Kerri On Down The Road

 Looking back over the years, I can't think of a time when I have embraced being female.  I have always identified as female and never had moments when I questioned that aspect of my identity.  Where I found myself struggling was in how my version of femininity fit in with society's expectations of being female.  My experience was one of confusion, frustration, and disappointment. After reading Judy Blume I wholeheartedly joined the "we must, we must, we must - we must increase our bust!" club, praying for the day to come when I would need my first training bra.  But after first developing breasts I found them to be awfully annoying and problematic, and I found myself wishing that they would go back from whence they came.  Shirts never quite buttoned up correctly and when I started to engage in sports they were always in the way.  Breasts were not the answer. Trying to catch the attention of the opposite sex was also an exercise in frustration.  I...

 I, for one, deeply enjoy when a story or movie takes a turn that I did not expect.  There is a sense of exhilaration and intrigue and wonder at what will happen next.  What I find interesting is how much I do not enjoy those same feelings regarding my everyday life.   Looking back over the years, I can attribute staying in situations that did not serve me far longer than required to that disquieting sense of not knowing what would happen next.  Plot twist - no thank you.  I would rather stagnate in the known than venture into a space where leaning into trust was the only way through.  And stagnate I did, often.   The funny thing about staying put in those moments was the gnawing sense of knowing I was not where I needed to be.  Despite that awareness, I couldn't see my way to taking a few uncertain steps in a new direction and bringing forward my own plot twist.  While I would lose interest in a book or show that never varied ...

I have often been caught up by binary thinking.  Things were one way or the other, and that was that.  I had little ability to discern events in my life as anything other than good or bad, and with that came a sense of elation at good fortune, or dismay at injustice being served.   Then I was introduced to a new way of seeing things.  "Amor Fati" is the philosophy of seeing events in one's life as neither good nor bad, but as necessary or required steps in the bigger journey.  A similar sentiment was shared on a podcast that caught my attention - "this is the curriculum".  The context for that idea is that we are all here to learn, and when faced with what we may perceive to be difficult seasons in our lives, we can choose to see these as the lessons set out for us to learn.   Neither of these ideas may help in the middle of a crisis, or when facing heartbreak or what seems like insurmountable obstacles.  I fully understand and agree....

 This past Saturday marked a milestone that I am proud of - 100 days of consecutive cold dips.  For once, it was not something that I purposely set out to achieve or even considered when I took my first tentative steps into the lake back in late January.  Instead, it was something that seemed to evolve organically over time.  A few days strung together into a week, became two weeks, turned into a month, and continued to progressively add up until I found myself standing on the beach Saturday morning, surrounded by friends and celebrating this achievement. One hundred days is a big number, and many changes can occur over that time: seasons change, feelings change, perceptions change, and as I discovered, we also change.   The first time I dipped, I intended for this to be a once-a-week addition to my training routine; a way of introducing full-body recovery to off-set the marathon training I was busy with.  I hoped that it would help ease some of the ne...