Welcome to the Journal.

I fell in love during a Zoom consultation with an Ayurvedic doctor. He is in India and I’m in Canada, so we met in a space between my sunrise and his sunset. I’m pretty sure the magical dust of the opposing transitions helped my heart flutter all about.

Bodies are problematic if you’re hooked on the drug of stability. The moment we put something in, something else needs to come out. We eat, we have to poop. We inhale O2, we have to release the CO2. The list goes on.

Here’s a tip: Don’t come to Ayurveda when you are at your wits’ end. In fact, don’t pick up any new health habits at that point, because they are bound to fail you.

We all need a friend who cracks us up when we are anxious. I called mine last night and confessed that I’ve been constipated.

“How long has it been?” she asked. “A week?”

“About 20 hours. Maybe more,” I told her.

As soon as I heard her cackle roll into a guffaw i realized what I was doing.

Ayurveda is often a nesting place for women who have struggled with body issues or controlling relationships around food. This is primarily because it is often taught in the West by women who have also struggled with relationships around food. Thus, it is presented as a set of principles that can be neatly tucked into clear rules about what to eat and what not to eat.

Over the past year, we have experienced a rapid increase in the intensity of life, and this year is looking to top it all. It reminds me of my time living on Kaua’i. That island appears to be paradise, but those who live there know the intensity of the last mountain in the sea.

I know that man.

He was the father of my best friend, the one who still had a job even though the factories had kicked nearly everyone else out. He brought me to my first picket line. Taught me to look at the labels of clothing, to search for things made in America. I still think of him when I think of the children in the Philippines who made my shirt.

Here is a new column series I’ll be sharing, called Dear Men. But I warn you that this essay will be the last of this series published on my public journal. If you want more, sign up for my newsletter to access Tier 1 of my secret journal when it goes live.

Dear Men,

My daughter has been listening to kids’ audio stories of late, which means I am listening to them as well. Some are Disney movies adapted to spoken word. Some are nursery rhymes. And some are fairy tales.

One in particular I am always happy to play. My daughter kept asking for it, though I had no idea what she meant. The girls with the shoes, she called it.

Truth is simple. It is not always convenient, but it is pure and elegant. And while it would make sense for Truth to be something we could scientifically prove, it’s something best understood by the way it feels in our bodies.