Hollywood Actor* told me I’m a phenomenal actor. They are an Oscar nominated actor.

There were other descriptors that were just as pleasant to hear, but I remember distinctly this particular phrase: phenomenal actor.

They didn’t say, actress.

They didn’t say, Native American actor.

They didn’t say Hispanic actor.

They just said I was phenomenal, period.

What does this mean for me? At this point in my career? My life? It means that I am perceptive. It means that I am aware. It means that I am adaptable. It means that I care. It means that I listen. It means that I give as much as I receive. It means that I am present. It means — that I can do just about anything.

It means that the “me” that I’ve been working on these past five years — to better understand myself as this creative being — is recognized for all that I have done to strip myself bare, and the work I have done to rebuild the best version of myself that I can. That I am doing just what I have set out to do with my life five years ago. I am doing it.

For all the times I’ve been rejected and will be rejected for a role because of my lack of connections. Because I don’t look right for the part. Whether I’m not Native enough and don’t have an accent. Or I don’t look Hispanic enough and don’t have an accent. Or because my résumé is still so small. Or because I don’t live in Hollywood. Really, any number of reasons why I just didn’t get the part, or even if I don’t get this particular role. This one acknowledgement, means nearly everything.

For all the times as a child I didn’t know what or who I wanted to be, it means that maybe I have finally found something I am good at.

There was a time when I trusted others more than I trusted myself. Like the time I trusted my ex-husband to make me feel good about myself. He praised me every chance he could. And then he tore me down.

What does it mean for Hollywood Actor to tell me that I’m a phenomenal actor? It means that for all the times I thought I wasn’t good enough for anything, when I stripped myself of those fears, I am able to surprise myself and be incredible.

*Name withheld to protect confidentiality.

Come
Stand beside me
And do not be afraid
You are lighter than air
You are heavier than stone
You are free of past mistakes and problems.
Just be humble and aware.
You are perfect as you are.
Know that you are not alone.

Do you have the strength to sit beside me?
Do you have the same level of care?
Do you know that you are worthy?
And for you I lay myself bare?

Do you know I cannot undo what I have done?
That I love the way I feel around you.
That I love who I am as I sit in this throne.
That I love me more and who I am when I am with you.
That I love this presence of being and sharing
The well of my heart and soul
The depth and vastness of a second home.

And I love the way you look at me.
I love the way you desire every part of me.
I love that
You stand taller and laugh louder and smile wider just thinking of me.

And so I
Lay down every splintered fault.
I take off all these hardened scars.
I peel off this awkward shame.
I strip away the edema-d ego till it’s as bare as bleached bone.
And then I
Lay all these on the ground.
Pull apart brittle ribs.
Protecting this sacred heart.
Empty out foggy tears.
Throw away dinged deception and damaged desire.
Vomit years of congested fears.
Then I
Swallow you whole.
Your taste finding space in this new skin.
New growth making itself at home.
I pour out everything to let you in.
These tear soaked eyes will never see me the same.
Always looking past me. Never seeing through me.
Always searching the space beside, behind, beyond.
Never quite looking at me.
Always outside struggling to look for me from within.

And until you are worthy of your place beside me, this feeling will always win.

I heard the distress call from your distant star. I came as quick as I could. Answering, just to sit with you, to spend time with you. To be love with you as you process your fear.

I recognized the faint and mournful cry
Of a child longing
To be rescued from a nightmare. Only to…
No one there.
Despair.
Trapped. Frozen. “Mom.”
Move a muscle and a monster may notice you’re there…

So resourceful are we, you and I, we even disappear. Blend into the bed. Tear soaked hair. A frozen pool of tears gives way to a…
Murky water bottom scouring to find treasure lay hidden from anyone’s view.
Many a mermaid and deep sea divers couldn’t keep up with you. This deep longing and instinct to travel down to those depths to help find, rescue, the sunk ship that steered off course
by a careless captain and a lovesick fool.

Always return to water. A rebirth. A renewal. A fresh start. A ritual affair to clear the air.
But you are fire and flame and water carries…
In the heat of your desire for transformation and change boil the ocean of sorrow and pain till only air remains.
And then breathe in light.

Fill your aching soul with nourishing air. Let the fresh breeze in.
Breathe in your new life.

