I got home from SF and saw an email that the theme at dance tonight was Acceptance. After we shed that which is no longer needed, what do we have when we let go? Ourselves. Can we accept all parts of ourselves? I painted a person in meditation, because when I sit, I can feel that everything is just as it should be. I can accept that all is right with each breath and that is all I need to concern myself with in that moment. I ran the painting over to dance at 6:15 because tonight was Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, 5771. I sacrificed a night of dance because I wanted to go to services at Chochmat Halev. I felt like sitting in community, in meditation and gratitude for being inscribed in the book of life for another year. I went by myself, for myself. I didn't want to cajole anyone into going. It was a smaller crowd this year, but I saw many familiar faces and sat with a close friend and his mom. The music was lovely and the singing delightful. There was even a dancer to one of the prayers and we all stood and followed her motions. I saw a mom we knew from pre-school and thought of a family we sat next to at back-to-school night last night. The woman thought we looked familiar but couldn't place us. She told me her name, which is a distinctive persian name that I remembered. I asked if she had an older child, maybe we knew her through Aaron's friends. She said she did have an older son who was at Berkeley High, but he was killed in a car accident in March. When I thought of her boy, Kyle, I started to cry, letting the sadness of it touch my heart. Rabbi Sarah Leya asked those in the first year of mourning to stand and say the kaddish, and even though I never met her son, I stood for him and said the prayer, tears streaming down my face. Later, at the end of the service, we were asked to all stand up and hold our hands up palm to palm in a healing circle, and those who needed healing could stay in the center. The circle was quite large around the perimeter of the volumous space and I automatically got up to be a link in the chain. Another friend motioned that I should go into the center to receive the healing. I feel fine and I want to believe there is no cancer left in my body, but she was right. I wanted to receive healing energy. I sat next to my friend's husband and took his hand without saying a word. Almost immediately tears began to stream down my face again. I let my own sadness come through. I hummed along with the vibration of the circle. A tear rolled down my cheek and along my chin and dropped into my blouse, landing on my breast right where the tumors had been.
As I sat in prayer with the Chochmat Halev community on erev Yom Kippur, I drew this. 
