The Beautiful Answer

Conquering any kind of fear is like getting away with something. I realized this today as I was waiting for my attorney to negotiate a contract for me that would change my life in pretty important ways. The thing about negotiation, though, is that you need to have two sides dedicated to finding some sort of common and mutually beneficial ending. It tends to not really work out if you’re not willing to give a bit, and take a bit. 

On a good day, I have a lot of work to do. I don’t fear my life too much, and when I find some fear coming to the surface for me, I try to dig down to its source and move it out out somehow, usually with energy work. Not so with the rest of the world, I find, and I have to be careful, not to mention respectful, of how other people go about dealing with their own fear. Because it’s not the same as the way I do it. Fear of not being seen or heard, fear of not getting every piece of the pie. Everyone’s got something to fear. 

Maybe it’s as much of a crime to deal with your fear as not. I mean, if everyone’s not doing it, you’re going to find yourself at the mercy of other people’s lack of awareness and/or effort at times. Even so, I like to make like Repo Man and do some crimes, maybe even get some sushi and not pay, or just keep working on my fear. 

“Genius is finding the invisible link between things.” 

— Vladimir Nabokov

Enough said. 

Maybe it’s because I got a new iPod for Christmas, or that I’m finally getting around to digitizing my old CD collection, but I’ve been thinking about music a lot lately, getting nostalgic hearing songs I used to love, songs that remind me or certain people, and even songs I can’t believe I used to like. 

Music saved my life. There, I said it. It’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. 

I remembered the times no one understood, but music did. People I’d never met, some living across the world from me, expressing all the anger, fear and elation of being young. I remembered the times when my heart was dangling by a thread, and only music could begin to figure out how to get that sucker back into my chest. Then I remembered how these songs took me to college, and those to New York, and others to London and beyond. 

I was in a band for maybe fifteen minutes in New York once, but decided I cared too much about music to suck at it publicly. Also, I didn’t care if we “made it,” which pissed a few people off. Eh. They got over it. 

Maybe music will always be the antidote to life, because it bypasses the brain as pure feeling. It’s one of the rare things that needs absolutely no reframing, except maybe if it’s Supertramp, and then no one needs to hear it ever again. 

On certain days, I’m sure that some cosmic force is fucking with me. On days I have a dental appointment, I may have three or four clients that day alone who are battling tooth problems. On days I want to go back to drinking caffeine I’m so tired, I may speak to several people o the phone who are having trouble keeping their energy up. Sometime, it’s just like that. 

These days, life is pretty much back to normal, and I’m enjoying some balance. With a book coming out in a few months, it’s a lot of work, but I’m not going to complain. I’m lucky to do what I do. I never forget that. But today, in the swirl of emails, clients, readings and more, I realized something. 

I had reached the point of saturation with suffering. Not that I can’t hear other people’s problems anymore (that’s a real problem among psychics - - just ask one if you don’t believe me), but I just came to the end of a road, so to speak. All at once, I saw that all the work I had done on myself, and all the healing I had helped people do, had kind of boxed us all in. Not in a bad way. But now it was just impossible for things to go back the way they were before. We knew too much, and had come too far to go back to the old ways of thinking and being. 

In a word, we had reframed our lives so much that to not see them that way was impossible. To quote the Replacements, color me impressed. 

All without trying to be anywhere or get anything. This shit is amazing. 

In the past, I’ve taken a few Pilates classes, mostly mat classes which hurt my neck. I know it’s something about the way I’m holding my body when I do it, but I don’t get much enjoyment out of the work, and not enough results to justifty the neck pain. 

Then I discovered Reformer classes. What the … ?  Just enough ass kicking to make them worthwhile, and every time, there are new exercises that work muscles you didn’t even know you had. Consider me converted. 

Problem is, now that I’ve begun to go to class on a regular basis, my body is adjusting. I want to push myself further, and have to counter that urge in my head as I’m trying to work on my form. Because if you’ve ever tried to simultaneously do a hard exercise, balance your body on a moving sled, and somehow not look like an idiot in the process, you’re doing a pretty good job. But you still want to press harder, for some reason. 

Tonight when I was driving home from class, body aching, soul triumphant, muscles taxed and shaking, I started thinking about that thing we all have, to push beyond, or try to turn working out, a singular pursuit if ever there was one, into a competitive sport. It’s why I never took Reformer classes before. It just seemed like a bunch of anorexics speed-crunching themselves to the brink of exhaustion. 

