How do you know? When the most embarrassing momnt of your life arrives? How do you dress for it?

Danielle Elise

looking at this G-d sent, heaven creation and hoping you’re not broken in the same places I am.

I am trying to remember what the sand felt like beneath my feet... but I have forgotten.

bitter. like tea leaves steeped for too long. hot coffee burnt and dark like the gravel beneath my feet and deep in the back of my dry throat, bitter. ash and astringent vinegar. Catching flies with the honey trap at the tip of my tongue. Drawing you in with my sweet words but darling, beware. My mouth is filled with an acid wine.

caution: language TRUTH

When mourning becomes a state of being and I must grin and bare my teeth so that my son might learn to smile.

When we live in the shadow of death And we must learn to smile and grin and bare our breasts and sacred skin to scare away the danger that is so obsessed yet only appeased by our disarmament.

I must be broken down, pulsed and puréed for your consumption lest my existence seem unfair to you because your mind cannot digest me.

Fuck. Respectability?

When my brown eyes and brown thighs frighten you simply because they are fully enshrined in my body.... And my body, It is a temple.

Does it put the fear of God in you?

Let it put the fear of God in you.

If I may pursue my life and my liberty at the sacrifice of my happiness, I will do it.

I have done it. For thousands of years under a searing sun

I. Have. Done it.

And I am done.

I am done.

I threw away the life i had for another one. Wrung it out, sucked the magic like juice from a pomegranate. meticulous/delicious and quickly.

I know who i am. I know what I want. I know how I want to live in the world.

cheers to 24.

last year wasn’t bad. A mattress, a borrowed bed.melted candles and melted ice cream on a wonderful waffle, and tonight? Tonight is quiet. A glass of cheap wine and a sitcom playing softly in the background. And another, softer thing. and this day is different. This year has had so many beginnings I can hardly imagine what the middle will look like. I am over and over again floored at my ability to fluctuate, to grow, to stay and to go. And I am tired, and I am willing and I am at the end of another beginning.

And so I’m sitting here cross-legged on my borrowed couch in my apartment. Wow. well, a couch and an apartment. And another city. An old city.

With rivers that I know and streets that I have walked a million times. A hazy future In the palm of my hands and just the same off ahead someplace.

twenty-four, I welcome you.

cheers to growth.

This time last year, I was working as a barista two blocks from Santa Monica beach, and living in LA again for the third time. I was a full time artist and had just released my first song, New House.

I had also just filmed a campaign for Skullcandy headphones.  I regularly served espresso to comedians and actors who made Cielo their go to spot for craft coffee.

I was in the studio, in writing sessions and going to Nightswim at the Hollywood Roosevelt every week.  I was living and working in the industry. Networking like a boss, and living mostly out of our Jeep. I loved it. We moved around  LA every few weeks. I lived life on the fly, things were totally unpredictable and just a little ( okay, a LOT) crazy.

Fast forward 3 months, and I’m living in Orange County.

Having started and quit my 2nd job in Hollywood at an upscale boutique hotel (hey Mama Shelter!)  I was completely broke, homeless and stressed the week of my 23rd birthday. But we were moving to Fullerton for a job, not mine but Darrens. I just closed my eyes, crossed my fingers and prayed that I’d scrape up a coffee job at a place other than Starbucks.

We spent a week at a camp for kids in foster care.  We stayed with relatives. We searched for an apartment. I applied for jobs. We were semi- stable. We moved in with senior missionaries, joined a church plant, and I found a job as a hostess.

We were smooth sailing then, employed and cruising in the real OC. Still driving down for Nighswim every now and then, hiding the fact that we now lived in suburbia. Things were good. We talked about life goals.

Stay here? Start a family here? Darren was eager  to settle down and build something worthwhile. I declined to shoulder the burdens of a transient lifestyle, and we butted heads for a while.

Sure I wanted a family, but not there. I missed LA and the bigness of it. The adventure of finding new things in undiscovered places. I missed the freedom and carefree-ness of moving around.

I knew I was remembering selectively but I didn’t care. I wanted to think about all the good and easy and forget the hard.

My first and foremost thought about having a kid was “HELL YES!” Kids are super portable.. I’d love to add another human to our adventure, and I wanted to do it while we were still fun and alive.

And so we kept apartment hunting. and slowly started to imagine what life might be like. We decide that we wanted to start a family within 5 years. Before I was 28 and he 30. We decided that we definitely wanted to stay on the west coast and raise a family there.

Now, note this. At this point we’d been married 3 years, and had never used any sort of birth control. We honestly didn’t know if it would be easy to have kids, or if we’d have to work for it. We believed the latter, so we decided to give it a bit of a go.  

HA!

SO, early October, deep in the throes of some serious OC chilling, we find out that we’ll be expecting a baby come May.

My, my my. What to do?

Find out in pt 2!

Oh My Sōl. Water/Homebirth pt.1

wild eyes

A new part of myself is born.Is here, existing somehow outside of my own skin.

And it has taken some parts of me with it. Not leaving me vacant, but neither the same as it found me. It is a slow time. The boiling pot, water slowly filling the tub.I can look into my eyes and see that I am different to myself. Examine me.  I am softer, gentler, emotions always bubbling just near the surface. I have been broken down to my lowest form and built back up, atom by atom. Contraction after contraction, wave after wave. Fully present in my body, fully broken down. I have suffered. Given all I have, and in a moment to have the world given back to me.

I was startled, looking into the mirror for that first time.

Looking at a girl who looked similar to me but wildly different. Physical features were different, sure. The soft belly, warm cheeks. But the eyes, her eyes were new. Tired, wild.. knowing. It was in that moment I knew I’d changed.