Dear Sweet Little Body,

I am so sorry. I haven’t been a good friend. In fact, I’ve been a stubborn bitch who wants you to be something you aren’t, who ignored you when you didn’t comply, and unfriended you along the way. If I had a friend like me, well, it wouldn’t be pretty when I opened the door and told me where to go.

Guess you’ve been doing that in your own perfect way. I just haven’t been listening.

I am so very sorry.

You’ve been here for me my entire life. You’ve allowed me to fully experience all life offers — the hot chocolate hugs of joy and happiness, the silly giggles of fun and excitement, the achingly sweet sadness of grief — oh so much grief. It’s all been you … and what did I do? I told you that you weren’t enough or that you were way too much. I didn’t give you the one thing everyone needs — unconditional love.

You always point to what’s good for me, expanding me with the elixir of yes. You unfailingly show me when to say no — when to

turn around and walk away, when the direction I am taking will add trauma to my laundry list of feelings.

Did I listen? Rarely. I’m getting better though, thanks to your unerring consistency. I am so grateful you never gave up on me even when I gave up on you.  

I’m not saying this to manipulate you. God knows, I did that often enough to have a track record, so I wouldn’t be surprised if you don’t find me trustworthy. I don’t need you to behave better. I’m not saying this because I hope that once you are happy, you will thrive. I am not changing my tune for any reason other than I clearly see the error of my ways, that I haven’t treated you well, that I threw you under the bus in my desire to transcend this world. It became an ingrained habit that didn’t change when my desire did. 

You were never the bad guy. God, no. You were a true friend, mirroring back to me what I projected onto you, not with anger or resentment, not as punishment or blame, not even shame, but with clarity and love.  You mirrored it all back even when I couldn’t look at you in a mirror, even when I looked away.

You are life’s clarion call, the homing beacon atop the lighthouse, the behicle of incarnation. You are life itself, infinite aliveness in form, in forming the show, my own data bank of natural consequence.    

And I am truly sorry. You are a perfectly beautiful, preciously incredible miracle just as you are. The reality that I couldn’t see 

that all along was all about me, not about you. I was caught in the web of separation, jonesing to feel good about myself, to solidify the illusion that existed in my faulty programming — only there — there was never any reality to it at all.

I love you sweet, sweet little body.

You are magnificent.

Such an clear instrument, always pointing to true North.

Please forgive me.

Yeah … I hear you … I’m smiling.

There’s nothing to forgive.

Simple awareness purifies the separate mind of its sins.

There’s only love.