Dear Homer,

Saying goodbye to a place that has been home is hard. Feeling loss, sorrow, and curiosity all at the same time.

Home for 27 years, Homer, Alaska is where we raised our son. He now is raising his month-old son in Hawaii. My husband is being cared for by his wife, while I close up our house here.

This initiative is about loving our homes, both inner-spirited and outer-infinite Xpressions. Changing climate change takes cooperation.

Earth holds us all in our places with all we need for life: water, air, humans, and critters of all kinds. Homo sapiens are social animals after all. How we treat our bodies and emotions affects how we are with all these relations. I offer inner resonance to serve the womb of shemanity. I change climate change with youth global changemakers, and savvy Xecutives, and indigenous elders. I invite you to join our conversation on December 10 for TEDxVail COUNTDOWN on climate from your home. We matter, our voices matter, our informed actions matter, climate solutions we apply in our homes matter. Find us on TEDxVail Facebook to register in advance here: https://www.facebook.com/TEDxVail

For 12 weekends in a row, I got to meet new neighbors, give the extraneous away to those who found them as highly prized new treasures in their lives. My job was clearing out my consumptive life of stuff and hosting Saturday garage sales . At first, I asked friends to put up signs in their part of our small town. after the first one, I realized this was going to take longer than I expected. So I set a Friday night routine: set up signs on the way down West Hill Road about a thousand feet above the shore, bike ride on the spit the most marvelous jut of 7.5 miles out into the middle of Kachemake Bay, bring home dinner, set up signs going up East Hill Road on the other side of Homer, stop at the top of Skyline Drive for a breathtaking 220-degree panorama of the Smokey Bay, drive home readying stuff for the next day's sale.

What did I learn in letting go of stuff? Many things no longer served or belonged in my life. I feel lighter not having to know things were just sitting there taking up space for a future call on my time. Still, boxes remain until our house actually sells, but I am feeling a hopeful possibility that soon it will and I will again get to come home to Homer to release what remains.

What did I already let go of?

• A cookbook of family recipes I never completed to give my Dad who liked to cook
• Bags, for travel, for shopping, Louis Vuitton for cash, full of egg cartons-really-yes, egg cartons!
• Jewelry - not the good stuff yet, but coming with me to a place that might value it more
• Shoes, socks, clothes-lots of those- and even what remains in those bags is beyond sufficient
• All kinds of decorative objects from decades of traveling to meaningful places for Earth stewardship, gathering women made artisanal objects in support of their making their way in the world: pyramids, textiles, special foods, arts of all types, colorful things, fragrant things, beautiful things made with love, slowly and in the local culture

This morning I dreamed

nine thousand pieces of cloud from

the immense 220 degrees of barely blue

retrieving waders drying in the chilly Homer rising sun

breath remember to return

one deep breath and I

walk down the driveway a bit

walked out into the gravel

one breath deep

between the night and nurturing

between the bomb and careening Earth care.

Red fuscia pink horizon lift me in the moment, this NOW.

Not waiting for other humans,

I ask what more can I do?

I am no peacekeeper out there until I am in here.

Homer, I say farewell, for now.

You give me hope for peace in our planet.

I touch my fingers to my throat and take one 5.5-second deep breath and Xhale.

I swallow the not yet known.

What ripple will shake out truth, beauty, and the fresh joys of love?

Little Theo, I leave this place, my summertime home of nearly three decades to meet you.

I will sing songs of happiness,

low and slow so we might hold each other in reverence.

Earth listens, hearing each vibe you wriggle, cry, coo.

Will you hear the silence also?

The suffering of so many who have not known the beauty of Homer?

The weeping of other mothers in Ukraine and Gaza, Russia and Israel, humans and non?

Blinking out from no fault of their own?

Holding out peace in our hearts, crowding out the hate for and of others,

I will sing songs of fairies, and mushrooms, and mountains, and waves.

We'll listen for saltwater to be welcomed again and again into the shore together.

We'll skip one day together on a nearby beach of your warmer home in Hawaii.

Innocense returns to informed hearts that vengeance

turns into mothers' squeezing hugs,

taking away the breath of their strong,

traumatized returning daughters and sons physically safe from war.

War no more, say the grammas, from our wombs regenerating life.

Rest now, Theo. Soon I will hold you in my tired arms,

raise you above my responsible shoulders in delight,

lighter than your 10 pounds.

As I read this to my son, he chimes in "12 pounds by the time you get here!"

feeling like a feather of plausibility might peace return to our homes,

inner and outer.

Tomorrow I'll wake with the Xitement that tomorrow will be the day.

I'll put on my warm winter-is-coming clothes,

carry a prayer for mothers everywhere holding love in their arms,

safe from violence, secure with peace in their places, fed, safe, and held.

I bring songs and breaths and you will give fresh farts, and grins, and gurgles.

I bring also a heavy bag of memories for my husband, your grampa,

who is tired because he "took his longest walk yet this morning" I am told.

We will comfort and sing and laugh together for as long as we have breath.

We may not know the tune, we know the love and that is enough.

It will always be enough, no matter the matters.

Homer, see what you have started?

Until we meet here at home in Homer yet again,

Gracious gratitudes to your beauty, your neighborly citizens,

your spit of adventures, your bluffs of risks,

your continuous waves of love, ever shore-meeting.

I must go, we will meet again.

Until then love to you in your homes, wherever they are, you may be, and climate is now affecting you.

That is all.