It’s taken half a lifetime to afford the stability that allowed me to tackle the hardest parts of my healing. Things are relatively more peaceful but the blooming onion of life has a hell of a lot of layers. Pass the fancy sauce.

There’s a reason we find ourselves stuck in vicious cycles of fighting, denial, people-pleasing, addictions, abuse, depression, anxiety, obsessions, compulsions, learned helplessness, crime, homelessness, extortion, lying, cheating, war; wounds gets slapped with all kinds of misguided labels. Pick a poison, unhealed trauma is the root.

As I’ve been saying, along with all the mystics, sages, gurus and creation stories: in the beginning we were all pure love and then something happened that separated us from love and we’ve been attempting to lie, cheat, steal or perfectly perform our way back to good ever since. This is not rocket science. It’s human evolution.

The reason most of us don’t run with open arms into the safety of so-called solutions is because we don’t have the time, emotional energy, ego strength or money to do it. Plain and simple. Oh sure Liz Gilbert, all divorcees will simply pick up our yoga mats, tap our trust funds three times and wish our way on a year long, world tour of self-rediscovery. *Huge eye roll.* For us regular folks, the best we can do is maintain a job, our sanity, faith and a place to live. Processing actual feelings and thinking about what we truly want, or who we really are, has to be squeezed in between paying bills, navigating student loan forgiveness forms, finding the motivation to shower and switching the laundry, but thanks for the inspo chicka.

One of the many insults of systemic oppression is the way dominant culture sells products, lifestyles and services that could solve all our big and not so big problems while utterly failing to acknowledge that only a fraction of the population can afford those luxuries. Just believe, become enlightened and manifest your food, housing, equal pay, social justice, clothes and transportation. Oh. Yea. Why didn’t we think of that?

So as not to leave us in a place of frustrated, hopeless, despair, I’ll refer back to the metaphor of baby Buddha when he decided to leave the palace. Buddha started life as a prince. He was fiercely protected from the hardships of reality. Palace guards were instructed to never let him see a flower frown. Daisy! I know you’re standing in a pile of dirt that smells like poo but smile, damn it! The prince is coming!

Eventually, the prince got bored of redecorating the west wing again, and decided to sneak out of his inherited sanctuary where, to his shock and horror, he saw old people, sick people and dead people. Obviously, this really stressed him out so, he checked himself into the palace’s day spa where a team of private chefs, yoga teachers, facialists, life coaches, stylists and masseurs gave him a month-long glow-up. When he emerged with super hydrated skin, a restored gut microbiome and regulated nervous system, he walked out of the palace one more time and saw a man taking a nap under a tree and thought: that’s it! And ever since then, I’ve been prescribing myself and my clients naps when life gets too ridiculous.

There are no guarantees. We’re specks of stardust hurtling through space in an infinite galaxy that no one really understands. Try not to panic and, if remotely possible (pun intended) see the whole thing as an adventure, let go of attachments, have zero expectations, rest when you’re tired, dream when you sleep and be grateful for the ride.

The spacious, free life is from God; it’s safe and protected-Psalm 37:39