It’s nearly time to part ways now.  The honor of facilitating the making of a human body in my own body is nearly over.  This belly will never be this exact belly ever again.  My Son will never again receive nourishment from his umbilical cord.  I will never feel him slowly stretch and move against the inside of my abdominal wall as if her were dancing a sacred warrior dance.  These last days are the end of his fascinating and rhythmic hiccups inside of my own being, like an intimate drum beat only I will ever know and which makes me so very proud.  I will never again feel for his head to see if it is still pointing down.  I will never share this body in this way, ever again, with this human.  Now we prepare to become 2.

Where do we come from?  How does that which did not exist before come to BE?  How did you get to be you and how did I get to be me?  10 months ago, this Human inside of me, wiggling and moving as I type these words, did not exist physically.  And now he is about to join our Planet Tribe.

These past 10 months have been joyous, scary, nauseating, beautiful, emotional, draining, exhilarating and Divinely Perfect in all of it’s imperfections.  For the first time in my 32 years on this planet, I humbly and gratefully stepped out of my own way in order to let Spirit and the Ancestors guide what is to Be.  In 39 weeks, I have sunk to my lowest low and risen to my all time highest high, and gained 40 pounds of mass and now I just want to be silent.  Silent so that I can hear the stars and the approaching full Moon which will announce my Son’s Due Date.  Silent so that Baby Boy can hear my Taos Pueblo Drum and the burning of sacred white sage that I spread around us with wild turkey feathers.  Silent so that I can hear the rich conversation of the birds outside my window calling in the Magic that humans can so easily miss.  Silent so that I can hear Great Mother Spirit guide me to my own innate wisdom.  Silent so that I can hear the wave of water which has been inside rush out like a mystical red carpet made from Sea Water and Dolphin Breath.  I need silence so that I can hear my Son’s heartbeat and his call as we prepare to touch skin to skin for the very first time in the History of Man Kind.  I seek silence now to hear my own tears fall out of my tired eyes onto my wonder-filled red and heaving chest.

I have loved Frida Khalo since I was a little girl having been raised among wild and eccentric artists in Mexico.  Like Friducha, I find myself exploring my body and the reality which accompanies it with curiosity and intrigue;  sometimes very judgmental but more often with a forgiving eye.  I am not shy in my body:  whether I am what society would label skinny and fit or lumpy and bumpy at one time or another, I do not worry what you, dear reader, will think of me.   I respect you whether you dislike or love me.  I lovingly expect nothing from you.  My body has been a continuous and evolving canvas and I take great pleasure in creating art with it; even when it scares me.  I move this body to Guinea and Congolese rhythms not because I want you to think me a splendid or imperfect dancer.  No, I move this body to channel my Spirit Guides and my Ancestors.  I do not photograph my nude body for you to compliment my beauty or point out my ugliness or to have you comment on my courage or on what you might think a disgrace to be exposed.  Not at all.  I photograph myself because I am passionate about the Human form.  I am eternally fascinated how skin, hair and pupils reflect light.  I love my body as much as I love yours.  I love my vulnerability and pain as much as I hold yours tender in the palms of my heart.  I honor my authentic exquisiteness as much as I ecstatically bow to yours.  I see no problem in contrasting opinions because to me authentic opinions and thoughts and wisdom all boil down to the same exact ancient root:  Evidence That We Are Alive Together.

Self Portraits and photographs i took of another beautiful Pregnant Goddess.  Thank you thank you thank you.

My life as I know it is about to change:  forever.  In about 4 weeks, most likely under the guidance & protection of the full moon of February 7th and surrounded by my own tribe, I will give birth to my son.

I have no expectations of how the birth of my son will unfold.  I know not where the choreography of the birth will take place:  in a birth tub or in a Goddess squat, or if I will need the assistance of a hospital.  I do, however, know one thing: the word “love” will have an entirely new definition for me.  My heart, like my uterus which has grown 5 times it’s original size from 8 months ago, will expand and receive for the first time ever sensations of ecstasy previously unknown…

Many of my family and friends have lovingly shared with me all the fascinating things that are about to change in my life:  Poop, pee, throw up EVERYWHERE!!.  No sleep, no time alone, etc etc etc EVER AGAIN!!  ”It’s so hard, get ready for the most challenging and wonderful time of you life!”  I love all of this wisdom and I cannot help but smile:  Poop and pee and throw-up and no sleep and hard times are who I am!  I have been juggling 7 things at once since I was 7 years old!  Hardship is where I SHINE!  So can I do all of this while also facilitating a human who has chosen me as his birth channel into this world?  I say YES!

