I left my neighbors’ home-on-wheels last night, full of warmth and peace. Swiss mushrooms and chocolate, too. I went to bed looking forward to some time in the gym in the morning, following a generous offer to “show me the ropes.”

All creatures slept soundly and we woke up to the sound of roosters, announcing the day, calling the sun.

The sky was dark when I fed everyone breakfast, and as pretty much all mornings down here, I drank in a full helping of serenity and gratitude. It’s hard to have this much big nature around each day and not tap into an awareness of both how magnificent it all is, we all are, and also how tiny.

I remembered the gym plan, the painting waiting for me in my studio, the beach walk we would have later on.

And then, I read the news and the thought of stepping outside my garden seemed impossible.

I have read the news before, but today I wasn’t ready for it. I had very little padding, very little armor and it made its way in. Names, places, terror, unknown, too well known. I still don’t have many words that will work, so I won’t try.

I canceled the gym. I allowed the heaviness to move in all the way because this morning, I did not want space from it. I walked to the garden hose, turned on its red faucet, and I gave the plants a big gulp of the water that won’t fall from the sky for several more weeks. I let the leak in the hose drip onto my pink furry slippers and soak them a little. Then I went to the big plastic crate that holds my garden tools, picked up leather gloves that have seen better days, some shears, and I started pruning the palm leaves. One at a time, making light, making room, giving the bougainvilleas space from the fronds and giving the hibiscus space from the bougainvilleas. Stepping back, sloshing a little in my slippers, moving closer again.

There were no thoughts, just the heavy and the heavy seemed glad to have a place to go. Together, we pruned. We created a big pile of leaves and some of the bright flowers went into amber-colored bottles. No thoughts.

Just the heavy, the shears and me.

While painting last week, I listened to a class by Fer Broca, a friend had recommended. Fer does a great job of making complex topics simpler - something I love - and he does so about big subjects. On that day, I was steeped in his explanation of the Tao, particularly three points he had chosen to explore.

As my brush did its thing, swirling colors in just the right spots, I let myself get absorbed by his teaching. When he got to the third point of the lesson, something inside of me perked up its ears.

Yin Yang.

Holding a small piece of art representing the well-known symbol, Fer found a way to melt something inside of me, a border of sorts. The process felt gentle yet profound, as though I had reserved a little spot for this teaching a long time ago, and it had chosen that day to move into it.

I like to talk and write about Contrasts quite a bit. Since I moved to Mexico a few years ago, I have had plenty of opportunities to do so. For some reason, I am wired in a way that this works for me, even if it sometimes hits me hard. The sweet and the bitter, the dreamy and the harsh, the easy and the seemingly impossible, the sunset and the trash.
To me, they are two sides of life, dualities to be experienced and danced with.

Fer doesn’t see it this way.

In his clear Spanish, he explains that instead of duality, these represent unity, things that live together, not separately.

I paint, I listen, I pause. I rewind, and I listen again. Something in me nods its head, and a pleasurable softening takes place.

I think back to a few weeks ago.

I just had breakfast, and I am making my way down a sweet jungle path toward the beach, rich from having spent the last 18 hours with good friends eating, walking into the ocean, talking, and listening to live music in a nearby town. It is time to go home. My eyes and heart are full of so much beauty, nature, and friendship. Right before I reach the beach, I encounter a small hotel with a turquoise swimming pool and a palapa roof. It feels gently luxurious and it feeds that part of me. Then my feet are on the sand, the morning is crisp and full of promises, and I take in a big eye, soul, and lung breath full of gratitude.

Walking into the small village where I parked my car the night before, I decide to spend 10 pesos on a quick bathroom stop before getting on the road home.

With my sheets of toilet paper in hand, I wait. There is another woman waiting also.

Then I hear from one of the two stalls: ¿ Me pueden ayudar, por favor? Can you help me? Suddenly, the door swings open, revealing an older woman sitting on the toilet, seemingly unable to get up.

She is heavy, her panties are on the cement floor around her ankles, and she is asking for help standing up.

The other woman and I both gently loop an arm around each of her shoulders, and to the count of unos, dos, tres, we lift her up. Oddly, and possibly because we are in Mexico, the whole thing is joyful, as though all three of us are in a play or making some sort of prank.
Once up, she closes the door, and I resume waiting for my turn, now filled with something new: sisterhood. Three women in a small, almost makeshift bathroom, taking care of each other at a very basic level.

Then the door opens once more, the woman walks out, and now asks for water. The toilet is not flushing, and she is flustered. It is not uncommon for public toilets to be set up so as to not flush. In that case, there is usually a large container of water outside the door with a small bucket. You fill the bucket with water and then dump it down the bowl. The first time, it’s a little weird, and then it makes plenty of sense. Of course, you usually spot the container of water before walking in and you take the bucket of water with you.

Not today.

The woman seems overwhelmed, and I tell her that I’ll take care of it. I’ll get the bucket and “flush.” She thanks me and walks out.

Turns out that there is no container of water waiting outside.

And now, I really need to pee.

The other stall is occupied, so I walk back into “the one,” and boy oh boy let’s just say it wasn’t a great post-breakfast sight. The kind of sight that immediately turns my stomach upside down (just writing about it now makes me queasy). I just don’t do this well, and that morning, I couldn’t do it at all.

So I walked away, found my car, and drove home. On the drive, I thought about how, within five minutes, I had gone from a feeling of awe and deep freshness to being part of one of the most basic experiences of humanness. As I drove, still having to pee, I thought: Contrasts. Here they are again, right in my face. Pinche Mexico.

But now, listening to Fer Broca and remembering that morning, I live it differently.

