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As long ago as October of 2007, I was in Istanbul and my friend’s neighbor read my fortune from a teacup. We sat in the living room, on the ground floor of an apartment building that faced the Bosporous Sea, and this woman clucked her tongue in Turkish, your heart has no roads in, it is blocked solid.

I will attest to the fact that it remained this way for too long a time.

It is said that it takes half the time of a relationship to mourn, grieve, and resolve its dissolution in your heart. I had been married for 16 years, and in 2006 divorced, which means at the earliest it would have been 2014 before my heart would soften. 

Alas, it did not in 2014, or any of the years that followed.

I found it much easier to keep my heart guarded, blocked, than to open to the possibility of messy love. Now, I had dalliances, even something that looked like something, but no commitments. I had hurts, slights, and rejections, but I hadn’t gone all the way in, so I felt it easier to get out, exit stage left, than to stick around for the inevitability of leaving when it was harder to go.

Last year, at some point in a therapy session with Adam, I said I was thinking of sticking my neck out and trying again. I was almost embarrassed to say this to my therapist because he is a man, he is younger than me, and I just didn’t fully know if I could trust him with this vulnerability. This isn’t about him, it’s my own reluctance to embrace his acceptance of me just the way I am.

Adam told me to write a bio of who I envisioned. I tried. I tried. I tried. Inevitably, I came back to Adam and said how could I know what I want when I only know what I know? And I don’t want that. He said to think of the qualities I am drawn to now. So I did.

Kindness.

Creativity.

Mindfulness.

Spirituality.

There are many other qualities on my list, but these four resonate most. Oh, and I do have imperfect perfections I seek like no baggage, no drama, and no attachments. Yeah right. Those requirements are quite impossible considering life brings all three to you no matter who or what.

Last fall, I walked into the print shop where I get all the Hall posters and there was a man, his back to me, and a mysterious energy surged inside me, and then this man entered a portal into my life. 

He’s a man, he’s just a man, and I’ve had so many men before,
in very many ways, he’s just one more.

Nevertheless, the man piqued my interest, and so began a warming of the impenetrable glacier that replaced my warm and trusting heart from so long ago.

And if you are interested in what comes next, well, I didn’t act on the energy, I walked away from him, then he appeared again, and the energy surfaced again, then it halted, then it ignited, then it derailed, and well, energy begets energy and more will be revealed is all I’ve got for you today. But let’s give this man credit – he is the rare manifestation of what my heart could see after nearly two decades.

A common phrase used in the spiritual community about the journey back to your heart from your brain is, “The longest journey is the 18 inches from your head to your heart.” Thank you, Adam for the exercise in conjuring a vision in my head. Thank you, man for embodying the imperfect perfection my heart desires.

Today, I woke and made bad coffee. So then I made another pot.

I went to the San Pedro Riparian Habitat and missed the turn, but a guy working on a street project said to go back and to the east and then look for the cottonwoods. East? Thankfully that was indicated on the GPS. Cottonwoods – I know and they were lovely to behold as they came into view – stretching north and south.

As I walked along the riverbank and marveled at the colors of gold, sage, and brown and looked for the elusive Green Kingfisher, I happened upon a fellow hiker. An older woman (maybe my age – because hey, it is what it is), and she asked me if I saw the pond. I said I passed by it but didn’t see any water. She said, “Well I know more than you do, so I’m going back that way.”

la di da

She might have ruffled a different me but instead her desire to find that kingfisher too made me look up in the trees for it, and instead I saw giant nests with cormorants and wished I could see the chicks I heard squawking. I also walked more mindfully, thinking about how I want to be present, I want to understand my needs, I want to open up to the possibility I have a nervous system that is hardwired for chaos and disappointment, and that neither are happening right now.

I breathed in the dry air and looked in the distance at the Huachuca Mountains, which look like cardboard cutouts. I did a complete turn around and still could not find the pond, but the river was flowing a little stronger and the view through the cottonwoods was magical. I want to hold these moments where I feel grounded, centered, full of the breath of life.