I am so confidant in the ease of this transition of “my life never being the same” because I have, and you can quote me, the most EPIC community in the whole entire friggin’ WORLD!  I have Grandmothers and Mothers and Sisters and Brothers and Grandpa’s and little ones waiting to care for my boy.  I have dance camps waiting for us to dance and cry and laugh at; I have Africa and India waiting for us to visit and to educate us.  I have a tribe with arms wide open! And so I am at ease.  I have no interest in being my boy’s only Mother.  I am very much a follower and believer of the wisdom of Sobonfu Somè.  In her books she explains that raising children in her village in West Africa is a COMMUNITY experience.  The 2 parents are key players in the raising of the child, but it’s actually the responsibility of the ENTIRE community and the PLEASURE of the Tribe in providing the child with all the wisdom she or he will need.  I am walking evidence that it takes a village to raise a child.  Sobonfu gently reminds us that it also takes a village to support new parents.  I know so little in comparison to what my community knows!  A a whole, I am confidant this child wiggling in my enormous expanded uterus as I type these very words will have everything he could ever need. This realization makes me giddy with excitement…

Call it a tribe.  Call it a clan.  Call it a network.  Call it family or call it your crew.  The fact is: we all need one.

Here is the beautiful Tucson Yoga Tribe.  I love them a whole lot.  Thank you all for allowing me to play with you big kids!

I have heard hundreds of confessions of sorrow by now.  I have listened to thousands of stories of suffering.  I have held in my very arms countless sisters and a few brothers as they wept and shared their feelings of utter unworthiness and despair.  These confessions used to be only on my massage table where my clients lay both physically and emotionally naked and entirely vulnerable.  Quite often the confessions of un-connectedness, loneliness and self-loathing come from my dance students.  Lately the confessions have been in front of my camera.  Women come into my studio with shaky legs, feeling uncertain if they made the right decision to have a photo shoot with me.  They might not even know why they are there.  My sisters often feel ashamed that they are having photographs taken of themselves, as if they are doing a sinful act to honor their authentic beauty.  And most, at least 99.9%, are completely uncomfortable in their naked skin.  Whether they are what our society defines as fat or thin, they ALL share the same learned story that most of us have chosen to believe:  I am not good enough.  I am not beautiful.  I am not perfect.

When did we learn to be ashamed of our skin?  When did it become uncomfortable to be in our own skin?  When did we begin making our reality one of self-suffering and pain when examining our reflection in a mirror?  When did we learn the definition of “ugly” and “beautiful”?  Who gave us our definitions of “fat” and “thin”?  Who was it that convinced us that we were not good enough?  That we were not worthy of feeling “prefect”?  Who told us that were were imperfect?  Why did we choose to believe them?

There are people who have miraculously escaped form this belief system that was unconsciously and perhaps also consciously instilled into so many of us.  There are others who have re-written the lies into beautiful new truths of authentic beauty that are free of self-suffering.  There are those who still believe that humans could never be perfect.  There are others of us who have to make it a daily, intentional practice to be free from pain and to rewrite the pain into a lesson of beauty.  There are those of us that choose to see pain not as an ugly devil but instead as a sacred teacher that leads to even deeper perfection.

I once had a discussion with a scientist from the University of Arizona while on a backpacking trip in one of the most beautiful places on Earth.  Under a crisp and clear night sky saturated with diamond-like constellations in Northern Arizona we discussed perfection.  I had recently re-read for the billionth time “The Mastery of Love” by Don Miguel Ruiz.  I was high on redefining how i saw the world!  I was especially enamored with Don Miguel Ruiz’s theory on what he calls ”the biggest cop-out of our time”, that phrase:  ”nobody’s perfect”.  Like Ruiz, I believe we were born in perfection and we ARE perfect.  My scientist friend had a wonderful point that IF we are naturally perfect, how could we strive and evolve and become BETTER?  I didn’t see why I couldn’t be perfect right in that moment, evolve and learn and grow and dance and gather wisdom and still be perfect then too?

I mean, do we see a healthy beautiful baby born out of the vagina of another human and say, “Life is not perfect?”  Do we question the perfection of the female body which can MAKE an entire human in her own body, including a human with the opposite hormones and genitalia, while she lives her usual, everyday life?  Do we question the insane PERFECTION of the Himalayas, or the divine PERFECTION of the Amazon or the incredible perfection of a Sequoia tree?  LIFE is all of those things and WE are also life, so how could we not be PERFECT too?