I’m happy to be wrong, of course. Every teacher and class is completely different in feeling and tone. It’s that bit in my mind I have to work on, which I try to counter by telling it that taking it slow not only makes the muscles work harder, and become more sculpted. It also helps the brain incorporate the effects of the exercise — oxygenating every part of my body from the blood to the cells, and making my heart sing in every sense of that word. 

Sure, I’ll be sore as hell tomorrow. And that’s why Pilates and I have agreed to disagree about how best to get a good workout in. Frenemies are like that. They reflect you just enough to show you where you’re fucking up, and are just enough of a good time to make you forget about why you hated them in the first place. 

I read about this experiment today, in which a scientist tried to create the most viscous material ever. It was 1927 and the scientist was Thomas Parnell, a physics professor at the University of Queensland in Australia. He poured hot pitch into a glass funnel and then let it cool while his class of students waited for the results. In about eight years, yes eight years, the first drop fell. After nine more years, another drop finally separated itself from the others and made its way downward to join the first. 

That kind puts patience into perspective. 

Since 1927, a total of eight drops have fallen. What is the purpose of this, you ask? Why would someone purposely torture himself and his students by doing this? 

I like to think it’s uncertainty. We don’t know when the next drop will fall. Maybe also unpredictability. Think about it. In the wide open flow of time that makes up our lives, do we really ever know what’s going to happen? No. And if we did, we would never willingly choose to go through half the shit that comprises our human reality. It’s too painful, too messy and devoid of fun. 

If we’re being honest here, pretty much nothing is really in our control. And maybe it shouldn’t be. Maybe the beauty is in the surprise, the up and down of our emotions, the high of our highs and the low of our lows. Maybe it’s the anticipation that the very next moment of our lives could spin us in a completely new direction, an amazing and true direction, and that this in itself is pretty damn special indeed. 

I’ve been writing a lot about the strange energy floating around for the past two and a half weeks or so, both in my own life and in many of my clients’. I’ve read people who are ready to chuck an old career and try a brand new road, some who are sick and trying to get better, and people who are just … confused and uncomfortable by all the change and uncertainty around them. 

True dat. The world is in the midst of some serious change. Mars and Saturn have been battling it out in the sky for a while now, and Uranus is in an applying square to Pluto, which will have major historical ramifications (June of this year should be interesting, as well as a few times next year). 

What has to come, when the world squeezes so hard, is a time of reckoning, when the tension gets so tough to bear that you either crack under the strain or go through a deeper kind of awakening. Of course, I prefer the latter path, and have found that catharsis is the natural antidote to this particular type of groundlessness and suffering. 

Maybe for you it’s a good cry, or releasing something (or someone) painful from your past. Maybe it’s letting go of memories that hurt to recall, or practices that aren’t working anymore. For you it could be a combination of these, or perhaps something completely different. All I know, and what I’m continually guided back to, is the need for us as a species to release at this time in our history. To purge our emotions and come back to ourselves renewed and purified. 

So get catharting!  Let it go. Release. Take a moment, relax every part of your body and watch the tension go. 

So tired right now that I’m finding the greatest amount of beauty in those moments right between waking and sleeping, when my eyelids are fluttering, my mind is no longer racing, and problems (mostly other people’s) fade into the background for the night. Tonight I’m going to see if I can bring on a dream, to make beautiful pictures in my head, hear amazing words and sounds in my ears, and go on a self-conducted journey of sorts. I haven’t astrally travelled (not intentionally, at least) in a while, so I’m going to give it another go this evening. 

Sometimes, you gotta get as far away from your “real” reality in order to see how incredibly gorgeous everyone looks from over there. 

But that could just be me hallucinating. You never know. 

The way of the world can sometimes be ordered. Take the events of today, when things were meant largely to be about laziness, reading and football, in that order. You know what to expect and when to expect it, so things rarely seem threatening or weird. 

Other times, the world can be random and strange, like the past two weeks, when it seemed that practically everyone I read or worked on was going through some pretty stressful times indeed. Groundlessness rules the day, and every five or so minutes, it feels like someone’s ripping the rug out from under your feet. It’s like that, sometimes. 

I suppose there is a middle way as well, which sometimes dips its toes into the mundane — the laundry and the dishes, changing the toilet paper and driving to the post office — as well as the exciting — trips to South America, amazing sex, meeting creative people you admire, and experiencing incandescent works of art. This way ironically requires the greatest skill and attention. To be able to move back and forth through these worlds with some degree of grace isn’t easy. 

