I'll Pray For You

The other night, I sat with a woman who I hold very dear to my heart.  She is a woman whose honest soul I saw, vividly, the first time we met.  She is strong and selfless and sincere.  She is fierce and faithful and fervent.  She, like all the women who I love, is her own woman.  She is also a woman most people would never expect for me to share such an intimate connection with.  After all, we come from vehemently different backgrounds.

 She was born in raised in Texas.  I was born and raised in California.  She was raised in church.  I was raised by a pagan and an atheist.  She has found her faith in God.  I have found my faith in nature and humanity.  Her connection is with Jesus Christ.  My connection is with the Universe.  From an outsider’s perspective, the likelihood of us ever being able to sit comfortably in the same room is incomprehensible.  So, the fact that we share the bond of sisterhood, must be even more astonishing.  But I knew Cayce’s spirit was sincere the first time I looked into her eyes. 

Naturally, when I saw her for the first time in two years, all I could do was hold her tight and tell her how much I loved her.  As we drove to the market, we made small talk at first.  Then, I heard a new confidence in her voice.  I heard a new purpose behind her words.  When we got back to the house, we sat and laughed and caught up.  There was no pretense.  There was no agenda.  We just shared where we had been in the time since we had last seen each other.  Finally, something inside me blurted out “How has your spiritualty changed since the last time I saw you?”  And she looked at me, without hesitation, and said “I’ve rededicated myself to my faith.  I pray now.  I know how to pray now.  Because I pray, I know God’s direction for me.  I’ve found peace.”  Say what????

As you might imagine, I realized I was delving into a conversation that could go very badly with someone I love very dearly.  But I know that she loves unconditionally, so I told her:  “I don’t want to offend you, but I am genuinely interested in your journey.”  She let it all go.  She told me about where she had been.  She told me about where she is.  She told me she doesn’t know where she is going, but not knowing is easier to accept since she has renewed her faith in God.  I told her “Little sister.  Your soul has always been blinding.  But I saw something in you today that I have never seen before.  Your confidence in your path and your purpose is overwhelming.”  She blushed a little and hugged me.  Then, I thought about my faith.  I thought about my purpose.  My direction.  So, I shared with her my beliefs with her. 

I talked a lot about my creator being unknown and unnamed.  I talked about how my faith comes from nature and human connectedness.  I told her that I HAVE to believe that we have a connection with the earth and with each other, and my faith in that assembly, lies in the Universe.  The Universe is my higher power, my creator.  I also told her that the reason that I needed something to believe in is because, as much as I believe in it, science can’t yet answer everything.  I also said “There are some things that are so far outside our control, that we need to believe there is a reason.” 

We both listened to each other, perhaps with some skepticism, but without any argument.  Then she said something that really resonated with me.  She said “Until I reaffirmed my faith, I never knew how to pray.”  Those words crashed into me, and I stopped thinking about spirituality. I stopped thinking about the difference in how Cayce and I worship.  I started to think about faith.  I told her “I pray a lot, too.”  I don’t look to the bible for reprieve, but I do look to the stars.  I don’t thank God for what I have been given, but I do thank the Universe.  I may not look to scripture for answers to the unknown, but I do try to make sense of nonsense with my faith.  I do that through prayer.  Maybe not the same prayer as others, but prayer all the same. 

There was a time that I would get very offended when people would say “I’ll pray for you.”  I’d think “What the FUCK?  You don’t think I’ll survive without your prayers??”  I didn’t want any of it.  Don’t try to save me, people.  Only I can save myself.  Then, suddenly, engaged in a VERY unlikely conversation with a VERY unlikely ally, I got it.  I pray, too.  I don’t pray in an orthodox manner.  But I pray.  At night, when I all I feel is dissonance and all I hear is noise, I look to the stars, and try to regain perspective.  When someone I love is going through a hard time, I take them crystals to ground them.  When things don’t make sense to me, find peace with the things I do understand.  That’s how I pray. 

I know that Christians hold stigmas about non-believers.  Pagans, who claim neutrality, tend to judge religious types.  Wars over God have plagued this planet for millennia.  These are ideas that I have rolled my eyes at for as long as I have had a critical mind.  But the other night, in a conversation with I woman I love, not for her faith, but for her character, I started to become a believer.  Not a believer in her God.  Not a believer in mine.  I started to become a believer that we all share a common faith.   And that faith is that we can all find peace in our journey. 

