This last year has been one of dramatic changes for me. Some devastating, some crazy-making, some restoring, some amazing. There's been shattering pain and astonishing bliss, battles fought and lessons revisited(perhaps even learned). I've been crushed, tormented and caught, strained and stained by the ghastly muck of legal machinations.

I've never had a lot of money, but this year I discovered what it's like to have NONE. It's scarey to be broke with mounting debts and have a child to feed, clothe and protect. To somehow maintain an aura of "everything is OK, mama's gonna take care of you" even when everything seemed fucked and I had no plan, no idea how I was going to deal with it all. It has been so amazing to me that somehow through the grace of gods and good generous loving humans, it really has turned out alright everytime. I've gotten to know chaos well and I've even sort of gained some sense of balance, of knowing how to ride the waves without becoming completely overwhelmed and drowned by the bigger ones.

It's been almost a year since I chose to change my life, to break my family apart. Nearly a year since I moved out of my life with Jonathan, Sam's father. It was no light decision. I doubted myself for years, arguing all the arguments a woman's heart holds dear, even more dear than her own souls yearnings...

Nov 17th, 2001, I cut off my long blond hair and dyed it flaming red. Then I went to a performance art event and read my poems in public for the first time in a very very long time. It was the beginning of the end and, an awakening. An awakening thirst to create, to live bigger, louder, more lusciously. To allow myself to burst, to bloom, to devour, to slake my thirst finally! I would not waste away in self appointed martyrdom any longer.

I will not waste this life, this precious Rzan body, mind, spirit I have been gifted. How could I be a good mother, mate and friend if I'm denying my spirit? It is much clearer to me now, that paying attention to myself, to my deep, real needs serves my life and the lives of my family much much better than burying them and waiting, wishing... Living in fragments, dreams, bound by resentment, neglect, peeking through the gaps in the fabric of my frustration. It's crazy how a pattern grows, so slowly, so gradually that you don't even know, you aren't even aware of how warped, how twisted, how very far away you have crept from the truth, from the path you want, from who you really are.

Well, what was supposed to be a short intro to the series of poems that I wrote over the span of this year has become an epic and Sammy wants me to read him a book, so I think the poems will have to wait for the next post.

Thanks for listening.