I can’t rescue you. But I’ll spend some time with you. And I will listen. And I won’t ignore your cries.

I often see memes or people stating in posts, “just work quietly and only show your finished work don’t let everyone know your business or what you’re doing.” Or something more hip than that. I’ve also run across the adage, “never let anyone know your next move.”

I don’t do that. If I have no intention of doing something, I won’t say it. If I do, I will. 99% of the time, I mean what I say. Eventually. I’m a process person by nature (or at least I think I am).

The likelihood that something I do can be replicated and executed exactly like I did by someone else who wishes to copy me, may be minimal. Their results will vary based on a number of factors. Plus copying 1) doesn’t necessarily serve that person because they’re copying (what’s their original idea?) But 2) maybe someone needs to graft their courage onto something I’ve done that seems to have worked but they were too afraid without a little inspiration?

Plus, I like to help. I’m co-dependent that way. If I’ve found a way to do something and I see someone struggling. My initial instinct is to help. That’s my mom’s side. But then I also realize I like to figure sh!t out on my own so I sit on my hands and zip my lip as well as I’m able to stand it.

Granted I admit I am a terribly jealous person, too. But in admitting so, it takes away a great deal of its power. Mostly I find happiness in other people’s accomplishments and being in a place of love for them being able to achieve a goal is part of getting us all to the same place. If we can cultivate a world of love instead of negativity then all the better for myself and my kid and all the other kiddos, et al.

And yes, I do want you to know my business. I’m not generally a secretive person. If you meet me in person, I will unload my whole life story and my healing process to you within frantic minute. If you’re gonna think I’m crazy, then might as well start from the get-go and not find out a day later and wonder what happened to me. If you’re not gonna like me, I too, would rather you find that out right away than, ahem, waste MY time pretending you do. Again, it’s that helpful side. I do appreciate a thank you. It does go noticed when it doesn’t happen, and I won’t be helping them ever again!

So what’s the point of this late night ramble? I finished a journal yesterday (June 25, 2019) that I started October 1, 2018. And I think it’s probably the first journal that I’ve started that I’m proud of finishing. So many journals before were filled with sadness and pain and one in particular was filled with lies of how happy I was. But this one. This one was of growth and struggle and challenge and change and transformation. And early this morning, I cracked open a brand new journal, June 26, 2019, and already wrote an incredibly vague and general, yet probably the most ambitious 5 year plan ever.

I started writing down my intentions, with intention, a few years ago when I found a loose piece of notebook paper folded away in my collection of important papers I have trucked around with me from New Mexico, to New York City, to Massachusetts, and back again. This paper outlined what I thought I could do — at some point in my life hopefully — that I may never get to do. At the time I was so depressed, getting out of bed was ambitious (sometimes, some days, it still is). I hadn’t finished my bachelors, I was away from my family, I was not getting enough money, and I wasn’t too happy with my relationship.

When I finally moved back to New Mexico to work for the Navajo Nation, I found the paper tucked away in my receipts folder and I was absolutely floored, even though I was actually sitting on the floor already. Nearly every single item on that list had been accomplished at least in some form or another. I hadn’t lived in Hawaii, but I had managed to visit for two weeks. I hadn’t lived in Arizona but I was working there. And I hadn’t finished my Masters in hydrogeology but I had a job title of geologist. I wasn’t fluent in Navajo but I had taken a class with an incredible teacher and he was proud of me.

The following year (2016) I wrote down some intentions again. And as luck would have it, I don’t know where that notebook is. Lost in the abyss of moving and only minimally keeping track of my life am I. I’m sure I’ll find it somewhere in my product warranty folder somewhere…if I can find out what happened to my product warranty folder.

In the meantime, as much as it feels mildly silly to be so ambitious with my desires and as much as it feels like they may sound like bragging to some, I really have no bandwith to care if they do or not.

I still remember that one time my classmates in high school found out I wanted to go to Brown University and interpreted it as, that I got accepted (but I did go to Amherst! Go Mammoths!) The high school guidance counselor tried to talk me down from that dream. “Hijita,” he said, “New Mexico has plenty of good schools and you don’t have to be so far way from home.”

