Light danger.

Dr Carter Godwin Woodson II is my cat. He has a birthday coming up. He will be one year old on Valentine's Day.

This fool right here.

He..*sighs * ….“hides” behind doors and jumps out to give me love nips and if he misses he rolls around until his paws are up.

You must rub the tummy.

Also, it's not even really “behind”. More like “in close proximity to the top of the killer stairs/on a killer shelf in the clothes closet/in the bathtub where he can do his splayed-paws-Jean-Clawed-van-Damm move”, always starting in the loaf position.

I love him.

And that's my life right now. A lot of fun and beauty amid light danger that I can manage and usually quell, but always on the look-out for patterns of problematic behavior that I might be overlooking because of the cuteness.

Accurate.

It's not so much I'm on alert—I know what that feels like and that's no longer there—as it is a pervasive awareness that this is it.

My immediate environment is improving daily, but the world world?

People are going to people until people stop peopleing.

We all saw the James Webb telescope photos. We saw galaxies upon galaxies and the scale of the image was the size of a grain of sand held at arm's length.

Galaxies upon galaxies.

Arm's length.

And we are fighting—killing, stealing—when we could be eating mangos on the beach. We can band together and create any utopia we want and we have credit scores instead.

That acceptance has settled in, as has the acceptance that by all measures, I have far exceeded any expectation my oncologists had for me. That doesn't mean I can't drop dead after this sentence from an aneurysm, you know, but according to all the doctors at my last physical all systems are go, which for me is code for Don't Waste This Time Doing Stupid Stuff.

And I'm not.

I planted a lot of seeds during my winter years a couple of years ago. They were difficult to plant because in order to do so you have to be somewhat optimistic that something might grow.

I had no optimism at the time. People were dying around me, the life I built was gone…what in the…

But I did it anyway out of discipline and spite. Just because I didn't feel like doing it doesn't give me a pass from not doing it unless I sincerely and for good reason can't. And the best revenge is creating a life such that revenge is not even in my vibration, that the thought of it is absurd.

The biggest “can't ” has been the usage of my voice as a voice actor.

After all that happened, I jumped back into finishing a job that a friend had asked me to do. I relished the idea of doing it with total abandon.

I forgot about trauma and what that can do to the body. My voice is part of my body.

After two failed attempts of trying to finish this, I sought MD advice, who refered me to therapist, which I thought was odd at the time. It's my vocal chords that won’t work, ya dumb board certified double platinum award and saved a bunch of lives whatever whatever doctor.

I'm not going to go into it here, but divorce does more than just separate families. It changes your identity.

It changes your literal and figurative voice.

Divorce by itself can change your voice. I did not know this.

If there is any other separation—like kids—add that.

Did you have to move? Add that.

Was there a pandemic that stopped world markets and killed many and has left many with long lasting effects? Add that.

Huh. Imagine all of that having an effect.

So we worked gently, slowly, on me finding my voice. It took years.

The old voice is gone because she's gone. That woman is gone. This woman has lived and walked through fire and has forged this voice.

Once I accepted this, the neural pathways began doing their thing.

And now I'm just beginning to use my voice again in that capacity and that feels good.

Love.

I don't know what the future holds. I’m not absent of challenges and obstacles that must be overcome. There are light dangers out there that I can manage and even occasionally quell, but I am also always on the look-out for patterns of problematic behavior within myself and others that I might be overlooking because of the cuteness.

Thank you for hearing my voice here.