ALREADY HOME

If you’re like me you’ve moved around quite a bit in life.  I was born in Huntington Beach, CA but went to kindergarten 8 hours north up in Red Bluff, CA.  Back and forth we went following my dad’s desperate escape from his own addiction.  Starting over and moving again.  Fate brought me back to Southern California some good amount of years ago and filtered me out into a town called Long Beach.  I referred to it as a concrete jungle at a meeting this past week and an Oregonian came up to me after and said, you must mean California.  See, there’s a Long Beach here in Oregon too, but those two places couldn’t be more different.

Ah yes, Long Beach, you great big beautiful concrete jungle.  Filled with all types of people, the most ethnically diverse place I’ve ever lived and never noticed until I visited last week.  Full of hippies, vegans, meat eaters, beach goers, realists, and so much more.  Eccentrics aren’t blinked twice at, one of my favorite scenes used to be a older man in full cowboy gear riding a bike around 4th street.  And my bet is on most of the occupants of that fair city if there ever is a sort of apocalyptic event, Long Beach people don’t mess around.  And it’s full of AAers:

I got to see so many of my friends.  I got to eat a Hole Mole veggie burrito.  I got to go to a bunch of old meetings, whew boy all those new faces!  And plenty of old faces too, more than I thought I would see.  I got to go to my friend’s brand new yoga studio, Olive Yoga, what a space!

I was one of the first people she taught when she was going through teacher training.  What a teacher she is!  Many times over the years, I have been blessed to be taught by her and she has a way of speaking truth to your soul that as a student you hear and just get.  I wrote on her chalk board below, love, love, love to this space.

I think the very best part of the journey was the sit downs with friends, if it was a group restaurant flurry of conversation, or a two hour talk.  Those friends you are apart from for years and you click right back in with.

I stayed in my friend’s spaces.  Interesting because I figured most of my pictures for this post would be outdoor, would you believe the Oregon weather trailed behind me?  It was murky and drizzly, I ended up taking pictures of the interiors of my friend’s homes which in the end seemed to suit just fine.

And something else I realized. In Oregon I’m already home.  I’ve built a little life here.  As much as I love and loved Long Beach, it ain’t my home any more.  My friends still are my home there, so I will go back again.  But it’s a place I’ll visit, not a place to be pined after any longer.

I’m eight years sober tomorrow!  I’m so grateful for my friends (here and there), my son, my family, my HP, & my sobriety.  I would not have any type of life if I wasn’t sober.

I also feel like it’s time to let some more stuff go, as yoga girl says, those things that don’t serve me any longer.  I think that deep down we all know what those things are if we let ourselves follow our intuitions.

Sending out positive & truthful vibes to you all, you are all souls full of light!

~Namaste.