It is Friday and we are here.

{a breath for Friday.}

What worked this week?

Having a partner in crime.

One of my favorite parts of the last two weeks of Rally (Rally!) was getting to be Yvette West, Fashion Editor! So much fun dressing up every day!

So I’d been feeling pretty worried that post-Rally me would go back to thinking that delighting in garments is Shallow And Frivolous, my two monster fears.

I don’t want to lose Yvette’s wild-and-free creative instincts! She is so playful, so spot on in her choices, so unafraid to be gorgeous, so unapologetically sexy.

My own tendency is to wear the same thing every day or live in workout clothes. Unless I’m at the Vicarage, which is the place where I give myself permission to dress as lusciously as I want. Being Yvette is like Vicarage-me times ten.

This week I partnered (partnered-in-crime? partner-in-crimed? nothing sounds right but that last one is definitely wrong!) with Agent Annabelle Swell. Every day I told her what I was wearing. This was super helpful. And kind of hot.

Next time I might…

Just say no.

Or really, remember that it is okay to say no.

Lots of things are okay! For example, how hard this learning process is.

Or how much saying no can sometimes scare me. There is lots of conditioning to undo here. It makes sense that this is challenging for me.

This week I watched myself say yes when I meant no. Several times. Often even in a row, when I was still wincing from having said the first yes. Which is exactly the opposite of what I want.

Eight breaths for the hard, challenging and mysterious.

1. It was very disorienting on Tuesday to not be prepping for Rally. Or trying to finish a million tiny things for the next Rally. A breath for letting change be good.
2. Ugh action steps. They were needed this week. Except ugh action steps. Just the name, never mind the Taking Of The Action makes me want to just burrow back under the covers and sleep for a month. I tried anagramming them since anagrams are magic when I am as allergic to a phrase as I am to “action steps”. First thing to come up? Constipate. Right. Of COURSE. Other options were even worse. Panic Totes. A Septic Ton. A Tonic Pest. To Acne Spit. Basically action steps are so horrible they just anagram into more horrible. A breath for presence and for finding a better way that works for me.
3. Making things congruent kicks up so much dust. Mental and emotional dust. Energy dust. It’s good that things that are done are leaving, and in the meantime the process of helping them exit is showing me a lot of things I didn’t want to see. A breath for trust and more trust.
4. Last year I was at the Vicarage for rosh hashana, so I had a lot of time to get very quiet (extra quiet!) and focus on what I want in the new year. This year the holiday coincided with a dance convention so my process was more rushed, less internal. A breath for trusting in intention, fractal flowers and the deep internal knowing that seeds are seeds.
5. I would like so much more sleep please! I would like to get better at taking exquisite care of this body that is my home. A breath for trust, again.
6. Trust. That’s the big thing, isn’t it. Sometimes it is so deliciously easy, so astonishingly simple. And sometimes this is where I collapse. A breath for remembering truth.
7. Dancing with people who are not a good fit for me to be dancing with, not advocating for myself, hurting my shoulder. See also: PATTERNS. A breath for seeing this, which is the first step.
8. Inhale, exhale. Goodbye (and thank you), mysteries and hard moments of this week.

Eight breaths of good, reassuring, delight-filled.

1. Spectacular dance moments this week, so many that I don’t even know how to condense it into a highlight reel. Delivering the steamiest rendition of You Give Me Fever that Portland has ever seen. My teacher’s jaw dropping when I nailed something new on the second try. I’m having fun. A breath for hard work paying off, and for the sheer joy of play.
2. A hundred thousand sparklepoints for me! I said no to something without apologizing or over-explaining! Just a clear, sweet “that won’t work for me due to x, here’s what will”, and this was easy. The other person said, “oh cool how about y instead”, and that worked for me so we went with that. The entire experience was not-fraught, and I didn’t go into my Please Don’t Be Mad At Me I’ll Just Accommodate contorting patterns. Sovereignty win! A breath for experiencing how beautiful this is.
3. Realizing on Tuesday that I didn’t have Rally to run or prepare for, and then realizing that I could go to a noon rumba class with the retired people. All of a sudden my sad mood switched to “see ya suckers, I’m off to rumba!”, and it was awesome. Also my god I love rumba, why do I not do more rumba. A breath for freedom.
4. Tashlich. My favorite ritual of the year. Casting everything you are done with into moving water, in the form of bread crumbs. Casting. What a word. I went down to the river with Agent Mueller and Agent Em Dee, two of my most favorite people. I breathed peacefulness. I released everything that needed releasing, into the water. It was interesting to note that this year didn’t really come with regrets. It was more of a heart-noticing of the times I was not true to myself, and a full-body commitment to live in truth. A breath for letting go and for receiving.
5. A visit to my friend Va and her beautiful house. Feeling inspired about color, design, a richness of textures, congruence. A breath for delight, and for the superpowers of color
6. “Love more trust more” has been my sankalpa, my intention, in all things, and this is what I’m doing, both on my own and in connection with someone else, and I cannot stop smiling about how indescribably beautiful everything is. Same as last week: a breath of thank you for the right companion for this wild adventure.
7. This week was full of treasure for me, in the form of useful realizations, amazing dances, moments of deep peacefulness and moments of wild sparks. A breath for This Is Right.
8. Thankfulness. WALTZ BRUNCH! Four hours of dancing and smiling my face off. Bridgetown Swing this weekend. Getting better at noticing, and at receiving. Finally getting to give Marisa a thousand hugs. The notebook of wishes I made for the new year. An intensity of pleasure in my life, and this is not scaring me, and I’m not running away or trying to sabotage anything. So many lovely surprises. So many things are beautiful. Nothing is wrong. Now is not then. All Timing Is Right Timing. A full happy breath of deep appreciation in my thank-you heart.

