It sort of sounded like one of those dreaded homework assignments, the kind you wanted to squirm out of as a kid.  This time my boyfriend was the teacher.   One day Larry announced we would have a "Who Am I" page on the site.  So here I am, the night before we leave for South America (it's midnight and we leave at 6 a.m.)  trying to figure out who I am... and then describe the indescribable to a group of family, friends and near-strangers.  Needless to say, I've procrastinated, as words seem like clumsy generalizations for such a complex topic.  But, I will attempt to convert some of my thoughts and feelings into words.  So here goes a rough draft... of me. 

  Lately, I have been going through somewhat of a metamorphosis inside, hence all the outer changes in my life.  I realize I am not any of the circumstances that make up my life, because they can and do take on different shapes quite frequently.   The one constant I have found is well... God.  Perfect love, consciousness and awareness.  I have also found that getting in touch with God and living in the image and likeness of him/her in our material world, can be a bit of a challenge.  In this evolutionary dance of life, I believe we are all moving towards a greater awareness of our soul.  But since we have free will,  we can and do express who we want to be in every moment of every day.  The life we live is a manifestation of that.

  To give you some context, the "me" some of you have known in the recent past probably appeared to be an ambitious television reporter.  Ten years ago?  A college student studying communication, hoping to make a difference in the media world.  Twenty years ago?  A nine-year-old girl who loved to fly off the jungle gym, put on dance recitals on my backyard swing set and play hide and go seek until my little body could run and laugh no more. 

   I remember as a little girl, wanting to live at home with my parents, be kind to everyone and sing and dance freely forever.  I didn't really
think about it; it just felt right.  Slowly, I started realizing changes within me, much of it brought on by social conditioning.  I noticed that some of the youthful exuberance that bubbled within me was not accepted as my physical body grew.  Peer pressure can be subtle, but strong.  Think about how we, as a culture, might perceive a child dancing gleefully in a silly, unbridled innocence versus how we view a grown adult moving their body with an unrestrained freedom.  Hmmm.   Since I didn't like the judgment that came from not fitting in, I conformed in order to fit in.  But that trade-off left me feeling fragmented and lost.  It was from that place I proceeded to build an identity.  You can see why I sometimes felt as if I was floating around like a willow in the wind, because my foundation was a bit shaky.

  Through the years, I gained many achievements, which brought me praise.  I made the cheerleading team in high school, a top sorority in college and a broadcasting career in adulthood.  But I wasn't sure if I really wanted to do or be any of those things or I just craved that positive reinforcement.  Such questions rushed to my attention shortly before my 29th birthday (which makes sense if you know anything about the Saturn Return).  My idea of who I had become started coming into conflict with an emerging concept of who I wanted to be.  I may have looked great on the outside but a look into my heart knew this life I had created simply didn't feel like me anymore.  So you could say I took a huge leap of faith and decided to change what I knew didn't feel right.  So I left my career in television news, my home in the Bay Area and just about everything else I was using to define me.  Today, if you were to ask me who I am, I could not offer you an easily definable description.  Although we are all tempted to categorize each other by title, profession, income, race and status... I believe those categories do an injustice to the real person inside.

  I am, as are all of us, a complex web of consciousness, a merging of body, mind and spirit with a past to learn from, a present to experience and a future to create.  I am all of my experiences... and I am none of them.  I am who I choose to be, either consciously or unconsciously in this eternal moment of now.  I am a human becoming, living the grandest version of me I can imagine.  You may see my fears, when I let them control me.  I know it's all part of this growing, changing experience called life.  But my preference is to come from love, as that is the person I aspire to be.  I do know I would not take back or alter a single experience I've had, as they all have allowed me to be here today, with this perspective.  I see now, every moment, relationship or choice, was perfect, despite my frequent judgments about them.  My goal is to see the perfection always, regardless of outer circumstance.  I do believe everything happens for a reason, a reason of our own choosing.  It is from this conscious place I am rebuilding my vision of who I am.. and I don't think I'll ever stop.

  So, like I said, this is truly a rough draft of my thoughts on me now.  It is subject to change, just as we are all capable of changing ourselves and our lives in any way we can dream.