A couple months ago, happily nested in my Venice Beach apartment, I kept finding myself being so critical, so hard on myself, for the life I lived in my Brooklyn apartment.
It was specifically about living in that apartment, too. I felt claustrophobic thinking about how I spent day in and day out cramped in a studio, how that whole wall of window bore sunlight into my soul every morning, how I was ungrounded on the 14th floor, on display for all of Brooklyn on that terrace. (Even in writing this, I feel a tightness start to form; I feel the need to shake it out.)
The truth is, I felt none of that when I was there. In a session with my healer and friend, Ryan Glassmoyer (whom I see for guided meditations and healings through her Abstract Therapie program biweekly, 10/10 recommend!), she reminded me of how special and important that home, that time, was for me. I moved, often dancing, through my days in the fluidity of a studio space that spilled into the outside that was licked by sunlight most days, welcoming to rain on others, collecting snow in winter. I spent evenings on the rooftop patio watching the sun set across the Williamsburg Bridge, Domino Park, Manhattan. I jumped rope and hula hooped on my terrace, gleeful at the amount of outdoor space—in NYC—that was all mine. I had friends over and re-thought my prior assumption of self that I didn’t like to host; instead it was about having a space that made it feel easy, inviting and comfortable. I could walk the water, bike up to Greenpoint, strut Berry Street every evening with a friend who lived just across the way. We had a gym. There were grills. I made friends in the building. I had an in-unit washer and dryer! (Re-writing my memories now from the more recent above, I’m rediscovering the joys, rest and rejuvenation that life, and apartment, gave me.)
It was a cocoon for me, and it gave me everything I needed. It was in that time that I moved that I started seeing butterflies, too. Monarchs. Far more than I ever had in Manhattan. (Out there in the wilds of Brooklyn..) Now, in LA, I feel like I see even more than I saw then; they lilt in the front yard of my building; they pause near the palm tree outside my balcony. And it makes me smile and remember, how big and special that all felt then, and how big and special this feels now.
I needed that then, and I loved that then. It took that for this, a West Coast move, and I deserve to give myself gratitude for that time, and to remember that time for how much I appreciated it, and how proud I was of myself for all of it.
I have compassion for my past self. Where she was got me to where I am now. Who she was informed who I am now.
And thank you, to 325 Kent. You really were a dream.