-Inner Peas

Remember

On Memorial Day 1998, I was 12 days away from my high school graduation.  I was 15 days away from boarding an airplane to Philadelphia, PA.  The only thing I was thinking about was getting my hair done for graduation and the most flattering $6 pair of sunglasses I could find and KMART to hide my hangover during commencement.  Getting on that airplane was the furthest thing from my mind.  I didn’t want to think about the flight to Philadelphia or the bus ride that inevitably would ensue, from Philadelphia to Cape May, NJ.  I most certainly didn’t want to think about what would happen after I got to Cape May.  So, on that balmy Monday, 15 days before my life would be changed forever, I thought about graduation.  I sat with my friends and laughed and celebrated our accomplishments.  You know, because when you are 18, you are convinced that the greatest achievement of your life is graduating from high school.  I look back now and think “Wow.  Nobody knew how real shit was going to get.” 

Candidly speaking, shit got real for me a lot sooner than it did for most of my classmates.  We graduated on a Friday.  The following Monday I was on that plane.  Oakland.  Minneapolis.  Philadelphia.  Then a bus to Cape May.  Hello Coast Guard.  We got off the bus.  There was so much yelling.  There were so many push-ups.  There were so many rules.  The fear that came with breaking the rules was even more terrifying than the actual rules.  First night there was this guy screaming:   “If you did drugs EVER in your LIFE, WE.  WILL.  FIND.  OUT!”  Another guy screaming:  “WHY DON’T YOU KNOW YOUR BLOOD TYPE???”  And my personal favorite, the guy who guaranteed the certain death of 86 people: “IF YOU CLEAN THAT SHOWER WITH BLEACH AND COMET…YOU.  WILL.  DIE!!!!”  Oh my, I am going to kill all of these people by cleaning a shower.  I just want to make the grout white again.   Shit was real.  But in hindsight, it was the furthest I’d ever been from real. 

After the eight weeks in boot camp, I went on to five more years of service.  Station BELLINGHAM, QM “A” school, CGC SHERMAN, CGC MUNRO, housing office (please read: get me the fuck out of here.) That was my service.   All of which was, clearly, very glamorous.  Scrubbing brains out of the taft rail on a 41’ utility boat.  High seas drift netters in the Bearing Sea.  Chasing “go-fasts” off of Mexico.  Pulling dead bodies out of the water on Christmas Day.  Writing wills.  Watching hostile fishing boats flagged from Ecuador, crewed by Chinese nationals fight with us over who had the biggest guns.  For the record, that was us, we had the biggest guns.  After all, that’s what we do in this country.  We have big guns.  It wasn’t until I left the service, however, that I learned the meaning of Memorial Day. 

You may be thinking:  “But Angela, you grew up in a military family.  For the last five generations, your family has served this country.  How could you not understand the meaning of Memorial Day until you, yourself, had served?”  Well…The reason is because I also come from a family of pacifists; a family of good Samaritans.  They didn’t fight just to fight.  The people in my family who served before me, served because they believed in the greater good.  They didn’t necessarily believe in the reason for the fight, but more, they believed in the people they could serve in the fight. It’s called service.  Service isn’t just about sacrificing yourself, unquestioningly, to the arbitrary and the unknown.  Service is also about sacrificing yourself to make sure that others don’t feel like their sacrifice is arbitrary an unknown. 

The reason that I didn’t understand the reason for Memorial Day until after I had served is because I had never seen anyone serve before. I knew that they had served, but I had never seen them serve.   It’s also because the people who had served before me considered their service part of their citizenship.  They had all seen atrocities more heinous than I could ever have imagined.  They never spoke of the dead, because it was too painful to discuss.   We live in a different time though.  We live in an era that we would be remiss if we didn’t speak of the dead.  We also live in a time when those who have survived deserve a voice as well.  So, here, tonight, I would like to recognize the people who save lives, the people who heal the lost, the people who make sense of the unknown. 

