10,000 feet and counting. I'm catching a flight out of San Francisco for the fourth time this year. So many moments, memories, awakenings, and accelerations in growth. My love affair with this city grows deeper and more complex with each visit, and I am eternally grateful for all that the grit and gray and hip-ness evokes within me. My heart feels light and heavy, empty and full, all at the same time. This outro feels much more life-altering than the quarter-dozen before it, as with it comes an indefinite "see you… soon" to three of the most important relationships in my life.

62 minutes and counting. I will touch down in San Diego, my beloved, inspiring, bliss-filled homebase for just shy of a decade. It's breathtaking how much I have blossomed into my own existence in So Cal and, even after countless landings later, it never ceases to amaze me how right it feels to be welcomed by her warmth and energy. I will arrive car-less and cat-less, greeted by a mere forty percent of the belongings I had there just weeks ago. The emptiness of my heartspace will likely pulse with a strength that I have yet to experience in quite this way.

Just as the San Diego sunshine can (albeit rarely) become obnoxious in its relentlessness, so, too, have I felt before about my own eternal optimism. I LOVE being an effortlessly positive, confident, radiant woman. No doubt on that, at ALL. But I'm about to write the most daring, unconventional chapter of my life. I want to allow myself the space, grant the permission, to feel all the feels that go along with it. I will not judge them. I will not label them. I will genuinely and curiously and lovingly be with myself and every emotion that needs to arise during this metamorphosis. And I will authentically share them with you, my sangha, my family.

Because now, more than ever, I desire to be real and raw and vulnerable.

Because as I strip away all of the stuffness of my being, that's all I will truly be left with. My bare heart, my naked soul, my eager Being.

And because frankly, severance from every single thread of this crazybeautiful tapestry of life I've woven together… well… it's fucking hard. So I will need you. To see me and to hold me and to cheer with me from distant places.

28 days and counting. One lunar cycle. With nothing more than a backpack, I'll set out on a one-way soul journey to everywhere. To anywhere. And hopefully, sometimes, to absolutely nowhere, as I learn to just be with myself, mother earth, father time, and the Divine in a completely new way. I start in Lake Atitlan, Guatemala on December 8th. Two days later, I will begin a week-long Spanish immersion school. The next six, twelve, eighteen, twenty four months after that…. I have absolutely no clue. That's pretty rad (and slightly terrifying), and I simply can't wait to see what unfolds.

People ask how to stay in touch and follow my journey, and I say honestly that I am trying to "be better" about social media. I've been meaning to "start a blog," which makes me laugh like crazy because it sounds so damn cliché. But here it is! My blog, my heart, my soul, my ideas and intentions, fears and real big dreams… starting to pour out in little tiny gray letters.

I'm anxious to continue to share. I'm anxious to learn a new depth of relationship, where I can see and hold and cheer for YOU too, from distant places. And for god's sake, if you need to shake things up and be wild in the next year or two, please come visit!

All my love ~

And Counting: The Birth of Soulbare