I am no master of thinking I am perfect.  Lately I avoid the mirrors at all costs.  I am 40 pounds heavier than I was 8 months ago and my booty has a shake of it’s own.  I am one of the most OBSESSED people when it comes to the sacredness of a pregnant female body, yet I have to admit I feel large and awkward and puffy.  Yet every morning, before my feet touch the ceramic floor of my bedroom, I practice my gratitude mediation.  I am grateful for my baby’s hiccups in my belly!  I am grateful I am snuggled beneath a down comforter.  I am grateful that I have food in my kitchen and hot water in my bath.  I am grateful that I am creating life and redefining pain!  I am grateful that I have the opportunity to push a boy out of my body and have it feel perfect instead of painful.  I am grateful for all of the perfection that surrounds me…

There are a lot of different answers to these questions and a lot of opinions, and yet all I know is that when I see myself as perfect, I no longer need to take things personally. I no longer need to compete with other photographers or dancers or massage therapists and I can be free of the need to be beautiful or ugly.  I can just BE.  I choose to bathe in gratitude and practice my gratitude mediation for all the small and big things in my life.  I honestly BELIEVE in the perfection that we naturally are.  I believe that life is far more of a magician than I, and I will never call Life’s creation’s imperfect!  I no longer need to prove anything:  I just enjoy being perfect me gazing at perfect you.

It’s scientifically proven that happiness makes the human heart grow younger.  Happiness is the abundant side effect of being interconnected with those in our life that inspire us and to those we had no idea we could possibly love.  Happiness is the practice of forgiving those who have “harmed” us so we may be free from our suffering.  Happiness is practicing to gently embrace those who do not agree with our personal and authentic message.  Happiness is rewriting the I-Am-Not-Beautiful-Enough-I-Am-Not-Skinny-Enough-I-Am-Not-Sexy-Enough story that we have agreed to believe as truth when we look in the mirror.  Happiness is the choice in believing that yes, we ARE worthy of Brilliant Love!  Happiness is helping someone who needs our gifts.  Happiness is stepping out of victim role and into Authentic-Power-I-Can-Forgive-Role!  Happiness is being empty of judgement.  Happiness is allowing you, this Divine Reader, to think that I am crazy or to allow you to think I am brilliant because no matter what you choose to think about me, I am still going to choose to be happy.  Happiness is forgiving all that could possibly make us unhappy…

Some years back in his book “The Wisdom of Forgiveness” his Holiness the Dalai Lama tells a story of being hospitalized for stomach pain which, according to the Dalai Lama, was due to not listening to the advice of others to slow down within his very busy schedule.  However, while he was in the hospital in India, they did numerous tests on the Compassionate Teacher and the doctors were stunned that the Dalai Lama’s heart was in the condition of a 20 year old man.  His devout practice to Happiness, the Dalai Lama says, has kept his heart juicy and abundantly young.

Heart Disease is the leading cause of death in my home country, Los United States of Gringolandia.  See for yourself:  http://www.cdc.gov/features/heartmonth/  A generalized definition of Happiness I seem to witness in America tends to be first and foremost: Success (meaning money making success).  ”Happiness” is sold to us in grow-your-penis-longer pill bottles and weight loss powders and “Happy Meals”.  Our society tells us we will be happier if only we had the latest fashion and a blood-diamond ring.  I do not blame society or anyone in particular because we are responsible in what we choose to believe in.  So why do we choose to believe? Happiness has been defined, served to and BELIEVED as TRUTH by Americans via media for nearly a century….  Why?

Interconnectedness.  Being “empty” of want.  Forgiveness.  These are words that His Holiness the Dalai Lama uses to describe Happiness.

The most happiness I personally have gained in my life is learning HOW to forgive…  I LOVE forgiving.  When we cannot forgive those who have “hurt” us, the ONLY one who continues to suffer is the One who cannot forgive…

Because I learned to forgive the man who sexually abused me for years as a child, I have such a PROFOUND love and respect for my sexuality.  I am happy that I have forgiven my first and second love and the man I once nearly married for being unfaithful and lying to me about it.  I am so happy I have forgiven myself for believing for much too long that I am not worthy of incredible Love:  Self Love.