The safest way? Look deep, deeper, deepest. Look daily. Never stop looking inside, to see what there is to find there. And then be as honest as you possibly can with what you see, lest you waste a rare opportunity to work with such incredible information. 

Sometimes, you have to laugh. After all, I started this little project out of a playful desire to play give and take with the universe, to se if what most people think I can do and even ask me to help them do, is actually possible. But sometimes, you’re just not in the mood, am I right? 

I have a client, who shall remain nameless. Her daughter has cancer, a brain tumor, and I help her out with energy work to help the child through surgeries and treatments, to help her little body recover faster, and so far it’s work out well. She is probably through the worst of it, and slowly regaining her strength. 

When you work in this realm, as I do, you see things in a completely different way than most people. Little things like someone cutting you off, or not calling you back, or wearing the same sweater to a party don’t mean as much to you , and you definitely don’t take them personally, At least, not always. 

Sometimes, I get impatient with people because they are seemingly so self-obsessed that they can’t even imagine someone being eight years old and lying in a hospital bed for most of the past year of her life. They’re pissed that someone doesn’t like them, or they can’t find their size in the jeans they want, or their cell phone plan went up in price. Most day, I handle it pretty well, staying buoyant and poised, but I went in to buy a lottery ticket in a bad mood yesterday, and basically said in my head as I was buying the ticket, “OK, whatever. Make me win the freakin’ lottery if you want. Or not. I don’t care right now.” 

Good strategy, right?  Real spiritual. :) 

So of ourse I got two numbers and the mega number right, which is always the hardest. That’s the best I’ve done so far — 3 out of 6 numbers. I haven’t redeemed the ticket yet, but I think it’s worth two or three bucks. 

It made me laugh, and cleared up what was left of the bad attitude. If a little kid can fight that hard, surely I can come up with a little compassion for the less-than-aware among us. 

So much of what each of us do on a daily basis is unconscious. I would ask if you ever noticed that but, chances are, you haven’t. Even the most aware, or trying to be aware, miss things. The look on their mate’s face when we say something the tiniest bit cutting, or the hug someone wanted to give us but decided against when we turned away. 

So today, the “last” day of the week (I love that common misconception, as if time stops on the weekend), I decided to not just practice a tad more gratitude, but look into the ways I may overlook things people try to give me, or to show me. I spent some time sitting quietly, just watching my thoughts move through my head. I replayed an email a friend had sent, and saw that I had left it in my in-box, unresponded to, in the rush to get to the next task — the next call, the next article, the next reading and healing session. 

I felt into this person’s energy and saw they were just trying to see how I was, catch up a bit, have the equivalent of a virtual cup of tea.  It’s not as if I had been rude, technically speaking, but I became aware in that moment that I do this sometimes. I push people away by not getting back to them, or not fast enough. And I know what that feels like, when someone does the same to me. 

Of course, it does no good to beat yourself up over it. Just noticing it sufficed for now. And in my head, I built a little shrine to everyone who bothers to notice other people each day. The ones who try to keep communication open, who reach out and catch up. I built one for the people who care about those they ‘ve never met, caught in conflicts across the globe, and those whose children lie in hospital beds, waiting to get better. 

I saw this and I felt it move through my body like a powerful wave. And when I bowed to finish my meditation, I said thank you with my heart instead of my head. 

All right, so I decided to join forces with the protesters yesterday and black out my blog, in honor of the SOPA activities across the web. It seemed like the right thing to do, given the circumstances. I mean, everyone seems to think that civil liberties are either fought and died for, or just ignored away. Perhaps there’s a third way as well. 

The thing about a protest is that it’s really two sided. Not just your side and the other side, but two sides of the same coin, the same energy. Jarvis Masters, a prisoner at San Quentin, convicted murder and author of Finding Freedom: Writings from Death Row (as well as another book) famously talked about watching a television news program with no sound from inside his cell. In one shots, the cameras showed one side of a protest, with people yelling, grimacing and waving signs in an angry manner. Then the cameras showed people from the other side — doing exactly the same thing. He realized in that moment that to get that dug in to a particular viewpoint was to suffer. 

