Create holidays that nourish you...

Thanksgiving is my very favorite holiday: gathering with friends and family to celebrate our blessings, to enjoy one another and delicious food (please let the food be truly delicious and not lukewarm).  My mom's stuffing recipe is one of my favorite dishes on earth, I look forward to it every year.  
    A few years ago I was home in Seattle for Thanksgiving.  This particular year had been a tough one. I'd gone through some huge ruptures in my life, ended a very toxic relationship with a family member and my body was releasing all the stress/sadness/fear I'd been holding onto since I was a little girl. Because I set such a firm boundary, because I finally protected myself, my system was trusting me and at long last my body could finally truly relax and release.  I had bronchitis for six weeks (in chinese medicine the lungs are grief...and boy did I have a lot of grief to move through). So when Thanksgiving rolled around I planned on seeing how felt. I had a number of wonderful invitations to join friends around their festive and loving tables.  Did I want to be around people? What felt best for my body and soul?  
    So here we are Thanksgiving day and I just kept staying in bed.
I slept and slept and read historical romance fiction and slept some more. I meditated. I slept. There may or may not have been a shower. I was delighted, ecstatic, giggly. I shuffled to the kitchen to grab a Kind bar at one point to ease the hunger. In the early evening I emerged from my bedroom in total joy and calm. I popped open my laptop and found some new healthier versions of cakes, cookies, bread recipes because when I am happy and full of love I bake and create sweetness and then share it with others. At one point I spilled my glass of red wine on my laptop and fried it. Shit. I freaked out a bit and searched on my phone "red wine on keyboard" followed the steps I found, set it aside and then kept baking using my phone for recipes. 
     I was in such joy and flow it didn't derail me and I baked until 3am.
    I don't remember all the details of how I spent that day but I remember this. It felt divine. Perfect. There was no other place I wanted to be. And I was utterly, delightfully at peace with it.  It was exactly what my body and soul needed and by getting in approval with that I had a totally joy-filled day. 
    So follow your pleasure, follow your truth, reclaim your wild and do Thanksgiving, the holidays, your birthday, every day your way. In doing so you set more and more people free to follow their own pleasure which creates more true joy and connection in our world...and that is something to be truly grateful for. 
    What can you do this holiday season to be in your pleasure? To honor your truth? Say no to travel? Head somewhere warm? Homemade gifts? No holiday cards? Stay inside all day binge watching Jane Austen movies? 
    Only you know what is best for you.

I chose this photo because I remember how nourishing it was to make this in a cooking class I took in Valpariso, Chile. Pastel de Choclo (Chilean Corn pie). Comfort food all the way and so so delicious!

Creating with our Wild. The world needs us. We need us.

Hello Sisters
It's creation time! Can you feel it, that call we are hearing- to create what we are here to create, a baby, a cake that you share with neighbours as a way of introduction, setting up a hot cocoa stand to raise money for an art class you want to take, a danceathon to raise money for Standing Rock, making quilts for women receiving chemo so they are wrapped up in sisterhood and love, a movement, to share our wisdom, our truth and our wild hearts with the world? What is calling you right now? Is it writing, it is having friends over to circle together and watch a movie or read a book together, is it wanting to create a garden..

there are infinite possibilities for this moment. 

Let's use this moment of fire, of awakening to create the world we want to live.

Rather than reacting to the world around us and how it was presented to us.

We get to create our lives. That is the essence of reclaiming our wild. How do our days flow and feel- who is in them, how do we travel from one place to another, what is in our home (books, cleaning supplies, clothes) What new is calling to us, what needs to be released to create space for the new. Now is the time for alchemy, now is the time to let go, to unleash, to be so breathtakingly honest with yourself. WHAT DO YOU YEARN FOR? Those yearnings are so possible to be met, let's quit pushing them aside and instead use them to create. 

