Friendship is one thing, but partnership? That’s a whole new level. This journey of self-discovery has surprised me with insights I didn’t even know I needed—like the realization that my relationship with my body isn’t just about making nice and being friendly. It’s about collaboration, teamwork, and even a little trial and error.

When I started this journey, I believed I had no self-love and zero idea how to take care of my body. I saw myself as judgmental and mean, a negligent caretaker at best. My efforts were emergency-only responses—foxhole prayers to get me through a crisis. Sure, I’d hit up a detox spa or squeeze in an annual physical, but mostly, I manipulated my body with food, alcohol, nicotine, and the occasional massage or acupuncture session. I assumed my track record was awful.

But surprise! Turns out I wasn’t as terrible as I thought. According to my inner voice, I’ve done an excellent job navigating the trials and tribulations of being in a human body. Who knew? Sure, I was judgmental and mean at times—no delusion there—but I wasn’t the hopeless case I imagined.

Initially, my goal was simple: to befriend my body. I figured friendship would mean showing up consistently and listening. That’s about as far as I’d gotten. But now, the door is open, trust is blossoming, and the experience with coffee is proof. Slowly, I’m learning to step back from dictator mode and let my body have a say.

And then came the curveball: this isn’t just about friendship—it’s a partnership. The words in this piece of art came floating by clear as a bell in my meditation a couple of days ago. We, the body, mind, spirit and emotions are not just friends, we're partners!

This is my jam! Partnership feels professional, organized. It’s about cooperation, collaboration, and clear communication. The images that came to me during meditation were all about teamwork—a team where my body, mind, and soul are all active players. For whatever odd reason, I feel more at home in a partnership than a friendship. It feels solid and dependable, like something I can count on. Each part brings something unique to the table. The body shows up with its signals and needs, the mind processes and plans, the spirit offers perspective, and emotions give everything a little color. Together, we’re figuring it out, one step at a time.

But let’s be real: the partnership is a work in progress. I keep noticing tidbits of resistance and attachment—polarities that create discord. My attachment to being thin fuels my resistance to accepting how I look now. These two forces are locked in a battle that keeps me spinning my wheels. If I wasn’t searching for a long term unique solution through meditation, I’d probably be on another yo-yo diet and cycling through detailed exercise plans that I’d abandon after a few days.

And then there’s coffee—my old pal. Coffee used to be my ride-or-die buddy. But now? It’s that friend who overstays their welcome, leaving you with a sour stomach and the realization that maybe you’ve outgrown them. The fact that I’ve been quietly weaning myself off without any grand declarations or rebellious backlash? Honestly, that feels like a miracle.

So what does partnership look like in practice? For starters, it means listening. When I’m stuck in judgmental, comparing, self-hating thoughts, I’m learning to collaborate with my feelings—both mentally and physically. Like today, when I was spiraling, I did a quick five-minute indoor walk. That tiny shift got me out of my head and back into my body.

And that’s what partnership looks like—collaborating with your feelings and your body, moving through the hard stuff one step (or quick indoor walk) at a time. It’s not perfect, and it doesn’t have to be. But this too shall pass. And when it does, I’ll still be here, showing up for the team.

Each afternoon the meditations I experience appear to be all the same. Life is a funny thing, isn’t it? Even when it seems like nothing’s new—bam! Heraclitus said it most clearly with his saying: "You can’t step into the same river twice." Or in my case, you can't have the same meditation twice!

This idea of ever-newness hit me again during a recent meditation practice. The guided session (from an OSHO app—BYOB: Be Your Own Bestie, or as I’ve now renamed it, BMOB: Be My Own Bestie) is rooted in a course I recently completed: OSHO Reminding Yourself of the Forgotten Language of Talking to Your BodyMind. It’s a 45-minute guided journey of listening to your body, inviting alignment, and waiting for messages about new behaviors to emerge. On November 14th, one message came through loud and clear: Water is Love.

The image of the water drop filled with hearts was as vivid as if someone had painted it on the inside of my eyelids. It spilled effortlessly onto paper later that day, the font for the words even appearing by “mistake.” The message that came with it was equally vivid: It's OK to drink more water. Morning, evening, before meals, in between meals—water is LOVE!

Oh joy! A behavior I can get behind 1000%. I already love water. No disguises, no flavor additives—just pure, clean goodness. And here at Providence Lodge, our well water is practically liquid gold. Aside from coffee, water and iced tea are my go-to beverages. But now, with this added encouragement, I’ve been stepping up my water game, pouring a little more with each passing day.

