My Open Heart and Hands, in front of my sister Paula’s, zichrona l’vracha’s, grave marker.
Today, while cleaning through the piles of boxes and corners of my home that I need to get through before I go away, I came upon the original vow I made on January 21, 2008. I have been crying reading through my notes about this vow on scratch paper, tucked into one of my journals.
I do not speak in detail or much about the folks I have parented, cared for or held in tenuous and troubling and complex times. There are privacy issues and also, a deep desire to remain anonymous in my giving, which seems not possible, since so many folks have been involved in these adventures of mine. It’s different though when talking about things in a public context.
I’ll be honest and put down here the journal entries and notes that led to my initial vow to take some space for myself. These initial notes and thought are some of the origins that led to this process of going away for a full year Sabbatical retreat. It has been a long time coming.
The Vow I made:
In full awareness of the mysterious flow of the Universe, the River of Sparkling Light from which and to which we all return and belong, I Shoshanah Adamah Cohen/Nicole Andrée Barchilon Frank vow to attend to the Garden of my Soul and the seeds I am planting there of:
~Time for Deepened Torah Practice: Hebrew Study, Meditations, Prayer-Practice, Study of Sacred Texts, Communion with the Holy One
~Time for Writing and Art Projects: Cookbook, Arcata Eye Articles, Whatever needs to be written or created by me
~Time for Attending to my Body: Exercise, Dancing, Yoga, Walking, Massage, Trip to Hot Springs
I choose to not be distracted or drawn towards the RED LIGHT needs of others for 90 days from:
The Full Moon of Shevat, Tu B’Shevat 5768, New Year of the Trees, January 21, 2008
to
The Full Moon of Nissan, Tu B’Nissan, Erev Pesach April 19, 2008
At which time, I will reassess this vow and decide if I am called to continue this process for another period of time.
I have been re-dedicating myself to this vow for various periods of time, since the original writing. It has transformed my world. It is and has been powerful. I have said “No” so much more than I ever used to, creating Gevurah boundaries to temper my Chesed nature. I’ve included my favorite chart of the Tree of Life, that describes these qualities.
Tree of Life by Cindy Gabriel, copyright 1992
Another excerpt from the journal entry is a poem I wrote to navigate some of this territory. I’ve posted it in the Poetry section. It’s called Hineyni-Here I Am
So, from vowing to take space and saying “No” consciously more and more, I have actually managed to create the environment I have been needing. It has been a long journey. I still visit folks who are ill and attend to lots of people in various situations and generally offer myself to a lot of people in need. What is most relevant, is that my time doing this has shifted and it was the vow I took that helped shape that change.
Taking vows in the Jewish tradition is a very serious thing. We are encouraged NOT to take or make vows. They are too easy to break, and when they are made with intention/kavanah, they are seen as obligations between oneself and the Holy One and whomever we are also making a promise/vow to.
On Kol Nidre, we specifically are forgiven, in advance for all vows we take. There are lots of reasons for this, but essentially for me, what resonates in this has to do with the fact that it is VERY hard to keep promises and vows and there is a built in understanding of our human nature implicit in the practice of Kol Nidre.
So, when I take a vow, I do so knowing it is a big deal. I do not make vows lightly and I endeavor not to break them. This in itself is a very big challenge and daily practice.
May your vow taking be real and meaningful and may you find ways to release yourself from vows that are no longer relevant for you and to strengthen and engage more with the ones that are most right for you.
Attending to my vow of keeping Shabbat, so that’s all for now! Shabbat Shalom!
November 23, 2014 I am on my way to Salt Lake City to celebrate my daughter’s 30th birthday. I am with my youngest “child,” Ethan, who will be eighteen in January. Ethan’s older brother will be 28 one week before him. It is just Ethan and I journeying to spend time with my daughter, her partner and their adopted seventeen-year-old daughter. We will be there for five days and it will take us two days driving one way and the same back to do this journey.
I found us an off-the-beaten-path place to stay. It was about ½ an hour from Interstate I-80 East, between Loveloc and Winnemucca in Nevada. This is about the half-way spot on the long two-day drive. Despite my best efforts, we arrived in the dark, because even if you leave Humboldt County at 7:00 a.m. and just drive all day, in the winter the sun sets at 4:30 p.m. We did stop for lunch, but otherwise we drove solidly.