So today- connect to your yearning, your desires, your dreams ..perhaps you have felt them all along and they got buried in the day to day or a belief you couldn't receive them or create them/ I am here to hold space for and to be a mirror that you are worth having your yearning met. For love, community, sisterhood, hot pants, roller skates, a month in Hawaii...whatever the yearning is that comes from that deepest part of you- your wild essence.

Now is the time to connect to your wild and create. 

This is what this time is about- western women rising to change the world. No more reaction, no more adaptation. 

Create. Create. Create.

Coming back to my body, again.

Written February 24th. In Santiago, Chile. 

I am so profoundly grateful to be feeling better in my body again. I can't tell you how off it is for me to not dance, to not walk around Buenos Aires, to not get to take myself out for a birthday hamburger with live music, to not dance salsa until 4am in Buenos Aires. I missed it. I missed the aliveness and vitality. Because this is where I commune with my play, with my joy. It is in this body of mine. And while I took great care of it while sick- resting,, water, oral rehydration salts- there was another energy coursing through it after 7 days of quiet time in Ushuaia. Let's get out there and play! Let's flirt, and kiss, and ride on a moped, and tango in the park and salsa until dawn. Let's surround ourselves with beauty, with stunning architecture. Let's walk and take in the street performers, the cemetery, the bookstore, the textiles, the food. Oh let's take in the beauty of the food, the drink, the glasses, the restaurants. 

After years of over isolating and playing it safe, it is my body and my soul that are clamoring for more. So there was grief in leaving Buenos Aires for that energy which was not experienced, that sense of aliveness and vitality my body was craving. And it is such a reminder of where my joy is. Of where my creation lies. It is in me. In this body of mine. It is why I start every morning with stretching and dancing- to ground into my wisdom, my greatest guide before I go out in the world. And so this morning I gave myself a Buenos Aires re-do. I imagined myself out in BA, savoring food, flirting away, meeting a man, dancing with him, feeling myself wrapped in his arms. I imagined how we laughed, how his forearms felts as I caressed them. I imagined the energy of walking through BA late at night, holding hands with him, taking in the beauty of it all. I imagined and felt the energy of me laughing, of me feeling turned-on, of playing drums, of dancing tango in a park really horribly but with great play and delight, of a dramatic leg sweep as I trust my body would have done with joy. And as I do this, I feel this hole inside of me fill up with these energies, fill up with a reminder of who I am. 

Fill up with the desires for these feelings of how I am in the world in different moments.

Because there are times I am quiet, and I spend chunks of time by the river stretching, moving the old through my body or hiking solo as I have done so much these last 4 weeks. And in BA I wanted the new, I wanted these notes and tones in a different way. I wanted the aliveness of it all. The experience of this side of me that I have never truly lived in the world. More of me in it. More love, more play, more delight, more dance, more romance, more sensuality, more sex, more men, more yelling and dancing at a soccer game, more laughter. I wanted more. I am ready for more. And I am so grateful I took the time to honor the hole I felt. The hole I have felt many times when I have been out of flow with what the universe created for me. More love. So this hole is not nearly as big as it was this morning, these last few days. My body feels more alive, more dynamic, more hopeful. And I desire to be met with these notes and tones so I can keep expanding, keeping experiencing more of what is possible in this life. So I can keep loving more and being more of the expression of my true wild essence. 

Thank you universe- excited for the magic, for the notes and tones that await me as I head out to explore Santiago. More please. So much more.

How can you get back into and honor your body today? Maybe put on a few songs and let your body guide you. Lay down and rest for 10 minutes. Take a bath. Enjoy!

Sending love, Kim style.

Written on February 23rd. 

Arrived. Santiago, Chile. And after a week of bread, oat cakes, yogurt, potatoes, recovering from food poisoning I am happy to have looked at a menu and not silently thrown up in my mouth at the thought of meat or fish. For years I had dreamed of watching and dancing tango in Buenos Aires, of watching a football game in Argentina, of wandering around this city of great history and architecture and soaking it in. Of finding a romantic courtyard and sipping a glass of wine in the mid day heat....and none of that happened. 

