Birthmonth

I'm a virgo baby and it's my birthday this month.  many years ago i adopted the practice of advertising my birthday to be exactly sure that friends and family had enough advance notice to celebrate me according to the many hints and requests i had given them.  This advance notice has truly evolved for me and it feels like it has become more of a huge set of bookends set around the month of September in which i insert as many intentional celebrations, introspections, retreats and dancefests/singalongs necessary to assure that , from the inside, i am able to celebrate my own life, know what it is that i even care about celebrating.  But this month has been a little different than past birthdays, and i am reflecting in what feels like a very different way this year.

Having just spent the month of August out of the country, out of my day-to-day life, focusing on spiritual practice and intentional open-hearted interaction, i have found myself feeling a little nonplussed this month because it feels like much of the birthday work i would normally do for the year was really taken care of last month.  And what i find myself in the middle of now is truly new territory that i both love and fear at the same time.  i find that i have enough awareness and caring for myself that i treasure the learning from my recent travels and hardships and embrace their value in my current days.  i.e.  after 30 days of being the most open-hearted, least reactionary and willing to take nothing personal person i have ever been while living abroad, i find that i am truly challenged with the notion of bringing this home and incorporating it into my daily world.  i also find that with the open heart came this willingness to risk in a way that hasn't been around for a long time...or at least that is what came home with me and started out the month.  Now i feel just a wee bit fearful because i notice old habits and protections slipping back in that i am no longer fond of.

So i am set with a Birthday Challenge of holding truer, examining more deeply, embracing more authentically this person of becoming and i'm afraid.  i don't know how to be a new me, i certainly don't know how to stay the old me and survive the inner fury.  But even more than surviving such a fury, i truly choose to step into this void, leap with abandon.  i find instead that i step with caution, tight hamstrings, puffy ankles and toes in need of a pedicure--and yet step i do--thanks to the many who have contributed to my general discomfort that i choose gratefully the risky leap rather than sticking with what i already know.