That, of course, doesn’t mean you can’t take sides. We have to stand up for what we believe in or risk having those hard-won freedoms eroded or taken away completely. But perhaps there’s a third way, which takes our feelings and wishes into account, but which works to find community to do what’s best for all, or the most. 

To work with that a bit, I brought to mind all the things I felt really strongly about, the ones I’d probably fight with someone at a dinner party about, or would find hard to keep my mouth shut about — racism, maybe, as well as sexism and generalized cruelty. I’m sure there are a lot more, but those are the ones that came to mind at first. 

I saw myself, stretching back into the past, literally hating people I had never met, who disagreed with my point of view on a particular issue. After some forgiveness practice, for myself for being of that mindframe at that particular time, as well as the others I’d cast my anger at so mindlessly, I felt something move off my heart. As I felt all that pent-up energy of frustration, fear and ire leave my body, I felt a lot lighter and hoped that somewhere, somehow, those people felt a little lighter, too. 

I love those days when you feel like you’re past the worst of an energy disturbance and you’re kind of coasting again — at least for a while. Over the past few days, as seemingly everything in my clients’ lives has gone haywire, I’ve been trying to be the calm in the midst of the storm (I almost typed clam in the midst of the storm, which is probably a far more hilarious image). I’ve imagined roots growing from my feet into the earth, establishing a mighty root system that no wind could blow over, then a giant ship with insanely tall masts, capable of navigating through any nor’easter. 

Of course, imagining that this is the last storm I will ever encounter is wishful thinking at best. What I try to do, sometimes more successfully than others, is measure what’s happened, figure out what has to be done (both inside and out) to right the ship, then learn from it and try to to do that again. Maybe see it a little sooner, take evasive maneuvers — whatever’s gonna get me through it a little easier next time. 

This one has been a doozy. The energy is very strange, and all the channeling I have done (I’ll put some of it up on my blog @ SassyPsychic.com, probably tomorrow) is indicative of all this “end of the world” stuff this year is supposed to harbor. As usual, I just want to interpret it, to make sense of all the anger, frustration and uncertainty around me. Relatively speaking, I’m pretty happy, pretty balanced, and headed in the right direction. I try to be that, a little at least, for the people who choose to work with me. But sometimes — today, for example — I want to ask the universe, “What? What? What do you want? How do you want me to see this moment, make necessary adjustments, and help heal others and myself in the bargain? I am willing to work with you, anxious even, but just need to see it more clearly.” 

Make it clearer for me, universe. Please help me see it with all the grace and mercy necessary to bring some light into the word. 

OK, maybe I took the title of this blog post from Anna Deveare Smith’s most recent one-woman show. It’s a good title and well, steal from the best what I always say. I had some good news today, and it’s taking me some time to decide whether or not to take advantage of it, not do that, take advantage of some of it, wait a bit longer and see what else might transpire, or some combination of these.

Why is it that decisions are kind of harder when you’re aware? When you’re not you can kind of go with whatever sense most needs feeding. If you’re poor, you choose the one that bring the most money. if you’re emotionally needy, you do the one that brings the most attention and compliments. When you’re a little more aware, or are actually watching your reality, you notice the smaller things, and could subdivide a decision into a million component parts if you’re not careful. That could make decisions pretty arduous. 

So to reframe this unexpected condition of awareness, I decided to take a break from deciding. By giving myself the time and space to not really think about it but NOT think about it, I tried to see if this would rest my mind a little. And it did. My little experiment worked. And though I’m not any closer to figuring out what I want to do in this particular instance, I’m happy to know what probably no matter what choice I make, it will turn out pretty well. All things considered, that’s not a bad deal, and my mind gets to revel in all that space I created. 

Normally, I try to stay away from overt materialism just as I try to stay away from doughnuts (don’t like ‘em anyway), too much caffeine (I’m naturally kinda speedy, though I suppose it might have a Ritalin effect) and having sex with man who aren’t my husband. I’m kidding of course, honey, if you’re reading this. 

The thing is, most materialism is great for about five minutes, or four days, and then you get a sickly sweet toothache, as if you’ve eaten all the cotton candy at the fair, plus a few funnel cakes for good measure. It just kind of sucks. No wonder a lot of rich people have that bored look on their faces. They can afford anything, and enjoy nothing. 