I am happy that I am pregnant with a Son 7 months in my belly because I now have begun redefining my relationship to the Divine Male.  I have had to do a lot of forgiving to men whom I have allowed into my Heart in my 32 years on Earth. I have a wonderful father and a stepfather who both love me and countless Elders who have been such powerful Divine Male Leaders in my life.  And yet as a teenager and as a young woman and now as a Mother, I have had few if any close Divine Male Friendships.  My authentic relationship with men is that they either want to be with me sexually or have nothing deep to do with me at all.  This makes it incredible difficult for me to have a gorgeous, Divine Male Partner, the father of my Rainbow Warrior Boy in my Belly, who has nearly all female friends.  My life has taught me that a man wants to have sex with me or be done with me.  To forgive that pain-causing belief system etched into my soul by past male friends and lovers and allow my beloved to be their authentic, beautiful SELF is such a guaranteed road to happiness:  one I am lovingly and diligently working on every single day.

And now:  And now I have the honor of experiencing an entirely NEW relationship with a Divine Male:  to be His Mother.  There will be a lot of forgiving needed in my future and this makes me very, very, abundantly HAPPY.

I know how to forgive.

It is scientifically proven that happiness makes the heart grow younger.  Wanna forgive?  Wanna be high? Wanna be Interconnected with me and everyone you love without needing to change a thing?

Here is a series of photographs I took of myself at 6.5 months pregnant and a series I had the honor of photographing of one of the most gorgeous sisters I know…

I am in love with Those whom we have learned to judge.  I am drawn to Those we are told to hate.  I am best friends with the Ones whom we call names in the shadows but smile to in daylight.  I am in love with the Ones you might be afraid to fully embrace.  I am engaged to Unconditional Love and the Ones whom we are taught to not love are my source of inspiration and are the medicine to my authentic path:  The town drunk of Yelapa, the Migrants crossing the Sonoran desert and the most divine Whore are fountains of inspiration for this soul that resides in my physical temple.  I have learned to love the man who sexually abused me for so many years because forgiveness tastes so much sweeter than suffering.  An incredibly sexy and outrageously talented transgender woman is currently my best friend and muse and life has never been more full for this heart and soul before you.  I am a disciple of those who live their lives in personal and judgement-free truth.  I bow to those who CHOOSE freedom from the box that our fragile society has created.  A society that I never agreed to agree with, but who I nevertheless respect and honor.  I embrace those who walk their talk, leading by example instead of falling pray to the overwhelming popularity of hypocrisy and judgement that plagues my beautiful brothers and sisters I see sleepwalking around me.

Borracho (drunk) Steve lived under the thatched side patio of Tino’s Restaurant and Bar on the Yelapa beach in the 80′s.  Everyone despised him and talked endlessly about his inabilities as a human being.  Borracho Steve was an ex-patriot from somewhere indeterminable in Los United States of Gringolandia.  He had a long matted beard the color of dirty laundry and his unkempt, unruly hair was a wild, oily mess around his wrinkled sunburned face.  His eyes were the color of the soft blue sky after the clouds parted from a summer rain and were filled with a tremendous desire to be loved.  He smelled of the ocean, tequila, Yelapa sand and piss.  He would ramble on and on about nothing much at all and was beautifully animated with his weathered hands.  When he saw me walking towards him on the beach, teeth would emerge in an excited half grin half lion-face from the hairy mask on his face.  Tears would gather in his eyes.  My own young heart would nearly burst every time I took his body of weary and love-starved bones in my small arms.  He would kneel in the sand and I would bury my blond head in his greasy hair and tell him that I loved him.  I loved Borracho Steve as a Mother loves her Son:  Unconditionally, no questions asked.  I knew he needed love and I loved giving him that love.  Borracho Steve died suddenly on the beach one humid and hot spring night; he was haphazardly and unceremoniously buried in the cemetery in the Pueblo.  I cried for weeks.

She first came to me as a massage client.  It wasn’t long before she became one of my closest friends.  She wanted to tell me for months but couldn’t get it out without crying.  In fact, I couldn’t even hear her the first time she confessed to me that she was a Whore.  I didn’t understand what she meant at first.  Did she like to sleep with a lot of men and felt badly about it?  Why was she so upset?  And with time I finally understood that she was a love worker,  the oldest profession on our sweet Earth.  She did not like to confess her profession to people, especially women, because inevitably she would be judged which would directly lead to feeling un-loved.  She was exhausted and deeply sad that she could not share with people who she was and what she truly loved to do.  I have never, ever ever ever met a woman who so beautifully honors the Divine Masculine AND the Divine Feminine.  I have never ever ever known a woman who can offer our brothers and sisters such unconditional and sensuous love.  Her trade is Medicine Work.   One of her clients is an 85 year old man who she fetches from the Suntran bus stop for his monthly Medicine.  She has taught me more about my sexuality and unconditional love than any other human on this planet.  She loves to be called a whore, she says.  She likes how the word rolls of her lips.  Now that she is completely comfortable with me, I get to hear stories from her work and we laugh, cry and I praise her for being a Healing Goddess for our sexually confused Men and Women.  She is my Sacred Teacher of Authentic Sexuality and I love her.

