This week I’ve started to feel a bit like a drunken monkey in a new forest. That’s a pretty extreme way of saying that my attention span has been minimal as I’ve started to pick up my pen (okay, it’s a keyboard – sigh) and write the thoughts down that have been swimming in my brain for years. I feel like I’m bouncing from one tree to another to another and then another. It’s rather intoxicating, though, to finally feel alive again.

I’m not much of a talker – at least not about my feelings – and my feelings have been so wrapped up in my divorce and the recovery of that both financially and mentally that I haven’t – for about two years – felt much like getting in touch with my true self. Nope. I was more focused on just staying alive and facing a new day.

I wouldn’t necessarily go as far as to say I’ve been pretending to be someone I’m not. That implies that I’ve been dishonest or untrustworthy. None of those are true. But I think we can all agree we each have our own coping mechanisms when it comes to dealing with our shit. And mine is to bury. Bury it deep. In a blue barrel, underground, in the middle of an Ozarks National Forest.

Here lately, though, I find myself grabbing little scraps of paper to write out sentences that soon become poems or even great short stories. I wake up from a dead sleep with a story idea or the absolute compulsion to write out conversations characters might have with each other like in my story Train Whistles.

I’m communicating better – at least I believe I am. I wish I had had the strength to communicate to those I love this way all along, but I haven’t. I am neither sorry or sad about that. It was just the way it was.

I feel braver. I feel stronger. I feel…what is it that I feel…Ahh…more like me than I have in a decade. Sharing my thoughts with you have led to some revelations and I thank you for reading. I’m launching something new this week – Post It Poems – inspired by the work of Atticus, JM Storm, rh sin, and my very big celebrity crush Zachry K. Douglas. It really needs some content but I did manage to post one today on my Facebook page and it felt really good to make this dream go live.

I’m often reminded of something I usually tell my friends: You become “fill in the blank” by saying you are. For example: You are a fisherman when you say you are a fisherman. Now, some might rebuke that and say “That’s not necessarily true. You become a fisherman when you start fishing.” But I argue that first you have to believe you can fish before you actually do fish and the creation of that identity starts with your thoughts and words.

If that is true, then I’m claiming my new identity. I am fierce. And I am soft. I am both. Loving me requires you to respond accordingly to the person I present to you on any given day. I’m not easy to love but I love easily. I am brave and I am strong. I am alive today because of the brave and strong people I have met but also because of those who are fearful and weak who propelled me forward by their inconsistency.

Accordingly to Leo Babauta, another one of my favorite writers, you can change your identity over time. And, as it turns out (thank god) I don’t even have to quit my job, change my name to Gertie and start waiting tables in some little café outside Bay Springs, Mississippi. You just decide to be something different…and then you take the steps to do that. If you aren’t changing, you aren’t growing and I no longer have room in my heart for people who wish to remain stuck in the past. I encourage you to read his post because it so well illustrates how we can become someone else – yet remain whole.

If you haven’t read some of my posts regarding my experience with the Eight Limbs of Yoga, you can check them out below. I suppose I should warn you of my excessive use of the ‘f’ word. There. You’ve been warned.

Take care. Love hard. Hug more.

(And listen to this song. It’s soooo good.)

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