So I went to my high school reunion this past Saturday night. It was not like what I expected… I half expected a lot of childishness and clique-type behavior. What I found was how good it was to see people that I had known since kindergarten, how neat it was to see who people ended up with, what they looked like, what their lives were like!

I really had a lot of emotional response after the event. I was very aware, after it was all over of all the emotional energy I picked up and had attached to me. To know that all of us are in the “Saturn Returns” phase of our life, and we are all, on some level, reconciling our choices and our behaviors was very energetically apparent to me. Now I know some of you reading this may not buy into my “woooish” thoughts, but there’s no denying how high the divorce rates are during the “Saturn returns” faze, and you could definitely do the math with our folks at the reunion and see the reality in the high divorce rates…

I’m not condemning anyone that has gotten divorced. On the contrary, I think that it’s important to accept and realize that we simply are not who we once were, and that it’s better to figure out ourselves, our mission in life, and the lessons we need to learn.

My thoughts on this apply, I think, range from the most successful person in the room to the person with the most to overcome. We all are in this process, we are all challenged with making ourselves be more real, more genuine.

At this reunion, I tried really hard to not ask, “what do you ‘do’ (WHAT A LOADED QUESTION IS THAT)” or “are you married,” or “where did you go to school”… of course I slipped up and asked this kind of thing a couple times, but I consciously didn’t want to do that. Most people volunteered that information, anyway, if they wanted you to know it. I wanted to (and tried to) ask questions like “are you happy now?” “Where are you finding happiness?” I heard lots of stories about divorces and separation from children and sadness. I know people could take one look at me and judge me, to know that I had sadness and frustration because of the evidence of my obvious weight gain. I’m okay with that. My weight gain is not a sign of weakness, like I used to think it was, but rather a sign of reality, a sign of how one can easily set aside their health and body while wrestling with other matters. I hope that it’s like the worn out velveteen rabbit who just wanted to be real, to be loved. I hope that the one good thing that could come from getting heavy is that it’s forced me to take a real hard look and see myself for my strengths and my flaws.

The one thing that really stayed with me at this reunion (after I had time to start thinking it through) is that many of us have sold our souls, on some level, and traded our freedom and pursuit of our dreams for comfort, for security. My friend Heidi pointed out that the reunion-anxiety was not about confronting old friends and acquaintances, but really about confronting our old selves, and seeing if we measure up to what we had intended to become. I’ve thought alot about that, and hope that others are thinking about this too… I hope that everyone there is now thinking about how true to themselves have they remained, how focused they have been on fulfilling their dreams, and how driven they are to revisit those old dreams and ideas and to make peace with them. I hope that we, as adults, can make room for ourselves, as well as others, and trust that we’re all in process. Regardless of our social markers of success, and that someone with a tiny income and no “degrees” may be alot closer to this then someone with six figure salaries and prestige. None of those degrees or dollars really mean anything, really, and may prove more harmful than good in the long run, if they distract us from fulfilling our dreams and becoming powerful loving and kind people.

Enough for now. That was an exciting whirlwind of interaction. I am sending love to everyone I saw, hoping and praying that they all find peace, balance, creativity, love, comfort and personal power.