It was the summer of 2011. I had taken a permanent leave of absence from my grueling salon apprenticeship in New Orleans after finding out during a beach vacation that my on again/off again boyfriend of many years was cheating on me. In retrospect, this should not have been nearly as shocking as it was to me at the time. In fact, I seemed to be the only person surprised by this revelation. My mom suggested I spend the summer living with her in Jackson, MS, while I regrouped and figured out where I was going and what I wanted to do with my life. My best friend Ben, who had gone to University in Jackson, was living there then, working at a local wine shop. At the time, Ben lived with his boyfriend, Odiri, two roommates, and a black-and-white cat named Money in a gigantic yellow relic of a house with tall ceilings just down the road from my mom in the historic Fondren neighborhood. The house was aptly named Sunshine City.

My first night in town, I met Ben at Sunshine City. He was grilling with his roommates, Josh and Peter. Josh was a Black Hawk pilot, smiley, handsome, fit, and deeply philosophical. Peter was an eccentric redhead who wore “warlock rings” on each finger, band shirts with the sleeves removed, skintight black denim, and a dangly cross earring. By day, he worked as an engineer in pink polos. I was determined to have a summer romance. So instantly, Josh and I fell into a flirtation. By the end of night one, we were laid up cuddling in his bed and had concocted a rather elaborate plan: we would date for the summer, but we weren’t allowed to fall in love. I voided said contract about a week later when I got the ick after going to a movie and hearing him laugh. He was rather upset and told me he, in fact, did love me. We had kissed a time or two; this wasn’t part of the contract. It was time for me to move on.

Earlier on my first day in Jackson, I had placed a phone call to one of my sister’s psychics. Par for the course when dealing with heartbreak. It was all very cryptic, but she gave me a list of names. David was to be the name of my summer fling. “You are more than just friends,” she emphasized. In week two, like magic, David entered the mix. David was a friend of Ben’s boyfriend, Odiri. They had gone to high school together. David was smart, tall, and handsome with boyish good looks. His mannerisms and vocal affectations were almost as if he had time-traveled from the turn of the last century. He had gone to the New School in New York, was a bit of an Aquarian oddball, and had exceptional taste in music. His favorite pastime was soaking in the tub while reading great American novels. David was only in Jackson for the summer, a brief stop before he moved to Germany to be with a girl he had met traveling. They weren’t dating yet and communicated exclusively through long handwritten letters. He didn’t have a phone, but gave me his dad’s number. Instantly I knew this was to be my summer romance.

Since David also lived in Fondren, at his parents’ house just between my mom’s house and Sunshine City, he asked me for a ride home that night. The ride turned into hours of conversation about heartbreak while he spooned me until we fell asleep with Johnny Flynn’s Brown Trout Blues looping on repeat in his bedroom. I’m going to be ok, I thought to myself when I woke up the next morning. Since David’s summer trajectory was as ambivalent as my own, we instantly fell into lockstep. We spent our mornings perusing the Lemuria bookstore. In the afternoon, we walked to McDade’s grocery and picked up a 6-pack of strawberry Abita to drink on his parents’ porch while we streamed music through a new to America invite-only app the German girl had introduced him to, called Spotify. In the evenings, everyone would gather at Sunshine City.

There we drank mint cocktails out of old votive holders and played Boggle nightly. Bon Iver, Arcade Fire, Purity Ring, and Twin Shadow provided the soundtrack to our shenanigans. David or I would take turns fiddling around on guitar. We all took turns cooking. We drank countless bottles of Line 39 wine. We took incredibly dumb photos, mostly of me in the same orange crop top, that we shared to no one in particular on a new photo app called Instagram. A cast of characters rotated in and out of the house daily, but we were the mainstays. I even had a key and my own rollaway cot. Ben joked that I was the Heather Locklear sent to shake up the stale cast of Jackson’s Melrose Place. Once everyone else went to sleep, probably because they had jobs to attend the next day, David and I would walk around the neighborhood and experience Mississippi magic nightly. We’d have heady dialogues or make out in random lawns. One balmy night, we fooled around under the giant Magnolia at the Cedars’ wedding venue next to my mom’s house. I came home that night with no less than 200 ant bites. Another evening we stayed up in his bedroom, til the sun rose, writing a song called Sunshine City. At some point that summer, I had settled on moving to Austin in the fall, and David was still going to Germany after a trip to Egypt. We exchanged “I love yous” on some starry-lit Fondren lawn anyway, both of us knowing full well that we were only dating with a deadline. It didn’t make it less true.

At some point that summer, David gifted me an invite to Spotify, and we began exchanging cryptic yet meaningful playlists. It tickles me to no end that I still keep this practice to this day. My Spotify reads like a personal live journal of memories, each carefully considered track and title of my playlists honoring a moment I’ve loved.

That Summer culminated with David’s dad’s 70th birthday party hosted at the Cedars. A high school buddy of David’s played piano while I crooned Don McLean’s American Pie for all of his parent’s friends. The next night, Sunshine City hosted the biggest party of the summer. Every rotating character from our nightly antics showed up. Brittney Rosella read tarot from a tiny table. We watched fireworks and lightning bugs from the lawn, where a bonfire burned. I dressed like Sandra Dee in a yellow fit-and-flare dress. We laughed; we danced. And then the summer was over.

As the summer ended, we all said our goodbyes. That summer at Sunshine City was one of the only moments in my life I can remember feeling truly nostalgic for a time before it was even over, and I know each of us strangely shared that sentiment. David and I wrote occasional long letters back and forth through the fall and winter. No surprise, it had not worked out with the girl in Germany. We then met up for drinks in Jackson on the night before Christmas Eve that year. After a few too many mint cocktails at our favorite Babalu bar, we headed to Sunshine City for another party, but it simply wasn’t the same. The magic had left. We abandoned the party and got a hotel room instead, where we shared a bath and talked all night for one last time.

