Fill Your Cup.

Currently, I run a small team of 25 massage therapists and bodyworkers at Bathhouse a beautifully designed 10,000 sq foot space in Brooklyn. We closed March 15th, along with most businesses in NYC and when my leaders and I started to plan for the reopening in July, we were up against the questions of safety, preparedness, and the call to act in spite of fear: to be courageous. It has been a challenging and fulfilling year of individual triumphs and failures in tandem with the ever-confusing and catastrophic pandemic that truly changed the landscape of our healthcare system, our economic and political systems globally, and humanity… and it made me ever more so aware of Nature. This was all natural: the seasons, the cycles, the death, the viruses, the hate, the love, the faith, the fake shit. And I was deeply embedded and invested in its balance.

But and, after months of PPP, public safety, capacity, scheduling, hiring, training, and working on-site, 45-50 hours a week, I started to burn out. I lost some of my grace. I have more wrinkles in my face and I have fallen short of my own expectations of how to behave up against fear, politics, and the actual devastation of Covid-19. What I really want is illumination. I want to be a pinnacle for my community, a force people could count on, a shining light. But my cup is empty.

For the last twenty years, I’ve lived in NYC. I have waxed and waned between esoteric, physical, and spiritual practices to help maintain a balance in an urban environment that doesn’t always illuminate. As a movement instructor, a meditation guide, a massage therapist and sometimes an activist, I dipped in and out of living in the elements, a calling to nature. I would leave often: meditate, practice, travel, exchange ideas, learn, create and then come back to this beating rhythm that feels like my own heart song: Brooklyn.

Now, I have the balanced existence of there and here. Here, I am quietly spending time in the woods in the east end of Long Island. I am chasing sunsets, not only for the Instagram story but for the feeling of being filled up, of being connected. There, my job is the centerfold of my life: it truly keeps me engaged, aware, motivated, and hopeful. But out here… on the beach, with the birds and the space and the way the stars light up the sky at night! And I’ll go back there to the park on my block, and the diversity of the neighborhood and all the people I love to call my people. I’ll go back from spending time here in nature, having walked a long way; I will return to my bustling life there. With my cup filled and emptied, I am looking forward to this new moon, this new year, this new vision of balance, harmony, and peace.

My social media, my camera roll, my dreams, my daily existence is designed and detailing the new love I have in my life: El Guapo Roman Papacito. He is (now) a nine months flopping-eared puppy dog. For more on El Guapo please follow his IG :) He fills me with total and complete joy, all while upping my stress, complicating my days, and let’s be honest— a baby of any species is expensive. He fills my cup. Like really fills my cup.