So we got here around 5:30 p.m. I had printed out directions and spoken with the proprietor many times, because there is no cell-phone service or gps that works for parts of the drive out here. I still did manage to get us here. The trusty odometer on the car worked, and we turned off I-80 East and drove the seventeen miles on a paved empty road into the Nevada night. We turned right at the road that was exactly where it was supposed to be, once we hit that seventeen mile mark. It was a well-graded gravel road. We drove three more miles and sure enough, there was the sign for the Old Pioneer Garden Inn on our left.
The first sound I heard upon getting out of the car was that of the goats bleating and greeting. I love that sound. There is something so goofy and friendly about it. I also know it means goat cheese and goat milk, which are certainly favorites of mine. David, our host, pulled up in his truck, when we arrived and said I should follow him to our cabin. We pulled into a lovely wooden cabin. It was 37° outside, but David had turned on the heat in the cabin, so it was nice and warm. He showed us around our old pioneer-style rustic cabin and told us breakfast would be at 8:30 a.m. at the main house where he had met us.
So, my boy and I settled in and went to bed pretty early, since we were tired and even though there was WiFi access, it was slow, which was fine. We have been listening to an excellent book on tape, at the suggestion of my son; the Brother’s K by David James Duncan. I listened to a little more of it, snuggled under my warm down comforter and handmade quilt and then went to sleep.
Now, the best part, was waking up in the wee hours of the night, something I do all the time, wrapping up in my wool scarf and walking out the front door to a crystal clear sky of stars that looked so bright and so close it was hard to believe they really were millions of miles/light years away.
Crisp, cold and stunning, stunned again and again by the beauty of this universe I live in. My sense of loneliness and also belonging deeply intertwine when I am alone in nature. The only sounds being goats or water running over stream, the only light–star-shine, the only distraction from encountering wonder and Holiness–my own mind and thoughts. This is what I long for, crave and need. As I approach the time when I will have retreat, the hunger for these qualities is growing exponentially. It is as if the spaces between my cells and the distance between the stars are all in collusion with one another and in communication of some sort. If I can just get still enough, quiet enough and away from all the other wonderful distracting and important things in my life, some vital and true song and story is embedded there for me.
I could do my retreat here, perhaps, or someplace like this, off the beaten path, that’s what I’m looking for. I’m also looking at a monastery in Ireland that has hermitage cabins I have been granted permission to stay in. I’m still searching and asking folks to help me find a home or homes to plant my hungry soul for several months of solitary contemplation and writing and praying.
If you know of somewhere, high, dry or wet, wildish and isolated, that’s the place for me. I am hoping to only have to change locales three to four times over the course of a year. Four months in one place or three at a time seems ideal to me and will allow for me to not be in a fierce winter climate while I am isolated, which definitely does not appeal to me. This is not about being an endurance naturalist. I need electricity, warm water, a stove, a river or stream or some other form of living water nearby and quiet.
I am looking forward to my time alone with the goats, stars and river sounds, and trying mightily to manage the next seven months of my life before then with some semblance of grace instead of irritation or frustration. I am already on my way out the door. This is perhaps difficult for those that are used to my being so fully in the door and in their kitchens, homes and business.
This journey outward and away to go inward has begun and I am slowly disengaging from responding or getting involved in all the myriad situations and stories of those around me.
It feels good and right for me, even as I worry and fret just a little, about how it feels for those I love and who love me. This need though, is not a mild wish or dream on my part, it is pretty much the loudest sound inside of me, besides the beating of my heart.
Where I want to be–table and view outside the cabin we stayed in at the Old Pioneer Garden Inn
Photo taken by Frédéric Brenner, courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York. I’m the one holding the far end of the scroll, in the white skirt. This picture was taken over ten years ago.
I am looking out over a sea of yellow, green, red and orange from the fourth story window of my father’s Denver apartment. The Rocky Mountains are visible in the distance and I can even see snow on the high peaks. The sky is blue with clouds. My father (who is 91 and super healthy) and his wife Judy are napping. I am wide awake and feel energized. My time here in Boulder and Denver has been packed so full that even trying to describe one event will take me many pages. I will be finding ways to share parts of this story as slices of a much greater pie.