Why do we choose to use our words to judge and to make poison?  Why do we love to hate?  What if we practiced loving each other and our incredible differences?  What if I could be me and you could be you and we could honor our Authentic choices?  Why do we feel we must convert everyone to be just like us?  Why do we forget how to believe in and honor the magic of individuality?

Now that I am a few days shy of 5 months pregnant, I have re-discovered the magic in every little thing.  Just yesterday, I sat outside of a Circle K convenience store after working on a client and indulged in my first ever bag of Cheetos and drank a terribly sweet tea.  I was in bliss!  With every Cheeto that I put into my mouth, I would giggle in childish excitement while watching with deep affection the gorgeously strange people whom I would never talk to or ever know the names of stroll in and out of the Circle K.  The garbage scattered in front of the garbage can looked like an art instillation piece.  I marveled at the incredible weirdness and magic of the Circle K, a place I have never stopped to ponder.

And so to end this story, here are 2 different shoots I had the honor of photographing over the last few months.  Recently someone told me that I only photograph skinny women.  I was shocked!  I became defensive and wanted to show that person my client files and prove to her that I photograph all Divine Bodies, but I chose to not defend myself.  You see, I don’t see in terms of skinny and not- skinny.  I see only terms of One’s personal and authentic beauty.  I see You.  And I love seeing you.

It’s in west Africa where I feel the most beautiful.  There are barely any mirrors in the places I seem to stay and visit.  People do not react to my white skin and blond hair.  Men easily and vocally appreciate the body which my entire life has been called, “big boned”.  People cry when I leave and dance when I arrive.  I understand this kind of existence.

I am re-reading, for the dozen-th time, Don Miguel Ruiz’s “The Fifth Agreement”.  Every time I read these simple words, I laugh and cry and wonder how the words have re-arranged themselves to form an entire new meaning for me.  I have never ever re-read something so many times.  Just like movies I watch- once i have read a book,  it’s an experience that I will more likely than not NOT re-visit.

This re-read’s time around of The Fifth Agreement I am most struck with his explanation on how this reality we collectively experience is perceived entirely different by every single Artist, that is, every single human.  The words that we agree to understand and communicate with hold tremendous difference in significance for each one of us.  The word perfect means something entirely different to me than to you.  The power of the word perfect has been programed and crammed into my mind in a completely unique way than it has been ingrained into your mind.

When we were children before learning how to speak and before we learned to associate words with what we were perceiving in our world, we just accepted everything we witnessed.  A tree was a tree without a word and without the definition of “ugly tree” or “beautiful tree”.  A tree was just PRESENCE and was just EXISTING.  We hadn’t learned the words to place judgement on the tree.  We simply witnessed the tree.

I want to return to that place.  And mostly, I have.  I place no judgement on anyone nor on the things around me.  Yet my 32 years of learned-ability to have terrible self-esteem still lingers in the shadows of my personality and existence.  Sometimes, though, it emerges from the shadows and dances like a terrible self-created monster in front of me in broad daylight!  The shame from having acne as a teenager presents it’s self every time i get a sprinkle of pimples.  When I look in the mirror I see a “big” girl and I inhale deeply, hold my breath and fantasize about being one of those naturally thin beauties.

But then I snap out of it and I scream, “WAIT A MINUTE!  Who the HELL is making up this story?  My pimples do not make me an ugly human, my luscious curves do not make me what our society calls fat.  I am just ME!!!!”  I realize that with the words I have leaned as a child and with the meanings I have agreed to give them through out my life,  I judge myself and I inflict SELF SUFFERING!!!!!!!!!!!!  AGHHHHH!!!

WHAT has HAPPENED to us, Sisters?!

I had a boyfriend many years ago break-up with me because i was “gaining too much weight”.  Ever since then I have been terrified of gaining weight and have accomplished some serious self-suffering.  I am so not alone in this battle.  Yet why, WHY, sisters, do we choose a BATTLE?!?!  WHY do we choose a BATTLE WITH OUR SWEET BEAUTIFUL SELVES?!?!?

