If I had to sum up my day with one word it would be- comfort. This is so for many reasons, I'm going to share one of the big ones with you guys (and the one that has anything to do with dreads).

I went to one of my best friend's musicalreformance tonight. Tonight was the last of 3 nights, all of which I attended. I had written this friend a letter, which i frequently do for those I care about, and gave it to her earlier on in the week.

In this letter I expressed to her my following realities...

I've been lost lately; more lost than I have been inyears.Sometimes I feel like not only am I far from home, but I don't even know where home is. Sometimes when I feel this way, I am able to think of her and start to remember how to get home. In a number of ways...she is home for me.

At the end of her preformance tonight, when she out to recieve her congradulations from everyone, she had with her a letter for me. Out of respect for the intimacy of the letter, I will not share the entirety ofits contents with you. But in one parrt of it, she wrote that i was ironic that I felt far from home, because lately she had felt like I was becoming stable, and creating my own home. ThatI was becoming anchored in my decisions and in who I am.

One of the first things this made me think of was my hair. I have been told my multiple people that my hair is too thin, and that I will have "sparse" dreads. A number of people have told me that because of the kind of hair that I have, I will have to dread it myself or have someone else dread it for anything to happen. I dismissed and took to heart none of these comments. And my hair is doing amazing. I have way more hair to dread than I initially thought, and I'm coming up on month three now and my hair has dreaded way more than I expected in that short time.

I feel like my decision to dread and to do it how I wanted has helped me grow. My friend was rigt- I am creating my own home. I've been feeling so inadequate lately, and her letter and my hair have helped show me that I've been feeling that way because I've been feeling guilty about not responding to the standardso others; I've been too focused on everyone and everthing else. I need to come back home, back to myself.

This friend of mine is a beautiful person, I don't know howelse to say it. She never speaks with disrespect, or harmful intent, but she always speaks her truth. She pours all of her self into whatever she is doing; dramatic preformances, math homework, watching a movie even. She is always present and committed to that presence. Her strength and capabilities amaze me. When I don't know how to go about a decision, I ask myself what she would do. To me she represents truth, presence, morality. When I imagine the person I want to be, I imgine her. And although that desire is valid (I do want to be the kind of person whospeaks my truth,is present,moral), her letter tonight made me realize something- there are already so many amazing things about who I am. I've been so busy focusing on what I'm no and wondering how to be those things, that I've been missing all the amazing things I already am!

I feel like her letter and my friendship with her has simply reminded me of something I thought I already knew: I am beautiful in who I am. There is a tibetan mantra that I wear around my neck - "Om Mani Padme Hum"- and one interpretation of it is that you already posess what is necessary to be Buddha.

I already am Buddha. I already am my Self.And I don't thinkI give myself enough credit for how powerful that Self is.