I was in Colorado in mid-October which coincided with the culmination of the Jewish High Holy Day season of holidays, called SimchatTorah/Joy of and in Torah. We dance around our congregations seven times with the Torah scrolls in the arms of those strong enough to carry them and then we read the very last lines and the very first lines of the Torah. We can NEVER be done with Torah, so we immediately have to read the very first line after finishing the last line. There is a seamless sounding of Hebrew words and Torah between the last letter and the first. There are numerous mystical teachings about this, but the most obvious and frequently shared one is this:
The last word of the Torah scroll is the word Yisrael, and the first word of the Torah is the word B’reishit. The last letter then is an “L” sound, which is the letter Lamed.
The first letter is a “B” sound or a “V” sounding letter named Bet or Vet. It is a letter with two names and sounds and considered one letter. It has the numeric value of two.
The Lamed has the numeric value of 30. Lamed is the tallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet, and it reaches up towards heaven. When you put the lamed in front of the bet/vet, you get the word “Lev.” Lev, in Hebrew, means heart and mind or heart/mind. It is not the word for brain. There’s an ocean of teachings in this, but I’ll stick to a strand of seaweed right now.
translation = a pure heart
Our exercise in reading the way we do is to remember and highlight that the entire Torah from end to beginning and beginning to end is about our hearts. It is a journey through the Lev that brings us into relationship with each other, the planet, our teachers and all of creation in a joyous dance of loving-kindness, righteous and just society, goodness, compassion and forgiveness.
Before we read these words of Torah in their completion and beginning, we’ve danced the seven times around our congregations with them as our dancing partners. We form a procession of joyous folks following the scrolls and their bearers around the buildings we pray in. Or, we do seven joyous dances around and around like whirling dervishes for as long as we can. I found myself at Nevei Kodesh, the Jewish Renewal congregation in Boulder, where my friend Rabbi Tirzah Firestone was leading the services. All of us in the Jewish Renewal movement are still in deep mourning for our beloved Rebbe Zalman M. Schacter-Shalomi, may his memory be for a blessing. So, our prayers were laden with tears and honoring of him and it was so wonderful to be with a community of folks all collectively mourning his death, but also celebrating his legacy.
So, in honor of our Holy Torah, we danced for several hours with the two scrolls we had and we were pumped and JOYOUS! The wonder continued beyond my wildest imaginings and became extraordinary as the evening unfolded (literally). Rabbi Tirzah’s community chose to unspool the entire scroll with all of us present. We were instructed to form a gigantic circle, there were between fifty and seventy folks in this large Torah holding circle. Each of us stood shoulder to shoulder with our hands out in front of us and as the scroll was unwound in front of us, we held the top inch of it. We had to be careful not to touch the text and only hold onto the parchment at the top. This is a very intense and rare thing, the scrolls are extremely sacred, fragile and imbued with tremendous meaning. It takes a great deal of trust and faith for any congregation to do this. If a Torah scroll accidentally falls often the entire congregation has to fast and do penance. The Torah scroll is not a book, or a piece of parchment alone, it is considered sacred in and of itself and it feels that way to anyone engaging with it.
In our imperfect human circle, there were gaps where some people were too far apart from each other and places where some folks were closer together. I moved three times, going under or around the scroll to attend to these gaps. I am acutely aware of the Torah, in my body and blood and could not tolerate or hold the place of trust about these gaps in the circle. It was literally impossible for me to not go try and make sure that the tension in the scroll was not too great, behaving as is my nature, and being a Jewish mother to the Torah scroll, not just to the people holding it.
I helped a little boy get on a chair because having him hold our sacred scroll was too awkward from his height and he really wanted to hold onto it. So, we, his mother and I, had to keep moving him, and the chair and asking the people next to us to hold our parts for us while we helped him be able to also participate. This was one of many spectacular moments for me, being next to this little boy and his excitement about being able to participate, which he would not have been able to do if we hadn’t figured out the chair for him to get him up to the right height.
The circle was somewhat liquid at first until it was all figured out, which took about twenty minutes. By the time I was not helping someone or making sure there wasn’t a gap I found myself by the end of the scroll. I was shoulder to shoulder with some very stoned young men. They were very aromatic and smiley. This did not reassure me, but they looked capable and blissful, so I just kept checking in with them. Why did the whole scroll get unrolled? It’s a special thing to just witness, but Rabbi Tirzah and several other Torah readers wanted to give all of us something brilliant. They went around to each person, Torah readers on the inside of the scroll, with us Torah-scroll holders on the outside. We were instructed, individually, to remove one of our hands and point somewhere we couldn’t see in front of us on the scroll. The Torah readers then read for us a few lines from where we had pointed. So, we each got our own unique special Torah reading.
