When I was seventeen, I was on a cross country team for the first (and only, so far) time in my life. I am generally ambivalent about running when I am not being chased, but ended up finding my center in running the course that snaked through the Pennsylvania woods of my high school campus. In one of the last meets of the season, in the thick of the autumn of my senior year, I had an experience that still I don’t quite have a name for. The yellow-pink sky was dotted with Canada geese and I was looking out over the sports fields feeling very small and very big at the same time, and I knew that I would move to Oregon, and that it would be very hard, and that it was absolutely the right thing to do. And I was free of every feeling but a powerful sense of acceptance and wonder.

Ten months later, I arrived at a college campus just outside of Portland, Oregon. It has been almost exactly six years since then, and I have grown in directions I didn’t even know I could dream of at seventeen. I opened myself to deep fracturing and deep healing. I met people I love so deeply that sometimes all I can do is sit and cry and revel in them, even when they are right in front of me. I discovered I believe in many lifetimes, and felt such profound joy in recognizing and reconnecting with familiar souls in different forms. I brought back my slowly-opening self whenever I went back to Pennsylvania and slowly healed and strengthened my relationships there. I wrote songs that gain more meaning as I continue to play them. I joined and created space for the artistic communities that sustain me when I forget to honor the most human parts of me. I was enveloped in slam poetry and find more of myself and humanity in that art form with each performance. I found spiritual guides that watered me, taught me to grow, and will be with me forever. I found one in myself. I discovered the power of my own voice and used it to say no. I also used it to say yes. I cannot imagine the person I would be if I had not listened to something so true, if I had chosen to doubt or dismiss something I knew intuitively was the right thing for me.

I have never experienced anything like that afternoon on the cross-country field until this June, when I was walking through the largest urban park in the country. It is a few blocks away from my apartment in a corner of Portland I hadn’t been considering but ended up choosing because it felt right. Forest Park has ended up being a refuge for me for the past year, a sacred place of long walks and conversations with myself. On this evening, I felt I was withering. I had exhausted myself fighting for a relationship that was not nurturing me, pushed myself at a job where I felt constantly conflicted, and was missing the proximity of my family, who I have never been closer with. I breathed in the cool air of the trees and the creek, and felt very big and very small, alive in a way I had not been in a long time. I knew then that I was going back East, to explore life surrounded my more plants than people. I knew it would be very hard, and that it was absolutely the right thing to do.

I made a profile on the WWOOF (Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms) website, and within a couple of months I was finding so many communities that I was energized just reading about. A few weeks ago, I finalized plans with one of them in Tennessee, where I will be starting to work in late September. I am beyond excited to be part of a community that values open communication and to learn to care for plant life as well as human life. It isn’t something I ever planned on doing, and it is a risk in many ways, but there is nowhere I would rather be.

Also a few weeks ago, I got the word “trust” tattooed on my left wrist, “this” on my right. When I was getting them, I gritted my teeth and breathed deeply into the pain, reminding myself, this is the cost. There is no avoiding pain, and the wounds from living in truth and integrity heal far faster than the wounds of living in the cages we build. Each time I have left a place, I wound myself and people I love. I create an opening, a separation, a space that is filled over time with different forms of love. I call this process the come-and-go, and although it doesn’t stop me from hurting when I say goodbye, it allows me to let go with grace, having complete faith in our connectedness. When I look at the most painful experiences of my life, they have invariably come from times when I fought against what was happening, when I refused to accept that I was strong and capable of doing what I needed to do to exist, heal, grow. I did more damage by fearing pain than by accepting it. My wrists remind me to bring my power back to myself, believe in what has led me along so far.

I share this in hopes that it resonates, because my intuition is no better than that of anyone else. We all know what we need. We just occasionally fall out of the habit of listening. We must pay attention to the voices in us – including the immediate reactions we have to a person or situation and the unresolved pain we carry from pasts that continue to warp our perceptions – and trust the self that exists to hold all of those and understand the messages they carry, the self that is connected to a greater consciousness. Even our pain has a message for us – wounds are just openings, after all, another door to walk through if we choose. We are very small and very big. We can live in the flow of our lives or cling to fears that are solid and stagnant. I want to be a living reminder to myself and hopefully others that it is ok to live out of that place, to do what feels right and sometimes makes no sense, understanding why as you go along.

Thank you for doing me the honor of being present to my life, and for the privilege of letting me be present to yours. Let us keep continuing to say goodbye and hello and breathe into this come-and-go. Love.