Recently by Amy Stutsman

so we made it through opening night of marisol and season ten. ahhh. good show everyone. that was my first night ever on stage in a theatrical production. very exciting. very relieving. and i think it went well, despite a few mishaps here and there! what a huge rush to perform for a full audience, especially a receptive and expressive one. it makes the grueling, sleep deprived past month somehow completely worthwhile. there is so much yet that i personally want to polish with my character, but overall i feel good about the show. the entire cast and crew is incredible. our director is amazing. i truly appreciate bryan's spirit, his patience, laughter, strong yet gentle guidance, extensive notes, flat vowels! all the peoples involved in this production have been working quite hard and keeping such positive attitudes in the midst of physical illness, technical set-backs, and major harassments from me! thank you all for this most meaningful experience. connecting closely with your beautiful human spirits day and night in the green room, the flex, backstage, on stage, and then aside from the theater, i find more joy, more love, more light awakened within my own self. namaste. 

my character, marisol's angel, experiences a rather extreme shift of identity in this drama. she has known only her roll as guardian for all of her existence. then suddenly she takes it upon herself to assume a different roll. a warrior. for a cause with a most uncertain outcome. a cause greater than herself. greater even than her love for the one she is in direct care of. this is heartbreaking. but necessary.
in my personal life such a scenario is not unfamiliar. i know about care-taking. i know about seeing to the needs of others before my own self. this is how i was raised. but in recent years i have also learned to depart from certain attachments to loved ones. i have become aware that unless i fight for my truth i am actually doing a disservice to those i love. it has taken much time to convince me this is no selfish endeavor. for the angel it took thousands of years.
realizing that true growth and reconfiguration cannot come about without considerable loss is difficult at best. yet can we not all learn life's most valuable strengths while fending for ourselves? loss of loved ones, teachers, leaders, and so on can leave us bewildered and devastated. severing on some level is often needed in order for us to ask who we honestly are, what we honestly believe. the question may be terrifying. it has been for me. and perhaps still is from time to time. i am, however, continually learning to plunge into the fright of such fluid reality knowing that through it i will grow stronger in myself and thus be of much more significant impact on those around me. then fear is transformed to joy.
no one can give to me the force i have already within myself. even as i can give this to no one. we do have the power to either remind each other of or distract each other from our genuine lives. yet i think that when we begin to learn our own depths, regardless of outward influence, we are becoming our rightful selves.

last week on thursday night bryan asked cassie and me to describe in the five senses what our guardian angels would be like. i drew from what i find in life to be of deep comfort and fulfillment. since a very young age going to sit in a tree or walking in the woods is how i have sought comfort where no human could give it. so i told them my angel would look something like a tree. and sandalwood. that's what she smells like. the descriptions came easily then. bryan, that was a good suggestion. it really helped me get my angel on. en serio.
after i went home and to bed i was dreaming restlessly about a loved one several hundreds of miles away. the dream was interrupted by a beep on my phone. it was a message from him, the one in my dream. he shared with me a dream he had just awakened from in which there was a little tree so far away and the scent of sandalwood.
en serio.