We Walk Alone
Lately I’ve been walking right before bed–not just a few blocks, but miles and miles.
I’ve always been a big walker; everyone in my family walks a lot. Even before I moved to NYC three decades ago, I walked everywhere—-through Boston and its surrounding towns and, later, through Philadelphia and its insufferable suburbs. People I haven’t seen in twenty years will message me: I saw your parents walking down Route 16, four miles from their house. Whenever I visit my grandparents’ Northern Massachusetts town, I run into elders who say: I remember them walking everywhere together.
The difference, not to put too fine a point on it, is I walk alone. Continue Reading →
Sweet Solar Eclipse, Baby
Today’s astrology is big. Huge. So huge in fact, that I find myself quoting Pretty Woman-era Julia Roberts. Only this isn’t a mistake—this is absolute cosmic glory. At 2:45 pm EST, a solar eclipse and new moon are happening in practical-magic Taurus near true-calling North Node. At the same time, wish-granter Jupiter and love goddess Venus are intersecting in all-is-one Pisces. Translation?
This first eclipse of the 2022 season is sowing seeds on your behalf, so today isn’t about the sort of intentions your puny human mind can make on its own. It’s about the universe clearing out the rot on your behalf and planting new roots that better align with your highest self, especially in areas of love, creativity, and money. Think new romances, income flow, inspiration!
For everyone—but especially those with planets in Taurus, Aquarius, Scorpio, and Leo between 5 and 10 degrees—today disrupts and transforms. So ground yourself so these new seeds have somewhere to bloom. Go outside and stay outside. Do as much breath work and meditation as possible. 
Literally plant something if you can, and indulge in salt water of all sorts (tears, baths, ocean). Above all, unplug from the buzz of daily life to more deeply tune into the divine. When the universe is downloading this much glory, best to ogle with all your senses.
For your unique eclipse download, book a reading; I’ve expanded my reading schedule as this expansive practical magic is most intense over this next 36 hours. (Pictured here: Julia Roberts, who kept showing up in my brain as I wrote this and turns out to have a natal chart radically transformed by today’s astrology. Capricorn intuitive at your service, sweet baby….)
The Letter
This is the goodbye letter I sent to my long-time favorite person–the one I actually sent, not the 2,200-word tome I read and burned at the river. The latter remains sealed between his highest self and mine out of respect to the 45 years we’ve shared. But below is what his waking self deserved to receive, or at least what I needed to send him. I share it as a tool of my personal accountability, with great gratitude for your forbearance.
“…available people are the ones who are dangerous, because they confront us with the possibility of real intimacy and spiritual awakening…”
I have loved you for a very long time and, this round, was more committed than I have ever been to fostering our many-tiered connection with patience, compassion, and care. But I am taken aback that you would still describe me as an ally after that April 10 weekend.
I am long accustomed to you preening for female attention, but not to you overtly neutering our relationship to maintain the appearance of your sexual viability to a pretty, young woman in my presence. I am long accustomed to your hostility when you feel threatened, but not to how incontrovertibly cruel your words and actions were over those 24 hours.
It has forced me to get more real with myself about our dynamics. And here’s what I have realized.
I do not trust that you will treat my intuition, emotions, and sexuality with the respect, appreciation, and honesty they deserve. I do not trust that you will be in relationship with me except on the vacillating, undefined terms that serve your needs at the expense of my own. I do not trust that you will privilege our highest good over your ego. I do not even trust that you crave the intimacy I crave—the sort where you sleep limbs entwined and in fact entwine your physical and erotic and creative and heart selves as you build out your life.
So as much as I mourn a future stripped of my favorite person, all we were building together was a sand castle. Sustainable structures are never built to only one person’s specifications.
Given our recent exchanges, I have no faith you will metabolize these words right now, and I accept that. After some debate, I am typing them anyway to the best self you may someday more fully embody. The stand-up friend who would never tolerate anyone treating me badly and who has given me so many tools to love myself and him. 
The lover who would squeeze my hand over the significance of the dove settling next to me on my fire escape as I write to you.
With that man—clear-hearted, gorgeously vulnerable, and, no doubt, furry as ever–I would be free to share all the intimacy in the world.
I will never forget the many ways you have saved me from myself, and do not doubt we’ll be in touch again. But after years of rigorous self-reckoning and healing, I am finally living with an open heart, and there is no indication you are willing to meet it halfway. That matters above all else.