What does it mean to outgrow the self? To follow a cycle to its delicious grief stricken threshold end while yet grateful for the self you’ve become?

Ready to let it go; excited for the next adventure.

What is that moment of overlay between what was the resistance to change the tension the inevitable heart opening surrender and the subsequent rebirth into love. From truth we melt and return to breath. Stillness in peace amidst chaos.

My friend Deb and I have visited the metropolis Sayulita international beach port town for the last decade.

Escaping from out sleepy fishing village empty beach starlit sky nights to the steroidal version of melding Mexico pot: Ex-pats from around the world, witness colorful flags and ojos de dios blowing in the sea breeze amidst the indigenous from Oaxaca to the Sierras.

Earth and sea unite as one until the
Tension of what was
Resistance
Modernity inserts or asserts upon the
Streets dark and hardened wins.

Retreat to return;
Nostalgia and wonder intermingled in
Where exactly are we?
And oh it’s this is amazing place again.

Pastel palette meet vivid electric ceremony
Meet oceanic sands and water color waves
Blend ancient power and thriving softened
Innocent spirit alongside the fierce
Births the water bird in and around me
World matches what I feel as
I, now rounded, head towards 50:
Psycological teacher

A-line
Presence transform barefoot shaman jungle healer…
Self meet self and become more of who you are
Quieter funnier deeply intimate storyteller meet
Observer mind dancing the streets
Spanish meet English,
Touch the bare ground earth mold
People who glow love you into peach and orange sky
Baby blue meet hot pink and raise the sun golden
Sands warm hearts in time so that
Hands touch and we remember
Future is past reformed from the ancient worlds
Stars are born soul recognition twinkle eyes and
Sing baby songs in lodge for next generations are
Coming of age and the edges have worn off
The warriors have
Fallen in love and
Poverty converts through constant creation
Artists re-envision

A new palette opens vibrational gateways to
traditional tweaks little by little what was
Morphs into another version entirely.

Take me with you and allow all my nos to soften to yes.

Nosotros together belonging and
Solitary growth deconstructs to
Me to us to we and I begin again to relearn
Me in the midst of chaos
Joy finds its rest in becoming life anew.

Then sleep dream and awaken.

Tomorrow is yet another day to
​Outgrow the self
Transcending heaven through our own body Earth.

I'll start from the beginning. From the first memories that formed me in my childhood, or at least from a different, happier, joy filled version of simultaneously existing memories that I now choose to have overlay the ones that explain my ability to hold space for womb trauma, issues of separation and depression, as well denial of the unknown. In this version, the unknown continuously dwells beside me, the joy of the earth and its inhabits walks with me, and I am at peace in my oneness, turning womb-an by 8.

I lived on the edge of a new housing development in Aurora, Colorado. It was a beautiful "I'd like to buy the world a coke" warm sunlit 70's clothes in meadows and on hills kind of time and place.

On the other side of our fences lived people we called neighbors whose houses had children with home we spent the day at school. Since we lived in the same neighborhood and went to the same school, there was no telling who you would bump into along the way, converge and remember, you come from the same place and you are headed to the same destination.

We'd enter through an opening in a silver open weave fence that bordered safe lands where we learned soccer and kick ball with the tire swinging always by friend or wind. The monkey bars we each took a turn falling off and knocking the breath out of us. Play stations with bars where the athletic learned how to circle endlessly and climb, while the strong pushed overloaded stinky dusty overly full tire swings.

Square dancing in the gym where we parachute played when we were younger, same place we climbed ropes to the ceiling and tried to touch our toes and hold ourselves up to pass governmental tests of health. In that same place, crushes and aversions were forged as we were forced to hold hands with the opposite sex and follow directions that made spiraling mandalas in motion, in cowboy boots of course and prairie dresses of course.

Then bells would ring and someone near would be walking somewhere close and we talked about the day, crushes, and wishes until we got home to whatever awaited us.