The lines that I got were from Deuteronomy 31:7-9:
“Moses summoned Joshua and said to him before the eyes of all Yisrael. ‘Be strong and courageous, for you shall come with this people to the land that HASHEM swore to their forefathers to give them, and you shall cause them to inherit it. HASHEM is the One Who goes before you; He will be with you; He will not release you, nor forsake you; do not be afraid and do not be dismayed.’ Moses wrote this Torah, and gave it to the Kohanim, the descendants of Levi, the bearers of the Ark of the Covenant of HASHEM, and to all the elders of Israel.”
If you’ve been following my Jubilee series, you will understand why this felt perfect for me. I am planning to go away for a retreat and I am actively looking for the right “land.” I know I am not going to do retreat in Israel, but this piece of Torah was telling me to be strong and courageous. To trust and to not fear, that the land will be given or shown to me and that I should not be dismayed. This is amazingly helpful for me. The piece about the Torah being given to the Kohanim (the high priests) and the descendants of Levi and all the elders of Israel resonates as well. I am a Kohen, which means I am a descendant of the Kohanim, and as one of those descendants, who is deeply engaged with this handed down powerful scroll, I find it holds me more than I ever have the chance to hold it.
My several hours of dancing with our Holy Torah and holding it and watching over it were a small fraction of how I am held and danced and dreamed and nurtured by Torah.
To be on the safe side, since interpretation of our Holy text is very complex, let me ask outright for help. In case you happen to know where the Holy One has put that land for me to spend silent retreat away from people on, please let me know. I am moving closer to this place, and like my ancestors, it is not something that is clear to me. Is it over the next ridge or around a corner or at your vacation cabin? This is a place I am coming to and journeying to, but have not yet found.
Please use the contact form here to email me if you are aware of or have the perfect place for me to spend a few solitary, quiet months of retreat and prayer.
May all your dancings and movements bring you closer to your Lev Tahor, your pure heart!
Despite my intrepid “fearless” nature in general, there’s something about being alone in a cabin in the woods at night. Surrounded by beauty, surrounded by quiet, surrounded by peace I still was unable to relax at night during my recent solitary birthday retreat. Every sound was something scary, I couldn’t get comfortable sleeping because I needed to face the curtained window that faced the gated entry, just in case that would give me warning when the headlights of some very wounded and crazy person showed up to murder me.
I wish it had been otherwise, but it wasn’t. I have all kinds of tools for navigating fear. I followed my tradition’s practice of the BedtimeShema cycle, which is extraordinary and addresses all manner of difficult things that could come and attack one, including ones fears about such things. All the prayers reassure one and surround one with the Archangels and speak of the Holy One being our rescuer. They are designed to gird you for the fears and terrors of night. I spoke all of them, felt better and fell asleep for ½ an hour, until the first bird or bat or leaf stirred outside and plunked on the roof.
I spent the nights in the bedroom of my friend’s cabin. They are a practicing Buddhist and a practicing Hindu and their space reflects that. Under the extraordinarily sunny golden Indian tapestry, with mirrors sewn into the pattern to ward of the evil eye, I was still afraid. On all sides of me there were deities of powerful protection. I had three Ganesha beings watching over me and a Buddhist one as well. I tried calling on them and even did a meditation where I imagined myself surrounded by beautiful elephants walking in a circle of protection around me. I just knew they would keep me safe.
I slept for an hour maybe until the next lizard outside scurried under a pile of dried leaves. I tried the Jewish prayers again, tried the meditation, tried getting up and having a cup of chamomile tea, tried turning all the lights on, tried lighting all the candles, tried reading, tried listening to my book on tape, tried listening to meditation music of water flowing, tried and tried and tried and was very tired. No restorative lengthy hours of sleep happened for me, despite all this trying (as in really working hard) TRYING!
I am not a taker of sleeping pills, but I’ll tell you what, I really wanted some and if I’d had any handy, I would have taken them for sure.
