The Middle.

November 5, 2021

When I realized I was never going to arrive anywhere, I suddenly arrived.  That was it. My destination. Suddenly found. In the not arriving.  It became apparent that each end of the road is nearly always a turning point.  Another destination just pops up.  We just keep traveling thinking we are going somewhere.  But we never seem to finally make it there.  I bet we are in the middle of infinity.  Our minds can only see a small chunk of it at a time.  If we did glimpse at infinity, we would have never started to build our castles in the sand.  So this is what I figured.  Destinations do exist.  Just not the way we thought they did.  A destination is a string of thoughts that can conceive the illusion of a conclusion. That illusionary conclusion is placed in the future. So we don’t have to confront the fact that it doesn’t exist in the present.  We are basically saying ‘I will have time to make this real by the time I arrive.’  But even the end of a day is really a middle.  Sure the night comes, and we turn off the lights to go to sleep.  But the story is always left unfinished.  Just like it will be in our last day in this life.  We would be thinking about what’s for dinner.  Or making vacation plans.  And yes, there are some people who have a real ending.  But most of us die in the middle of a regular Wednesday.  Somewhere between the beginning and the middle of a middle of the week day.  And why I have strung thoughts together to make the illusion of arrival present itself today. In this way, I arrive somewhere every day.  I try my best to spend my days inside things that I really enjoy doing.  When I can’t do that, I string my thoughts together once again to arrive at something I love inside the thing I don’t.  So that there are no illusions.  Just present to what arrives. And here we are arriving at the end of our time together. Stringing together the illusion of the end of this letter.  So we both feel the glory of arriving, making it through.  And just like that.  The middle can be an extraordinary destination.  Here’s to your string of arrivals traveling alongside you wherever you are.    With Infinity at my door, Christina  

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The Time Thieves

October 29, 2021

Could these letters I am writing to you every week, be my diary entries?  I know. Just imagine for a second.  If we could all look inside each other’s journals.  All of a sudden the whole world would be revealed, no mysteries left to solve.  No hidden agendas.  No misunderstandings. No secrets.  No Invisible Loss.  Someone told me the other day exactly what they thought of me.  To my face.  That’s right.  Sure, it was not pleasant.  Sure it felt like someone just slapped me.  But I no longer had to wonder.  There it was.  No need to guess anything.  If I had to choose between someone telling me the truth today vs hiding it for years to come.  I would choose truth. Truth delivered on time.  Ultimately, we all find out what a friend or a relative is writing about us in their diaries.  Why spend years with someone who doesn’t like you, when you could be with someone who does? One of the things I struggle with is wasted time.  Talk about loss.  I consider it a robbery.  The worst thief of all is the kind of thief that steals time.  Make sure you don’t live with them, drink with them, or dine with them.  And certainly make sure you don’t sleep with them.  This by the way, goes both ways.  We can fall into the pleasing space in a relationship especially when we don’t want people to find out how we really feel.  And that is not just a betrayal to them, but to ourselves.  After loss, the only life worth living is the one that reveals our most authentic selves.  Anything else is not life, it is just a waiting room with big windows.  It looks like it's part of the house, but it really is the extra room that never got finished.  So go on, show or tell the truth to the person who should no longer be in your life.   I am.    With on time truth, Christina P.S. We are making a new website for our Second Firsts Letters.  Also a new Life Reentry Home for our classes.  Stay tuned and truthful dear friend. 

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The Pretenders

October 22, 2021

Did you know that one of the most authentic relationships of my life is with you? I sit here every week writing exactly what I want to say.  There are no pretenses.  No adjusting my words.  I just tell you things as they are.  As the years have gone by, I understood the importance of this letter in my own life.  It is the one place each week, I can count on to be real.  I have often struggled with living inside a dishonest world.  When people say something they don’t mean, it feels like a betrayal.  It is often the seemingly harmless pretenses. ‘I love seeing you.’ Or, ‘let’s hang out together again.’ When they really don’t mean it.  I happen to believe what people say.  I am a literal person.  If you show interest, I believe that you are interested.  If you tell me you like my hair, I believe that you do.  If you make a promise, I believe you will keep it.  So when I find myself in places where pretenses are at the forefront of my experience I feel a lot of loss. We live in a play pretend world that nobody prepared us for.   I came back home last night after experiencing many new adventures, making new friends, and visiting places I had never been to.  In the last two months, I traveled to Greece to see my family.  I saw a rocket go to space up close.  I spoke at a conference where politicians, celebrities, and public figures spent three days together.  And I came back knowing that finding people outside the Matrix is rare.  You can feel connection, friendship, and meaning but 9 out of 10 times, it won’t last.  9 out of 10 times, it won’t be more than a short-term occasion that ends on the day it starts.  In the last two months, I had plenty of new connections and friendships.  I experienced such beautiful moments.  I felt excitement that I can’t even describe.  I had the time of my life.  I even felt like I belonged at times.  That I finally found my tribe.  I spent time with new girlfriends, mentors, public people, cousins, aunts and uncles, parents, dogs and cats too.  I had moments of pure joy and contentment.  I took my MFA art homework on the road.  I made book deadlines sitting at airport gates.  I met with my team no matter where I was.  I continued facilitating my classes as I was running from one place to the next.  I kept everything moving forward while searching for meaning, for new friendships and connections.  Always looking for some kind of human Nirvana.  I didn’t find it. But I did find myself.  The most trusted player of the game of my life.  I played the play-pretend game without becoming one of the pretenders.  I looked people in the eyes.  I meant everything I said.  I didn’t make promises I had no intention of keeping.  I walked inside every conversation wanting to know the other person better.  I showed up without ulterior motives.  I tried to leave everyone better than I found them.  And that has to be more than enough.  In life, you will meet groupies, pretenders and users.  But now and again as you sit inside the game, someone will come along who is not a player. In the two months of traveling, moving across the globe I may have brought home with me 2 new friends, dare I say 3. Here’s to finding yours.  Remember they are out there, they are looking for you, just as you are looking for them.  You and I are a special kind of human.  We mean what we say, and say what we mean.  And you will always find us outside the Matrix.    With honesty, Christina 

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Short and Sweet

October 15, 2021

This is a first.  But I have been flying, traveling, experiencing, living so much that this letter did not get to be written today.  Instead, I am sending you a short note to tell you to drop anything that is not important and go do something fun.  I don’t care what it is.  But don’t tell yourself you don’t have time to see a friend, to try a new ice cream flavor, to be free of the to do lists.  And as for me I just landed in Oakland and I have to go celebrate my friend’s Kristine Carlson movie Premiere Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff.  So in honor of my life, her life, and your life this is the length of today’s letter.    With the presence of life, Christina P.S. Make sure you watch the movie on Lifetime TV and grab Kris’s book Heartbroken Open. 

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