Emerging : 5.4.26

Hello dear one,

I’m writing to you from the sky on my way home from a week spent in Puglia, Italy. It was magic. Truly.

I swam naked in the ocean, danced late into the night, sat in circles of women, opened my heart so wide it expanded three times its size. I ate pasta, learned to make pasta, and then ate more pasta. I drove through the countryside in a little turquoise car, and explored ancient villages painted all in white, and indulged in gelato, and fried seafood, and afternoon cappuccinos.

I wrote poetry, and painted, and breathed deeply, and cried a lot. I was showered with love and care and community, and I poured from an overflowing cup into the open arms of the women surrounding me.

I engaged in ritual, and reverence, and devotion, and I lived and breathed abundance in the truest of forms, that of unconditional love and deep inner and outer belonging.

And I laughed, deep, full belly, unfiltered laughter, the kind that explodes like a cascading waterfall from the space nurtured by safety, understanding, and heart-to-heart connection.

I found my joy and embraced the parts of me that are afraid of my own light. I heard the whispers of my younger selves, “Do it for me.” And I felt the longing from countless generations of silenced women and children, “Do it for us.”

I dissolved into and beyond myself, and emerged with a strength equal to the ocean in all her softness and flexibility, never static or controlling, ebbing and flowing, trusting in the process and the returning.

I booked my plane ticket just three weeks before leaving, having had no intention of taking this journey this year. And here I am unable to imagine if I hadn’t followed my heart.

My 91-year-old grandmother sent me a long and beautiful message earlier this week. Part of what she shared was this:

I don’t want to be defined by my age, or by some possible fatal illness.
I’m alive now and that’s what matters.
Life is temporary, always, for everyone.
My work is to live until I die.
I want to say yes more frequently.
I want to dare more and leave this life without regret.
I want each of us to be as present, open, and honest as possible.
I will own my responsibility in actions.

I am holding her wise words close, as a compass and a guiding light.

My bag is full of Italian olive oil and my heart is bursting with gratitude, and love, and the tenderness of saying yes to it all, knowing that everything is as impermanent, here today, gone tomorrow.

May we remember that our lives are happening now. May we create space to hear the whispers of our hearts. May we have the courage to say yes to the things calling us forward. And may we open our hearts wide enough to experience the fullness of life; the grief, the joy, the magic, the sorrow, the beauty, the whole of it.

With all my love,
Raina