Bears, birds, and beauty.

I'm just back from a wonderful trip to June Lake, a little town north of Mammoth in the Sierras in California. Lucky me to have such a friend as Kathy Keane (www.magicinnature.com)who is a wildlife biologist and photographer and shares such adventures with me. (That's her below with her 11-year-old lab Onyx.) She is a good and kind and fun person and I appreciate her friendship very much.

When I'm on a vacation like this, it's feels like the dozens of balls I'm constantly keeping in the air, like my job and family and friends and chores and finances and women's group and singles parties, just disappear and I'm carefree. It's like the only thing to worry about is when to have my next meal and should I hike or should I read or should I just stare out the window at the beautiful scenery. And yes, that's a bear that was eating the birds' sunflower seeds, just outside the window of the front room of the home we stayed in. It's so refreshing to have my usual worries and angst and concerns and all the things that I write on post-its so I will remember to do them are just not there, at least for the time I'm away on the trip.

While I was watching the birds and the big bear, I read a book of Kathy's called "Succulent Wild Women" by SARK. Her definition of succulent is "ripe, juicy, whole, round, exuberant, wild, rich, wide, deep, firm, rare, female." The message is to learn to "be ourselves" in all our uniqueness. To wear bright colors and hats, to dance outrageously, to sing loudly - to not be afraid to express ourselves in any way we choose. It made me think of the ways I squelch my own unique self and then I thought about how I try to fit in to the mainstream. I realized that, as a small child, my parents discouraged me when I was "different" and pushed me to "fit in." And since then, I do it to myself by all the "shoulds" I have in my life - I should be thinner, I should let my hair grow, I should be more like so-and-so, all of which diminishes who I really am in favor of being like someone else, like the norm.

So what have I learned on my summer vacation? That I value my women friends, especially Kathy. That I am just who I am, in all my strangeness and quirkiness, and that all that I am is just fine. And that I will look for ways in which I squelch myself and learn to let go, a little bit here and there, so I can more fully express my uniqueness. I like what my yoga teacher tells us, that we are "beautiful and perfect, just as we are in this minute." I vote that we all allow our special beauty and perfectness to shine and grow. Right now. Today. Every day.