The Sunshine City house no longer exists; it was eventually condemned and demolished. The thought of that giant yellow house, which held so many people and memories, disappearing into dust is the most literal depiction of Robert Frost’s poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay” I can think of. Aside from Ben, who is essentially my soulmate, not that many of us really kept in touch in a meaningful way. It’s such a potent reminder of how many pockets of magic and mystery each of our lives hold. Some moments aren’t meant to last. We can never return to them, and likely that’s what makes them so magical in the first place.

I often think in alternate realities. What I mean by that is that I think of everything that could happen as not a possibility but a certainty. Not if I get shot, but when I get shot. Not if I will win the lottery, but when I win the lottery. Not if I will have lunch with Bob Dylan when I have lunch with Bob Dylan. Seriously, it applies to any thought that crosses my brain. In the span of a day, I allow myself to go from writing a best-selling fiction novel to becoming a professional Audible narrator, singing a song at a local open mic night, and going to jail because someone framed me for murder. As I write this, I now wonder if this is a psychological condition for which I don’t know the name.

I do know that I am not alone in this. It’s a particular language I speak almost exclusively with my friend Ben. As a result, our sentences to each other often start with phrases like, “When our screenplay about young Leonardo Dicaprio sells, we should...”

Or “When the lady from Death Becomes Her pokes me with the magic anti-aging potion, I will...”

This year I have strangely experienced a lot of grief due to this unknown condition. The robbing of time that the pandemic took from us is actual. My hair clients need help figuring out why they’ve aged. Likewise, I am trying to figure out why I’ve aged. It has been both a slow creep and a sudden descent into staring down the second semester of life. I think, “did eighteen-year-olds always look this young?” on a far too regular basis for my liking.

Earlier in the year, I read a book called 4000 Weeks: Time Management for Mere Mortals. Don’t let the title fool you; this is no book about time management. Instead, it is a book about how futile it is to manage our time. It’s a sobering yet strangely joyful reminder that every choice we make comes at the cost of another. The nature of this choice is what creates the meaning of our days. We can not do everything. This concept poses quite a challenge to my previous notion that all possibilities are inevitable. I now grapple with the truth that the likelihood of me opening an herbal apothecary in New England, where I reside with my sister and Aunts in an old victorian home, casting spells and drinking midnight margaritas, is rather unlikely.

I’ve had to step back and allow myself to grieve all of the alternate realities. On my current trajectory, I will not be making out with Cillian Murphy at an ice hotel during this lifetime, and that will have to be ok. I’ve never been one to spend too much time lamenting over making the wrong choice. I’m not a person that typically finds myself paralyzed by having to make a decision. I make one, and then I experience the outcome. I have a level of choice about how to feel about it. At least, that’s the way I’ve always seen it. So this lamenting over lives unlived is unusual for me. It points to something else.

Over the summer, I made a bucket list. I filled it with action items that seemed easy enough to complete but would hopefully allow me to bring my life more in line with the one I long to be living. I left the list on my dresser untouched until it eventually started mocking me. I swear I could hear it whisper, “not well bitch” when I asked myself how I had done at crossing off the items. How difficult would it have been to eat some watermelon in a body of water? And yet it never happened.

My favorite place on the planet is, hands down, the bookstore, but I find it both a heaven and a hell. On the one hand, It’s full of potential, and on the other pure pressure. I wonder at all the choices that lay before me, a library of lives unlived, poetry unwitnessed, knowledge not gained. I recently compiled two lists of films. Those I wish to rewatch and those I still desire to see. But where will I find the time to do both? I’ve also wanted to take Spanish classes, brush up on sign language, and paint a large-scale watercolor. And thus the dilemma. Time is finite, and what do I do with what I have left?

Something about staring down the barrel of the back half of your life makes you start grasping. The mid-life crisis is no small wonder. It’s primal. We watch our faces melt, feel our bodies begin to creak, and our memories fade ever so slightly. So, of course, we would desperately seek out what makes us feel alive. We see the fire and already know we are goners, so we might as well cannonball into it in gasoline undies. But, of course, it takes consideration not to take the lit match in our hands and burn it all down. It takes restraint; it takes effort; takes presence.

Presence is the cure, after all. I wish I could say the practice of presence comes more easily to me than imagination and rumination. But, alas, it doesn’t. I spend far too much time thinking of the shoulds. What should I have done? What should I do? When the only one I have any semblance of control over is what am I doing right now? And that’s all, folks. It’s taking the book in hand, opening it up, and reading what’s on the current page.

Originally written in 2020. Still feels true.

For many years now, I’ve shared the same Rumi quote ad nauseam. I’ve shared it in countless yoga classes, prior essays, conversations with friends, podcast episodes, YouTube videos, IG stories, online forums, you name it. If you know me, then you’ve likely heard it. It goes like this: “This is a subtle truth: whatever you love, you are.” Read that twice. Here, I’ll force you. “This is a subtle truth: whatever you love, you are. I find these words work like a mini-metta (loving-kindness) meditation. The quote never fails to soothe my soul like a balm- this poetic reminder that everything I have ever and will ever love has only ever existed inside myself. That’s true for you too. What a gift that knowledge is, particularly in very human moments of heartache, rejection, or self-judgement.

