Brave

I haven't written anything for this blog in years. Like over ten years.

I have been the Editor and Contributor for a website that I started with my husband www.challengenie.com. I am proud of the work I put into this site.

But goddamn it! I need something that is just my own again.

I just got home after dropping of my dear friend. And I feel charged up and kinda lit up.

Not because I drank or smoked or imbibed anything questionable ( which has been an issue popping up in Seattle..ladies don't step away from your drinks).

I feel like a have a hard-on for my life again or at least a little more blood flow to special regions. I want to encounter the wetness that comes from being juiced about a job, a creative project, dancing in front of hundreds of people.

Just to be clear. I am not looking for a hookup, a threesome, an affair. I have wasted a lot of my creative energy getting high off the endorphins of new bodies and entanglements before marriage. I am just borrowing the language that my friend's friend gave her about the attitude that she should be feeling toward her next career choice.

But this passionate and horny attitude is something I want for all aspects of our lives.

I need to reclaim myself. I am lost.

I look at myself in the mirror and sometimes wonder who the fuck I am.

When I make it to washing my face after feeding the dog and my son, I see a tired, migraine-worn face. The kind of face I would want to hug in the elevator while I was running off to some wonderful experience (myself 6 years ago).

Living bravely, I felt empathy for others as I saw regret in their expressions. I knew how that felt and never wanted to taste it again. Mostly, I was feeling a lil lucky that I was not the one wearing that unwanted mask.

When I see my face, I want to give myself a hug. It is very hard to hug yourself. That is why you need to meet your friends out for drinks when the kids are asleep and the husbands are home.

Tonight, I did just that and we talked and talked and laughed and were honest about how sad we feel.

How unfulfilled we feel.

How much we love our kids and know that being mothers full time will give them something that you can never go back to and retrieve once the years have passed. We are giving our kids a sense of security and attachment. To be present so that they can have the balls to go out into this sometimes scary world and not be afraid to speak securely, fight for what is right, and to take risks toward their dreams.

We know this, but we are still left feeling empty. We want to feel how we used to. To feel juiced, hard and wet for our lives and our role in it.

My friend told me that I was brave because I am taking an emotional separation from my husband (will explain this later). I started tearing up because I feel so unbrave.

I used to be drunk with boldness, with the "why not?"way of thinking.

In the best possible way, I would get an idea and see where it would take me. I would think about teaching a class with movement because I loved writing and movement. Then I would send out an email or walk into a bookstore and talk about it and then I would be doing it and often loving it.

I would audition for a role without any professional experience because I loved dancing. I would choreograph and move from a gut level without concern for anything except expression. Then after the performance, people approached me to perform elsewhere. Then I would find another place to perform because there were women artists there. I would follow the sweet bread crumbs, and it filled my life with wonder.

You get the picture, right? All along the way, I would say, "Why not? Sure, let's do this." I would say this not because I knew I would succeed. I wasn't sure exactly what that would look like anyway. I just wanted to follow where the path would lead.

I have lost this ability. Or I have forgotten it.

It is not because I am a mother. Not even because I am a wife.

I have lost some of my magic because I assumed it would always be there.

I took for granted that my choices would not impact it in anyway. Each choice to put everyone and everything else first made me feel lost to myself.

Please listen to me when I say each little decision I made to put off a spark of an idea pushed away my ability to take risks and see my outcomes with curiosity. I shrink wrapped my life into a familiar TV dinner.

I gotta woo my mojo back.

My friend gave me a hug as I dropped her off.

I just knew that I had to do something with this energy that I am feeling. To make something of the beautiful, raw conversation we had.

That is why I am writing this.

Because the doldrums need to stop. And the fucking adventure needs to begin!

These portraits were made out of wire mesh screens by the Korean artist Seung Mo Park. Taking the ordinary to new levels of creative expression.