As I walk down to deposit the mail in the box, I glance down at what I’m wearing: Black summer wool knit dress, in the shape of a paper doll cutout over light blue jeans, rolled one cuff length because they are too long, a simple tan cotton ¾ sleeve cotton shirt underneath, and turquoise Crocs because they really are comfy. I’m feeling good, and my clothes make me feel like I should be outside in a field of wildflowers with my easel, painting, writing, communing, dancing circles.

**

On this day I feel like Holly Hobby with her big bonnet and colorful patchwork dress, innocent, young at heart, keeping back her smiles because she’s smiling at nothing, yet smiling at everything, smiling at the feeling of her body in this physical plane, smiling at the curves of her lips because she cannot hold it back, smiling at feeling at home in her physical manifestation, and feeling so much a culmination of heaven and earth, all the little speckles floating around—feeling a connection to something in the great beyond that although she feels at home in herself—she also feels that sense of being different, and loving it because it makes her who she is, but also realizing that it is also what keeps her in her aloneness in the most profound and wonderful way—a lone wolf on the outskirts—but that is where home is. It’s not a bad aloneness, but she has always had few that she could be herself around, few that she could be around. It has always been this way—she has never liked being part of the crowd. She has ebbed and flowed in certain friendships, but she has felt most herself in the very few, and especially in her solitariness because when one goes into that solitariness, that is where it all comes together: The A-ha’s and the unfoldings and these moments shared but their secrets never fully revealed, lest they crumble like star dust. Best that can be done is to write the feelings, the emotions—the energy into existence. To be in oneself, to embrace all that that means, to surrender to the path that is discovered more and more each day, to walk into the reasons, to walk into the questions, to walk into the purpose that one is gifted in being amongst the living. To bring a little happiness into the world—laughter, smiles, sharing, in the ways that are etched into the reasons.

It is possible to know aloneness, yet be graced with the riches of connections in the ways that they present themselves—and I am grateful for that. I am grateful to continue finding wonder, passion, zest, curiosity, love, feeling—so much do I feel in life. So much—that all I can do is pour it out right here, pencil in hand racing across the page as fast as it can, to capture this moment because all that we have are these moments and they are everything. They are alive!