On my way out of the trail, I saw the older woman sitting on a bench. I noticed the layers of clothing she was wearing – a jacket around the waist, another long sleeved shirt on a tee shirt, hat and water bottle and fanny pack and I felt lighter just whistling as I cruised by her.

The last week at the onset seemed an uphill climb. At the Hall, there was a retirement party, our Lava Lounge, then Reggae Fest, two TV spots at the buttcrack of dawn (my Russian friend likes to call it this), then a wedding, where I would be presiding, and that was just at the Hall. In my private life there was a disappointment to overcome.

It started with the disappointment and as is my tendency, at first, I blew it off. Meh, this happened, it wasn’t what I wanted, but meh I told myself. But I stopped that usual script and instead thought: I’m disappointed. Sad too. I went ahead and claimed all my feelings – a little put out by someone else’s lack of mindfulness, and then appreciative I had not invested myself more than I had. It was good to close and punctuate what had been a promise and had evaporated.

All of these other public things on my to do list were handled as well, but it’s the wedding where I’ll take my victory lap. The couple – Doug & Erin – have held a special place in my heart since I met them. They both arrived on the scene in Bay Saint Louis and immediately jumped in 200% giving their love and energy to making our community a better place. Ahem, I’d like to think I know them. Maybe I am them. When they said they wanted to get married at the Hall, I said, fantastic. When they said they wanted me to officiate, I said woo hoo! When I asked them if they wanted me to say anything in particular, they said, we trust that what you say will be perfect.

And (ahem) I think it was.

The words wrote themselves. Drummer gal meets DJ guy and they get hitched at a music hall. I am not a huge fan of weddings, even though I’ve had three myself – the tendency to follow the same playbook, to bore people out of their minds, to create an illusion of fantasy that doesn’t exist and the wedding party always skittish and needy and nervous. But on Saturday, I had the honor to wed Doug & Erin, and it was a beautiful thing.

A woman I know is running a business in Biloxi, and she is a working mother. I asked her how she is doing, and she said, “One thing for sure no one is coming to save me.”

Today, we did a meditation and the first question was when was the last time you asked for help? My answer, yesterday when I asked Terry and Bill to come help me set up the Hall. Owning a music hall has turned me into a Project Bitch – I have so much that needs to be done, some of it too heavy for me to lift alone, some of it too much for me to do in the time allotted. Some of it just overwhelming in the detail of every little thing that needs doing around here.

That’s just my work life. My personal life: keep two dogs fed and walked, keep a cat alive, clean the house, go to the grocery and try not to throw away too many perishables, clean clothes, stay healthy, and for me travel once a month to Arizona, grocery shop, rent a car, rent a house, cook, clean, get back on a plane, rest and resume.

There have been moments when I would love someone to turn to me and say, “I got this.”

Single mother, single homeowner, single business owner, singularly over here just trying to live a thousand lives all at once. And the reality is no one is coming to save me.

I’m teaching myself to not feel any urgency to take care of everything. I’m learning how to let things go. I’m trusting the process will affirm my intentions. I am realizing the fear comes but I’m willing to do it anyway. I’m dreaming bigger. I’m opening space for magic.

At the end of the meditation. the teacher asked: what happens when a kind and creative person is resourced.

I got in the car with friends last night heading to a new Colombian restaurant in Gulfport for dinner. The first rule of this group, who seldom has time to get together as a group, is overshare. And the overshare sometimes includes future forecasting, which if you are paying attention, is my specialty.

In a parent support group on Zoom yesterday, each of us was sharing and the theme was fear and man, we have a lot of it. Parenting sucks. You are responsible for this human being that is developing at his own pace, and if you’re lucky, you have a child that is a square peg that simply cannot be jammed into a round hole. I say if you’re lucky, because really wouldn’t you be terrified to have raised a human being who just plugged in and did what they were told to do?