I think of the quote every time someone sends me an outrageous meme, Meg Ryan Fall, Practical Magic, Before Sunrise content, or a Mary Oliver poem. I think of it when my best friend Ben sends me twenty obscure songs in a row on Spotify, when Em sends me New York apartment listings, when Mel texts me a zero-context black-and-white photo of Liz Taylor lifting a cigarette to David Bowie’s lips. How beautiful that we are constantly mirroring what we love to each other, and that what we love IS who we get to be. It’s a reminder never to be scared to love. We are never at a loss to be the one to do so. Besides, from firsthand experience, scared people tend to be fucking scary. Best not to be one.

Years ago, I shared the same Rumi quote at the end of one specific yoga class, accompanied by my playing “Hey Ya” by Outkast on guitar, something I’ve long loved to do. The next day, I was at the studio coffee shop when a student greeted me. “Oh hey,” she said to me, her eyes shining brightly, “You did that cover of Hey ya yesterday; it was so great.” “Thank you,” I responded, feeling liquid gold fill my heart. “I also can’t stop thinking about what you said at the end of class. It’s my new mantra,” she continued. Naturally, I assumed she meant the Rumi quote. Until she trilled in a sing-songy way, “I lOOOOVE ME.” I did not recall saying “I love me, but knowing myself, I also assumed it was safe to say I most likely had. Mandy (pictured above) was that student and, years later, is now a dear friend who’s far more like family. She assures me to this day that the quote she received was “I love me.”

Some years after that class, on what was a very dark, shame-filled day when self-love felt incredibly far away from me, my phone lit up with a notification. It happened to be “Mandy-Future-Bestie,” as she had made me plug her name into my phone that day in the coffee shop years before. Tears flooded my eyes when I saw the unexpected image come through my screen. It was a new tattoo under her right breast, and a reminder I so desperately needed the universe to provide me in that singular moment. There sat the words. The message I, myself, most needed to remember: “I love me.” As I type this now, it’s not lost on me the irony that the fallout of having deeply loved someone dearly as a friend is what caused this specific dark day of my life. As that situation sits far behind me now, many moons and a variety of healing therapy sessions later, I can finally laugh at the sheer silliness of such a thing, as if I could have helped my heart.

In light of that situation, I should really be scared to love, but I’m absolutely not. What I’ve come to realize over time is that my die-hard romantic nature is my favorite thing about me. I romanticize everything: a long-held gaze, my friendships, a thoughtful response, a white feather I find on the ground, a line from a book, a knowing nod from a stranger, the way the light dapples a room, a pretty tarot card, my children’s stuffed animals, a good recipe, utter nonsense. I find life to be brimming with meaning and miracles, and I am just Lloyd Dobbler with a boombox on my shoulders, Peter Gabriel’s voice singing a love song about eyes to anyone who will listen.

One such miracle occurred this past spring. I took my kids to a SPACE-themed choir concert, put on by the Austin Women’s Choir, which Mandy is a part of. We slipped into the Downtown church, took a seat in a pew near an image of Earth projected onto a covered pipe organ. My oldest child read a Garfield comic, and my youngest frantically drew on the back of a receipt with a tiny pew pencil. Honestly, I didn’t have high hopes for my time there, but my kids ended up being sufficiently distracted. I was able to settle in and attune myself to the music, to my friend’s shining face as she did what she loved, to all of these women’s brilliant faces and voices, to the music about space, wonder, and the awe that any of this exists at all. It was so profoundly moving; hot tears rolled down my cheeks. There I sat in that church, my heart wide open.

Jai Guru Deva Om

Nothing’s gonna change my world. Nothing’s gonna change my world.

It really hit me all at once in a moment. I was so incredibly moved. It occurs to me now that maybe that’s the way we should strive to live. Moving towards whatever moves us, which, with our fickle hearts, I know all too well, is often subject to change. Us humans, we sing, read, laugh, meditate, practice yoga, make art, dance, cry, fuck, fight, all the while the order and chaos that is the natural world constantly unfolding around us. That’s Bhakti, baby. That’s love. So I will continue to love openly and with abandon, knowing just what a miracle it is to do so. That’s the only way, because love- that’s what we are, and I love life even when I have no stomach for it. I love you even when I don’t. And the mantra now and forever emblazoned upon my very own beating heart, I love me.

It all started in January. My recently divorced friend Carly and I had decided that, after months of sending each other memes about needing our bodies laid upon, it was time to figure out dating. We were both like baby fawns fresh out of the womb, learning to walk. So we did what people apparently do in 2026 and joined Hinge. Much to our chagrin, we instantly found ourselves scrolling through all the same people. There was a man in a kilt hurling a log, a man touting himself as a fashion-lover Zoolander-pouting into his mirror to take a selfie showcasing his Gucci belt, and too many men looking for their “silly goose” to reasonably count. Also, there was the matter of us both only having had sex with the same people for 15-20 years, and the questions we had about living in our changed postpartum bodies. I even went to my OB and asked her to do an aesthetic assessment down there to make sure everything was still “ok.” “You’re actually iconic,” she laughed before giving me a thumbs-up.

Carly, being the type-A overachiever that she is, immediately came up with a plan of action and began purchasing video courses for us on how to do illicit sexual acts. She came over on Tuesdays for study nights. We would howl with laughter lying in my bed with tears streaming down our faces as we watched a woman demonstrate with surgical precision how to massage her husband’s rectum in a star pattern with her index finger while he rested in child’s pose. “Is he enjoying that?” we wondered as we examined his flaccid penis and bored disposition. Didn’t matter to us as we stored it in the arsenal of tools to use just in case there ever comes a time. (spoiler alert: there thankfully has not). Carly would bring over all of her lingerie sets for me to try on and order my sizes. My favorite synchronicity was one week when she randomly threw her vibrator into her bag, for what purpose I am still unsure, and when she pulled it out, I was stunned because it was identical to mine. Now, if you’re a masturbating woman in 2026, you know that things have changed since the old Sex and the City rabbit days. There are countless types, and even 40 styles, from this specific brand alone; not only that, ours was the exact same colorway. Hers, respectively, is named Pinky, and mine is GiGi LeTwat’.

