It’s been a while since I’ve written for this blog, and getting this out was is as much about breaking my silence as anything else. I’m days before a new semester at a new school in a very different environment after an vast summer of life altering experiences.

Writing has always been a way for me to integrate the many things going on in my life. Separate experiences, seemingly un-related friendships, scattered thoughts and emotions get woven together into a cohesive story that helps me imbue all of the different pieces with an overarching meaning. Sometimes this happens spontaneously and sometimes with much thought and effort. Often it pours out of me at intense times of major transitions or transformations. I’ve come to realize that this is a part of my puzzle of personal wellness and a self-healing activity that helps me be whole – and that’s what health his – wholeness.

This summer for me has been a particularly transitional and transformational period of my life. First, I left Brooklyn, my home for the last 3 years, a place where I have many friends and a special community. At the time, any sadness about leaving was covered up by excitement about the open road and new experiences on the horizon. The summer continued with a couple months of traveling around the Southeast visiting family and much preparing. Preparing for the moment I united my life with my soulmate’s amidst a loving and warm community of family and friends in one of the most beautiful places on our earth. The two of us then embarked on a 5 week honeymoon journey through Central American, learning to scuba dive, climbing volcanoes, and experiencing other cultures. We’re now just about finished setting up our new home in Boulder, CO, caring for a new puppy, and trying to figure out life in this new place.

Months later unprocessed sorrow from leaving Brooklyn arises, as the realization that life far from a community isn’t as rich and that building and becoming part of a new community takes time. The sadness arises, asking to be honored. Mostly, I’ve been trying to avoid it, but  now I’m finally trying to give myself time now to process the droopy soup of emotions that sat on the back-burner all summer simmering. And it’s good now to digest my emotions. To take from them what growth and learning they supply me with and let go of the stuff that isn’t good for me. The soup is good, full of sweet, sour, bitter, spicy, and salty moments (all 5 flavors balanced quite nicely). The soup is nourishing. But it isn’t exactly tasty. It’s a medicinal soup, the kind that you know is good for you, even though it’s not pleasant (there are yummy medicinal soups out there too and I hope to share some recipes this fall).

With that, I’d like to express my gratitude to all of you out there bearing witness to my personal story. I think a major part of the healing quality of writing for me comes from the ability to share it with others. I believe a major component of our ability to heal is our ability to honor all of our emotions – I honor my emotions by giving them a voice and sharing them – by admitting to myself that they deserve to be heard and shared. It isn’t always easy, it requires a certain level of vulnerability, but I find that it’s worth it.

I’m looking forward to being back in somewhat of a routine, more formally engaged in my healing education, so that I can share more (perhaps less stories about myself and more about medicine – though I do promise that storytelling is a form of medicine, and I’ll be explaining more about that soon).