Taking A Step Back - Retreat! My Affection For Native American Anything

I have a kind of lifestyle that demands action from me all the time.  It suggests that wasted time produces regrets, loss of opportunities, loss of profit...so even if there's nothing to do, there is always something to do.  But when I woke up today, something felt off; something felt different; something felt wrong.  I went to a doctor's appointment, but when I got home, I couldn't move.  I felt down.  Don't really know why.  I also felt like something's missing, and although I could've written a hit song, or practiced voice, I was stopped in my tracks with a sadness. 

Disgusted, I put my sneakers on, and thank God, it was a GREAT Spring-like day outside.  So I took advantage, and went speed-walking with my trusty i-pod.  I walked rapidly, hoping the endorphins would kick in so I could feel some relief.  It took 35 minutes, before the "joy" kicked in, but it did.  I went home, drank a glass of water.  Oprah was on.  I love Oprah, just love her, but wasn't in the mood...what's wrong with me??  Ugh!!

That's when I put on some Native American music - aha - that's something a lot of people don't know about me:  I love Native American EVERYTHING.  I love the music, the clothes, the white sage, the jewelry, the wisdom, their spiritualtiy and especially their respect for all living things and how they never take anything for granted.  Native American tradition demands a demeanor of gratitude and prayer.  I feel a strange affinity to them.  I am angry that they were forced out of their own homeland, forced to walk miles where their own children died.  The early settlers here tried to annihilate their religion, their language, their traditions...they forced them onto what is known today as reservations.  But all in all, they are still here.  I admire them...and if there is such a thing as a past life, I was definitely one of them!  I think I was with the braids and everything, lol.  I think I may have been a medicine woman...hey, what can I say! I have an awesome imagination.

Anyway, I played the music, lit some candles, did what is called smudging...that's when you take herbs (I personally like white sage) and light it in a shell and it acts as an incense.  Native Americans believe it is cleansing and releases anything negative...I love how it smells and it strangely has a calming effect on me.  I began to pray, pray and pray some more.  There were tears, for I've been worried about what may happen to my career one day...I know people reading will feel I have no reason to worry, but trust me, lol, this career has no 401K plan, or medical insurance, or any guaranteed of a pension.  Although I have already made financial preparations for that day when and if it comes, I still don't want to do anything other than sing and be a personality on NY radio!  So, I just let it out...I allowed myself to stop and cry.  Whenever you hold back tears, tears have a weird way of duplicating faster and they fight you to make an appearance...so let them out.  And I did.

Then after 20 minutes or so of prayer, calm...I took a mini retreat.  I didn't go anywhere, but I took a retreat from within.  I stopped the inner chatter, and then I felt an urge to just lie down.  So I did, face up, and did nothing, but meditate.  When I was done, I felt like the message was "Just trust that I'm taking care of you.  Stop worrying about the future, I got your back.  Great things will come for you, if you just ask and believe and then you have to be wiling to do the work and pay it forward..."  I may have lost fans who read this, lol, thinking, what the hell is up with Judy?   LOL...but it is the truth.  This is how I keep from losing my mind.  I pray.  I also thought about going back to Sedona, Arizona.  I went there alone last year for my birthday, and it proved to be the best gift I'd ever given myself.  I want to go back and see the red rock landscape, breathe that clean air, climb the canyons, taste their food...oh, it is literally bliss.  Yea, I have to go back very soon!

So sometimes to feel better, you just have to take a step back, and retreat.  Retreat doesn't mean defeat - it means simply that you need to regenerate, recouperate and refill your own fuel...You can't give what you do not have. And by the way, I did finally see Oprah!  And it was great!