because I love lists,
and because we are many layered:
1. I was born on my mother's birthday. She really wanted a daughter, and I did her a favor by being the best birthday present ever. Thus, the name.
2. I have three fiddles in my closet and a child-sized accordion on a bookshelf. I yodel in my car. My secret dream is to be a fiddle-playing, yodeling accordionista trapeze artist. With pigtail braids and striped knee-highs.
“Favor is pure magic, so...”
3. They thought I was a genius when I was in 1st, 2nd and 3rd grades. I gave perfect tests, every time. They started doubting me when the tests would ask me to project into the future based on the information they gave me. I put the girl under the tree, when they told me she should be in the house. That sort of thing.
4. For many years, I have been building a collection of animal bones. Deer, cows, birds. fossils. Also, whenever anyone tells me they are going someplace I have never been, I ask them to bring me back a rock. "What kind of rock?" they always ask. "You'll know it when you see it," I tell them.
5. I spend a great deal of time staring into space. Into a middle space. If I find myself without time for this staring every day, I go a little lost. We could call it meditating. Or journeying. Or shifting. Whatever its name, it's important. It’s my lifeblood.
6. I'm an INFJ.
7. I want to write much, much more than I do. I'm good at it.
And sometimes I avoid it.
8. Same: I think I might be an artist, but I've never really tried.
9. There are three people I have met and thought: this person will be important. So I pursued them relentlessly. Without these three, I would not know who I am. So I was right.
10. I am an animal communicator. Some of you tease me for holding this belief about myself. You don't even know.
11. I am almost always hungry.
12. I know three excellent magic tricks. I keep these magic tricks handy because I am unbearably awkward in groups. I also know a few very good jokes about small animals (slugs, millipedes, chickens, hedgehogs) and one about a hippo.
13. I am, every moment, seeking connection. It's the most important thing I can think of. Shared connection, visibility, love, truth.
14. We don't know why my hair started turning gray when I was twelve. Sometimes I tell people there was a lightning strike, but this is not technically the truth. We could embrace the metaphor, though, and be on a kind of solid ground.
15. I never had a father. Never met him. But when I was small, I thought for sure John Lennon was my dad, and he would claim me when he finally learned about me. He died the day before my 7th birthday. Since my mom & I share our birthday (see #1), my party was cancelled, and we cried all day, listening to the Beatles. Later I started thinking maybe my father was Paul Simon, or Willie Nelson, but I never hoped either would actually find me. I have been content to sing their songs, top of my lungs, on road trips.
16. I believe in so many things I can't explain.
17. When I was small, my mother told me that if she ever disappeared, I was not to worry: the aliens came and she went with them. I still find myself wounded and small when this memory is triggered. But I see myself doing the same thing to the people who love me when I talk about the airstream in the desert. Disappearing, without a trace. That's not fair, and I'm sorry about it.
18. Sagittarius sun, Aquarius Rising. Moon in Gemini. Sagittarius North Node.
19. My deepest and most tangled life goal: to live with wildhearted expansiveness.
20. There were some days I wanted to be a mother. I wanted to be pregnant and in love (with the person, the child, the future, the world). I think I am an excellent mother, even without a child. We pick wildflowers and talk about what might be happening underground and in the sea. We make up songs, tell stories, and make the world beautiful.
We can choose to be who we need.
More of how I see the world, here:
“You are your best thing.”