Beautiful, whole and unbroken

Last year on the beach in Aruba. You’ll just have to trust that there are umbrella drinks nearby.

If all goes according to plan…

I’ll be sipping an umbrella drink on a beach with Mr. Adams this time next week. If I’m not, chances are it’s because I’m still sleeping off day one of our Great Dominican Adventure of 2017.

Or… because the plane went down on the way to Punta Cana.

Which is a completely morbid thought, I know. But it’s a thought I have every time I book a flight. What if the plane crashes? I do all my laundry and clean my house like June Cleaver on Adderall before every flight because, if that bad boy goes down, I don’t want whomever has to tend to my affairs afterwards to know just how badly I kind of suck at the whole adulting thing.

Very accurate depiction of me on the beach… minus the abs, handstand and expensive yoga clothes.
So you know, basically the water and the towel. Maybe a little yoga. Maybe...

Has it been enough?
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In all seriousness though, I don’t spend a ton of time obsessing over death, but I have to admit to having spent a considerable amount of time thinking about it and my subsequent legacy over the past few years. It’s one of my favorite hobbies and, in an odd way, kind of my job.
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Someone really smart (okay, it was my kid), once told me that the real purpose of shavasana — corpse pose — is to prepare you to learn how to die. So now, at the end of every one of my yoga practices, I lie in shavasana and — after I’ve stopped cursing my favorite yogi’s love of a 15 minute pigeon pose — I ask myself, “If this really was my death, would it have all been enough?”

Everything is already alright: The best piece of advice I got this year was written on a step of an AirBnB in northern Cali.

Yes, it has been enough.

Sixteen thousand, nine hundred and forty-six days on this earth and I can finally say, in all honesty — yes, it was enough. I know 2016 was a shit year for many, but for me it was the year that I dared greatly to become the person I really wanted to be — a person who lives without regret. It was the year that I decided that I was the only person who was going to define my destiny. It was the year I decided to stop talking about my dream and decided to make it happen by quitting my job of 16 years and launching the SheHive.

My gentle snowflakes, it has been enough. And if the plane ride to Punta Cana ends up being my demise… well, what a fan-fucking-tastic exclamation mark on a life well-lived.

Just spread my ashes here. The only monument I need at the end of days is a little piece of the interwebs where I can declare, Everything is Already Alright.

That’s not to say that I don’t want more…

Or that there isn’t room to grow, places to see, people to meet and lessons to learn. It simply means I’m not broken and I don’t need to be fixed — I only seek to be a more full, truer version of myself than I was 10 years ago… 10 months ago… 10 minutes ago.

I believe we can all lead wonderful lives filled with a comfortable tension between being happily-satisified and wanting more for ourselves.

More of me in 2017

It’s one of the many reasons I am so looking forward to 2017 at the SheHive. I can’t wait to carry my beautiful whole self into that beautiful whole space and become a truer version of myself — a woman who is a little bit better with her finances and a little more conscious of her health. A woman closer to getting the book out of her head and on to paper. A woman who is a little more badass than she was the year before. A woman who has grown her tribe exponentially.

And, mostly, a woman who can continue to say, “Yes. It was all enough.”

​And that will have been legacy enough.