Aside from now having time to pursue sexual liaisons in the newfound spare time on weeks without my kids, I also found myself gravitating towards long-forgotten hobbies. In high school, I was a film photography nerd and spent all my free time in a darkroom with my sleeves perpetually drenched in stop bath. I actually originally went to school to pursue photojournalism before becoming a beauty school dropout. Over the years, I have continued to collect various Nikon cameras and lenses and have dabbled here and there. One afternoon, I found my cameras in my garage and decided to play with them. I brought them up to my bedroom and began to watch YouTube videos on portraiture. Suddenly, a video on posing for boudoir portraits caught my eye. That sounds fun, I thought to myself, eyeing the recently purchased matching Negative Underwear panty set in the corner of my room. An hour later, I had my tripod holding my camera, with some soft box lights set up around my white, fluffy bed. I arched my back and gently parted my lips, hands caressing the bed, staring alluringly into the lens as the video had suggested. An hour of timer-shot self-portraits later, I set to work editing. “Am I crazy, or are these kinds of…good?” I texted Carly later that afternoon. “Holy Shit! What night this week can you do mine?” Carly responded instantly and enthusiastically.

Not a day later, she was the one resting on my bed in front of the soft-box lights. “Bring your big toes to touch, widen your knees, and inhale as you broaden through the collarbones and arch your lower back. Soften your forehead as you exhale sweetly,” I found myself rattling off cues as if I were teaching a yoga class. When I tell you this was the most fun, I mean it was THE most fun, and Carly agreed. “You should really be doing this, Medina!” she suggested, even going so far as to send me an AI-generated business plan the next day.

Being the mouth of the south that I am, I began to casually laugh about it to my friends and clients at the salon. “Guess what I’m up to now,” I would say before they would request to see said photos. What I wasn’t expecting was for most people to see the photos, then look at me and earnestly say, “How much are you charging? Can I do a session?” If you know me, you know I love a side-project or a side-hustle, but as someone who has been head down in yoga for years, and I mean focused to the point of singularity, the enthusiastic response to my bootleg boudoir blew me away. Undoubtedly, Carly’s great rack is a sell, but the yoga therapist in me understands it’s actually how deeply we both wish to be seen and to see ourselves fully.

Last summer, I was gifted a photo shoot by my dear photography friend Angela Doran, during one of the most tumultuous short-term seasons of my life. I donned nothing but a beige nightie and met her at a park in central Austin to crawl out of a tree hole like a sexy woodland fairy. We talked openly about our current shames and pain points as she took my photos. It was an experience of being both deeply witnessed and seeing myself that undoubtedly unlocked a resilience deep within me, which I desperately needed at that moment. It actually takes a great deal of trust in someone to open up to them. Angela has provided me with this in every session, and I am flattered to imagine that I might offer that same feeling of being safely held to another person.

Photo credit: Angela Doran Photography

In the sessions I have shot since Carly, I have watched people come alive in front of the camera. I have so much gratitude for the joy this has brought to me and, seemingly, others. The overwhelming response has been, “I didn’t know I needed this so badly.” If you’ve seen Season 2 of the hit show Fleabag, then you’ll understand this reference: I want to look upon you the way the hot priest looks upon Fleabag. I want to watch you break the fourth wall and use the open intimacy of my gaze to allow you the space to witness yourself fully. Being truly seen by another allows us to shift the focus of our own perspective; it allows us to view ourselves through a wider lens. I want to capture you as you meet your full self in the magic of this sacred, present moment. If that’s something you would like as well, I am currently offering a few remaining discounted sessions for ATX locals through September while I continue building my portrait portfolio (taking your top off is not required).

You can email me at Jordan@thismagicmoment.co to book a session.

If you’ve just found your way to my Substack, welcome! Here, you will find more of my adventures in being alive.

*If you haven’t seen season 2 of Fleabag, you should rectify that.

“He with you?” the man asks in a gravelly tone, his boots clomping on the pavement as he steps off his motorcycle. He turns his head to my left, gesturing toward my travel companion, Morgan, who is a few paces away, FaceTiming his nieces and nephew.

“Yes,” I respond, unsure, placing my hand in a salute over my brow to shield my eyes from the bright sun. I glance toward his dog, sitting at the back of his motorcycle. The heeler mix steps gingerly to the ground. “What’s your pup’s name?” I ask.

He replies, “Her name is Tehona, but she’s not mine, and I’m not hers.” I look at Tehona and think to myself, Have I ever actually seen a dog roll its eyes before?

I look back at the man and take him in: long gray hair and beard, jeans, and a rancher hat. His eyes are a piercing blue and stand out against his tan, weathered face. He continues, “You see, I believe in the consciousness of animals. When you take ownership of them, they lose their dignity. We do this with our human babies, too, changing their diapers; we rob them of their dignity.” I picture a newborn, helpless and soggy, and try to locate the dignity in that equation. He loses me on that last line, but before I can ask for clarification, he presses on: “I’m writing a book about canine consciousness,” he muses, pulling some cellophane wrap covering a piece of sausage out of his pocket.

