No Matter Where You Go, There You Are.

           I appear in the pink-painted bedroom with a pop sound just as a girl is closing up her jewelry Caboodle and pushing it away. As expected, we lock gazes, allowing me to see very familiar features – eyes that seem to be a combination of blue, green and gray with a thin ring of yellow around the pupils, framed by long lashes. I’ve always thought of that nose as cute, too. Within minutes, the crayons and colored pencils are out and we’re storytelling together, drawing scenes, trading ideas and dialogue, coloring in the details. One thing I’ve always been is a storyteller. My right knee aches suddenly, briefly, and, as is my current habit, I unfold my legs. “Okay,” I say to the little girl. “Where am I? Do I take notes on the meeting?” “No, you’re helping, we’re talking.” I chuckle in surprised amusement. “You got it.”

           I need to sit more with my inner child.

Including today, which is, of course, Monday, the 17th, I had a productive weekend. Writing, exercise, catching up on sleep, learning about the one and only Dawson Church and benefiting from a guided meditation he did with the host of YouTube's "Inspire Nation". I had a lovely dinner with my parents and saw, on the counter, Dad's Valentine's gifts for Mom, which involved a card of which I swear I got a birthday version either in '19 or '18 (That gave me pause, though I blame card companies, not my father).  Because you were dying to know, yes, my mother still makes tasty chili. And I finally started watching "AJ & the Queen" on Netflix.  Younger me always appreciated Rupaul Charles , but as an adult currently undergoing a transformation that involves remembering who I really am, meditating, etc., I'm in a phase of looking up all of these interviews with him , hungry for the parts where he says such inspiring things , putting out int...

            For me, dating that is pretty much intuition-free is utter bulls**t.                         I have a friend who would have loved for me to have dated more and told her more about it. A s much as she loves and supports me, she has occasionally let slip that she seems to make negative assumptions about what kind of person that I and her other friends will attract, not to be catty but to prepare herself using assumptions that are not about or because of me. The source of that is past pain and possibly self-doubt. That said, her words grab the attention of the fearful voice in my head and elicit classic internal reactions of the Shannon I used to be. Our individual negative opinions are not about one another.               In this post, I’m gonna dig into...