So I trust I will return in diving timing to experience these long held dreams. i was guided to go to Iguazu Falls and then on to Santiago, Chile and I don't mess with guidance (I do my best not to). So here I am. Sipping some wine, in an outdoor courtyard and I just ate my first dinner in a week. So far, so good. So here is to letting go of expectations. To surrender, to flow. Here's to more play. After days of being sick, after the energy of Iguazu Falls and the full moon, after all the emotions of leaving Argentina, I am spent. I wrote L a postcard today care of the place he works, the lodge we met at. Addressing it to all there and using words that will only deeply resonate with him. That are only for him to truly appreciate. Since he is offline until April, I wanted to reach out to him with love as I left Argentina and it was so much fun to write this postcard in code for us.

I kissed the postcard before I put it in the mailbox at the airport, then cried my way through security and passport control, and then into a bathroom stall to let the love I felt here, not just from L, but from this land, its people, move through me. That's what these tears are, me feeling loved. Me feeling held. There is joy, there is gratitude, there is grief for going without this for so long. For some how believing I wasn't worth loving. For keeping men out of my life to protect myself, for the lost years and gratitude that I am here now. 

I am curious what brings me to Chile. I am open, I am ready. More please universe. And thank you for the fish, for the wine, for this sweet little hotel with nature and a courtyard in the midst of bustling city, for safe travels, good seat mates, easy passport control, kind taxi drivers. all of it matters. love matters. 

Buenos Noches, K

Full Moon Magic at Iguazu Falls, Argentina

This was written on February 22nd, sharing now via the magic of faster internet. 

On this full moon I was guided to Iguazu Falls- a true powerhouse of nature. I spent the day walking near the waterfalls, through rainforests, being surrounded by butterflies. I spent the day trying to get myself to walk slow when my body wanted to zoom with all this energy. I spent the day trying to recapture the essence of lightness and love I felt with L, felt in nature before my food poisoning and 4 days in hotel. I came back, napped, took a shower, and felt that tomorrow it is time to leave Argentina. And so I go out on the patio, it is raining here and i start to cry with gratitude for my time in this magical land. 

I flew here on the full moon two months ago- watching it through my airplane window on my red eye. I spent the last full moon with L, in El Chalten, wrapped in his arms and sharing our love of the moon with one another as we looked at it through a telescope.

And this moon? Well, I am forever changed, I am softer, more open, I am more receptive. I have slowed down. I have danced on new mountaintops, slept by rivers, hugged trees, wept. I have fallen in love. I have been held, caressed, nuzzled. I have eaten more meat and bread than I can imagine, sipped Malbec, met people from all over the world, learned new words in spanish for tender, soft, wild. I have been gifted new music, new ideas. I have seen sunrises, sunsets, colors of water I never knew existed. 

I have felt loved here in a way I have never felt before. I have come to understand the beauty of my soulfulness, my play, my wild. I have felt soft here in a way I have dreamed of. And now I know there is something even better. Now I have called in more of who my man is, he is free to travel with me, this love can last longer than 7 days, I am ready for love with a man to permeate my life. To open myself up for more. To know there is more play, more love, more communion than I can imagine. And so while there is some grief, there is joy and hope too. 

Thank you Argentina, this land of such intense nature and rapturous beauty, of people who kiss each other hello, who take time every day to sip their mate'. Thank you Bariloche and the family I met there that welcomed me in. Thank you Isla Victoria for taking my phone and more. Thank you L for your life changing love. Thank you angels, guides, universe, love for bringing me here, for keeping me safe, for reminding me I am easy to love, I am worth loving. For expanding my sense of self and delight in who I am. For the gift of my freedom, the gift of traveling this world with love.

Thank you. Humbled. Grateful. More please.

3 hours later and I just went out and looked at the moon, the clouds have broken and there is a rainbow above it. Stop. It. 

Off to Santiago, Chile in the morning.

Iguazu Falls, Argentina