So, I napped during the day, here and there, and I kept trying for each of the four nights I spent alone to sleep more than a few hours. The first night of my retreat I had my husband with me and we were able to sleep several hours straight, until the mouse made noises like the apocalypse in the kitchen. Since my mate went and investigated and saw the mouse, he was able to return to sleep and I was as well. I was also next to him and in his arms. But, he wasn’t there the other four nights. So, I had to address my fears.
Or at least be honest about it. What does it mean when I trust the Divine and believe that my time to leave this earth is in the Holy One’s hands? If I really feel that to be true, why would I be afraid at night or ever? Fear is not rational though, it has nothing to do with what you believe or even know, it has a flow and power all its own and it is a VERY deep and core current.
Most of us, myself included, just do everything we can to avoid it. Some folks like dipping into the horror story narratives because it is just enough fear to make them feel stimulated, but then it is all pretend. Real fear, which isn’t about Hollywood zombie take-overs, is another thing entirely. Part of why I am going away on retreat is to look at my fear, so why should I be surprised when it comes to visit me? I just wanted to look at it, not be in it! Darn, it doesn’t work that way.
This territory is well-known to spiritual practitioners or all stripes. There are tools, stories, prayers, guidelines and every manner of helpful teachings to support ones navigating these waters. Clearly, I will need to call on more of them, then I had handy with me for this virgin voyage out alone.
By the final night of my stay, I was pretty sick of my own situation and determined to face this fear head on. I chose to set up a chair outside facing the valley and the front gate. I brought my loud bear horn with me and my small can of pepper spray. I wrapped myself in a shawl and was determined, not to even bother trying to sleep but to face the night and the dark. I had forgone going outside at night, too afraid the other evenings, to appreciate the wonder of stars and half-moon rising and setting. I went outside around 4:00 am, so I knew the dawn was about two hours away and this made me feel safer.
I sang some prayers, I was afraid and I cried and I looked out at the billions of stars shining light years away, who all were singing to me. I remembered that I am their kin and despite the small noises in the night, I stayed put to hear their night song and their long, long history song. I remembered that I am a tiny speck on a tiny speck in a vast Ocean on an expanding Universe journey. My life and its certain end, just are not that big a deal when you put yourself on the deck at night and face the starlight.
So, that’s what I did my final night, and I was still afraid, but I managed it. I didn’t sleep, but at least I spent time enthralled by the beauty of night and wow, I survived to write about it! As this month of Elulunfolds, we face all kinds of fears, consciously, like the fear of having hurt others, the planet, and the Divine. Not facing those fears, will not make them go away, they just loom larger. I think I will have to do a lot more sitting outside in the dark before I can comfortably sleep alone in the woods, but I will do it.
Just like I will face the truth of who I am and what I do that is harmful to others, to myself, to the planet. The Jewish New Year is not just about getting a new start, it’s about fixing and aligning oneself with what is right and true. This means looking deeply and cracking open our hearts. Wednesday, September 24th, the Jewish New Year/Rosh Hashanah will be ushered in right before the sun sets with the sounding of the ram’s horn which we call a Shofar. This sound pierces the soul and cracks through all our hardened shells (we call klippot). I invite you to be exposed and vulnerable and to let in something strange, wondrous and transformative and in doing so, I hope you find what is sweet and true in you and in all those around you. L’Shana Tova u’Metuka (To a Sweet New Year)!
~~~~~~ *Nicole unwinds, unwraps and unfurls her thoughts for you from her home in Bayside and she does so sometimes with twinges of fear, but mostly with great gobs of joy and wonder!
*Originally published in the Mad River Union on Wednesday, September 24, 2014
The air is thick with smoke from the large fire at Happy Camp. I am several valleys away from this fire, but it is still impacting the skies here. It is smoky in the mornings here where I am on retreat for my Jubilee (50th birthday). Nevertheless, it is extraordinarily perfect. It is quiet, except for bird song, squirrel chatter and lizard movements among the dry leaves. The smoke clears by mid to late afternoon, which is when the wind seems to pick up. My days have taken on a dreamy quality of time moving extremely slowly with no sense of urgency. This is absolutely what I wanted and needed. There is a profound restorative quality to this time. I was just about at the very end of my tank, even my reserves had been used up.
“The skin of the earth
covers its imperfections
Just as my face conceals
my vast uncertainty.
In the dry cracks of the earth
I find that it has bled
from the injuries of man.
The earth has healed itself
through time moving across
its tortured face of skin.
