(Song Dedication: Forever by Mumford & Sons)

So you know all that Be here now – blah blah blah -spiritual – blah blah – follow your path and know your are meant to be right here stuff I just LOOOOOOVE to espouse?  I mean I literally have a tattoo about this shit so it must resonate…

I may or may not be entering into one of the greatest challenges I have ever taken on thus far…and I think that says a lot if you read what I have endured in even just the past say, 5 months? I think it’s meant to be a big test…like final exam for moving on to the next year…or next degree, or maybe a masters kind of step.  It is significant to me because it is wholly foreign and uncertain and I have no fucking clue what I am in for!

Exciting right?! Hello? Right?! Crickets…

Right…still only me here…tap tap tapping away each sentence to construct something that resembles an article of unified ideas and possible inspiration, and if anything another sign post on my trail through the very thick woods I’ve wandered off into without a compass…other than the moral one hidden deep in my chest cavity (aka. my heart).

Through the twists and turns of my journey, I am at a crossroads…well actually I was at one and I have physically chosen one direction to head in for a bit and see where it takes me…my emotional, spiritual selves precariously trailing behind my body noticing the steep incline and thus the steep drop-off that accompanies such an incline that also appears to be slathered in fresh mud and inappropriate footwear for navigating such unknown terrain…some apprehension to say the least.  But with that apprehension some exhilaration to propel all parts of me in the same general direction, albeit not all at the same velocity. 

It’s like when my son and I walk the dog.  He is often reluctant to go, but then does and enjoys the banter and perhaps even the exercise?  And as I pick up the pace, he does too, yet fascinatingly always 5 paces behind travelling at the exact same speed, to the point of me finally tiring of craning my neck backward to continue said banter and requesting he resume his pace, which is my pace, but NEXT to me.  Just please stop walking behind me like we are in the lineup to go to the gym or library or like you are subservient to me!

I digress.

I have just written a proposal to take part in an Exploration Series through a sort of local theatre company.  That’s right, the·a·ter.  This is wayyyyy outside my scope of creative comfort, although my husband and possibly a therapist or two would beg to differ, always reminding me that I have in fact been acting my whole life.  And admittedly they are right, but not in a complimentary kind of way, like wow, you could be the next Charlize but more like you have worn a mask of perfection and projected this ideal human act for decades, like a master, but it’s perhaps time to let that all go now, on account of the anxiety, migraines, addictions, unresolved trauma and whatnots that are literally taking you down like a tired gazelle with lions hanging from her bloodied haunches…surrender sweet child. The time has come.  So as I submit to be consumed by the pride, I find a peace in just letting go of keeping up all the appearances under the misplaced idea I was in survival mode and come back in my next life, revised and 2.0 better.  Lucky for me my next life…is happening at the turn of 40, maybe because I heeded the call to arms rather than waiting until I had completely wasted away in my own self-made prison.  This literally feels like a do-over or some shit.  Major Last Chance U, if my life were a football metaphor…which thankfully it is not, because I would be so disoriented and bored.

So why the hell not?  Why not write my truth and share it in a public forum?  Has my blog- that I randomly started on a whim and whisper of intuition two winters ago, also without a clue what a blog even was let alone the vulnerability it required – not been provisional to this next part of the process? I heard a quote a few weeks ago by someone – sorry can’t remember who at the moment saying something like,

I use to feel like I had no business being ‘there’ with ‘those’ people, but what I realized is, I too have every right to be there because I am. 

And my soul and heart began to jump for joy, all like Hells Ya! And I stopped sweeping or whatever, maybe picking up dog poo…which is literally the least inspired job I can think of that I do daily, sometimes 2 to 3 times…and felt that resonant frequency with some dude that I am sure is a well respected social figure…writer, actor, philosopher…maybe even all three…sorry can’t remember still who it was, but something in me jarred awake and was like See?! Sarah this is what I’ve been telling you the whole damn time!  You are enough!  You can do this, if you feel it deep within the pit of your guts and it won’t go away, it’s not about ‘can’ it becomes ‘must’.  As in you must find larger poo bags for large dogs who poo large amounts, Scout is no Wheaten Terrier, her poops demand a larger repository…I don’t know, maybe just start using Glad kitchen catchers or something?

So I marinated in the ideas for a while longer still questioning my inadequacy for applying to such a project and then a few more messages came in, as I tuned my station a little more delicately and they essentially said do it.  You have nothing to lose.  Submit (as in apply, but also as in surrender) and release.  And maybe that yearning, nagging feeling will subside.  Which of course it did.  I have to admit, I have only completed the initial writing of the proposal and am yet to humour its existence by actually turning it in, but that’s the easy part…the physical piece of emailing it or delivering it in hand…which way?? I don’t even know that yet I’m so ignorant to the process.  But for me, the act of doing, the process of expressing my intents and ideas and concepts is what matters most.

So in the immortal words of Marcus Mumford from my favourite song off the Delta Album, which we saw performed live in August with our slow-walking, awesomely cool, hand holding through the entire concert seven-year-old son,

Do it for yourself

Do it for the girl

Do it for your, dare I say forever