Though hindsight reveals, yes, he was right on all accounts. But he was’t listening to me. And he didn’t want want to see me fail, I guess. Or maybe he was jealous. Or maybe he just didn’t want me to try. I dunno. His tactic didn’t work. I’m still glad that even though I ask for a ton of advice and I garner a million opinions from my closest friends, I always listen to what I need to do. And like rock or mountain climbing, the view from the top may be grand but the satisfaction I find is always in the process. Create your own destiny and have fun along the way. Even if it’s to entice yourself to crawl out of bed to use that new post consumer recycled toothbrush you just bought. Do it.

Speaking honestly and candidly with top film industry professionals is always intimidating and reassuring, and wonderfully refreshing at the same time.

In the short time I’ve been involved, I’ve experienced some major lows. And extreme highs that I never dreamt would happen. Even in this small, but now growing New Mexico market, there are those who try to take advantage of you, point you in the wrong direction, or are too busy trying to gain fame for themselves they lose their humanity along the way.

I’ve been a bit busy working on a few different projects lately, one of which is trauma healing. Initially, from an abusive relationship, and now I’m moving on to releasing generational traumas that got me in that situation in the first place. And in all this self-help woo-woo business, I keep hearing the exact same advice coming at me from all directions for different reasons.

These scenarios tell me I’m headed in the right direction. So maybe you’re there right along with me on a similar path and you’ll find this helpful. And it’s been confirmed, ladies and gentlemen, it is true and not just because I’m saying it. But the best piece of advice I received recently is this:

No one gives you permission to be an actor.

Yes, there are gatekeepers and there is the fickle industry and they have their list of criteria, their personalities, their agendas. But YOU, dear artist, need no one’s permission to do your thing. What matters — is your persistence. There are a million different doors and a million different days and a million different projects. Just put on your best walking shoes. Grab your canteen. Pack a lunch. Keep knocking. Keep going. You don’t need anyone’s permission to be you. You are the one who gives yourself permission to.just.be…

Subject

To being too much and also not enough.
Not enough woman for the girlies
Not enough sex for the boys.
Too loud
Too soft.
It’s what you get.
It’s what you learn
Shamed in delighting in self work, self-worth, self-ish
I work and I just wish…
Put you in your place where you will learn to be the same.
Force feed doubts and fertilize the pain.

What do you see that I don’t?
What do you see that I won’t?
Look closely.
At me
Study my shape.
The curve.
The length
The lines.
Soak it all
Inside your skin
Breathe it all in.
All.
Of.
Me.
Just
Breathe.

The options are endless but the choice is clear.

But you can’t
Avoid
These eyes
Seize you thorough…Lie.
So you lie.
You are not ready.
To go all the way in.
Coward
You are
Looking the other way.
You are not worthy.
But you try any way.
Any.
Way.
Tear it down.
Tear it a part.
Let me in. Let me try. Let me play. Let me prey.
Try.
Pull back my hair
Whisper in my ear
Tell me your truth
You say:
I don’t understand you.
I uncover your ears.
You say:
I can’t see you.
I uncover your eyes.
Stare straight into the night
These pools of blue
Hold me fast and firm
Embrace my all as I embrace you, too
much.
My heart needs.
As much as yours bleeds.
Breathe me in and tell me
Tell me what you cannot say lying…
next to me.
Respect the medicine I bring.
I am seer.
I am teacher.
I am companion.
Take me whole. Don’t waste a single thing.

Not gonna lie, the energy this past week(s) has had me all somehow. Got off work, went home to an empty place. Kitten comes to love me, then bite me. And this agonizing sadness just burst through and I lay there on a brick floor covered in fake grass, looking up at the vigas holding up MY apartment--MY home--my empty home, with a cat who would eat me if I died there on that floor with no one around to feed her...and I just cried. Out of loneliness....for isolating myself in my not quite there place. Music from the railyard drifts in from the window nudging me to pry myself off the floor.
"Come see. And if you don’t feel alive by the time the night air awakens your soul, you can always come back to the kitten who wants to bite your face."

So I willed myself up, phone not entirely charged but I can always come back home if it runs out.
It's too cold for my taste but not cold enough for a jacket. I return for a moment to throw on my overly worn and somewhat ripe favorite swearshirt under my favorite flannel, a gift from my love last summer around this time, just enough layers, just enough protection from the world to wander alone at night. And my moccasins my Hataalii made me, so I feel the ground as I journey to reclaim myself tonight.

