Closing Time

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Thank you, Joni

Yesterday I was driving the long Howard Franklin bridge back from St.Pete to Tampa when A Case of You started playing. Ugh, right in the feels. 

My time here has been charmed, a promise I was told in 1993 would come to be. By the time I got here, I was deeply shattered by the death of my father, and shortly after, my mother died. The water flowed my tears, the birds flew my grieving. My prayers for help were heard in the divinity of this place, and the promise of long ago that people would come was answered exquisitely. 7 years after I moved my physical being into this space, my dad and my mom are home in me, and I know now that needed to happen before I could move forward in my divine purpose, however that reveals itself.

I have been feeling gone already lately, to the mountains and the forest I am going to root myself into. It feels like a disservice to live as a ghost in my final days here, but I think it's been part of me trying to sneak out without deeply acknowledging the love I am separating from physically.

Insert Joni Mitchell. The tears are finally flowing to the starts and stops of dulcimer, my heart is cracked open. Everyone I have encountered here has brought me at least a step closer to coming home to me, and I am so deeply grateful for every one of those painful, exquisitely beautiful steps, and to every soul who walked with me. Thank you for being part of the divinity I have found in this beautiful, flowing, wild place. 

"Love is touching souls. Surely you have touched mine..."

Who I am now carries the touch of all of us, and we'll never be separate again. 

Still. I'll miss you, my beloved, healing Florida community. I could drink a case of you.

💖 Julie


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