After 16 years of watching this service evolve, I have watched people serve without recognition.  I have learned the value of servitude.  I have seen selflessness bare its soul to the helpless.  I have had the opportunity to watch the most magnificent servants turn in the most magnificent leaders.  The most remarkable part about those people, is that even as leaders, they still consider themselves servants.  These are the people who stand the watch night and day.  Then they stand the watch into the next night.  These are the people who get underway, in heavy weather, on boats that may or may not be fit for the weather.  They are the people who take responsibility, not only for the crew they travel with, but also for the people they embark to assist.  They are the people who don’t point fingers at another guy for the indiscretions of the people who work for them.  Instead, they take full responsibility for the shortcomings of the people they are responsible for.  They respect their craft. They honor their trade.  They know that saving lives is their business.  Not just the lives that ask for their assistance.  They are also in the business of saving those who have been appointed to their attention. 

Memorial Day is about the fallen.  Even in this peace keeping, sea going service.  We have lost many to the perils of the job.  I guess that’s part of why I am uncomfortable when people thank me for my service.  Because in my mind, I didn’t serve.  I collected a paycheck at the tax payer’s expense.  It was a job that I should have done, without pay, for the betterment of our society.  My service is arbitrary. There are so many who have given so much, and done it without expectation.   But even more than those we have lost, we need to remember those who have survived.  We need to remember those who take ownership of the fallen.  We need to remember that for every lost soul, there is another who will take the responsibility of the loss to the grave.

-Inner Peas

Four Years

Every year, about the same time, I do this thing.  I get really introspective and emotional.  I acknowledge the people in my life.  I hold close the people I have loved.  I reflect on the friendships I’ve cherished.  I try to acknowledge how those friendships have enhanced my life.  I do that.  Every year.  About this time.  I know it makes some people uncomfortable.  I know it makes me seem volatile to some. To others, it makes me appear overly sensitive.  I can’t stop it though.  Every summer since I was 18, I have had to say “goodbye” to people I have loved, only to greet people I never knew I would love.  After a very emotional week, I started to think about the cycle.  It’s a four year cycle for most, but for me, it’s lifelong.

It’s a four year cycle.  Usually.  Sometimes it’s a three year cycle.  Sometimes it’s a five year cycle.  But, as rule, it’s a four year cycle.  At the beginning of year one, you arrive.  At the end of year four, you depart.  The cycle is the same for most.  When you get to where you are going, you are greeted by unfamiliar faces and dynamic personalities.  You never know what to make of those faces or personalities.  Inherently, you want to assume that they all have good intentions and want to welcome you into their circles, their homes, their families.  But after you have made so many transitions, you begin to question the motives behind, such seemingly, genuine acceptance.  You have had some good experiences, but you also remember the bad experiences.  Because of the bad experiences, career transients have established two rules to the “four year cycle.”  Only two rules.  The first rule is “never trust the first person you meet.  They made themselves the first person you meet for a reason.”  The second rule is “never get too attached, eventually, they will be gone.  And so will you.”  Those are the rules.  I didn’t make them up, but they are rules for a reason.  You should probably abide by them, after all, everyone who came before you said they were the rules to follow.  This is the military.  We abide by rules here. 

For many years, I did just that.  I followed the rules. I held them as gospel.  I accepted them as unfortunate side effect of service.  For years, I believed that you couldn’t trust friendly faces.  I also believed that the friendly faces you learned to love, would eventually leave, so it wasn’t worth it.  I did through the years I spent on active duty, then the years I spent as a military dependent.  I believed the worst in the first people I would meet when I transferred.  Then I believed that the good ones weren’t going to be around long enough to love anyway, so I didn’t love them.  Those are the rules. 

Then there was this day, more than seven years ago now.  In one of those perfect transfer seasons.  The kind that you start driving from Virginia.  While pregnant.  In one car.  Then you drive through Canada.  (I know most people don’t believe this, but Canada is, in fact, a different country.)  Then you drive through the Yukon.  Only to have to drive through more of Alaska.  So that you can get on a Ferry with two cats.  This isn’t the Puget Sound, people.  This is the Gulf of Alaska.  It’s overnight.  In a part of the ocean that is notorious for being inhospitable. Still, somehow, we drove off the Ferry. with the same two cats we started with and nobody was dead.  We were met by a guy who said he was going to be there.  We went to housing and they gave us keys, same day.  We went to TruValue and bought paint. 