I am putting down my sword and my chest armor.  I stand naked in front of you with my love handles and my cellulite and my pimples on my chin, and I care not which words you would like to place on me.  They are your words and I no longer agree with them.  I am perfect in this body that I have been given.

As I enter my 4th month of being pregnant, I am going to re-define the feeling of shame and “ugliness” that so often trails pregnant women.  I need no man to appreciate this beautiful body.  I love it to the last fucking drop.

I love this body.

Eva came to me from the Heavens.  I really do not know how she found me, but I am eternally grateful she did.  She is one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen.  All she could see, however,  where the self-inflicted stories of suffering ie: NOT being beautiful.   Her mother told her she was ugly her whole life.  Her words have been messed with deeply with un-truths.  I couldn’t BELIEVE the beauty as I photographed her.  WHY DO WE SUFFER sisters?  We are so perfect, let’s see it NOW while we are still alive!  Let’s be our OWN lovers and our OWN biggest fans!  Let US LOVE our sweet, tender and authentic bodies!  Let us make the deepest love to OURSELVES!

This is why I love photography.  I see it as a medicinal tool to eliminate the un-truthful words we have agreed to place on ourselves.  It is a a tool of beauty.  I love photographing my sisters and killing the monsters of Self Suffering.  I love planting the seeds of Authentic Appreciation for Personal Beauty with No Judgement.  Only Love.

Original Music from my blood sister Singer & Song Writer Sapphire:

My yoga practice has gone out the door.  With it has gone rising early and eating mostly raw food.  I am 2 months pregnant, unmarried and just today I signed up for the first time in my life for AHCCCS (a state health-care for poor folk) and food stamps.

And yet…

And yet I work for myself.  I run my very own dance and photography studio.  I have clients who pay me well for massages even when they have tight pockets themselves.  I have a 15-foot blooming Jasmine bush in my apartment.

I may not make enough money to have my own health care, and yet I am constantly surrounded by radically juicy Love from my Tribe, from my family and community which, if not pregnant, is my health-care.

Standing and sitting in line today for over 4 hours for my “interview” for state health-care and food-stamps, I had no choice but to drop to my knees and give PRASIE to Great Spirit for facilitating such a Beautiful Life for me.  I was surrounded by hundreds of people with whom I normally have zero contact with.  The collection of people in the office instantly made me realize that even though I am a pretty Global Citizen, I basically live in a bubble surrounded by incredibly positive and abundant folks.  Just because I need help with bringing this baby into the world financially does not mean that I am in a desperate situation.  Just because I have little materially does not mean that I am not Abundant in my Spirit and outlook on LIFE.  On the contrary to feeling desperate, I am so grateful for the available help and I feel honored to receive financial support.  And good thing I went to apply today, because AHCCCS ends for people like me (single with no current children) July 1st.  My Birthday.

I am all about re-defining how I show up for all of this.  As I type this, I feel like I may puke at any moment.  My “morning sickness” lingers like an overweight and depressed relative clinging to my weary chest all day long.  I tell myself that I am fine, I am not dying, and after a puke or two, I move along with my day.  I massage my clients trying not to inhale because just about everything, even the scent of my own skin, makes me gag.  I don’t WANT to be sick!  I cannot AFORD to be sick so my mantra is:  surrender.  SURRENDER SURRENDER SURRENDER!!!  I pretend this intense feeling of nausea could very possibly feel orgasmic!  Maybe, just maybe, in some other dimension, nausea IS an orgasm!  Just maybe…  I am here to re-define it, folks.  It’s all I can do.

They tell me I will feel like Wonder Woman after 12 weeks of making this little human inside of my belly.

And soon…

I will return to my yoga practice.  I will make my kale salads again.  I will return to my comfort zone as an Authentic Being.

And I will be an amazing Mother.

Everywhere I go, even standing in line today for 4 hours for health care and food stamps, I see Beauty.

I have the honor of knowing Exquisitely and Authentically Beautiful Sisters and Brothers.  I have the blessing of having their trust and their desire to want to make art with me.  I have the innate desire to make magic with beauty-FULL people.  I want to show you what I see…  I really do.

Here is what I saw a few weeks ago…  Enjoy this Exquisite Magic Creation with my Yoga Goddess Rachel.  Music by my blood sister Sapphire Bell.