Now let’s talk about coffee for a second. Coffee and I? We’ve had a good run. I couldn't do without my Starbucks fix on the train ride to work in New York City, no way! But lately, it’s like a clingy acquaintance who’s overstayed their welcome. Sure, it was warm and exciting at first, but now it’s all acidic vibes and nausea. I mean, I powered through for old times’ sake—what’s one more cup, right?—but even my body’s over it.

Over the past week, I’ve noticed this shift. After 1.5 cups, I’d get that sour, acidic tummy feeling, sometimes a wave of nausea so strong it made me question my life choices. But did I stop? Of course not. Coffee is my guilty pleasure, my reward, my safety net. And let’s not forget the epic caffeine withdrawal headaches waiting in the wings.

Then, something miraculous happened. I didn’t finish my second cup. It sat there, abandoned, waiting to be emptied later in the day. Yesterday, I planned for one glorious cup, no more. And today? I couldn’t even finish that. Somewhere in the blur of nausea and mindfulness, I realized my body had been gently weaning me off coffee without any declarations, control tactics, or rebellious backlash.

Healthy, natural behaviors are rising to the surface in their own time, with their own priorities, without me needing to force or dictate. This, my friends, is the dream. No guilt, no struggle—just ease and grace. My attachment to coffee feels unnecessary now, even a little silly.

And that’s the beauty of listening to your body. It’s not about micromanaging every little thing; it’s about trusting that, given the space and attention, your body knows what it needs. For me, it started with water—a simple, loving shift—and its growing into something bigger: alignment.

So here I am, on day 9 of this BMOB (Be My Own Bestie) 30 day meditation journey, embracing more water and less coffee. The transition feels surprisingly natural. My body’s wisdom, it seems, has been there all along.

And you know what? It’s fucking awesome.

Here’s to more water, less coffee, and the joy of discovering that change doesn’t have to be forced—it can flow, just like a river.

This diagram was surprisingly challenging to create. You know that feeling when something makes perfect sense in your head? It’s clear, intuitive, almost like a dance. Then, you try to capture it on paper, and suddenly it’s boxes and arrows and scribbles. That was my experience with this meditation insight. I started with a big swooshy arrow, feeling like an artist in flow, and ended up with… a visual puzzle that looks more like a science project.

During meditation, I pictured a big swooshy arrow—blue and curling—representing a simple shift from one set of thoughts and behaviors to a radically different experience of the same things. The swooshy arrow was the perfect representation of this shift I felt—something light, effortless, that just swoops in and transforms everything in its path. It’s the kind of arrow that says, “Hey, no need to overthink this.” It was more about the feeling of letting go than about any specific outcome.

So why, you might ask, did it turn into a diagram with boxes, labels, and lots of arrows? There’s something about human nature that loves making simple things complicated. We have an epiphany and immediately start dissecting it. Can we just let the swooshy arrow be? Apparently not. We want diagrams, explanations, and flowcharts. The meditation experience said, “Just shift your focus.” But of course, I had to go and create a map for it.

And that map? It’s all about flip-flopping behaviors. The concept sounds elegant: instead of obsessing over food, I could obsess over movement. Instead of resisting movement, I could try resisting certain foods. It’s like rearranging furniture in your mind—familiar elements, just with a new layout. There’s something oddly freeing in realizing you don’t have to “get rid of” anything; you just move things around. For once, I don’t have to “fix” anything; I just need to try placing it somewhere else.

So, how do we actually make this work? I started small. When I noticed myself obsessing over food—what I ate, what I planned to eat—I paused and asked, “What would it look like to use this energy on movement?” It’s like rewiring a circuit in my brain. I remind myself that I can simply shift my focus, that I can experiment with where I put my mental energy. The more I practice, the more natural it becomes.

Meditation creates this space of non-judgment—a place where all these “undesirable” behaviors suddenly feel neutral, even kind of interesting. From that space, it’s easier to look at them objectively and say, “What if I just moved things around?” Instead of trying to exile certain habits, I can simply shift their energy. The openness I felt during meditation allowed me to see that I don’t need to judge myself for having these tendencies. They’re just part of the puzzle.

