Owen has an alter ego. He first told me about him two years ago in a confidential interview. His name is Ace. He has brilliantly scarlet hair. He wears a long fitted black jacket, boots an elfin bow and a broad sword. He is outgoing and graceful, athletic and fearless. Owen told me that whenever he spins circles in the back yard he is being Ace in a richly imaginative world, complete with monsters to battle and epic challenges to overcome. Owen has been wanting vibrant red hair for a year now and I have always said no. In order to dye his gorgeous locks, one first needs to remove that rich walnut hue with bleach and then lay some red color on top of that. It doesn't last long and it's pricey. Owen finally said, "Mom, I feel like I need to be more like the me inside of me. I want to dye my hair." Well who am I to stand against self expression and so yesterday, while at the Italian Festival in Belmar we wandered into the Paul Mitchell School and Owen and Ace united in expression.
Some days, you just have to forget about ‘healing’. You have to stop trying to feel better, trying to overcome your emotional wounds, or trying to be anywhere other than where you are. You have to embrace the day as it is. And you have to give yourself the most sacred permission of all: To shatter. To break. To be an ugly mess. To lean into a place of utter humility and powerlessness in yourself. To cry out to the heavens, “I can’t do this!” To admit utter defeat in the loss of the life you had imagined. To crumble to the ground, lonely and hopeless and profoundly ruined. To want to die, even. And there, in the darkest places, in the blackness of the underworld, you may begin to rediscover... life. And learn to love the beginnings. A sacred reboot: A single breath. The way the sun warms your face. The sound of a tiny bird singing in the tree over there. The raw simplicity of a single moment of human existence. Hell has been transmuted, thr...


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