A New Thanksgiving

Sitting around a raging bonfire at Cleo camp seems ages and a million miles from my last entry. It's Thanksgiving, early afternoon and we are having personal time in the tee-pee. Its been pouring for the last 36 hours, and life smells like Oregon so much so that the olfactory overload is quite confusing. My eyes say desert but my nose and my heart say green mountains and rainforest, and the contrast is blunt with distraction.

I have so much gratitude for being back with the girls this week. I am again reminded of how being out here instantaneously dissolves the barrier between my heart and my head, which lately I am so painfully concious of. I also realize I have a lot of anger and resentment even still over the whole staffing fiasco. I thought I had worked through it but apparently not quite yet. I stand behind everything that I've said about this last chunk of time off being meaningful. My anger I think at the core is my frustration and uncertainty around wanting to be succesful at this work and still fighting that battle with feeling perpetually inadequate. I transfer a lot of anger onto Ellen, I think in large part because I perceive her as responsible for whether I stay or go. I also pin a lot of my insecurity onto her, atleast professionally, for having so much doubt about hiring me in the first place. I feel in some irrational sense that getting to work last shift was a reflection of them (theres the great "they" again) not having enough faith in my abilities out here. I think Ellen and me also communicate in very different manners in a lot of ways, and her blanket ebuliance and energy intimidates and exhaust me.

I catch myself starting to get anxious about the rain and the weather and the omnipresent looming specter of encroaching winter, and I'm reminded of my WFR instructor's two certainties in life. He liked to say you can be certain of two things in life, the bleeding will stop and you're either pregnant or you're not. Similarly, the rain will end. It has to, even in Oregon in the rainforest the sun comes out periodically. Winter is the same, just on a greater scale--the sun will come again. It has to.

I'm strangely OK with the way the boy situation unwound itself. I think the universe was conspiring to tell me great and global things, that I interpreted on a small, selfish, and pretty much inconsequential level. The lessons were correct but the application was far too narrow-minded. I think he was sent to show me exactly what I've been missing by walling off my heart, and to remind me that there are so many other ways of being in the world. I think he was supposed to show me exactly how disconnected my head is from my heart, and how deeply that disconnect manifests itself. I think we can be great friends, past all this lovely awkwardness. I think he was also supposed to remind me of my power. When I want something bad enough I can summon the gumption, resolve and courage to follow through. I talk myself out of what I want so easily and so convincingly. I'd like to see the romantic ideological side of myself win more battles in the future over the realistic pragmatic domain. I like those parts a whole lot more completely, I think. I respect the pragmatist, but I enjoy the romantic.

On this day of thanksgiving and gratitude, I'd most like to acknowledge the deepening understanding and openness to the myriad of things the universe can unveil to me. I'm greatful fo rthe opportunity and emotional fortitude to have come to this place and follow through with this grand adventure. I'm incredibly fortunate to have found myself here, and greatful for the insight that has already come to me. I am greatful to be living withouth depression as we look to winter's approach, and for all the tools and strengths I've honed in managing my fight. I'm greatful to be out here this week and every week, for the chance to live to my greatest potential and most soulful nature of my being.

It will certainly be a holiday that I will remember for a while.