But parenting a live wire SUCKS DONKEY DICKS, because it keeps you in a constant state of agitation and fear. As the parents went one by one through updates of the latest “situation,” I couldn’t help but think Let Us Now Praise The Wild Childs. Because I truly have a wild child. Yesterday, in Tin’s social call he was once again speaking to me in a language that was mystifying. He had again adopted somebody else’s accent – something he has done frequently and easily. He has an ear.

To parent a wild child is the very essence of living in fear and vulnerability, and at its core is a feeling of residual unworthiness that you may not be up for this task. I know I have had this sinking feel one too many times to count.

But yesterday in our conversation, someone said something about “living in the wreckage of our future” and I wrote that down. I have so many prompts around my desk that say, “Everything’s going to be ok” “You are exactly where you are supposed to be no matter how things seem to appear” “What belongs to you shall come to you” and more – these are my prompts to see the reality of my life with a lens of optimism. And I am, at heart, an optimist.

The worry is what gets in the way. And worry belongs in the future. And I belong in the present.

I need to be able to close my eyes and envision scenarios that are marvelous. I had to do this when I was overcoming my panic attacks. My anxiety had reached mountainous heights, and I could not cross the Causeway – the longest bridge over water – and so I went through a workshop where I envisioned that when I crossed this bridge, fanfare awaited. The mayor was there to hand me a key to the city, an oompah band was playing, and even fire dancers went into action to receive me.

I have an indelible memory of sitting in Bacchus in the Bywater (New Orleans), when Chris was alive and owned it, and we were listening to Helen Gillet play her cello with James Singleton on his bass, and Tin was sitting in my lap, he might have been five years old, and he was moving to the rhythm, and I was struck with a thought, wow, I’m a fucking rockstar to have this human being as my son. He is going to grow up to be a fantastic adult. Lucky me!

I lost sight of this vision in his teenage years. And now I wonder many things like what was Kendrick Lamar like as a child, or Miles Davis, or anyone else who has proven to be a square peg in a round hole? There is a man in this town I live in whose good looks and charisma allowed him to father over 40 children, he could never tolerate school, and yet he is a venerated icon of our community – he’s a character – like any good Southern town, he is allowed the space to be himself.

in my darkest hours, I picture myself living alone in the wreckage of my future. And my work, and it is hard, is to narrate a different story. The one I hold in the lightness of my being, when I am present, when I am aware of my perfect breath – it’s in that open space, I am vulnerable and can say I am a hugely sensitive person who gets flooded by other people’s big emotions and, at times, by the world itself. I am a human being. Not a human doing. I am a masterpiece. I master peace.

I desire to be free.

And yet I struggle. I am a layered trifle of limited beliefs, which I am constantly trying to scoop away, eat away, dissolve, and yet, these beliefs persist. Much of the meditation I’ve been doing the past few weeks is about breaking out of these limited beliefs.

Here’s where the buzzer goes off – is this true or is this not true? I’ll give you a belief that has come up recently. When you feel butterflies after meeting someone – is this a good thing? Fate calling? Or is it a bad thing – old patterns re-emerging? Every relationship I have gotten into has begun with butterflies and love at first sight. Al-Anon and psychology will tell you to run the other way if you feel butterflies, because you are registering danger not long-term compatibility. How unromantic, but what if it’s true?

I went through an exercise with Tin about what I intend to do to work on myself. The number one goal? Not to work as much. And yet, it is 4:30am and I’m up early because I am starting this week with an overburdened calendar and a TV spot first thing this morning. I sat at my desk to write and was torn between sending out an email blast, logging in ticket sales, sending another email to the 100 WOMEN DBA, sales tax, and I was flooded with my to do list.

We all know work expands to meet the time allotted, yet sometimes I am moving so quickly through my to do list that I create other problems. Yesterday, I bought tickets to a concert on the same day that I bought tickets to another concert – both of them are in different cities. The goal is to slow down and not do so much.