We’d been in the house for a couple of hours, both exhausted from long hours on the ALCAN and of each other, I allowed Mike a beer and smoke break.  A BRIEF break.  “We’re painting,” I told him.  How either one of us survived that pregnancy, I don’t know.  But I am digressing.  I allowed him a reprieve from paining.  I let him sit for a minute, then I followed him outside.  That’s when I saw the most beautiful face I had ever seen in my life.  I heard this tap, tap, tapping.  I looked around and didn’t see anything.  Then I heard a pounding and a girl I had never imagined to see, struggling to open the window in the house next door.  She held up a finger.  One finger.  I could see her mouthing the words “DON’T LEAVE!!!”  I looked at Mike and raised an eyebrow.  He just held up his hands, as if he was as confused as I was.  Before too long, Erin busted out the back door, spilling Capt’n’Coke all down the front of her shirt.  Out of breath when she made it to our gate, she said “We’ve been waiting for you!!  Sorry I’m late.  Just had to make a cocktail.” That was the days that I broke all of the rules.

 Because of Erin’s “tap. Tap. Tapping.” on the window, I smiled for the first time in weeks.  Because of that smile, I was more willing to welcome other people who made me smile.  Because of my smile, more amazing people made their way to my door.  I learned, because of Erin, that more is merrier.  We had fire pits.  We had parties.  We played Mexican Train.  I had never been so connected to any group of people before.  I’d never celebrated so many holidays or sunny days before.  Most certainly, I had never celebrated a snow day before.  But, one night, in the midst of a blizzard, I held Radley, only months old, against my chest, sheltered from a howling snow.  I walked him, through the snow drifts, at least 100 feet to Erin and Jeff’s.  Pockets full of batteries for the radio and wine for the soul, we all sat together, in the dark, grateful for the connection. 

The first time I broke the rules was the first time that I had been hurt by the rules. Before I knew it, I had completely embraced it.  Dinners.  Firepits.  Drinks.  Snow plows.  Then, one by one, all of the people I had loved, left.  Just as soon as I had learned to believe in the power of our connection, they were gone.  Savannah. Syracuse.  Pensacola.  Galveston.   Places that I would never go!!!    Just as quickly as they had become a part of my life, they were gone.  I was so upset.   I had fully prepared to move to Kodiak and isolate myself for the next three years.  I was ready to live in my house and never leave.  But on my very first day there, a beautiful, jovial soul appeared in my life.  And she changed it all.  She reminded me about the four year cycle. 

Where have you been in four years?  I know I have been a lot of different places.  Four years ago, I took my two year old to Galveston when I had nowhere else to go.  I was ready to leave my husband. I saw Erin pregnant with her first child. She has had a second, since then.   I spent a lot of nights there, drinking wine and asking the universe for some relief.  I asked for some answers.  For some direction.  I remember, very clearly, the early morning that Erin dropped me and Radley off at the airport, she was ready for me to go, as I was ready to leave.  She said, you always have a place here. I knew she was sincere.  But, as I looked down over the Houston lights, from 10,000 feet above, I realized that I couldn’t let go.  I couldn’t let go of the places I had been or the people I have loved.  I couldn’t let go of the past or forfeit the future. 

And I'm glad I didn't to either of those things.  If I had, I would never remember late nights, ending at the break of dawn.  I would never remember the pork shoulders and the pasta salads.  I would never remember tall guy jumping the fence or the way he looked when his shorts got caught on the chain link.  I would never have enjoyed 74 degrees in Alaska.  I would never understood what a heat wave actually means.  I would never have allowed strangers into my home while I was pregnant.  But if I hadn't have done that, I would have lost some of the best memories of my life.  And if I had have given it up after four years, I would never have known what it was like to meet strangers who accepted you as their own.  I would have never known the unconditional love and courtesy that comes from those who subscribe to a mutual love of people.  I would have never met patients and providers, who have changed my outlook on socialized medicine.  

If not for Erin, I would never have known the beauty of reunions.  I would never have known the pain of separation.  If I had never broken the rules of the “four year cycle,” I would never have understood the beauty in acceptance and love.  I would never be able to talk about where I have been or where we are going.  I wouldn’t be able to hug the people, who unexpectedly, walk through the door.  I wouldn’t be able to share life and love and heartache with others.   It’s the four year cycle.  You can either embrace it or escape it.  If you manage to embrace it, you will find more value in life than you could have ever imagined.  If you escape it, you lost it all. 

