I've been thinking about waffles.

I've been thinking about pajamas and how I want to be someone who changes into pajamas when the kids start their night routine. It isn't about the pajamas, I am quiet comfortable usually, it is about becoming someone who honors a night time practice, who falls into rituals rather than on the couch half asleep. It is about being someone who washes her face and smooths her oils because she honors her future self.

I've been thinking about a robe. Because I also want a robe to put over those pajamas. Because it is cold, really cold here.

I've been thinking about the leaves in New England, turning into the leaf peepers dream and what an asshole I was a few weeks ago declaring that this Autumn was not living up to expectation, how the colors I remembered weren't showing up. Well, guess what, it is freaking gorgeous here and I am just looking at why I felt the need to judge the leaves. Why was I feeling disappointment in trees?

I've been thinking about co-depency and how I am surrendering to the fact that yes, OK, that was me. Every piece of information I can listen to or read on it I am gobbling up like it is vegan gluten free strawberry cake and endless cups of tea. I'm breaking this shit up. There is a grieving period. An identity crisis of who I am without this and an excitement of who I am becoming without it, even though it feels raw and naked.

I've been thinking about blended family and how hard it can be and today I cried because it feels harder than what I can do, or want to do, or I don't have enough boundaries, or I feel I'm in a damned if I do damned if I don't position where I will never feel settled. And also, because I'm breaking up those co-dependant patterns and I am willing to now say, this isn't working. And I don't know what that means comes next. And I'm not trying to fix it. Just crying, and, walking, and crying, and walking.

I've been thinking about how I used to want to fix, or solve things, for everyone I loved and now I don't. I just don't.

I've been thinking about that strawberry cake I mentioned up in that metaphor above because pleasure for me sometimes comes in that form.

I've been thinking that yes, there are still hard bits to not drinking and somehow I am starting to feel the complete joy in having my life back, having me back. I don't ever worry about waking up feeling like shit or how I behaved or if I was an asshole (except to those poor trees) and I am finding so many practices to handle the shit storms of emotion that come up. See above, walking, crying, pajamas...

I've been thinking about how I want to coach less and conversate (that doesn't seem to be a word) more. I want conversations. That feel like the strawberry filling in that cake. Gooey, sticky, sweet, thick, lovely, sensual. 

I've been thinking that when I start to feel like I don't fit into my current set up of life, like when things aren't working, the flow, the feel, the practices, the relating; when I feel like I am a different shaped human than what my life is now, I marinate in the discomfort. And it sucks. I think a lot. About everything. I grieve it, I move it through me. I can barely find anything to wear that feels acceptable to the change because I don't know fully who she is yet. But I feel her. I feel her wiggling inside of me.

I've been thinking about my hair cut. How it feels like the first step into this becoming of a newly shaped life that can hold me. It reminds me of my nose piercing, my first tattoo. Me being me, without any other voices in my head. 

I've been thinking about how change is breaking of patterns, how new rituals and practices are a way to become a new part of who we want to be. How they guide us to that identity of self. If I want to feel differently/show up differently/become differently then I must actively and fiercely live in the now as though that is my truth, now. 

I've been thinking about waffles, buttery and dripping with the best maple syrup you can find. When my kids were little until like, 8 months ago, I wouldn't eat a waffle. I was a 30-day-cleanse-raw-grain-free-paleo-atarian. All for the purpose of staying small. I would hope the kids would leave just one little bite of that waffle that I could eat before washing their plate. Just that one little bite. So I could taste it but not be inside this body that is now me. My body that feels like home. All of me. Not small. Just fully me. Do you know that this size 14 body has been the body my Spirit has whispered is my truth for years? Years? I have fought it so hard with everything inside of me. I test myself sometimes to make sure this is really true, that I am really here, in total love of this body. I'll ask questions like, "Well, what if you and Dave broke up and you wanted to date, would you try to be small again?" "What if you were going to see so and so, would you freak out and not be able to because of your body?" The other day I was making Instagram stories and I caught my belly jiggly bits in the dress I was wearing showing loud and clear. A year ago I would have not posted that video. Now. I not only post it but I loved it. I love this me. I love an occasional gluten-free waffle, frozen ones, right out of the box, buttery and dripping with syrup. Every single bite, for me.