Sometimes, I have no patience for exploration and become a Project Bitch barking orders to get the shit done because we don’t have time. Or I perceive we don’t have time.

I sometimes journal with a tarot card prompt and the card of today is the 8 of Swords – self-imposed limitations: 1) no time, 2) it needs to get done, 3) I am responsible for all of it, 4) if I don’t do it, it won’t get done, 5) I have to do it, 6) if I don’t do it, it will be bad, 7) I have to do it now, 8) do not stop till it’s done. There you have it, eight self-imposed limitations as to why I need a master class on relaxation and letting go.

When the 8 of Swords appears upright 

• You might be imprisoned by your own beliefs
• You might be unable to see possibilities for change
• Your thoughts and beliefs might no longer be serving you
• It might be time to let go of negative patterns
• It might be time to embrace new perspectives

My friend Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr. came in for Mardi Gras since he was our King last year for the Krewe of 100 WOMEN DBA. The word character is the best way to describe a man whose talent and zest for life and use of the beauty of words give so much delight.

On Thursday, Amos was selling some of his books and posters during the Hall’s Lava Lounge. I found mine instantly – FUCK SHIT UP!

I needed these three words.

Lately, I have fallen deep off my gratitude wagon and have been on a road of self-flagellation and asking myself on repeat the worst question I’ve ever asked – why??? I just couldn’t come back to me. Tears kept coming, regret kept spewing, and a plethora of why’s circled my mind.

It’s not my mind. It’s monkey mind – I have a dumb monkey high on adrenaline who runs around my mind wreaking havoc. The monkey goes on and on about how I’m not good enough, about how I’ve gained weight, about how I don’t know how to be a mother, about how I don’t think I can go on anymore like this. I want to fuck that monkey’s shit up. Hear me?

Centrifugal force tethered to that damn monkey’s mind had pulled me away from center. How do I fuck shit up? I dug deep into gratitude. I breathed. I told myself I am okay. Then I looked around to see what’s here in front of me. My niece turned to me in the car in Tucson and said, “Aunt Rachel, you’re a good mother.” A woman visiting Bay Saint Louis and the Hall for the first time during Lava Lounge turns to me and says, “I want to tell you, what you have created here is fantastic.” No, you don’t have to rely on outside validation, but sometimes it does nudge you back to center. The center where you give thanks for all the work you’ve done to create a life with meaning.

I’m an ordained minister and have the privilege of marrying a beautiful couple this Saturday at the Hall. I have been collecting anecdotes about their life together. Their best trip? A hike that led them to Cape Disappointment – named because the man looking for the mouth of the Columbia river came upon the cape and felt he had failed to find what he was looking for. Like this man, the couple had accidentally found Cape Disappointment with its breathtaking vista, unparalleled natural beauty — they discovered a place of vastness holding the power of nature and it was anything but disappointing.

Joseph Campbell said “We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”

How many times must I hear Campbell’s words to lasso all my energy back to center. To fuck shit up along the way and come back, again and again to myself, and to know that what awaits me is good and is breathtaking and is vast and is powerful and is not disappointing.

And if I take a deep breath and hold still, I can see it right here, right now, all of the time.

Woman goes on journey, comes home changed. The journey was a short trip to Arizona to visit Tin. It also happened to be the weekend before his 16th birthday, an event that is always laden with ambivalence. Not mine, his. The journey of an adopted child is lifelong. I remember a man in an adoption group I belonged to insisting that I look at adoption as trauma, and I insisted I was not going to teach my son to be the victim in his own narrative. The man was right.

To be adopted is to begin your life wondering why.

I wanted to be a mother so badly, I left the man I loved to become one. I read, spoke with, participated in adoption groups and tried to become enough for my son. I immersed myself in his culture, trying to be enough for him. I’ve pulled in mentors, teachers, rabbis, artists, family and friends to help me navigate being enough of a mother to an exceptional learner and creative spirit.