WHAM BOOM! Operations completed.

Finished all the edits for the latest Sip Hint Learn book, it’s on its way! Big big changes at the Playground. Operation Luscious Consonance is both easier and harder than I thought, and a critical mission if there ever was one. Things are moving. Wham Boom.

Revisiting some wise important words of truth from past-me.

This post called Lost In A Tragic Ice Cream Accident. This is important stuff.

Superpowers…

Powers I had this week…

Last week I wanted the superpower of I Always Remember To Invoke Extra Superpowers, and it worked! I had this one in spades.

Superpowers I want.

I suddenly realized something this week that has never occurred to me in nearly four decades of being jewish: when we wish each other happy new year, we wish for a good and sweet year.

In one sentence. Good and sweet. Not “have a good year” or “have a sweet year”. A good AND a sweet year. This is so beautiful. What an abundant, loving wish. What a wonderful sense of plenty.

You get to have good and sweet. So then the good is even better because it is sweet, and the sweet is even better because it is good, and you aren’t greedy or selfish for wanting both, for desiring more sweetness and more good. In fact, it’s important that you get to have both.

I want all the superpowers related to that. All the superpowers of AND. The superpowers of I’d like this and also some of that. Yes.

Plenty. Delighting. Delighting in Plenty. Sweetness and PLenty. Sweetness is Valid and Important. There’s Good And Then There’s Even Better. It is Okay to Want Both. There Is More Good And More Sweetness. Receive As Much As You Like.

And someone told me that it’s energetically okay to toss our regrets in the water in the form of bread crumbs because apparently in Jewish culture fish are immune to the evil eye. I want the superpower of that! And that should work well, because I’m a fish.

Pisces superpower: No One Can Hex Me.

And more of these from last week please.

The superpower of Theatrical Spectaculars! The superpower of I get a parade! The superpower of everything…in style! The superpower of Self-Ripening Wisdom. The superpower of Everything Is Happening in a Grand Fashion because that’s how I do things, baby, like a fairground stripper! I Boldly Glow. Ablaze With Fearless Intentional Choice-Making. I Have Everything I Need. Wildly Confident, Outrageously Beautiful, Wonderfully Tranquil. I Do Not Dim My Spark For Anyone.

The Salve of AND.

This salve softens everything it touches, starting with your skin and then going deep, illuminating.

Any internal rules you might have that say you aren’t allowed to have X and Y suddenly dissolve into light, so that you are filled with your own light.

When I massage this salve into my skin with sweetness, I find myself suddenly and mysteriously filling up on permission, on amnesty.

I remember that it is okay to combine. I can have good and sweet. I can have sexy and sweet. I can have wild and sweet. I can have passionate and sweet. I can have steady and sweet. I can have all of these things at the same time, and infinitely more.

Any quality I can think of can come into the mix, can be added on with an and.

This is the salve of It Is Safe To Add An And.

This salve enhances compassion, because when you experience what it is like to gently undo false limitations, you can see your own and everyone else’s pain with so much love.

It also helps with sovereignty, and glowing boldly.

Playing live at the meme beach house — the Fake Band of the Week!

This week’s band comes via Ez, and it’s called Guilt Bombs. They kind of sound like a slow-motion version of The Pogues, though I heard it’s just one guy.

Attenzione! Attention, AGENTS.

I am still recommending the Emergency Get Calm, Quiet And Steady techniques, since they are keeping things good around here for me.

So I want to seed a reminder that this is a thing, and it helps, a lot. Not just with calming down in the moment but with building the kind of habits that allow you to change your relationship with whatever is scary or uncomfortable.

I hardly ever recommend these because the page is already many years old and needs rewriting. However, copywriting aside, this is still one of the best things I have ever made, by a lot. I have two boxes in my office full of the sweetest thank you notes from people, and so many of them are for this.

Come play if you like…

Join me in the comments. Some of us share hard and good, some of us say hi, or maybe we’re on silent retreat. My ritual doesn’t have to be your ritual. Whatever works for you. Almost three hundred weeks of this and there still isn’t a right way.

Everyone belongs. We let people have their own experience. We’re supportive and welcoming. We don’t give advice.

Wishing you a glorrrrrrrrrrrrious day, a restful weekend and a happy week to come.

p.s. It’s fine if it’s not Friday anymore. There’s complete chicken amnesty — join in whenever you like, it’s no big deal. And I am blowing kisses to the Beloved Lurkers. I love that you are here too.