September 6, 2009 – Cool, sunny. Miss Frieda has graduated to sunning herself on the porch. Can’t quite leave her alone there, because she might vault the fence, but she loves to be part of things, and I think she is a great spirit. The housesitter couldn’t get her out of the crate – she growled and snarled. It will take time. She is a working dog, and loves to work with me, and hang out with Lenore.
  I’ve been thinking about fear, which I’ve often written about here. I have made a lot of progress with it and am learning how I spent much of my life with my own fear buried and covered up, too busy in so many ways, too disturbed to understand it or deal with it. Sleep is one of the last frontiers in this passage, I think. I am reluctant to grasp the nature and depth of fear, and it’s particular grip. I am accepting it, and I do believe it is a space to cross. I don’t know precisely where I am in this geography but I have come far. Have a ways to go, and will always have a ways to go. This is not a trip that ever completely ends, and I don’t want it to.
  For me, a happy life is not a life without fear or trouble. A happy life is a self-aware life, where you come to know and love yourself, and the things you do.
   I am not the same as I was. I’ve gotten help and traversed a lot of medical terrain. MD’s. Therapy. Holistic and Homeopathic Medicines. Visualizations. Meditations. Energy Work. Medications. More and more, I am seeing that the more I let go out these external notions of help – many are quite good and useful – the better I do, the stronger I feel, the happier and more peaceful I am.
  I feel I am closer to breaking through this veil of confusion, distraction, and the need to fill my life up with people and places to hide my fear. Better to fill up a love with love, good friends, good work. And sure, great dogs. I have a lot to do, and I will share as much of it as I can. Part of the story. Frieda and are on the move, getting better.
  I was touched by the afternoon at Gardenworks yesterday. Couple of hundred people, and a cloud of love and support to help me define and shape my life. So much has changed. So much was lost. So much was gained.
 But I’m in a better place, and that is nothing but good.