My 5'11'' smiling giggling mother was always there. In a 70's shag with sewing tools strewn all over the kitchen, she'd break to give us food and laugh us away to the outdoors where classrooms converged in races, bike and barefoot races we'd run down the street at full speed, or wander out into the endless field with prairie dogs, amethyst and petrified wood.

In the distance a conservatory with a plains Indian tipi. It was a beautiful 300 acres of land that preserved how life looked and therefore felt on the prairies before open flat land became anywhere USA strip malls and housing developments.. To me, it was pure heaven. Warm, safe, alive, friendly, and filled with images that I feel inside my brain. Myself resting in my awareness while still yet a kindergartener. Memory clear as summer sun filled days, and warm spring rain, playing in the gutters. I often wonder, with curiosity and not regret, what my life living in these fields, watching the developments grow, and staying friends with this set of people, would have become. We left when I was in 5th grade just as we were beginning to find our instrument in music class, I had not yet made it to all the stations.

I return to this neighbor 40 years later with ideal images of and how safe neighborhoods and schools can be. As I remember night under the stars singing concerts, jean, white shirts, red bandanas, and silver bleachers under the stairs facing hillsides where parents sat on blankets. Ideal I remember and as I drive into the grid it looks exactly as I remember and I am relieved and happy, calling my brother, mother, and father to share the exciting news. "Hey! You guys! It really was ideal! It's really as cute and sweet as I remember," I repeat this several times to my brother, mother, and father all of who are too busy in that moment, too distracted. So me, and myself, we remember together, giggle, and feel into happiness of memories.

I am flooded by memories of us, my neighborhood friends, rolling down hills at break times, fast. Limbs flying everywhere, laughter propelling us along with gravity to repeat the game over and over. Another memory floats through my mind and I laugh inside, maybe in that moment I am 7 or 8, now, I am 9 riding my bike to the duck pond, down the hill by my house, losing the chain, getting stuck in the bars, flipping, skidding15 feet coming to a stop, dusty, bloody and shirt belly missing and exposing where I had slid, now bare, on my belly marked red. Oh yes, that's where the scar on my knee came from and when I learned pebbles embedded in my knee, that my mother was not a natural born nurse, but the best creative, crafty, storyteller mom in the world. The dirtier we were, the more engaged in life we were, so certainly, bike chain broke and all, it was certainly a memorable day. I remember I had choices, closer to my destination than when I began I decide to sky gaze at the pond, yes, despite all our accidentally, life used to be safe and I, at 9, knew the way to peace after bloody messes and how to get home before the light of day had set.

Pops worked a lot, the first Hispanic in his company, Chevron Corporation, I now understand those long days without him and late night visits to top floors downtown darkened with people gone home, father at his desk dimly lit in the emptiness where my brother and I crawled under and through desks and pops worked harder. He was an accountant for a corporation before excel sheets existed. When my mom missed him, we'd drive downtown up to one of the upper floors and sitting under those desks playing my pop, with graph paper and a ruler, entered in mechanical pencil on graph paper large numbers to budget account changes.

That's my pop. Focused, determined, he changed all our lives and his in one generation. Moving from my grandmother's one room adobe house in my El Paso, Texas birth town to Aurora, Colorado after he graduated from University Texas El Paso, first but not last of my family to get a college education. This education he got with the GI Bill for his service in Vietnam and, he joked, his education only cost him a leg. In the 40 years he worked for Chevron, nobody knew he was an amputee, but they didn't have to. My dad ran, lifted weights, and played racquetball tournaments on off times, not to mention helping create one of my favorite very first memory while landscaping our yard.

​The Strawberry.

Well, it's not just a strawberry, it's my dads smiling gentle face behind the plant as the sunlight was shining on us. In this memory he was handing me the strawberry, telling me to put it in the hole he just dug and cover it over.

How, daddy?

Ask it, he says.

And it tells me.

​To be continued....
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