And sometimes, the simplest insights turn out to be the hardest to capture on paper. It's funny, isn’t it? We use every ounce of brain power to expect, search, judge, and compare, only to discover that a single swooshy arrow might hold the key. Whether or not I get this “flip-flop” idea working in real life, I get to keep exploring, moving things around until it feels right. That’s progress in itself.
​
So here’s to the swooshy arrow—a symbol of simplicity, ease, and trust. I may have turned it into boxes and arrows, but the insight remains. Sometimes, the solution doesn’t need to be complex. Sometimes, a little swoosh is all we need to rewire our experience.

The meditation experience yesterday has been more challenging than usual to articulate—like trying to catch a whisper in the wind. There was no image or word that came immediately to mind. The sensations started a couple of weeks ago during the BYOB course.* At that point, the words I heard were, “I’ll teach you to love.” It was almost too extravagant to believe—that I could access love, much less that some internal part of me was ready to be my teacher. It felt overwhelming, like a door opening, and I didn’t even attempt to put it into words. Now, though, the theme is repeating, and the sensations are becoming more believable and trustworthy… if that makes any sense. This image of otters from an Oracle card deck I have nailed the feeling. It was a lovely adventure to "accidentally" come across this image this morning and a perfect match. (image source: Colette Baron Reid Animal Spirit Oracle Cards.)

I realize I’ve built such an amazing protective system—my own emotional Fort Knox—that I barely knew it was there. My behaviors were and are so ingrained that only now am I learning to decipher what is kind and what is, well, not so much. On some level, admitting this feels vulnerable, maybe even a tad embarrassing. I know that “love,” like “God,” triggers my defenses. I’ve sidestepped both words, trading them in for something more palatable, less fraught. I wrote them off as too generic, overused, or packed with associations I wasn’t ready to unpack. They came loaded with guilt and sadness, worthiness and lack. The other day, I was watching movie trailers and realized just how much Hollywood has tried to define love for us—sunsets, slow-motion kisses, tragic misunderstandings. They make you feel as though they’ve cornered the market on defining love. But expectations are a funny thing; they lead to judgment, comparison, manipulation, and control. And, of course, once those enter the picture, love (and God) quietly slips out the back door.

Looking back, I’m amazed and astounded at how far I’ve come. I didn’t set out to redefine love with this journey. My goal was to bring my soul and personality into alignment, to quiet the nasty inner critic that’s made a home in my head. Along the way, it felt right to become a friend to my body, to actually try befriending my physical self. It’s funny, but that’s something I hadn’t tried before. I’ve negotiated with my “inner rebel” at times, even made some headway, but befriending myself? That was new territory.

And here I am now, with this unexpected invitation—an opening I hadn’t anticipated. I’m only 29 days into this practice, and I’m looking forward to seeing where this journey of self-compassion leads. Befriending my body is like learning a new language—awkward at first, but with a little practice, surprisingly rewarding. It’s little things, like listening to what I need or taking a few minutes to just breathe. And I’m grateful for the mantras I’ve adopted lately. Simple words, maybe, but they feel like shelter and direction when I need them most: There is nothing to fear. There is nothing to prove. There is nothing to fix. There is nothing wrong, and there is nothing missing.

​Each mantra brings its own kind of sanity. “Nothing to fear” invites courage, a reminder that life is safe to explore and that fear is 90% delusional. “Nothing to prove” tells me to let go of perfectionism, to stop comparing and judging my worth based on others’ expectations I’ve unknowingly taken on. “Nothing to fix” is a potent reminder that, most likely, “it’s not my circus and not my monkeys.” The chances are high that I am not responsible for fixing anything because, with a slight shift in perspective, everything is perfectly perfect as it is. And “nothing is missing” is my favorite of all—a deep reassurance that everything I need is already here within me.

Each phrase whispers a different invitation: release worry, drop expectations, step back from control, recognize completeness. These words are like a gentle hand on my shoulder, guiding me away from the need to do and toward the ability to simply be. With each reminder, I feel a bit closer to the friend I want to be to myself, someone who offers gentleness instead of judgment, who listens rather than insists.
​
So, here’s to 29 more days of not tripping over my own self-discovery—and a big shout-out to my Guardian for the patience of a saint. Many thanks to whomever is tuning in to assist with this transmission. All is well.

