity to view things in true relation or relative importance. There are moments that naturally instill a broad perspective and year-end is traditional for the long view. I’m not big on resolution, but I’m an ardent fan of perspective.

Sometimes we’re in practice magic. A realization lands and, in the space of one moment,  everything appears different than it was, fresh, brimming with truth.  Like there was then but now it is now.  Like recognizing someone you haven’t seen in ages, someone who has always been there, but just not visible.  I had one of those moments on the dance floor November 20. 

A regular visitor to my home hobbled in on one of those awkward walking boots this week. I had no idea she’d been struggling with foot and ankle pain for six months. She recounted a familiar sad saga. Slow onset; chiropractic visits to no avail.

In all ways big and small, I’m noticing the dynamic duo of willingness and curiosity as key hallmarks for a life that thrives. Evidence is plastered all over my work experiences. When a new patient arrives full of questions with an eagerness to co-create…this is such a predictor of favorable outcome.