The only exception I make is nature. I can get a lady boner for nature like nobody’s business, and today I wasn’t having a regular trip to the gym. I wanted nature, even if it was gray and nasty looking outside, even if it rained. So I got my husband into it, away from his normal weight lifting routine, and we headed up a pretty steep hill in a nearby nature preserve. It should be said that I am still geting over a cold, so my lungs aren’t what they could be, but we had a great time. We got sprinkled on a little and talked a lot and even though my lungs were burning for a lot of it, I was really glad I went, and we missed most of the rain. 

But that part of me that has to have things at all costs, even something slightly less harmful, like nature — that part I had to look into. So I sat with that feeling, of always feeling like I had to have more, even if it was more nature. I saw that it began in the lower part of my body, then moved up to my torso, heart and throat. I saw that it was fiery in nature, kind of red and consuming. Though it felt energetic, it was still like something eating up all the brush on a hill, using it as fuel, and that wasn’t going to work. So I brought forward a series of images of nature in my mind. One after the other, I spent some time with them, allowing myself to lose time in their beauty and taking as long as I liked with each one. 

After a few minutes, the consuming, fiery feeling went out. My breathing felt deeper and I was less anxious. My addiction, albeit to something as healing as trees, air and water, felt a little less strong, and I was able to go about the rest of my day thinking about how to add more nature to my daily life — a window garden perhaps, or some beautiful photographs I bought in Hawaii. There, those should do the trick. 

Sometimes, reframing seems like a lot of work. My mind would rather sit on the couch and watch basketball, or curl up with a good book and a glass of lemonade. Part of me sees this as something that has to be done, effort that has to be expended, or even something I may be unsuccessful at. But that’s like saying you can be unsuccessful at yoga. The whole point is to try, and if you can’t get into a pose, to find an acceptable substitute until you can. There really is no way to fail. 

Other times, the reframing has become such a habit that nothing happens in the next moment. My mind simply notices, refuses to react, then moves on. That’s when the quiet comes down. Time seems to drag, and it’s exactly like those scenes when the hero’s motions are in slow motion so he has time to dodge bullets, dive sideways while firing two guns at once, and of course end up saving the day. 

Times right after crisis, challenge, or even annoyance are like this. The quiet comes down like a curtain and all of a sudden you could be anywhere — away from the honking horns and the irritating neighbors, closer to some sort of paradisical landscape that lives in your mind. 

Today I was quiet, really quiet, so I could get down deep. I found some stuff, I did some excavating, and when I was “done” (because I suppose none of us is ever done), I felt like a little kid who’d just finished her first day of school. Glad it was over, but excited to go back tomorrow to see who I could meet and what I might learn. 

Sometimes, life throws you a curve ball. You read it, react as best you can, and then you get another pitch. Then you get another curve ball, and another, until you’re sure the next one has to be a fast ball. Or a slider. No one ever throws straight curve balls. They’re too easy to read. 

But then it happens again. And you either swing through it, or connect and send it into the stands. 

Life threw me another curve ball today, but I have to say that this reframing stuff is making it easier and easier when things like that happen. I was calm, didn’t get too worked about it, and even though my mind was tempted to go in all sorts of directions, spinning possible stories in a million simultaneous spikes, I was proud to stay grounded. After a few minutes (not hours, weeks, months of even years), I could see this as a gift, an opportunity, a rite of passage that would only lead to better things. Freer and less burdened things, that will undoubtedly bring new knowledge, new growth and even newer changes and opportunities. Which would make other people feel afraid, I guess. But for right now, even in the midst of this groundlessness, I am happy to be me, with my life, headed into tomorrow and whatever’s coming. 

Quietly but insistently, my mind has been talking to me these past few days. It has gained in strength during my nearly seven months of reframing practice, and even under stressful conditions, has helped me see clearly. It has slowed down enough during the potentially reactive bits that I could get my bearings and not add any more suffering to the mix, or exacerbate the situation at hand. 

When the shit hits the fan, as it has this week, I can’t imagine where I would be without my practice. Fifteen years is a long time to sit around and do nothing (not all of those fifteen years of course, but you know what I mean). To sit and not try to get anywhere, or do anything, seems crazy luxurious when you consider it from that angle. And just when you think there’s no “there” there, suddenly there is. When there is no net, your mind suddenly becomes one for you. 

It makes no sense on paper. It’s intangible as hell, and not likely to become any clearer. The results of my reframing can’t be put in a frame and hung on my wall, or poured into my car to make it start. It won’t feed me or clothe me, and it may never save my life. But it makes the quality of my life on this planet better, and less knee-jerk because of it. 

