SERVICEABLE DISCONNECTION Staying connected was never my strong suit. Because of things that happened very early in my childhood people were scary and intimacy was polluted. I learned down in my emotional body that when I was open and available, I got hurt. Before I had the right and the voice to say no things happened to a child that simply should not happen. People who said they loved me used that promise to compromise and abuse me. And so early on I learned that openness was dangerous, and love could be tormenting. If this is already too much for you, please feel free to scroll on or hit delete. If you have heard or read me at all you know that I often remind us all

GROUNDED “You are grounded, young man!” “You will stay at home until I tell you that you can leave!” “Go to your room!” “You have just lost your privileges!” “You go sit and you think about what you have done.” I actually was only grounded once as a young teen. The threat was ever looming, however. I always tended to be the good kid. The responsible one. The one my mother could always count on. I had an extremely short career as a rebel at about thirteen. I found out was grounding was all about. It actually wasn’t so bad. But back to good kid I went. So, it is a truly shocking experience to be, at age sixty-two, grounded for the second time in my life.

SICK AS YOUR SECRETS I am a somewhat public person who greatly values privacy. Privacy is not the same thing as secrecy. Someone once pointed out to me that when I die countless secrets will die with me. I guess at a level that is true. But whenever I am sitting with someone and they share something with me that they had been holding in secrecy the release of energy is palpable. When they say what they have feared to say to another living being, and I do not run shrieking from the room, the relief is beyond description. The knotted energy of the secret is untied in the telling. The shroud of shame is vaporized in a moment of vulnerability. What had seemed so solid and

SOME SLACK “Hey, cut me some slack.” It was a familial request that I rarely saw actualized. It is often difficult to remember that people are doing the best they can based on their current level of consciousness. It is even more difficult to remember that I am doing the best I can based on my current level of consciousness. And that later awareness is the bridge to the former. Today I am choosing to cut myself some slack. I watched in fascination recently as something occurred for someone that threw them into a total shame storm. It wasn’t really what occurred that caused the storm. It was the ensuing narrative. I could literally see the shades get drawn, the doors get locked, and the lights go

IT'S SAFE It is finally safe to stay in here. When I say in here, I literally mean in here. Inside of me. In my experience of me. In my moments and in my relating. An undivided sense of self. A state of being that knows it is enough as is. That it is okay to welcome whatever arises. That everything belongs. That there is nothing to try to hide and suppress. Nothing biting at my heels. No uh-oh waiting to consume me. Nothing to correct. I could weep just typing those words. The weeping is relief, it is not sadness. It feels like a huge exhale after holding my breath for decades. I have finally realized how much of a fugitive I was, always on the