The image of a book was clear during meditation recently. The body is a book of stories waiting to be held, waiting to be explored and recreated, expunged, and reimagined. It holds the histories of lifetimes within its cells, chapters of laughter and grief, memories stored in muscle and bone, and sensations woven through veins like trails and pathways to adventures long ago. For the body, change just is—it is constant and flowing, unending. There is no need to be static; it is not possible to be static on this plane. The pages shift, always in motion, and I am here, reading them. I am listening. I am taking responsibility, practicing patience and kindness, learning to let go.

This new routine is like watching water boil—my mind can’t resist checking the clock, adjusting the flame, shifting the pan, waiting for those first bubbles to form. I hover, overthinking every sensation, trying to make it happen faster. But of course, the more I try to control it, the longer it seems to take. Sometimes the body’s stories need slow simmering, and maybe all I’m supposed to do is sit back, breathe, and let them unfold in their own time.

I do feel the progress; it ripples through me, gentle but undeniable. I can sense the difference intuitively, in my heart of hearts. A guided meditation suggests I listen to my own heartbeat. I struggle to find the pulse at my wrist, but it is still there, reassuring and human. I can't begin to comprehend it, but at least I know the forgotten language exists. My pulse is felt and fathomed more deeply, each beat more meaningful, more puzzling, like a language spoken only in quiet moments. My heart has become my storyteller, guiding me toward a kind of foreign, distant wisdom that has no need for words.

Can you imagine that you are created with one machine, designed solely to experience all this physical plane has to offer? This one mechanism, this one precious unit, is our sole instrument for touching the world. It is guided and linked to something beyond the physical, hovering here yet locked in time, willing and resistant all at once, both knowing and forgetting, remembering and learning. And we are to hold this instrument, this vehicle, with reverence. For any explanation or story we create to describe it feels inadequate, period.

​As I meditated, I began with a bit of grumpiness—accusatory thoughts, doubts, negativity. They’re familiar visitors. I am, since my last set of meditation classes, moving forward on my own with a blush of an idea on how to rewrite my own body’s stories. Yet impatience remains a close friend of mine… we’re tight! I’m making new friends with love, patience, responsibility, and power. It’s uncomfortable and strangely magnetic. That old saying, “Make new friends but keep the old” does not apply here! I am looking forward to letting go of my very good, very old friends: fear, avoidance, resistance, blame, and impatience.

I imagine these old companions slowly receding, but not like a wave on the sand—that’s much too quick. No, perhaps more like a season passing, but even that moves too fast for this process. We move from summer to fall to winter in only weeks, and this change feels far slower. So what analogy can I use? Perhaps it’s like moving from childhood to puberty or fertility to barrenness; the shifts in the human body take years, lifetimes even. I’m beginning to appreciate the depth of these changes, realizing that generations of genetics and evolution bear upon this body in my lifetime. This journey, my body’s story, is shaped by the ages. I recall a passage from Eckhart Tolle in Oneness with All Life: battling and fighting aren’t effective since there is no enemy. It’s not about “doing” anything, only remaining alert and aware. Notice the thoughts and consider the source.

For now, in this moment, I get to exercise my creativity and keep my mind engaged as I journey toward alignment with my body-mind. I so enjoyed my recent trip north, when the original plans fell through, the sudden freedom from a time commitment was invigorating, like the spontaneous rush of clear air. I got to jump into the flow of life without a project, destination, or appointment! I remembered Julia Cameron’s advice about scheduling a weekly “Artist’s Date,” "The Artist Date is a once-weekly, festive, solo expedition to explore something that interests you. The Artist Date need not be overtly “artistic”– think mischief more than mastery. Artist Dates fire up the imagination. They spark whimsy. They encourage play."  I checked the movies playing at the local theater. I watched a few trailers, curious if something might feel entertaining, enlightening, or informative. I considered adding a trip to the cinema as one adventure on a weekly date. Movies, however, won’t be making my solo adventure list—at least not the ones on the marquee right now. It was instantly apparent, just watching the trailers, that this is precisely where a lot of my delusional expectations about relationships came from! Instead, I want to keep my mind and emotions open to my own creative endeavors rather than immersing myself in someone else’s story. As moving or poignant as their tales of love, fulfillment, loss, or drama may be, thanks to meditation, clarity, and a better relationship with the present moment, I choose, for now, to listen with patience and kindness to my own heart’s song. I’ll tune into my own radio station, catching up on my own reactions, preferences, loves, dislikes, and curiosities.
​
Over and out.