So mind, this one’s for you. You’re resilient and think for yourself. You don’t follow gurus blindly, and question nearly everything that filters through from the senses. You lean toward grace, and kindness, and curiosity. You seek out the beauty in every moment. And I’m ever so glad you’re in my head, and help me make my time here meaningful. What I would be without you is scary to think about. 

The way it happens, I’m deeply in love with you, even when we don’t get along, or you race too fast for me to sleep. If my consciousness resides in you, as some people believe, I hope we stay together lifetime after lifetime, like two buds just lookin’ for some fun in the cosmos. 

Some days, you feel good getting out of bed, ready to tackle the world’s most difficult problems with a smile on your face and a skip in your step. Others, you’re just trying to make sense of the events in your life. So completely out of whack have they come from their normal moorings that you’re just searching around for the rope to tie them back to the dock.

Sigh. Sometimes, it’s just like that. 

It’s been a weird three days, let’s just leave it at that, with many opportunities for reframing. It’s ranged from the sad to the strange to the crazy and threatening back to sad again. I’m still glad to be me. I’m still glad to be doing what I do for a living. After all, I consider it a privilege, not a right. But some days, you just wonder what the hell is going on and question your sanity at choosing this particular profession (for me, intuitive healing) instead of say, becoming a dental hygienist. 

OK. Whatever. Chin up and time to move on. My reframe of the day has been those words, over and over and over again. When I find myself questioning why something is happening, I say the word next. When I wonder why it’s going on, or how long it might last, same deal. Maybe not the most original way of reframing these challenging times, but sometimes you resort to the ones that work. 

Chin up, move along. There’s that’s right, girlie. You got it goin’ on. 

I tell myself these things to keep from crying , though I suppose some of part of me is laughing inside. 

It’s been quite a day — one for reflection and growth, and another for sheer annoyance. Someone I’ve been reading for more than a year and a half placed an order for a reading only to completely flip out a few hours later, calling me several names, getting belligerent and issuing threats. She was obviously in a lot of emotional pain about something in her life, but no amount of my apologies or money refunding would convince her that I was anything but someone who lived to take advantage of other people and make their lives miserable. Why it took her a year and a half and around 15 readings to figure that out, I have no idea. 

I’ve been doing this long enough to know that it’s not personal. Of course it’s not. And I’ve been doing it long enough to know that no one’s perfect. Not even me. :)  It was the entitlement that was so stunning about it, the idea that she thought I owed her something because her life hadn’t turned out the way she wanted it to.  That was really jaw dropping. As if I somehow predicted a hard and fast truth and if it didn’t happen, or not in the timeframe she had deemed appropriate, somehow I was responsible. As if energy doesn’t change form time to time, and she didn’t have to participate in the creation of her own reality. 

Let me break it down for you. Participation isn’t optional. It’s mandatory. Attendance is taken every day and, if you’re not there, it’ll go down in your permanent record. The real one, where no one really cares if you’re there, but it still has the power to make you happy or sad, fulfilled or empty, all the time, every day, for the rest of your life. 

Believe that. 

If you don’t participate sure, you might be able to cast off whatever you don’t feel like dealing with onto someone else. Picking a fight here, or creating some drama there. Maybe you’re so used to the drama that when you don’t have it in your life, you create it just to feel alive. Maybe you can find an enabler who lets you foist off your drama onto him or her long enough that your discomfort relents temporarily, and the relationship gets used up in five days, weeks or months, only to send you back to the drawing board, hungry for someplace else to place your uncomfortable feelings. 

Me? I’m done with it, and anyone else who comes into my reality this way. I have a huge soft spot for the struggling, the people who recognize their imperfections and work on them, just trying to be a little better, a little healthier each day. I am far from perfect, so I don’t expect it in others. Part of me doesn’t even believe it’s possible, so who cares? I am as much a healer as a psychic, and if you’re not up for it, that’s fine with me. 

So I sat in meditation for a bit, looking for ways to reframe what was essentially unreframable (that’s totally  not a word). Teasing the strands apart, I saw what she had brought to it, what I refused to take on, and how it had inflamed the situation between us. I saw that I had few other options, really, and so I chose not to take it any further. I don’t need to be right; I need be heard, and to at least be granted the opportunity to make my point. If it’s not received, I can’t help that. I can only release with peace, refusing to bring any more suffering, and wish her well.