But what shall heal me except
the sun which makes cracks in my face
so that I can come together with my land.”
In the afternoons up here, I walk to the river, moving very slowly, so that I can come together with my land.
When I get to the river, it is cold and has deep pools as well as shallows. I immerse and rejuvenate, alone with the trout, crayfish, birds and water bugs, so that I can come together with my land. Besides immersing myself in quiet and cold water, I came here to do some work. The process of self-examination and hard work of this month of Elul, which is the month that precedes the Jewish New Year called Rosh Hashanah, is always pressing upon me. I’ve written about this before and I wasn’t sure what new things I could say here. My process this year, is of course, WRIT LARGE, because it is not just about a single year, but the last 49 years and my very conscious choice about changing direction and focus. In order to do this, I have to snip the old frayed threads or sew the ragged patches up, so that my body and soul can move into the next part of my brief time on this planet, so that I can come together with my land.
Elul reminds us that life is cyclical. We make mistakes, we grow, we fight, we harm, we love, we fall down and we do these things over and over until we are no longer able to. This cycle is as old as human consciousness. There has always been war, there has always been ugliness. There has always been fear and pain. There has also always been love, and tenderness, hope and reaching for Holiness and Wholeness and more folks working on mending what is broken than folks breaking things.
This cycle, my Mussar teacher gave us a very specific assignment. I’m used to making lists of people in my life I need to ask forgiveness from and I have a practice that is pretty automatic at this point. My teacher asked our class to start the forgiveness work this Elul by forgiving folks who had hurt us for the first ten days. She wanted us to make notations and to do this work internally. There is a daily forgiveness process in the Jewish tradition that is part of the Bedtime Shema, where we grant blanket forgiveness to all who have wronged us and ask that they not suffer on account of any wrong they have done to us. Only religiously observant folks recite this blessing regularly. I attend to it in Elul, but it is kind of automatic and non-specific.
This homework assignment was really different. I had never actually made a list of all the people I needed to forgive. It was not that long, but there were some biggies on the list. I wrote a name down, and then listed the hurt that person had done me. After I completed this part of the process, I started to chant the name of the person and to speak to them and tell them I forgave them for the wrong and the hurt they had done to me, as I did so, tears came and a huge sense of release in my heart. I found myself blessing these folks after I forgave them. I certainly did not expect any of this and it took me by surprise.
For the men who raped me, I forgave them for the harm they did me, but asked that my forgiveness be connected to justice unfolding and for them never harming another person again. I asked the Holy One to please help them to find health and healing and awareness. I’ve done years of work on this territory, in various therapies, and most of the hurt is no longer present for me. There are tiny droplets of pain that re-surface now and then. I can go great swaths of time not thinking on it– “I find that it has bled from the injuries of man. The earth has healed itself through time moving across its tortured face of skin.”
There were two folks on my list that I put aside for later, I am not ready or able to forgive them on some level. I can forgive the men who raped me, but not these folks who betrayed my trust and hurt my family. I will have to get some help from my teachers about these two people and how to not be holding onto this hurt. Elul is not an easy month for me and yet this process is amazingly liberating, even being able to identify that I am not able to release those people, is helpful. It tells me I have work to do. I don’t believe forgiveness is a simple thing or that I have to grant it. In my tradition I do not have to forgive someone until they seek my forgiveness and make amends. My choosing to forgive them ahead of their asking is completely on me and also part of a deeper spiritual practice.
There is enough sticky goo in all of our lives, old hurts and tattered remnants of messy memories and shattered feelings. I would rather be free of these so that I can be of good cheer and good service for this moment unfolding right now. It is late, almost midnight. More musings on how to let go of fear and be more present coming in the next few weeks. For now, though, you don’t have to be Jewish to take advantage of this time, make a list of folks who have hurt you, see if you can forgive them, and see how it makes you feel. Take a chance on letting go of old stuff, so that you can come together with the land, which has no choice but to forgive all the wrongs we do. Did the sun not rise today, did the vegetables forget how to grow? Forgiveness is the nature of earth and we are made of this lovely loamy stardust stuff.
Nicole comes together with her land and your land and any land she can by engaging with it, and then writing about it. This column was written high in the hills as Nicole turned 50 and is now officially “over the hill.” It appeared originally in the Mad River Union on Wednesday, September 17, 2014
Open Heart Open Hands 
