Be the tree, man.

Do you ever see things in things? Like, this Angophora tree next to my house - I look at it every single day, and every time I see a nymph, standing on one leg, arms outstretched to the sky, lifting her back leg up.

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I woke up yesterday.

As in, I woke UP. I'm really here. It's a very good thing, and I choose to continue this way. For a long time.

Reconnecting has been really bittersweet. It hit home just how detached I have been, for quite some time. I'm the realest version of myself ever. I'm a real boy! Thank you to the strangers with no names who have told me stories of pain and grief and strength. Sharing our stories is a powerful thing ... it dates back to sitting together in caves. I'll sit in your cave if you'll sit in mine. Please tell me your fears; it helps me with mine.

I turned the radio on in the car today, to the first strains of the first song of the album "All that you can't leave behind." You know how your favourite songs and artists mean things at certain points in your life? This particular U2 album means Hope to me. And Redemption. It got released the day I went into (yet another) rehab back in the year 2000.

"The heart is a bloom ... shoots up through the stony ground .."

I used to blast it through my walkman late at night, crying. I shared a room with a woman who was incredibly fucked up (wow, I guess she could have said that about me) ... she was 48 years old and had severe childhood issues to do with her mother and family of origin. I remember thinking how sad it was, she'd just wasted her life trapped in her head and her feelings.

One day, I saw myself in her and it scared me.

Not long after that, I fell pregnant with Max. During my hab "graduation" my therapist got up to say a few words about me. He knew how much that bands lyrics resonate. "Eden ... what you don't have, you don't need it now."

I do not need what I do not have. I suspect this is true for you, too.

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It's too tiring to keep stuffing my crazy back in. It's out and I'm not pretending anymore. If I want to say something or be something or heaven forbid - just be myself in the world - then I just will.

I am the tree.

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My friend Palemother emailed me this quote, and wrote:

" Eden - I guess she would have been a naked blogger, too! xox"

"If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it." - Anais Nin