-Inner Peas

Real Women

Lots of talk around lately about what a “real woman” is.  Apparently a real woman has curves and tattoos and eats bacon and drinks Southern Comfort with the best of ‘em.  Or maybe a real woman is fit and wears glasses and reads books.  OR maybe a real woman raises children and cleans house and drives a minivan.  OR!!!!!  MAYBE!!!!  A real woman does all of those things.   On different nights of the week.  Or when the spirit moves them.  Or when it’s convenient to tell someone else what a “real woman” does or has or is.  I’m going to be honest with you.  This behavior is disturbing to me.  I can think of no better day, than Mother’s Day, to address the stigmas associated with women and what being a “real woman” actually means.  This is  a letter I composed a few months ago, to the women in my life. 

Dear Ladies of My Life,

I adore all of you.  We are all sisters in spirit.  We are each other’s comfort and calm.  We are friends in foul weather.  Only WE can understand each other.  We are mothers and daughters.  We are friends and lovers.  We are fixers and survivors.  Nothing has been handed to us. We have chosen to fight.  We have chosen to love.  We have chosen to be scorned.  We have all struggled.  We are our biggest allies. We are all strong.  Only we understand the weaknesses in each other.   Only we can offer support to each other in times of frailty. 

We have all realized that being a woman isn't a battle with other women, it’s sharing our experiences.  It’s sharing our strength.  It’s loving each other so that we can better each other.  Being a woman is not a competition.  There is no definition of a “real” woman.  We are all real women.  We all feel.  We all struggle.  We laugh together, when we can’t do anything else.  We love food and wine and laughter.  We eat and we drink and we find a way to survive. 

To the ladies of my life, I love you all. So much.  I am so very grateful for you.  I never would have understood acceptance if not for you.   To the ladies who have loved me, I appreciate, more than you will ever understand, the substance you have added to my being.  I am graced and humbled by your place in my life.   You are NOT the reason for this letter.  The reason for this letter is the women who see other women as the enemy.  We are not the enemy.  We have no enemies.  We only create enemies amongst ourselves.

 

So, with that said, I would like to remind you all of what it means to be a “real woman.”  Real women might have curves.  They might have tattoos.  They might cook dinner every night.  They might burn all of the dinners they try to cook.  Real women might go to the gym four times a day.  They might spend too much money at Ulta and Macy’s.  They might try too hard to be something they are not.  But, honestly, real women come in all shapes.  All sizes.  All characters.  All colors.  The one thing that REAL WOMEN do is love each other.  Real women accept each other.  Real women don’t care what their sisters look like.  They don’t care that other women have different outlooks or different opinions or different ways of living their lives.  Real women draw from the strength of other women.  Real women provide support to other women.  Real women are not threatened by other women. 

I have been PRIVILEGED to know some of the most amazing women in the entire universe.  I have been GRACED with the strongest shoulders to cry on, the biggest hearts to learn from.  I have been HUMBLED to be one of those shoulders, one of those voices, one of those hearts that other women have held sacred.  Any woman who has ever known the love and friendship of one of her peers, should know that part of being a woman is privilege, grace, and humility.  When you learn that, you learn that we are all connected. 

Sisters, I love you.  All of you.  I love you because you love and you nurture.  I love you because you are honest and transparent.  I love you because you feel and you accept.  I love you because you are real.  I love you because you accept me and want to be accepted.  I love you because you teach others how to love and be loved.  I love you because you have taught me how to love myself, therefor, you have taught me to teach others the same.  I. FUCKING.  LOVE.  YOU. 

And to my sisters who haven’t yet learned to love unconditionally, I hope that you will be graced with women, as I have, who teach you how to do so.  To my sisters who haven’t yet learned to love themselves. I believe that if you open yourself up to others, you will find the secret to loving others, comes second to loving yourself.  And I hope that you, eventually, find the serenity in yourselves.  And I hope you find the peace that comes with being loved unconditionally. 

With much love,

-Inner Peas

Experience

When Mike and I split up, more than three years ago now, I left our relationship with the belief that everything I had been doing for my entire life wasn’t working.  I knew that because my marriage had failed, I needed to find a new approach to life.   And, as most women who haven’t known the difference between codependence and independence, I turned my new “freedom” into rebellion.  I went to bars.  I went home with strange men.   I got a tattoo.  My first, and only, tattoo ever.  I was a rebel.  Everything I did was extreme.  Especially the tattoo.  I didn’t just get a tribal arm band.  Not a butterfly on my shoulder.  It’s not a cute little sea creature frolicking on my ankle.  NOPE.  I got an angel.  A HUGE ANGEL.  Right in the middle of my back.  Now, granted, it may be obnoxious in size, but in my defense it was strategically located in a place that VERY few people will ever see it.  Barring a mid-life application for a pole at a strip joint, it will never effect my employment opportunities (Don’t worry folks, that will never happen.  And not just because of the tattoo.)  It will never receive questioning stares from strangers.  It’s very personal.  But it’s there.  I know it’s there.  And it does have meaning. 