I carried her all the way upriver in my young arms because I wanted her to see my house.  I wanted to bathe with her in my secret place in the El Tuito river. I wanted her to listen with me the chorus of jungle birds outside my home which was surrounded by banana and papaya trees.  Since her wheelchair could not make the journey up the summer time mud-path from the beach to our casita in the forest, I decided I would carry Lina.

I felt  love for Lina before I met her.  I was nearing the celebration of my 11th birthday in1991 when I first heard her muted wailing.  My family and I vacated our tiny dungen-like apartment in Puerto Vallarta 2 days out of the week.  Our place had an open-air back patio that was directly below her family’s open-air balcony, enabling us to share the same view of the Pemex gas satiation behind the barbwire fence.  If positioned correctly, we the folk below, could hear entire conversations form above.  Within Lina’s moaning I could make out a sound of innate loneliness and desire for connection.  I wanted to meet her.

I began courting Lina’s friendship by tying up little presents of chocolate and small Mexican super-hero figurines in hemp string and tossing them from my place below to her balcony above.  I had attached a note to the bundle that read, “Dear Kid of the House: I hear you and I love you.  Do you want to play?”.  After tossing up the gift to the balcony, I stood motionlessly and waited to HEAR:  I excitedly anticipated the reaction to my gift.  ”Lina!  Tienes un regalo!” I heard.  Lina, you have a gift!  Silence.  A few moments later, I  heard a slow river of bubbly laughter from a child who was not-really-a-child.  Laughter from a human who has known more suffering than joy; a human who has never walked on her own beautiful 2 feet.

I cried.

For reasons of safety and curiosity, Lina and her parents came downstairs to introduce themselves after a few more of my tossing-of-the-bundle-gifts to their apartment.  Because of the design of the roof the divided our 2 apartments, we neighbors could not see each other directly.  My mother had no idea I had been tossing the neighbor’s gifts and apologized for the hazardous acts of her spontaneous 11 year-old daughter.

It was then I discovered that my new friend from upstairs was bound to a wheelchair. A wheelchair, I might add, that hid from the rest of the world it’s magical heron-winged wheels.  Lina’s hair was long, thick and unusually shinny black.  Her head hung dramatically to the left, causing her bangs to cover her left eye.  She had the most innocent stream of drool escaping from her full, 15-year-old lips.  How could I have known that a Fairy Princess with a heron-winged chair lived upstairs from us, I thought.

Fairly soon, Lina’s parents granted me complete trust of wheelin’ her all around the sketchy walkways and un-even cobble stone streets of Puerto Vallarta.  My favorite outings, however, where when her parents would push me along side Lina in her spare wheelchair around town.  I would simulate Lina:  drop my head to the left, make my arms limp and drool a little bit.  I was fascinated to experience, if only for a few hours, the life Lina lived everyday of people staring at her.  She loved being twins with me in public and being pushed together..  I loved seeing Lina’s world from her winged-chair.

Lina’s birth parents abandoned her when she was born lame.  A sweet-hearted couple named Bruce, an American, and Adelina, a Mexican, adopted her as an infant.  I made her my sister that year in 1991.

I wanted to show her my house in Yelapa.  We could not bring the wheelchair on the boat from Puerto Vallarta to Yelapa because of the sand on the beach when we got off the boat and because of the muddy trail that led the way to my house.  So I told Bruce, Adelina and my Mom that I would carry Lina in my arms from the beach to our casita.

I mean, I was an abnormally strong 11-year old.  My daily house-hold chore was carrying water from the spring to our house countless times a day because we didn’t have running water.  I was confidant in my carrying abilities.

And so it was.   Lina, my mom and I went on the panga, or boat, to Yelapa.  Lina was in giggle hysterics, so deep in joy!  My own heart pulsed and glowed…

After having several boys help me get her off the panga on the sandy beach, I hoisted Lina into my arms like a newly-wed bride and began the 1o minute walk upriver.  I stumbled on several different tree roots, sending us both into the mud and horse manure more than once.  Lina laughed loudly with her eyes closed and I gathered strength and day-dreamed of lunch.  I carried her first to my house, then to my favorite spot in the El Tuito river that snaked it’s was through Yelapa.  We washed the mud and horse poo off our skin and I hunted the waters for crawfish to show her.  Back in the city, I had bathed Lina countless times in her blue-tiled bathroom.  She was 3 years older than me and already had small, pointy breasts and a soft patch of dark hair between her legs, both of which I still lacked on my own young body.  Fresh and clean from the El Tuito river water, we allowed our skin to air-dry as I carried Lina back to my house where mother fed us a late lunch of leftover lasagna in the fading central Mexican sunlight.  With a full belly, a happy heart and tiered arms, I drifted into a short siesta.  After lounging on my incredibly tranquil hanging bed, I carried her back to the beach with less stumbling this time on the path.  Mom, Lina and I boarded the panga to return Lina to the city, to her family and to her magical thrown with the great heron-winged wheels.