This weekend, I felt the tension that coexists with loving a person whose trajectory is always moving a step away not towards. He is moving towards self discovery, self identification, and his grand desire to be free is always at odds with being present. To be present means to accept what is here, what is in front of him, what is his reality. Our struggle is born out of his living in a future not yet realized and my living in a past that has never been enough – between my desire to be a mother, to have a family and recreate my family of origin and his desire to be who he is, unencumbered by my history, my expectations, my needs. We struggle.

Our struggle is based in fear. Mine has always been I’m not enough to mother him. His is based in fear that he is too much. I crawled deep into the cave of disappointment on this trip. I find it hard to be present because I can’t let go of my expectations or my desires or my vision for him. I can’t let go of wanting to protect him from harm. In his upward spiral, he is willing to risk everything for his freedom to be who he is, to do as he pleases, to be cut loose from the control of adults. This energy feeds a flame of fear that makes me grip tighter. When I need to be letting go.

I always reach across this chasm to say I love you, to touch, to breathe, to be with him. My past is always future-forecasting my future, I’m the one who needs to break free and let go. All of my growing into being enough has been to let go of the dream of who I wanted to be, to accept the person I’ve become. To know that I am enough. I struggled. I have to have faith his struggle will lead him to a similar place – to know he is enough.

On November 7, 2025, Ann and I were driving Tin to boarding school in Arizona. We stopped in Las Cruces, NM and took a detour to go see a giant roadrunner sculpture made out of garbage. As fascinating as it was, and it was, we were in the parking lot of the welcome center when Ann thought she spotted a chicken running underneath the cars. A young man, Asian, handsome, long jet black hair, stood beside a Sprinter van eating a small bowl of granola and he said, “That’s a roadrunner.” From somewhere along the parked cars, a woman walked up behind us and said, “It’s pregnant.” Right then and there we learned that spotting a roadrunner is lucky, spotting a pregnant roadrunner is double lucky. 

We felt the vibe! The Hopi and other Pueblo tribes of the American southwest see roadrunners as “medicine birds” which have the power to protect against evil spirits. Seeing a roadrunner is considered good luck and given their speed, they could symbolize rapid progress towards your goals or swift passage through difficulties.

I was beyond excited to be in the presence of a roadrunner – an affirmation of my luck (the trend has been my friend and so many things have been happening that are miraculous and life affirming and transformative including driving my son to boarding school in Arizona). So many things were going to happen that would keep proving this but I’ll save that for later. 

Ann and I took Tin to the ranch and then segued to our journey home, where we spotted our second roadrunner jetting across a four-lane highway. At this point, luck was entrenched in our theme.

When we got back, Ann made a graphic of a roadrunner with Lucky written across it and made a tee shirt for Tin as a holiday gift. She made me a collage, which I now keep on my table to see every day as a reminder. 

I was in Arizona visiting Tin for our monthly trip. These trips, the calls, the letters seem to tangle me up with so many emotions it is hard to pull a thread without me unraveling. Which I did at the airport on the way back. It’s one of those: I’m leaving my son across the country and going back to my empty house, I’m sure he is in the right place, but it never feels quite right. The travel alone is taking a mighty toll on my bank account as evidenced by my card getting declined at the Gap where I was buying him two tee shirts to replace the too small ones he had brought. 

The physical travel takes a toll too: I am out of my routine, sitting on too soft sofas, sleeping in too soft beds, moving from one crammed airline seat to another. The journey to visit my son who made me a mother involves stepping away from that role – I was not prepared for this part – as a fellow ranch mother said to me about her grief, “I thought I had a few more years of mothering him left.” 

The penultimate day while I was in Tucson, we were walking out of the Air BnB, when Tin spotted a roadrunner across the street. “Roadrunner,” he shouted and pointed. We both walked towards it as it dashed like the cartoon roadrunner from one end of the yard to the other and disappeared into the bushes. I crossed the street and into the yard, and the man seated outside his house next door, behind a thicket of cactus said. “That’s only the second time I’ve seen one in my life. They don’t like the city.”