As I was in a crisis of faith at the end of my 12 year marriage, I pillaged the internet for something to believe in.  I’ve never been a God or Religion girl.  I’ve never been the girl who forfeited all to a higher power.  I didn’t need too.  My spirituality has always been strong.  My faith in our connectedness has never wavered.  It just so happened, that at the time I felt most alone in the world, I really needed a spiritual entity to identify with.  Naturally, like all people in the midst of spiritual crisis, I Googled it.  Somehow, I found myself perusing an alphabetical listing of angels, kind of a Yellow Book for the faithfully impaired.  Before that night, I had never really thought too much of angels.  I mostly had considered them God’s bitches.  I likened it corporate bureaucracy:  God gets all the credit and capital, meanwhile his minions are taking care of everything for him, at the expense of their bank accounts and their souls. Essentially, I figured that angels put in all the hours, yet reaped no benefit from their efforts.  Not to mention, angels are NOT psychologically sound.  It’s just a fact.  They’ve got the world’s demons to contend with.  There is absolutely no way anyone could be stable under that sort of pressure.  At that time, I really had no place for angels, or their boss, for that matter, in my life. 

But that night, as I sat, soaking in too many Grey Goose/cranberries to count, absorbed in 12 years of failure and a resounding desperation to cling to something I could understand, I turned to the angels to help me make sense out of everything that was happening in my life.  It was that night, that I met the angel Barchiel.  Barchiel, the internet told me, is the angel of compassion.  Barchiel was tasked with teaching mortals the beauty of the human experience.  As I read Barchiel’s bio, I had an ah-fucking-ha moment.  I thought to myself:  “THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT I NEED!!!!” I did need that.  I needed a path to compassion.  I needed to understand the beauty of the human experience.  I needed what that guy had to teach.  I was really excited about Barchiel.  This was going to be my salvation.  I just knew it. 

Convinced that I’d found a way to save my soul, I drank a bottle of $6 wine, found a generic angel image that I had printed off the internet, and walked over to my neighbor, who was inking people in her garage.  I said “this is it.  I’ll give you $100.”  She looked at it and looked at me and said “I don’t have a chair to do this in.  Can you grab one from your dining room?”  Done. 

As I sat naked, from the waist up, sitting backwards in a pub chair, my soul sister next to me, I felt every pull, every tug of that needle.  I don’t like needles.  That’s the reason I had gone more than 30 years without ever a desire to sit in an artist’s chair.  That, and until that day, there was no story that I felt I needed to be told on my body.  In that minute though, I was alone with my thoughts, with my pain.  I delved really deeply into the idea of Barchiel’s purpose:  The beauty of the human experience. 

With a needle in my back, my germanic, scandio-norwigian skin under assault, the physical pain had nothing on my mental anguish.  At the same time, though, I felt a reprieve from the pain.  I sat silently, as the ink crossed my spine.  I was more aware, in that minute, than I had ever been before.  While I was quiet, I began to sob.  The artist stopped.  She asked me if I hurt.  I said “Yes.  Yes.  I hurt so bad.  But it’s not because of you and your needle.”  I hurt because of the last 12 years.  I hurt for the last 31 years.  I hurt because I never knew how to express emotional pain.  So, finally, when the physical pain manifested itself, I was forced to acknowledge it.  And, at the same time, I became aware of the beauty of the human experience. 

The human experience isn’t about laughs and hugs and butterflies.  The beauty of the experience isn’t about everything that is beautiful.  We would have no concept of laughter and love if we never knew their antithesis.  I didn’t know that until that night, when I revealed more of myself, both physically and emotionally, than I ever had before.  Before Barchiel, I didn’t understand that we need to reveal ourselves to others before WE can understand who we ARE.  Sometimes, being naked and vulnerable is the only way to understand that pain is part of the beauty. 

-Inner Peas