Vulnerability

Man oh man. I am just recovering from this full moon past. December 12th was the date.

She was so full this time she cried for days and days.

Its been raining here in LA. The moon's been hiding herself in the clouds.

The rain did exactly what it should have. Brought a quiet hush over the city with its steady cleansing back beat. But with cleansing comes pain. Healing wounds can sting. The sting I've been feeling is that of loneliness. Its been seeping in slow and constant for months and months now. I am painfully ware of its presence and haven't been able to pray it away. And its not done with me yet...

But its bringing me to a deep place of revelation.

Yesterday my BFF told me, "I like you like this. All vulnerable and ish." That's where I've been trying to live...in this place where I say out loud to myself - "I want. I need. I refuse to live without."

I am practicing vulnerability. And it is a discipline, like yoga or prayer. One can easily be thrown of its course.

Last Saturday I attended a workshop for actor's called The Workshop. It was the kind of thing actors do...the kind of thing I've never done and am now convinced I must do more of.

The whole day consisted of very intense, intimate, emotional exchanges through a series of exercises with a partner. Within 10 minutes of beginning I was crying, hugging my partner - a magnificent Mexican actor who could make me smile or cry with his eyes alone - whispering in each others ear, 'Help me,' or 'I honor you.' Later Carl, our coach for the day and a mighty man himself, would have one partner (A) say to the other (B), 'I like you.' B would then respond by saying either, 'I believe you,' or 'I don't believe you.' You can imagine the emotion that ensued.

Still vulnerability in these moments throughout the day proved more freeing that frightening.

A couple of nights ago I broke down on the phone with my mother. It was my monthly mommy breakdown. She's used to it yet still compassionate like each time is the first. I shared with her through tears what I learned from that workshop. How Carl stops me before lunch and tells me how my presence is so powerful. How I am so full of emotion and pain and that is where my power lie. How I shouldn't live there, but how the pain is my vehicle of artistic communication and my artistic gift to everyone I encounter. I told mommy, "I refuse to be a crazy lonely artist" - giving away my emotion to others with no one but God to pick up the pieces. I will need a physical lover if I am to live out this exhausting calling upon my life. She prayed with me on the phone and said, "God, just give her someone."

And ironically, it has been men who have been significant in helping me through this vicious full moon week. Two friends in particular, both of whom are men much older than me. Both 45 actually...now that I think of their ages. So they are men of an era passing, secure enough to allow women to actually be women - the vulnerable goddesses that we are. Not like these boys of my day who have with the loss of chivalry come to demand from women that we trade in our goddess for their masculine non-emotive ways. Vulnerability terrifies them. For these dear male friends of mine who rode the wave of my emotional cycle, vulnerability excites them, it calls to them, it sparks in them their own hormonal nuances and enables them to be wholly men. My phone conversations with them, each for hours at a time, and sweet emails or texts waiting to greet my sadness in the mornings after restless nights sleeps healed me, restored me, returned me to my feminine goddess power fighting extinction in this culture of cool.

Vulnerability is healing. It is a pre-requisite for Love.