The man divides it into two and instructs Tehona to climb up a row of barrels. He places the meat directly in front of Tehona at each end of the barrels. “Look at her,” he instructs me. “She doesn’t eat until she energetically knows I agree.” Tehona regretfully looks back over her shoulder at me. The man nods and says “comer,” which means eat in Spanish. Tehona takes one bite and waits. She reluctantly looks back at him this time. “Comer,” he says again, and she takes the second bite.

By now, my date has returned from his call, cautiously curious about my new friend. Morgan reaches out, shakes the man’s hand, and introduces himself, and the man responds with his own name: “David Sleeper, but just call me Sleeper.”

Sleeper rolls on into the next part of his demonstration. His dog, Tehona, has now wandered across the street, where she watches us from a distance. “Watch this,” he says as he steps to the far side of the fence separating the property where we sit from the one to the left of us. Tehona looks at us, then at the fence where Sleeper just ducked behind, but keeps sniffing the dusty yard across the street, unconcerned.

Morgan and I sit in silence for at least a full minute, unsure how to proceed or if this is all part of the demonstration. Eventually, we return to our margaritas and continue our prior conversation.

Maybe 5 more minutes go by before Sleeper and Tehona are back at the side of our picnic table. “It’s never taken that long before, but she knew where I was because we share a consciousness,” he assures us.

I begin to sense Morgan’s restlessness, but I am enthralled. Maybe it’s the margarita or the microdose of mushrooms, but I am beginning to see the faint outline of a prismatic aura surrounding Sleeper’s head as he talks. He goes on about shared consciousness, man’s role in spreading the seed, women’s role as the true creator, and, frankly, who knows what else, but I’m sure it will be available to read in his upcoming book.

We drain our margaritas and begin to set ourselves back on our way. Tehona winks at me as we say our goodbyes.

Some hours later, we find ourselves walking down the empty, dimly lit streets of Marfa on the quiet Monday evening. We round a corner and walk right into Sleeper and Tehona, now on foot. “Sleeper!” Morgan warmly acknowledges the man despite prior misgivings. Sleeper instead looks to me, completely ignoring my companion. “Jordan,” he tips his hat. I nod back and smile.

In early twenty twenty one, I attended one of my first postpartum (post?-pandemic) public yoga classes. Despite already having a daily home practice, it was the first time in a long time that I really felt alive. As we lay in savasana bliss, soft music hovering in the atmospheric inch above my body, I listened to Bob Dylan’s voice wash over me.

“The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind. The answer is blowin' in the wind.”

This struck me as funny because the day before, I had rewatched the Coen Brothers’ movie Inside Llewyn Davis, and Bob Dylan’s discreet cameo at the end of the film, which always moves me, had done so again. Dylan seemed an odd pick for savasana, but the timing felt like synchronicity, the love language of the universe.

I left yoga, grabbed a “loving-kindness” latte, and popped down the road to Book People on a whim. I listened to more Dylan in the car on the way. As I sat upstairs at Book People, perusing the shrink-wrapped coffee table and art books, I overheard a man asking whether they would be carrying the new Clinton Heylin biography on Bob Dylan and whether he could pre-order it. That felt like another nudge, another small sign that Dylan’s fresh presence in my life was insisting on my attention.

Now I’m a believer in synchronicities, so at this point my attention was thoroughly caught. “What is Bob Dylan trying to tell me?” I thought to myself. That night, I googled the best Bob Dylan documentary and, of course, was met with No Direction Home, a legendary 2005 documentary directed by Martin Scorsese. At the end of the three-hour and twenty-eight-minute documentary, I was captivated in a way I hadn’t felt in years. Dylan’s rise, reinvention, and refusal to stay where others placed him began to resonate in my bones. “Dylan Goes Electric” became one of rock and roll’s most mythologized turning points.

I spent the entire summer of 2021 utterly and completely obsessed with Bob Dylan. If you were my hair client, my then-husband, or even a complete stranger who encountered me during that time, I’m genuinely sorry. In an online forum I was part of, I began to be referred to as “Bob Dylan” Jordan. I was completely fascinated by his story, but it was also as if there were a mystery I needed to solve, a deep and personal message I was meant to receive. In my own life, I was struggling. I was unhappy in my marriage, in my chronically ill body, in how I participated in my role as a mother, and in my almost twenty-year career as a hairstylist. An ancient, very deep wound from my family of origin had recently been reopened, leaving me all but crushed. I was yearning for a different life, one in which I wouldn’t feel so very far from myself. One of my few sources of solace was my yoga practice. I couldn’t yet put words to the ineffable qualities the practice was providing me, but I knew there was some strange magic afoot. When not practicing yoga, I walked or ran and listened to Dylan. Visions of Johanna for my warmup, Hurricane and Like a Rolling Stone for the run, and sometimes Joan Baez’s Diamonds and Rust for the cool-down. If that sounds like a short run, you would be correct. I had never run before and probably never will again. What I did not understand at the time was that I was in a season of deep grief, and Dylan was providing its soundtrack.

During this time, I was enrolled in school to become a yoga therapist. My yoga therapy cohort classmates will surely recall my Bob Dylan affliction. I had found my way into yoga therapy school, which is essentially yoga grad school because the deeper I studied yoga, the more questions I had, and the suggested intensity of this level of schooling felt like it could finally provide the answers I was seeking. Two things occurred simultaneously: my practice deepened immensely, and I had more questions than ever. I began teaching at a local studio, and practice or teaching became two of the only places I felt like I could come up for air. I gulped in every deep breath I could get, lost the chaotic contents of my mind in mantra practice, and I sang loudly to drown out all the internal noise. At the same moment, I immersed myself in community. I listened to and loved on strangers, and I remembered joy, but it widened the chasm between the life I wanted and the one I was living at home. I began to feel incongruent, like my insides were completely different than the outsides. I felt inauthentic, dishonest, and I was becoming so sick of myself. Yoga can be confrontational in that way if you aren’t walking your talk. I knew I had to tell my tender truth if I wanted my life to change. And I wanted my life to change. So I lit the proverbial match and tossed it onto the gasoline-covered kindling that was my own life, and boy, did it burn. And yet, when things went kablooey, despite having kind of started the fire, I found myself genuinely surprised by the size and scorch of the flames.

