Lunch bowls dinner leftover- layered brown rice with fresh spinach, chick peas coconut curry, topped with avocado and sprinkles of hemp and flax seeds 

There are many smaller steps on the modern man’s hero’s journey but nevertheless is seems to break down into 3 distinct phases.

“Life is about loosening our grip. We hold on to things because we’re unsure. What will happen if I take this risk? If I make this choice? It’s in the letting go that we experience who we can be. Life is different, fascinating, curious, and magnificent”.

Things start to shift in our lives when we connect with our deeper selves, which is inherently an emotional connection rather than intellectual. When we set that deep intention and follow through (through inward practice of reflection, meditation, or prayer), we intuitively start breaking the rules we’ve been used to follow. We stop asking permission and start doing more of the simple things we enjoy, from writing in our journal, walking, to acknowledging our pain and suffering, and maybe changing our relationships or career.

Once we uncover and become aware of our set of beliefs we realize we’ve been trading ourselves unfairly. We do have determination, and all we wish for is without a doubt within our reach. It’s a matter of being curious about our own abilities and our own truth. When we’re kind and respectful with ourselves, we liberate ourselves, and the shy, naked truth will come out. Our truth, our consciousness, the energetic power within us has always been wanting to come out

So proud of my beloved @arranharv who’s always relentlessly pursued his artwork for its sake and never for any other reason. He’s always been a constant inspiration (as cheesy as that might sound), his passion for his artwork a reminder that the things we do without expecting external recognition are the very things that we keep doing, for no other reason other than the pure joy of exploration and self expression (some may call the latter “selfish” but we all need it in our lives).

I don't remember this, but when I was fifteen, I decided to move overseas, or so my dad says. I am not sure why I would have thought of going far away at that young age. Maybe it had to do with my parents' quiet divorce and my mom's shaky new marriage that followed. I'm sure it also had to do with growing up in a communist country where everyone dreamed to get away, if for nothing else, to see what was beyond the tightly locked Romanian borders.

I was a nerd on the outside and a rebel on the inside. When I was about twelve, I learned to knit, a typical pastime of older women back then. When I was seventeen, I set a ridiculous goal for myself: to knit a sweater each month. I also loved to read, and I taught myself to knit whilst also reading. My mom, an extremely sociable person, often had people over for dinner. I remember hiding in my bedroom while voices resounded from our little kitchen, and do my knit/read routine. One time my godmother came in to check out my weird new sport, and nicknamed me Napoleon, for doing many things at the same time. By the end of the year, I had knitted 10 sweaters and am not sure what I ended up doing with them. It was an accomplishment I sure was proud of, although I had the sense to not brag much about it.