These photographs have nothing to do with Lina, and everything to do with Sacred Radiance.  We all radiate beauty.  I see exquisite beauty in everyone, making me passionate about photography.  I had the honor of photographing this new young family last week:

I haven’t always been able to stand naked in front of a full-length mirror and smile.  In fact, there are still days that my shoulders slump as I uselessly gaze at myself.  All I can see are the soft love handles above my hips and the sprinkle of pimples on the left side of my chin.  On those days of useless gazing I have to practice with a little more assertiveness the re-programming of my vintage belief system and ACTIVELY choose to BELIEVE in my worthiness….

You see,  I MUST show up for my community, for my students and for my clients as a role model, as an inspiration, as someone who makes it a practice to walk their talk of being imperfectly perfect:  I must transform the old belief system that I am not enough, which causes vasts amounts of useless suffering, into rich and juicy clay from the Taos mesa.  I can then mold the soil and earth with warm and tender hands into who I truly want to be: An Authentically Beautiful Reflection of Life.

Sometimes, maybe almost all of the time, I am so sore after the nights I teach dance that I can barely get out of bed the following morning.  And yet I do it, again and again, for over 8 years:  this intense love-service of my body…  This coming to be Danced…

I give myself up:  in entirety.  If i died tomorrow, I want to know I danced with my Entire Self Tonight.  I want to float to The Great Spirit knowing I opened my Vulnerable, tender and Authentic Heart in trust.  I surrender to what my tribe needs on the Dance Floor.

So you see, there is no time for feelings of un-worthiness.  How could Spirit move through me and dance me for my people if I felt unworthy of The Gift:  The Gift of being alive.

My Mama Mabiba Baegne walks with a significant limp at 3 years shy of 60 years old.  She has such drastic pain in her ankle and hip.  And yet, when the drums begin, she looses all sense of bodily encumbrance and becomes a vessel:  a vessel of Spirit Dance.  She dances with such fluidity and grace that everyone becomes entranced and the room is silent…  Who wants to disrupt Spirit moving through a Sacred Body?

Back to this feeling of Worthiness…  Why is it that so many of us powerful, gorgeous and intelligent women choose to suffer with thoughts of un-worthiness?  I find it absolutely astounding that we go out into the world and work as powerful teachers, lawyers, doctors and nurses, janitors, humanitarians and activists and yet we STILL struggle with the deeply rooted belief system of un-worthiness, of not feeling proud, beautiful and at ease with our gorgeous authentic being.

Life doesn’t question if it’s perfect or not.  Life just IS.  Life just LIVES.  It doesn’t write a hypothesis on the question of feeling Worthiness and Greatness.  Life doesn’t waste time wondering if there is more evolving and love to be experienced in the future.  Life just knows that’s it’s doing it’s very best every single day.

“The highest point of your journey back to yourself is the moment you see yourself through the eyes of truth.  If you can see your authentic self, you will love what you see.  You see the magnificence of your presence; you see how wonderful and beautiful you are.  You see the perfection in you, and this breaks any doubt that anyone else ever put into your head.  You see that you are light, that you are life, and when you accept your own divinity, you become a better reflection of life.”  -Don Miguel Ruiz, The Five Agreements.

I noticed a brand new wrinkle on the right side of my face last week. You know, down by my mouth. I had a warm feeling come over me: evidence that I smile big and often. Praise this getting older and wiser. I feel so utterly beautiful and worthy of these lines.  I need not to conceal them or agree to what our society labels a wrinkle on a woman’s face.  My laugh lines have stories to tell!!!

If Rosangela Silvestre would have walked in front of my camera 5 years ago, I would not have felt worthy to photograph her.  And guess what?  I would have missed out on one of the most beautiful late mornings of my entire life.  Thank God and The Goddess I have de-labeled my  made up story of not BELEVING in my authentic worthiness.  Instead, I cried in bliss behind my lens as I photographed Rosangela and her loving partner, dancing around in my studio in downtown Tucson….  Take a look: