Summer Reflections: Coming Home to the West Coast

It’s September 10th, and I’m sitting in the sunlight listening to the water roll up onto the shore and settle over the rocks beneath it.

There’s a blue heron out on the water, surfing on a piece of driftwood as though this is the most natural thing in the world. The water is calm today. There’s barely any wind, and the sun is warm against my skin. Only a handful of people are scattered along the beach, giving me the feeling that I have this little piece of the world almost entirely to myself.

I’ve been sitting here reflecting on the summer.

It has been full. Vibrant. Ripe with connection.

There have been beautiful reunions with friends who have been part of my constellation for years, along with new friendships that have already begun to find their places within it. Coming back to the West Coast has been such a gift. I feel deeply at home in the way people here seem to gather, connect and celebrate life together.

There is a particular quality of possibility I feel here.

These days feel ripe with potential. There is a sense that anything could happen, that someone could appear, that a new idea could take root, that a connection could become something more.

Anything feels possible from this newly rooted place. I must be home.

One of the sweetest parts of being back on the West Coast has been experiencing Pride in both Victoria and Vancouver this summer. I found myself surrounded by friends from so many different chapters of my life, along with new friends, families with kids, elders, queer youth, young adults; people of all ages who had come together to celebrate being exactly who they are. There was something deeply moving about seeing so many generations sharing the streets together, dancing, laughing, waving flags and making space for one another.

I attended both the Victoria and Vancouver Pride parades, dancing on the float in support of my dear friend Mischa Oak, who published Rainbow Wisdom: 18 LGBTQ+ Life Lessons for Everyone this year. I feel so grateful that this book is now making its way into the world. Rainbow Wisdom draws from Mischa’s personal experiences while opening into the broader lessons, insights and gifts that can emerge from queer lives. Reading it feels like an offering of lived wisdom, taking what we have learned through our own journeys and sharing it outward so that others might find more language, possibility and belonging for themselves.

Being part of the parades felt like a beautiful extension of that spirit. We danced our way through the streets, and I had the opportunity to welcome queer youth onto the float and into the celebration. Looking around and seeing children with their families, elders who have lived through so many chapters of queer history, young people just beginning to discover themselves, and friends of mine from across the years all sharing the same space filled me with a deep sense of gratitude.

I also joined both the Dyke March and the Trans March this summer. These spaces hold a different kind of energy for me. There is celebration, certainly, but there is also something powerful about gathering in solidarity with the communities whose bodies, identities, relationships and ways of being continue to be challenged by the dominant systems around us.

It matters to me to show up for that solidarity. We live within systems that still carry deeply embedded assumptions about whose bodies are acceptable, whose gender is legitimate, whose sexuality is worthy of respect and which ways of expressing ourselves are considered normal. Those systems can make authentic expression feel like an act of resistance, even when all we are doing is telling the truth about who we are.

Walking together, dancing together, witnessing one another and taking up space together reminds me that we have choices about how we meet that reality. We can create cultures where people are encouraged to become more fully themselves. We can protect the space for queer and trans lives to flourish. We can share wisdom across generations and make sure the people coming behind us have more freedom, language and possibility than those who came before.

This is the kind of community I want to be part of creating. A community where wisdom moves between generations. Where there is room for the people who came before us, the people arriving now and the people who are still finding their way toward themselves. A community where we get to celebrate life together, while standing firmly beside one another when that freedom is threatened.

That feeling of connection has stayed with me long after the glitter came off and the parade routes were cleared. It is part of what makes being back here feel so much like coming home.

Standing on stage alongside Corinne was a beautiful experience. She brings such depth and educational mastery to this work, and I loved being able to complement that with breath, presence and embodied guidance. I felt myself come alive in that space. I felt seen, connected and deeply grateful to be guiding a community through an experience rather than simply talking about embodiment.

The weekend reminded me that belonging is about more than feeling comfortable or connected. It asks us to become more conscious of the land beneath our feet, the histories that live within a place, the relationships that make gathering possible and the ways we participate in creating something different. It asks for celebration alongside accountability, pleasure, presence, and connection with a willingness to listen, learn and repair.

These are the kinds of spaces I want to keep creating and participating in: spaces where our diverse bodies are welcomed into being, consent becomes embodied knowledge, people can dance and celebrate together, and our capacity for connection grows alongside our capacity for care.

This summer also marked forty-four trips around the sun, and for the first time in my life, I was surprised for my birthday. Five dear friends secretly arranged a sunset cruise aboard a floating hot-tub tugboat in the Victoria Inner Harbour. We spent the evening soaking, laughing, watching the sun go down and taking in the ridiculous delight of being five friends floating around Victoria in a wood-fired hot tub.

The wood-burning stove was the real feat of engineering. Somehow, a little fire inside that stove heats an entire tub of water hot enough to soak in while the boat floats along the water. There is something wonderfully elemental about it: fire heating water, water carrying us, the sun setting around us, and our bodies moving between the warmth of the tub and the cold of the surrounding sea. I have always loved that polarity of hot and cold, and getting to share it with people I love made the experience even sweeter.

There was plenty of laughter, conversation and the kind of easy intimacy that comes from being together without needing to accomplish anything. We soaked, cooled off, climbed back into the heat and watched the evening unfold around us. At forty-four, I found myself feeling deeply grateful for the simple magic of having good people to celebrate with and a body that still wants to jump into cold water just for the pleasure of feeling alive.

Looking back, that birthday somehow captures so much of what this summer has held for me. Connection, play, embodiment, friendship, a willingness to follow curiosity and a growing appreciation for the strange and beautiful ways life brings us together. There has been a lot of movement and a lot of becoming, yet there have also been these moments where everything gets very simple: breathe, laugh, feel the warmth, feel the cold, look around and realize that this is your life.

As summer begins to close, I can feel the season asking me to gather what it has given me. The days are changing, the light is beginning to soften and the rhythm of life is shifting again. I am carrying forward the friendships, the dancing, the conversations, the moments of solidarity, the courage to keep showing up authentically and the reminder that belonging can be something we actively create with one another.

There is something beautiful about arriving at the end of a full season and allowing yourself to pause before the next one begins. I feel grateful for this wild, vibrant West Coast summer and for all the ways it has invited me back into my body, my community and my own sense of possibility. As the season turns, I am listening for what wants to become next.