The crisp cool night gently punctuated by the still lingering scent of Russian olive blooms. I focus on my breathing. Inhaling and exhaling completely. I don't want to be walking out here alone without a "reason" or someone to meet but I am here, I remind myself, enjoying my own company and I may or may not meet up with friends but maybe I'll make some wherever I go.

And I do. In the dark a familiar and smiling face . We embrace briefly as the music from the Railyard had just died out. People still milling about. Breathe. I can do this. I can be this. And be here. On my own.

I wander over to Guadalupe street on my way to the Plaza. My moccasins feel the steel below from the train track crossing. Making jokes with my Lakota friend about the value of Native tears over texts.

Not sure I want to go to the Cowgirl but also, I do. And just as Im trying to set up a phone call with my daughter to see if she got in ok with her dad, my fellow Aquarian-charmer rides up on his bicycle like some well-timed, scripted dromedy Indie. Our discussions always replete with incomplete tangents of philosphies and male-female misunderstandings and childhood mysteries never fail. This brief happenstance included angler fish male-female relationships coupled with Mother earth killing off the human species to right herself.

But as if completely on cue, like a Bollywood-movie-on-cue, I realize my dear friend is singing tonight and I have as of yet, had not heard her live.

As the bass beats and drums rocked and my friend’s soulful and loving energy pumped from her vocals and into my ears, the types of people dancing, this vibrant life we create with each other, our willingness to connect — in our own ways — our desire to be with others even when we’re painfully fearful inside our heads…this connection is the beauty of this city. Of life. Of my now life. Santa Fe.

I walk home with the intention of seeing what else might be happening at the plaza. Maybe getting some late night food. Instead, I try to make sense of motherhood with my neighbor. I pet a dog. I pet my cat. I talk to my Mom for nearly an hour. And as I have more stamina at this late hour than the kitten, I will consider her sleepiness as a victory for my face. Although, I still haven’t had dinner yet. So there’s still some self-care issues I need to work on.

The moral?

The disconnect I was feeling, when I actually, was able to LOOK at it, as opposed to being in the moment feeling it, allowed me to appreciate the gift of loneliness for what it is. Opportunity to work on myself.

Solo

I want to be someone’s reason to let go

To be unhindered
To express love
To find love
To be love
To love

I want to be someone’s reason to let go of their fear.

I want to be someone’s inspiration
Be someone’s comfort, lover, best friend, laughter increaser, joy sharer, love enhancerer
..the one you want to crawl into bed next to at night
…and wake up next to every morning…

I don’t want to be the reason you quit trying.

I want someone to include me in their thoughts.
I want someone who wants to include me in their life.
…
I want to be taken care of
… not because I need it, they know — and I know — how capable I am.

I know I am capable of creating happiness on my own.
Without the help of anyone.

But I do want someone who wants me
…And who wants me to be me.

“Have a beautiful day.”

Every damn day

I am reminded

why you are my choice

to share my happiness with.

As another day goes by

Why chosing to embrace

the unknown

instead of remaining in the lonely darkness of my mind...

When I realized it was ok to want to "be ok" …

That it’s ok to want happiness and joy and to love fully.

When I set my intentions to the endless possibilities

…that’s when you came into view.

Ask me tomorrow.

Or the day after.

Ask me next month.

Next year...you’re right, I don’t know.

But my heart knows.

My soul knows.

It’s known since before I saw your face.

Is this right?

You ring true.

Like some law-of-physics-deep-level-universal-truth-stars-were-born-our-particles-separated-and-scattered-throughout-the-vast-exspanses-finally-reuniting-sorta-thing.

You gave me a choice.
I choose me first.
Then, I choose you.

Purpose

Floating skin deep in the heat of the womb of mother earth
Her nourishing water blankets me.
Tucks me in — her most sanctuary.
The drumbeat of her heart
Pumps into my soul.

My eyes flutter gentle with childlike sleep.
Nose flares, mouth parted
Opens complete with heavy howls.

The moon keeps watch over this sacred baptism
Reemerging to the world in ecstasy and joy
This union of self
Spirit
Earth
Woman
All
This sacred connection as the embodiment of creation

Where one portal closed. Another opens
The bruised heart shelled girl I brought with me to shed
Reborn the conscious vessel that is
My strength abundant
My heart full
My mind clear
My power amazing