Waylon has said, “write anything.”

Ok, I’m writing.

I haven’t submitted any writing during this course and tomorrow at 1:00 p.m. (my time, which is East coast) is our last official session. I’m a little freaked out. Well, that’s not true—I’m a lot freaked out.

I’ve grown accustomed to the weekly sessions. The familiarity of Waylon’s voice is soothing to my ears. Of course, there’s more than the sound of his voice—there’s the wisdom in the “specific” words he chooses to use to make his point clear and concise. The wisdom of a sage, who gently sits among us (his students), giving life lessons to those who want to be better, to be of benefit.

I’m one of those students.

So why am I freaked out, you ask? I want to write and write well. I signed up thinking I was going to learn how to write and that this would be my time to share my story. But, nooooo.

What I have been receiving in these eight weeks of sessions has been an unlimited amount of genuine love, concern, counseling, and guidance, all packaged in the most precious gift of enlightened education.

I find myself freaked out because I need my weekly shot of Waylon and the community.

Freaked out is a big, almost silly word. How about anxious—that sounds better, right?

I have Cystic Fibrosis, a progressive disease with no cure. I’m outliving the life expectancy, so I appreciate all the cliches about “living life to your fullest”—not that I use those in my daily life.

I’ve spent years in counseling learning and coming to some type of terms with the inevitable—death. But I’ve never written my story about the journey I’ve traveled, living with an insidious disease. I thought this is what brought me here.

I thought, now I get to tell my story.

You should hear the laughter inside my head as I write this, because what I have learned during this course, and with Waylon at the helm, is better and bigger than the ability to write my story. (Oh, I’m going to write my story, I promise.)

Now, what I want to share, need to share, is I found out how to be with myself, to sit with the shattered, torn, broken pieces of my life and not feel the incessant need to get my story out before I die. Because I am living my story this very minute as I type these words, with tears streaming down my face, my heart pounding, my breathlessness elevated due to low lung function, and I’m saying the words out loud: “I am alive, right now, and writing!”

This is it. I’m here now and I am freakin’ grateful.

I’m not the biggest fan of social media, but I see its benefits and one is this: I found Waylon and Elephant Academy on Twitter and am eternally grateful. Waylon came into my life at the perfect and most specific time (see what I did there).

I will never hear that word in the same way as I did before.

So, as I start to chill out to reduce my anxiety about the “last session,” I have an epiphany that it really isn’t the last until I take that last breath.

With a grateful heart,

Linda Bowman