In the aftermath last summer, I went to yoga class after yoga class, trying out different local studios and teachers, attempting to salvage my practice from the rubble of my life. I was hoping to find a place I belonged, feeling broken-hearted, lost, and deeply confused. I also felt incredibly determined. I finished school for yoga therapy, which was genuinely no small feat. I found a new place to live and made it a beautiful home for my kids and me. I put up with endless chatter from people I had thought of as kind acquaintances, dear friends, or even my own family. Many unkind and often untrue assumptions were made about me, which is actually quite normal when you change your life, while many others are afraid to do so, but for every friend I lost, I gained a better new one. The depth of my relationships with real family and close friends came to the fore and carried me when I couldn’t carry myself. With time, I was finally able to reclaim my personal yoga practice. I learned that what remains is what matters and how beautiful each moment really is. I learned just how little control we actually have, especially over how others perceive us, and how surrendering to that truth is, in fact, freedom. I learned just how deeply I can trust myself. I danced with life. I saw that the depth of my grief was actually mirrored by my capacity for joy and happiness. I learned what it actually means to operate from blind faith and developed a trust in myself and life that will carry me through the rest of my days. While I have realized I am perhaps not going to be teaching yoga in the modern-traditional studio sense, at least for now, I am eternally grateful that I have maintained and held onto my practice. The depth of my understanding and love for yoga will undoubtedly carry me through the next half of my life and will inevitably be shared through whatever medium I choose to create in. I realize now that the lesson I learned from both Bob Dylan and yoga is actually one and the same. It is to honor the mystery rather than try to master it. And as I sit on the precipice of forty, I can say with a degree of certainty that while I don’t know what the next half of my life might hold, I do know it’s going to be electric.

Welcome to This Magic Moment. Thank you for being here.

*cue the harmonica solo

**Another small synchronicity unbeknownst to me at the time, this was written close to midnight on the eve of Bob Dylan’s 85th birthday. HBD BOB!

Recently, I found myself asking someone, “What’s your favorite thing about yourself?” After a thoughtful answer, they asked me the same. Without hesitation, I replied, “My curiosity.” The next day, while cleaning my bedroom, I reflected, “What’s my least favorite thing about myself?” Instantly, I knew: my need to know. It is not at all lost on me that these are two sides of the same coin. My endless curiosity keeps me open and full of wonder, honoring the mysteries of life. This is a beautiful trait. Yet I also have a deep longing to understand the unknowable, driving me, like a hungry ghost, to constantly seek answers.

This hunger for answers, while sometimes overwhelming, has tangible impacts on my life and practice. This drive to learn keeps me enrolled as a student. I have been consistently enrolled in some form of yoga training program since 2020. I voraciously consume texts and work 1:1. or take classes with teachers I admire. I view every opportunity I get to teach, whether in a class or workshop, or even in a podcast episode, as an opportunity to learn and grow. One thing I’ve noticed is how often, as a student in a classroom setting, I am told information that contradicts something a previous teacher said. “Pull your elbows forward in Garudasana (eagle pose) to elongate the neck” vs. “draw the elbows down in eagle to compress and then lift the chest up.” or “The Gayatri mantra helps thin the layers of the Koshas to let Atman shine through” vs. “The Gayatri mantra is only meant for men to whisper in the ears of their sons when they come of age.” This is where, at times, my own research or discernment is needed. The beauty of yoga is that, in The Bhagavad Gita, a foundational text of classical yoga and Hinduism that most of us study or begin with in the West, it outlines how we are to best learn. We begin with the texts, and then, potentially, a guru or teacher who translates them, while the highest version of knowledge is achieved exclusively through direct experience. The power is truly in the practice. The practice is the moon, and everything else is just a finger pointing at it. This is true for everything we do. It’s why, although I love the work of Maya Angelou, I have to wholeheartedly disagree with her famous quote, “When we know better, we do better.” Often, we think we know, and yet we still don’t do better. The truth is, none of us really know, and we certainly don’t always do, but I suppose practice makes progress.

This ongoing engagement with learning and the search for deeper understanding has led me into varied explorations. Building on this devotion to learning and practice, during the last semester of Sadhana School, a program I am enrolled in through the Embodied Philosophy platform, we dove into what’s known as Maitrika Shakti, or the ineffable experience of practicing mantra. One of the course leaders, Nataraj Chaitanya, encouraged us in his introduction not to get lost in Vidyaranya, the forest of knowledge. I found myself reminded of Alan Watts’s book, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety, in which he argues that humanity’s frantic search for security is the root of its anxiety. Watts posited that because life is inherently impermanent and unpredictable, true happiness and spiritual peace are found only by accepting this insecurity and living fully in the present moment, rather than chasing future certainty.

In my personal experience, yoga certainly seems to help with finding presence, but even after all my practice, there are times when I am sick of myself and feel insecure. I am, after all, yet another thin, blonde, able-bodied white woman donning Free People Movement attire and espousing ancient wisdom from a culture I don’t come from. It has been immensely helpful to learn the historical context of Yoga vs. Hinduism, which, while not inherently the same, overlaps significantly, in order to orient myself in my own teachings so that I can culturally appreciate vs culturally appropriate. However, I find inherent acceptance in the practice itself. Part of my work in both learning and teaching non-dualism is accepting that I might want to sing Outkast or the Ganesha mantra at the end of a class, and that neither is inherently more spiritual than the other. I have both a goddess Saraswati murti and a bronze glitter ET bath bomb from Lush, which I honor with equal reverence because both hold deep meaning for me.

