Episode 35: Climbing Our Mountains

SUPERMARKETS ARE FUCKING WEIRD! Summiting literal and metaphorical mountains. AN INTERVIEW WITH CLIMBER RUTH KING! If you are love, love will find you wherever you go. MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT SPIRITUALITY. My birthday… STARING IN THE MIRROR. & gifts from lovers.

Photographer and climber, Ruth King, also took this amazing photograph of me…

Excerpt 1:

So this week I have an unusual show for you, and it seems only fitting, that on the week of my birthday, I do something different. But instead of, you know, an entire show that’s just about me… this week I will spend most of my show turning over the microphone, which seems also fitting, so that you can all hear a different story. For once, one that is not my own. But somehow it seems intertwined with mine in some crucial and yet unknown way.

But you know, as per, let’s start with me! Now me and birthdays have a long rocky history. Now, let’s just be honest, most of them have SUCKED. But this year was different. And I can tell you why. There are several reasons. Not the least of which, is I’m a very different woman than the bitter angry frustrated — and mind you at least marginally funny — woman who started this show. It has changed me, and so it seems only fitting that it evolve, as I have, into something wider, more expansive, and more connected. This year, for the first time in a long time, I was showered with love, and notes and flowers. Not in a gaudy or performative way, but in a real way. One with heart. I was reminded over and over, that when we show up, in community, in compassion, in every part of our lives, the people around us notice. And I was given a gift, a beeswax covered envelop, with a birch bark letter inside, and mountains drawn on the front, the contents of which reminded me, not only of how far I have come, but how many people have traveled with me. When my lover handed it to me, they pointed at the stitching, holding the hand-waxed paper together. Red thread. 

One. Red. Thread. To run through our lives. To connect your hands to mine. Close always, no matter the distance or time past. 

And I got home, from one of the best dinners of my life. My family, chosen and blood: they are love. 

And I stared at myself in the mirror. I was so used to seeing flaws, the broken imperfection of me. But all I saw was a woman, staring back at me. A woman who had survived so much. A woman trying her best. A woman who was, dare I say it. Brave enough to face it all, and tender, finally, enough to hold it. 

And for the first time, I realized, I did not hate her. Her muscles, that fell like a fighter for no apparent reason. Her messy hair. Her blemished skin. And I realized. That somewhere inside of her, that little girl — who so shocked at the cruelty of the world she had come into, so ready to be done with the madness of humanity — that all along she had known, that I was somewhere. Finally. All of my pieces, all of my lives of self, all of my heartache and love, all of my suffering and pain, they had shaped her. Into the woman that stared back at me in the mirror. Finally, for the first time. The inside matched the outside. I was just, me. 

I had climbed down into the depths. I had stared down the highest heights and lowest lows. But still and always searching. Ever present, ever curious. For whatever the next adventure would bring. But I was ready. Fully ready, for the next chapter. Whatever that might hold. 

And I remembered, at that moment, something one of my exes fathers said to me. He came to the opening of my healing arts sanctuary. My studio. Where I now sit with people every day, and hear their stories and lay my hands on them, and attempt to stitch them back together again. He said, as he walked up to me, “Ohh, I understand. You have always been this, in every life, through time. Welcome home. You just had to get lost for a little while. Glad you made it back.” 

And I too, was glad that I made it back. Not in one piece, but with all of them. Every version of me. Here in service. With every skill utilized, with every ounce of heart, and every liter of blood. Sure of only one thing. I will never stop searching, or learning, or growing, into the woman I was actually always meant to become. 

Here, with all the love that made me.

Here with the strength of  hundreds of hearts.

Here with all of my being. Finally.

Home.

And I know, that there is so much of the story left to be written. 

And I have no idea what will go on the next pages. 

But it’s going to be an interesting story. Of that, I am sure. 

So here’s to climbing our mountains.

Wherever they may be. The ones inside of us, and the ones outside we have yet to summit. 

Here’s hoping, that when we get to the top, there will always be another. 

Because as my day one Camus would say, “The struggle itself to the heights, is enough to fill mans heart.” 

So before I turn it over, to the women who just came home from summiting her literal and metaphorical mountains. 

Here’s 

Feeling Good, by Nina Simone.

She said this is what it feels like. At the top of the mountain. And I have to say. That sounds just about right. 

And I’ll follow that up with, 

River Deep/Mountain High, by Ike and Tina, because I just couldn’t not. 

Excerpt 2:

So there you have it folks. And let that serve as a potent reminder. You are truly capable of anything. You are capable of pulling yourself out of anything to create a life better than you could have imagined. 

Like I always say. If you can’t have faith in that. I’ll have enough faith for all of us. 

I am humbled. I am honored. To hold witness. To the extraordinary capacity of beautiful people with incredible stories. 

Once in a while there are these moments: sitting across from clients, that have begun to understand that their unique light is preciously worth bringing to every experience, or in the arms of a lover, or eating an incredible meal. Where I am truly unquestionably grateful. That I am alive even to experience it all. And I say this often. But, I feel as though even when thing are hard, that I am somehow the luckiest woman in the world. But now I am sure that it’s not luck at all. It is fate. It was written in the stars. It was carved into my bones, and bonded to my psyche. Every experience I have had, every experience yet to come. Brings me closer and closer to the core of human existence. Which ultimately is love. The great and unfathomable unknown. Where all that is, all that was, is unfolding simultaneously. Into a brilliant tapestry. A conversation, between me and the universe. And between me and the universe that exists on the pinpoint of the human mind. Inside the beautiful stories. Others bring to me. 

So we will close out our show tonight with the song Ruth found while traveling to her mountains. And I think it’s the perfect fit, because well, sometimes our love travels with us. And sometimes it haunts us, and sometimes it carries us higher. But there is no doubt, that it is what makes us and what breaks us. 

So here’s Old Love, by Eric Clapton. 

To close us out tonight.