I went walking last night, late into her hours.

My boy, Mowgli pup, and I with the concrete and grass and beach and back again.

I’m lucky where I live; it’s really peaceful, gentle street lamps lighting the way.

I never thought I’d love suburbia so much when I know the forest as home—fresh water coursing through her soil.

I long for it so deeply each day, and get myself back there often, but here we are, and I like being wherever I am.

I let my feet and the surface, the wind and my breath, Mowglis pace and the night, all do the talking.

I was just listening.

I was walking because my body was restless and wouldn’t settle into sleep, and slowly as I kept going, I recalled what my teacher and I were dissecting this week.

What are the regularly scheduled hours anyway?

What are time frames?

What is night and day?

And not in some esoteric way; I mean, what are these perimeters we’ve put around when things are to be done, at what time of day.

What masculine rigidity to always be adhering to!

I won’t. I cannot. I don’t.

My body and being inherently crave alternative ways.

I notice my body soften as I continue to walk.

I am softening under the weight of holding critical compassion for myself.

I am softening, because I lean in, and do not look away.

These thoughts circulating my headspace and leaving with each exhale; my being feels lighter with their exit too.

This is the bridge within the undefined and inseparable mind/body we are.

And my bridge is made well and working. Where it isn’t, I have a plan and support for that. I notice this, and thank my self for it.

It’s been a long road of redirection and reclamation, and I will savor this sense of trusting my body, as the home she’s always been.

I keep walking.

I keep walking and thinking and breathing and let be what was, and I lean into the void, the space for what will be.

I settle into being here now, with all of me.

I wrote and worked all day.

I can write sometimes, from just after sunup till almost sundown.

When I step out of the plan and feel into what is perhaps better planned for me, I become accessible, free to follow what flows with ease through me.

We started the day with a swim in the ocean and ran and played all over the too-early-for-others in March beach.

Stretching and moving throughout the day, nourishing with real foods in spurts that feel real good too.

Gentle and sturdy support, keeping me malleable enough while I stay focused.

A lunch hour?

A cutoff to the flow?

A supposed to now, or a maybe later?

No thank you.

I catch the last of sunset down at the same shore, and eat dinner a little too late than I’d like to, but that’s my body talking, not the learned scheduler in my mind.

I could practice till midnight, and still like clockwork, my body will be up with the sun.

I like that about me.

She rises with ease, every new day.

I’ll be diligent with clients till noon, I know that, but then I will nap too.

It’s a new practice, I’m not that good at it, and I love it.

The more I held myself to the right way, I rebelled, and the more I fought righteously, I felt lost, endlessly. I would feel constriction from the regularly scheduled programming, and the clear need in me to rock to nature’s rhythms.

Nothing done in constriction, especially for women, is done with a full-body resounding, yes.

I sense for the yes. I honor the no.

My life is devoted to listening to the nature of this body, when and where She opens herself and speaks clearly yes.

Yes.

My body speaks yes, and I unfold.

My body talks and I listen.

She tells me what is true, and I respond.

There is no calendar or clock or CDC statement that I trust more than the sun and moon, tides and seasons, all interwoven, that can insist on my body questioning her timing and expression.

No.

No, thank you.

I will make it mine, I whispered to the clear night air.

All of my life will feel like home to me.

Mowgli stopped and looked at me. His face saying, you’re silly; it already always is that way.

The humility of seeing our self through a wild dog that chooses to call us home is not to be underestimated. Neither can it be stated enough, the importance of rejecting the syllabus of how to be human that was made by other humans who don’t seem exactly…happy, and embodied, in their human.

It is late and no one is listening, and even if they were, I’d say it all still. I choose to reject the expectations, and also, too, the avoidance of expectations.

It’s all in hopes of control anyway.

And the feminine thrives another way.

My body senses the rigidity, and she moves with the golden sun that holds all of Her ways and curves unequivocally.

The fluidity to change and shift shape and direction—the heart and head sense it, and tell about it, in hopes that you too might feel keen to the freedom, that you have more access to than you know.

I walked and thought and led myself back home.

Right here, right now, I have more freedom than anyone will ever let on.

I sense the softness, the receptivity of me,

within this moment.

I sense the choosing and the wanting of myself, within it.

I sense the freedom found within our beautiful, full and lush, body of presence and intention.

~