This perspective on embracing different aspects of myself informs how I interpret the debates I see in the yoga world today. Currently, I find myself intrigued by the amount of debate in the online yoga space. Many people are currently arguing over the superiority or age of their “lineage,” when nearly all of what we practice in the West is modern, and “lineage” might as well be another word for brand (yes, even yours). That does NOT mean these practices or traditions are without merit. I have rolled out my mat for a home Ashtanga primary practice more times than I could possibly count. I’ve chanted a mantra for hours, rolling mala beads through my fingers, but I’ve also touched the face of God during savasana at the end of a sweaty, black-lit EDM yoga class. All of this can be true. You are, in fact, not more yogic for wearing harem pants and no makeup. I am, in fact, not less yogic for loving the Euphoria TV show and cursing under my breath in traffic. There’s a lot of discussion right now about what yoga is and what isn’t. While I do think yoga is a lived experience, what concerns me is that there seems to be a bit of judgment about who is or isn’t “living their yoga,” and, frankly, that is not something anyone can name but the practitioner experiencing yoga through the vehicle of their own life. The beauty of where I do think is that this conversation is coming from, and what isn’t up for debate is that yoga is inherently a spiritual practice. It is part and parcel of it, no matter the lineage, tradition, or brand. This past week, I interviewed fellow teacher Carter Miles on my podcast, where he reflected on the current conversation in the yoga space. As I was editing, I was struck by a single line he said: “As far as I’m concerned, it’s either all yoga or none of it’s yoga.” It is all yoga.

With that in mind, I

am reminded that yoga’s spiritual foundation is interconnected with everyday life. Also, our lives are a spiritual practice. Our divinity is part and parcel with our humanity. These things cannot be separated, and the separation or division is where yoga is needed most right now, so that we might remember we are not separate from each other. If what drives someone to their mat for the first time is the opportunity to change the shape of their ass, or to stretch their calves, then I don’t really care. If what drives someone to their first meditation is crippling anxiety, then that’s a great place to start. Despite all of my hours of training, I can’t say with any degree of certainty whether you or I will awaken from the seat of the meditation cushion, from the front row at a Radiohead concert, or while watching a rerun of Welcome Back, Kotter on a beanbag. It’s not for me to judge, and it’s certainly not for me to know.

Do you ever just want to cup your hands around the sides of your mouth and scream? Like, holler so loud you have to bend your knees and tense every muscle in your body just to open your mouth wide enough to get the proper sound out? Does it feel as if you, too, were to, in fact, do this right now, no one would even notice? Would anyone look up from their iPhone or even take out an AirPod to listen? More and more it feels like we’re all just shouting into the void. “I’m here.”

A friend recently told me, unsolicited, that he thought I should really do a Rage Room. Not because I seemed particularly rageful, he just felt I probably had to be based on what he knows about me. Who doesn’t need a rage room? And I’m sure I am rageful, but actually, the words I wish to scream at the top of my lungs? “I DON’T KNOW.” It’s really that simple. I don’t know anything about anything. I don’t know a thing about a thing. Nothing, Zip, Nada, and I am beginning to really severely question anyone who pretends to have a clue. Frankly, I am downright uncertain. I am bona fide unfuckingsure. And maybe that doesn’t sell. Maybe that’s not packagable or palatable, but it’s true. I can provide no ten-step program to save your life.

This was especially evident last Tuesday. For days, I had been running around like a chicken with my head cut off. I was overpromising and underdelivering. Never have I made more calendar errors in my entire life. Sorry, dear reader, if you were someone affected. After a morning paying a speeding ticket, a few hundred dollars for cruising 12 miles over, I was beginning to question it all. I frantically checked to see if my laptop was even charged for a Zoom meeting and looked down to realize I was still in last night’s sleep attire, black sweat pants, and a giant happy face t-shirt, a messy top knot sitting above my unwashed face. Currently, I am in a year-long mentorship studying astrology with my yoga therapist, . As she popped onto the call to go over the next sign in the zodiacal wheel, tears began to well in my eyes. “I’m overwhelmed,” I sheepishly lamented. “I got you. Let’s pivot,” she quickly jumped in. She instructed me to lie on the floor and began a yoga therapy practice. A few slow breaths coupled with arm movements known as nyasa to calm my nervous system, and she began offering a visualization. “You’re lying on a rock in the sun. Right now, you are no one, you have nowhere to be, you are nothing.” The literal stress that rode out of my body on my exhale, I can’t even express how good it felt, even just for a moment, to be no one. To need to know nothing. To be reminded that I don’t have, or need to have, the answers, and that’s a good thing, because I don’t. The few times I’ve told that story in the week since, people have almost instantly booked a yoga therapy session with me. Don’t we all just want to be nothing for a moment? Aren’t we all a little uncertain?

Emerging from that experience, I realized what I do have and what the practice really provides. I love to learn, but more so, unlearn. I love sitting with myself and questioning my belief systems. Where did it come from? Is that really me? Is this judgment for someone else or myself? Is this who I wish to be? When I feel heightened, I can take a deep breath and pause before responding. Can I sit with myself even when I am my very most rattled and ask myself these questions? Being able to do this is undoubtedly a byproduct of years of daily yoga practice and countless hours sitting in the discomfort of postures, breathing slowly on a mat, or just becoming comfortable with getting still and listening deeply. So, no, I don’t have and can’t sell you any answers, but yoga has helped me, and might help you sit with the questions, too.

