In my next life, I’m going to study Traditional Chinese Medicine and I’m going to have a box of needles by my bed, by my reading chair, in my car, and I’m going to stick myself every chance I get. I will be perpetually lit up. 

I have spent so much of my life trying to be busy, for busyness was next to holiness in my family when I was growing up. There was always something else to do, some other box to check, another list to make, another accomplishment to achieve. 

The body keeps the score. The body knows what you really need, and it will try to wake you up so you can take care of the business that is solely yours in this life. The business of your soul. 

If you’ve been following me on Dr. Mark’s eating plan, and if you’re feeling strong and energetic in your body, but if your mind is starting to tell you that what you need most is alcohol or pizza or a hot fudge sundae made with Ben and Jerry’s Cookie Dough ice cream, start thinking about things you want to do but are afraid of doing.

If you get very still, you can feel your heart moving. You can hear it beating. 

Listen. That is your body telling you how much you are loved.

I am so curious what my life will be like August 1. I feel like I’ve thrown myself off a cliff, only, at the same time, I feel like I’m riding a train that is hurtling down foundationally solid tracks. What that means is that I feel like I’m going somewhere fast, only I have no idea where it is. 

No one has ever said to me, Hey, are you a dancer? Even though I’m a massage therapist, I dread the first few minutes of getting a massage because it never fails: the therapist always says to me, Relax.

I have done massage for eighteen years, and I’ve seen all kinds of feet. When people get old and have spent a lifetime wearing shoes, their feet tend to look pale and compressed and the toes look like five cars trying to squeeze through a tunnel. The whole apparatus reminds me of a broken bird.

I am more aware now of the power of language. I am more aware that most things I say are either honey or acid. I think of my words as those substances, and if I’m speaking to you, I try to consider whether I aiming acid or honey at your spirit.

Dr. Mark sent me a text as I was starting to hike. He wrote, “How are you holding up? The next couple of weeks might be tough as you might want to default to old habits.” Boy, was he spot on.

I am chasing several things in the next 93 days. There is the desire for beautiful and regular poops, of course, and there is also What are we capable of doing in our lives? Just how wild can I get? How free? How singularly myself?

Headaches and migraines affect a lot of people, and, I believe, adoptees in particular. I started having migraines in graduate school and they shocked me, the way everything could be fine and then my vision would shatter and I’d have to pull to the side of the road or put down whatever I was doing and cover my eyes and pop a pill and wait until I could see again.