I am constantly reinventing my perspective – I’m lucky to have become Tin’s mother, despite the grief that it has not been as I had envisioned – to raise a child with a partner, to go through all the touchstones of school, family vacations, and all the life experiences that fall under “normal” – yet, I am lucky to have had this experience. Tin, my son, makes me a better person every day. That is why I balled my eyes out from the Tucson airport all the way back across the country to the Gulfport airport and home. That is why I am crying now.

I’m sure everyone on those planes thinks I have Covid because I sniffled, blew my nose, and kept my hoodie over my red eyes throughout the entire trip. None knew how LUCKY I really am. 

I’m back in this alien landscape to visit my son whose 16th birthday is approaching. None of what has happened with us in the last 16 years could have been predicted, none of it fits tidy into a family history, none of it has been easy, and yet, when I sit down to piece together all of the photos from previous birthdays, the notes, the cards, the feelings – there is a through line of how I at 50 years old, and he at nine months old, became a family. It’s our history.

I pulled up the speech I gave in March of 2022 for Tin’s bar mitzvah – of all the hard things we have done, this was one, and its outcome was marvelous and glorious. What I said to him, to our family and friends then, applies now, Tin will turn sweet 16 with people who love and support him, and to love and be loved is the greatest gift we can give each other.

March 2022

The two most important days in a person’s life are the day you are BORN and the day you find out WHY.

I found out WHY the day I met you. I knew with divine clarity I was born to be your mother.

I am so PROUD of you today. You and I have been in a dynamic, unfolding adventure every step of the last 13 years. Your humor, creativity and energy have confirmed what I saw in your eyes the first time I met you – you are a born LEADER. That’s why your Hebrew name – Moshe – Moses – is so fitting that I would have picked it for you myself. But you chose it because of my brother, your Uncle Bill, who by the way you have a similar temperament with! And we are very grateful Uncle Bill is here today to watch you cross this threshold into Jewish adulthood. I am grateful all of my brothers are here both biological and spiritual. And of course my SISTERS.

To be a bar mitzvah is to become ACCOUNTABLE for your own actions. And I thank God this no longer falls on me as your mother! From now on everyone here knows you DID it, not me.

I’m grateful to everyone who has come here today to witness your bar mitzvah – if you look out at all of their faces, remember this one thing about each one of them – they are here because they LOVE you. All of them have helped form your path in one way or another. And most will continue to do so as you navigate these teenage years into becoming a man. 

We would be here another few hours if I listed each person and their contribution. I do want to thank Ellie Wainer – Ellie taught you to read Hebrew! And if we were not Jewish, I would call her a SAINT. Because Ellie approached this task with such REVERENCE for you, with such love and patience, that I marveled every time I was privy to those lessons. I also say thanks to Rabbi Silver, who has from the get-go SEEN Tin for who Tin is and has always supported your unique journey through pandemic and distance to becoming a bar mitzvah. Thank you to our visitors – Temple Beth Am – for sharing this remarkable occasion with us and for so generously providing our meal after the service. 

I would like to also thank those who aren’t here – our ancestors – their struggles for freedom have given us this opportunity to be together today. Your name Constantin contains the journey of over 500 years of the Sephardic Jews who were exiled from Spain and made their home in Turkey. The Sephardim were exiled along with the Muslims and their diaspora is intertwined. I will leave you, my son, with these words – this is a passage from a book called Leo the African about a young Muslim boy forced to leave his home:

Wherever you are, some will want to ask questions about your skin or your prayers. Beware of gratifying their instincts, my son, beware of BENDING before the multitude! Muslim, Jew or Christian, they must take you as you are, or LOSE you. When men’s minds seem narrow to you, tell yourself that the land of God is BROAD; broad His hands and broad His HEART. Never hesitate to go FAR away, beyond all SEAS, all frontiers, all countries, all BELIEFS. (Amin Maalouf, Leo the African )

Constantin Moses Dangermond – I LOVE YOU, now let’s get this party started.