If you, too, wish to be gently reminded you’re nothing, you can book with me here.

Photos above by the unmatched, Angela Doran.

Words are my currency. I love to talk, I live to read, and I write most days. My home overflows with journals, books, and handwritten notes from friends, family, and past loves, both platonic and romantic. I contemplate words, look them up, and choose them with care. Sometimes a word captivates me; a recent week was marked by my searching for places to weave macabre into a sentence, and this week’s infatuation is impeccable. I teach, write, share essays, and podcast. Language is my love.

This devotion to words makes mantra my favorite yoga practice. Mantra embodies my belief in the transformative power of language. It allows me to connect deeply with words through the magic of ancient sound, the maitrika shakti. I’m currently studying with of Embodied Philosophy in Sadhana School. Much to my delight, this winter semester is devoted entirely to this subject. So much of our inquiry centers on the distinction between ancient and modern language. Our current language is largely used to indicate. The ancient was used to create.

As if the universe were underlining the lesson, reflections on the limits of language began appearing everywhere. Synchronicity seems to follow me when I’m paying attention. I was recently sent a thoughtful article by Cormac McCarthy, and that same week, another arrived in my inbox from . Two worthwhile, word-filled reflections circling a truth Eastern philosophy has long insisted upon: words fall short.

Just last week, walking to the salon in the cute Austin neighborhood where I work , I spotted a vanity plate that read “SOHOOD.” I immediately pulled out my notes app to jot down an essay prompt about my intrinsic mistrust of people with vanity plates. It’s the old paradox Alan Watts loved to illuminate: “Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.” Words are crude embodiments of deeper truths we cannot fully name. Watts spoke so clearly to this limitation of language: “You cannot put what it is into words. And this indeed is a central point of Zen and of Buddhist understanding in general: that reality is beyond words, and one must not confuse the world of things—as we think about them and name them—with the world as it actually is.”

This doesn’t stop any of us from trying to define things. It’s only natural to want to place a label or a name to understand and identify our mysterious selves and the general uncertainty of the world around us. Yet what are these definitions even if we aren’t actively living them? I’ve learned over time that those who talk the loudest are indeed sometimes all talk, unable to back up their bold proclamations with any direct action. Or even worse, acting in direct opposition to the words they espouse. An astrologer I adore, Colin Bedell, once said, “Integrity is security, and integrity is walking your talk.” We witness this in the actions of ourselves and others, that maybe that general hum of anxiety most people are feeling is just the incongruence of their words and motions.

Still, for all our philosophies about language’s shortcomings, life sometimes reveals the truth with striking clarity.

A few years ago, I had the immense privilege of sitting in a yoga classroom where students were invited to share. I no longer recall what prompted the reflection, only that it concerned the ineffable quality of the human soul. One student raised her hand and described losing both of her parents, one to dementia, the other to ALS. She recounted the differences between the two illnesses: the parent with dementia lost memory rapidly, preserving other faculties, while the parent with ALS lost the power to communicate entirely, trapped in a body that would no longer answer.

Yet, she said, in those final moments with each parent, the experience was indistinguishable.

It was the experience of sitting in the presence of pure love.

There was hardly a dry eye in the room. The irony that the student’s words illustrated to a room full of people: words do, in fact, fall short

.

As I’ve been contemplating the physical body, I can’t help but ponder what it means to embody. The word itself means to be an expression of or give form to (an idea, quality, or feeling). Our bodies, these physical vessels that move us through the world, make the invisible visible. Others see our values or thoughts through our daily actions. Our hands write lyrics that become love in verse; our physical actions make ideas manifest for others to witness. I read, therefore I become a reader. I practice daily sadhana and become a yogi. If I flip the bird at a grandma holding up traffic, I am the embodiment of road rage. Believe it or not, these last two are not inherently mutually exclusive, and that is why we practice.

Upon first contemplating the anamaya kosha, the most superficial layer of self, in the yogic system known as the koshas, I wanted to dismiss it as just that, superficial. I’m realizing now that what is most visible is, in fact, the embodiment of our deepest truths. We don’t have to wear a graphic tee for our outfit to tell a story. A hairstyle choice might make others consider you chic, “c*nty” or a Karen. Our bodies are an expression of the energy that resides beneath the surface. A heavy sigh carries deep meaning. A lip nibble means you’re worried. When we find something funny, we laugh. We whistle while we work. We hum when we’re happy. Salt water wells up in our eyes when we are overwhelmed with grief or joy.

Even our language reflects these acts of embodiment. We “stand up” for what we believe. We “bow” under pressure. We “grasp” for an idea. We “look away” from injustice or we “rise up” against oppression. It strikes me in this way how much our bodies matter. How in this life, this time, this is the way we are known. How our very actions reflect all we hold to be true.

On a personal level, I’ve been considering what it means to be an embodiment of the value I hold dearest and truest, love, and what that might look like. How love in its tangible, embodied form may not be a passionate poem, it might be two squeezes of a hand. It might be someone saving you a seat, or wiping the boogers out of your five-year-old’s eyelashes. It might be a meme sent without explanation. It might be baking gluten-free marshmallow brownies for someone’s birthday. It might be a small act of service that the other person never even knows about. It might be a simple, “Hey, how was your day?” It might be holding a grain of compassion for a person you’ve never met who lives a life completely different than yours.

In summary, I suppose what I’m saying is that how we act matters. How we show up reflects what we believe. Our acts of embodiment are who we are, and now I’m nourishing myself with and offering you the same food for thought as an act of love.