What Have You Been Learning Lately?

If you want to figure out who you are, move home. Live with your family- watch and listen. You might find, as I have been, that you are, to perhaps a frightening degree, deeply a product of your environment. I'm sure that Nature plays an important role in our formation, but anyone who denies the impact of Nurture clearly isn't paying attention. Begin to examine your values, your morals, your stories about the world and "how things are" and I guarantee you will begin to see your family reflected back somewhere in there. This isn't always a bad thing. I am appreciative of many of the excellent habits, ideas and values that my family helped to instill in me. For instance, how would I have learned to be an excellent hostess if it were not for watching my family warmly greet and over feed strangers? "Joe just met you at the bus stop and now you're here to have Thanksgiving dinner with us? Great! Welcome! What can I get you to drink?" That kind of gracious

The time has come! With 8 days left in the year, I'm beginning to craft and refine my learning goals and intentions for the new year. My 2010 list served as a helpful touchstone throughout the year and I am pleased to find that while some of my goals and intentions were not mastered (not reasonably master-able in a year...), I made many important steps forward. This year I have been challenged, taught and grown by surrender, communicating my truth, living my reality and committing to my spiritual practice. I found God vibrating in every atom of my being and this revelation spurred a whole series of events involving growing/glowing self-respect, steadiness and faith. I have let go of a lot of nonsense that stood between myself and my Self. This has been a year of softening and blossoming. 2011 represents a time for coming into full alignment with our highest Self. Thus far I am interested in bringing consciousness to communication in all its forms and to my relationships, particul

My alma mater, San Francisco State, has a fun, upper division unit area called Segment 3 that requires students to take classes from a subject area outside of their major. When most people chose Human Sexuality, I decided that what I wanted more than anything was to learn about Judaism. I grew up Catholic and realized that I knew very little about what it is to be Jewish, but I wanted to find out. This curiosity led me to read some incredibly beautiful literature, to cry every week with Laurel in Holocaust and Genocide class, to spend a summer attempting to learn Hebrew, and to fall head over heels with The Word. I've been writing for fun since I learned how to form letters, but I never realized how magic words are until I was reading the Torah in my Kabbalah and Jewish Mysticism class. God spoke and the words formed existence! That is some serious stuff. That same semester I started performing the poetry I had been writing. I was in theatre for a dozen or so years routinely perf

After writing about the mancation I'm indefinitely taking, I got to thinking about settling. Why is it that I've been so unwilling to accept the reality of everyone I've ever been romantically interested in and instead crafted fantasies about these people? Is it desperation that leads people to need to see everyone that strikes their fancy as their romantic salvation? Or maybe its strong social programming that causes me to always be in search of someone to "complete me" and build a nuclear family with. That's it, I'll blame society and the media, and while we're at it, my parents. The silly thing is, I'm not even that hot to get married and procreate. Someday, sure, but not immediately. It totally gets in the way of my current plan, which involves no responsibility or ties and no planning. More than anything else, I think the idea of marriage and babies is comfortable- something I could do to slip back on to some kind of a normal, grandma-approv

Yesterday, in typical fashion, my friend Laurel called and inspired a new perspective on life. She ran the numbers on how many hours she spent thinking about, pursuing and dating men and came to the conclusion that for the usual outcome, her investment was not worthwhile. She then brought up the important point: imagine what we could accomplish if we just stopped. She has decided that for the next two years and three months (the length of her previous Peace Corps service) she will refrain from any type of romantic involvement with anyone. She is allowed to hang out with and get to know people she could potentially date, but will be keeping things on a strictly platonic level with the hope that if anything romantic should grow, it will do so from a strong foundation of friendship. After having mulled over Laurel's fresh outlook all day, I shared it in a late night conversation with my friend Kaitlin. Today she sent me the link for a This American Life broadcast from 1995 about Qui

Thomas Wolfe thought you couldn't go home again. I have gratefully been able to. I was nervous to move back in after living on my own- and alone- for so long. Communal, family living seemed to me to be something I could never return to- I've been (not really) joking for a long time that my husband and kids were going to have to get their own apartment. However, I've been pleasantly surprised by how nice it is to be "home." And thanks to my family's generous offer to urinate in the hall outside my room and jump out from behind doors to keep me on my toes, it's just like I'm back in my old neighborhood. It's an immense blessing to be welcomed back by people so warm and funny. Even the suburbs, rich with red yellow orange leaf rain and epic hillside sunsets, are prettier than I remember and invite runs through the park and smiling at strangers. My brother and I cooked dinner for the family tonight, producing a gourmet meal from our little kitchen like