What if this wasn’t about the pristine vs the distasteful? About morning sunshine vs stained cement? About turquoise swimming pools vs poop?

What if this was just Life? What if instead of Contrasts, it was about integration?
As Fer proposed: what if this wasn’t about duality and instead about unity?

I am processing, and I am pondering. I am always grateful for teachers who make us pay attention and invite us to peel the corners of places we thought we knew for sure.

***

PS: The unveiling of the Wall of Hearts was richer than I had imagined, and because it was so good, I am ready to have it make babies all over the world. I present you with Wallofhearts.org.

Sitting on my patio with a steaming cup of Market Spice tea and my Morning Pages notebook, ready to have “a phone call with myself.” Give it to the paper, make space, find burrowed gems. Sacred time, yet nothing out of the ordinary.

Except for the cup of tea.

Tea. That humble, simple, complex, lowly, and holy brew. So many cups throughout my life, on many tables, planes, trains, countries. Cups of tea to celebrate and cups of tea to accompany tears. Cups of tea to think more clearly and cups of tea to forget a little. Cups of tea alone and cups of tea shared with humans I love.

But none of them compared to her tea. My friend Joanie’s.

The first time I saw her pour tea was out of minuscule cups, showing me a Montessori ritual which she transformed into something part ballet and part toddler party. That’s how we met.

For the next thirty years, she made me more cups of tea than I could count. She would laugh her Joanie laugh every time I took the first sip because she did not know why it made me close my eyes and moan a little. “It’s just tea,” she would say. It was never “just tea.”

When I said goodbye to her last February, I asked, with my eyes attached to hers, who was going to make me tea from now on. We both knew that it was more of a love letter than a question. She blinked once, and then she quietly said, “I’ll send you some tea.”

A couple of weeks later, as I sat on his couch while we waited for his baby girl to be born (she is one year old today), my son handed me a cup of some spicy brew with a touch of milk and honey. I absent-mindedly raised it to my lips, and when it reached my mouth, I cried. This was no ordinary tea. Only one person before had made me a cup of tea like that. Maybe she was sending me tea after all.

Back home, it took me a couple of months to realize that I had lost all desire to drink tea at all. Sweet boxes and pretty jars of mixed spices, flowers, and herbs sat on a shelf in my kitchen, untouched. My kettle was oddly quiet. It was as though something had just vanished. Gone. Without a trace. Without even being missed.

When I noticed it, I was surprised but also not so surprised. She was gone, and she took the sacred brew with her. Something inside of me felt like shrugging and asking, “What would be the point?”

Then I remembered how, after my mom died, I had worn her ring for a year. Her big, quite conspicuous diamond ring. I wore it everywhere and always. I wore it working, traveling, hiking. It didn’t matter. I NEEDED to wear it. At night, it sat right by my bed, and I would slip it on when I woke up. Then, on the morning of the first anniversary of her death, I picked it up and felt a big “no.” Nope, it didn’t feel right. Too big, too shiny, too… there. Something had ended, and I knew not to push past it. I haven’t worn it since, as much as I treasure it. It was time.

I had heard about the one-year mark for mourning in the Jewish tradition. Both Joanie and I have Jewish blood running through our veins, and so, as the months passed, and my tea shelf remained unused except for an occasional cup I would make for a friend, I wondered if this was a forever thing or if, perhaps, sometime this next February, I would wake up and walk to the kettle as I had for decades.

It wasn’t quite that clear, but it was more delicious.

Last week, 5 days after the one-year mark, I received a text from Jan, who was on her way here for a retreat. She said, “Do you want me to bring you boxes of Market Spice Tea with caffeine or without caffeine?” How she remembers my favorite tea is part of her magic. I didn’t quite know what to answer. She hadn’t asked if I wanted tea, she hadn’t asked if I still loved tea, she just wanted to know about caffeine or no caffeine. I texted back: caffeine.

She arrived, three boxes of tea arrived with her, and the next morning, in the quiet darkness of the still-asleep jungle, without even thinking about it, I picked an earth-colored clay mug from a shelf, walked to the kettle, and opened a sealed pouch filled with incredibly delicious-smelling little bags. Straight from Seattle’s Pike Place Market, straight from the islands, the rain, and my other home.

A bag went into the mug, the boiling water on top of it, a splash of milk from the fridge, and then just me and that blessed brew of black tea, orange peels, and mysterious spices.
There were no tears, there were no words, there was no big deal. It was time.
I have had a cup just about every day since that morning.

Last night, on the phone with my friend Hadea, I told her about this. I told her about how, for a year, I had no tea. The Year of No Tea. She listened, and she said, “Maybe you needed someone to make you the tea, as she did. Or to gift you the tea.” And before I can tell her that this makes so much sense, that it was never about the tea but all about the Essence of Love, of Nurturing, she says that she is going to mail me a selection of teas. So that the teas in my home will all be teas of Love and Nurturing (I may be paraphrasing here because sometimes her words are words that come out of her heart and not her mouth).

Humans. We think we are so independent and running on our own schedules and timelines, away from traditions or rituals. Silly us, not listening. Silly us, needing to know the whys and the hows instead of feeling them and living them.

Really, we know. We know when it’s time to wear the ring and when it’s time to not drink the tea. We know when we have a yes and when we have a no. Away from GPS and away from forums and apps, we know.

YOU know.

***

PS: If you would like to get closer to your true YOU, to understand the difference between your Core Essences (the ones we can’t thrive without) and your Learned Essences – and how to dance with all of them so that you may truly blossom – please consider joining me for my intensive two-day Back to Me Retreat, March 15-16. You can email me or WhatsApp me (360.421.1618) with any questions.