When I first started writing this blog, I wasn’t sure what it would be about or exactly why I was doing it, but it has since become clear to me. I am in the midst of what I refer to as a “life-rehab,” with the intention of being:

This means being where I am and who I am, and knowing that is enough, that I am enough. I do not have to be perfect, please or put on a performance to be worthy of love and belonging. I do need to be vulnerable and brave, open-hearted and kind, trusting in my innate wisdom and compassion. Gentleness is my superpower, and I refuse to continue smashing myself to bits.

I’ve always known that creative people who don’t create will self-destruct instead–all that pent up desire turning putrid and poisonous. I believed that, and yet I created very little, getting sicker and sicker, not loving myself enough to save myself.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?…Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory…that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. ~from A Return to Love, by Marianne Williamson.

I had to start by loving myself.  I am doing the work to learn how, am finding and connecting and studying with the people who know how, who can help me, (see the links on my Links to Inspiration page).  Through my “life-rehab,” I am breaking bad habits and establishing practices that will support me as I walk this path.

“To stay, you have to believe there is something worth staying for–and then you have to bring yourself back, again and again,” (Geneen Roth, from her book “Women, Food, and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything“). I am staying with this person I am, this vehicle, this oracle.  As I do this work, I am consciously making a map for anyone else who might also need to make this journey. At the heart of the writing I do here is the question, “What do I long to say with my life?” (inspired by this post, “Letting go,” by Patti Digh of 37 Days).

The title of this blog comes from a song by one of my favorite singer/songwriters, Tina Dico. Actually, two of her songs have the lyric “thousand shades of gray.” One is “Break of Day,” where she sings “between black and white, there’s a thousand shades of gray.” The other is “In the Red.”

Love is a thousand shades of grey – and we know
There’s not a safe or certain way to go
But when we’ve seen all, uneasiness and hate, it will show
That it all means nothing, it all means nothing, it all means nothing at all, at all

I like very much this song’s awareness of subtlety and complication, and also that in the end, “it all means nothing, it all means nothing, it all means nothing at all, at all.” I don’t mean in a sad, depressed “oh well, it doesn’t matter anyway” kind of way but rather in a Buddhist, Yogi, mindful “no one is okay and everyone is fine,” and that means everything is okay kind of way. There’s nothing wrong in this very moment, nothing to worry about or hope for, and this very moment is exactly where we should be.