I am an aging hippie.  I graduated high school in 1969, the year of Woodstock.  I did not get to go, I lived in Iowa at the time. Instead, that summer, I went to Chicago with my boyfriend of 3 years, who played lead guitar in the best band in town, and another couple, and we saw Blind Faith. It was a birthday present for my boyfriend. I saw a few concerts during that time of my life.  I saw the Beatles, twice, the Rolling Stones twice, The Grateful Dead, the Allman Brothers, It’s a Beautiful Day, Steppenwolf, Lovin’ Spoonful, a myriad of lesser names, like Donovan…..But I think Blind Faith was probably the best concert.  They were a band of the greatest musicians of the time, Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, Steve Winwood and Rick Grech.  They toured one summer, made one album and that was it….But what amazing alchemy they had.  Anyway, that was my Woodstock, to sit in the 9th row and watch Erick Clapton….  My younger sister, who continues to go to concerts, still tells me she is sooo jealous that I got to see Blind Faith.

I left the town I lived in to go to college at the University of Iowa.  A huge school, 40,000 undergrads, maybe 10,000 grad students. The home of the University of Iowa Writers Workshop, attended by many many incredibly famous and accomplished writers.  To be invited there is HUGE in a writers life.  I was also pulled into the drug culture.  My ex and I were living together, and smoking a lot of pot, we tried psychdelics, we tried a lot of things.  We had a lot of fun, we had two cats a pure white female named Annie, and a pure black male named Alex.  We hung out at the bars during happy hour, buying dime beers and 25 cent wine coolers with a table full of our friends.

We took part in the anti-Viet Nam war protests. They had set a curfew, and I remember walking around the campus, and seeing national guardsmen or state police on the roofs of buildings with high-powered rifles following me as I walked up the hill, their guns trained on me.   As a freshman at school, I was living in the men’s dorm with my ex, not officially, because it wasn’t allowed, but unofficially.  During the riots which closed the school after a major building was burned to the ground, the national guard tear-gassed the dorm, the hallways.  I was afraid to run out, because I wasn’t supposed to be there anyway , but also because we could see kids out the windows getting beat with billy clubs, there were hundreds of state police and national guard around the dorm.  So we stuffed a towel under the door and wrapped one around our faces. But to this day, I can tell you that tear gas is aptly named.

We both (my ex and I) quit school for lack of interest, but stayed in the city for another year or two.  Working, smoking dope, hanging out, wasting time, having a ball for ourselves.  I have not, since that time, felt that free.

I will say though, that our interest in drugs was looking for enlightenment.  It was NOT about “hey man, lets get high and have some fun, do some shit….”  Of course, we did…but the overall intention was to evolve, even back then.  Though I’m not sure it was a coherent thought.  I do know that at some point back then, the objective was lost, and the drugs became the end, not the means, and I was ready to let go of that life when we moved.  It felt like a waste of time.

When we left Iowa City a couple years later, and came to Connecticut, we just left that life behind.  Took on responsibility, real jobs, took on debt for a house and cars, got married, owned our own business, worked all the time. Pot smoking was out, concert going was out.  I wish  many times that we hadn’t given it all up, there was a lot of value that was left behind.  My ex began sliding down the slippery slope of power and control, probably exacerbated by working for his father for 14 years, who was the donor of the abusive gene.

Anyway, that was me. When I was with him in January,  Scott was telling me how he and Betty were old hippies. They knew each other then, though were not romantically involved.  Then they lost track of each other for 30 or 40 years.  I told  him , yes well I was a hippie too.  Scott then told me that I wasn’t a real hippie, that I didn’t “live the life”.  I remember looking at him quizzically, wondering why he would say that, especially considering he knew very little of my old life, and he asked very little.  He didn’t offer it up, I didn’t feel like defending part of my life to him. He assumed.  (You know the old adage about doing that…..)  I didn’t disabuse him, it didn’t really matter to me.  By that point I knew I was moving, I was not trying to build a relationship again.  I was just there, in the moment, enjoying his company.  But I would guess maybe because I didn’t live in a commune, or participate in orgies, or become some drug addicted wastoid, that he didn’t feel I qualified.

Well…I wasn’t a hippie like he was.  Thank God….but I was part of a huge culture of love and peace. I was as much a part of that, and it a part of me, as anyone.  Free love was not part of who I was, I could never just randomly have sex with anyone.  But I don’t think that disqualifies me, it just separates my experience from his. I drew the line at hard drugs.  And it’s a good thing.  My ex, who was my boyfriend at the time, expressed some interest in them, in “trying” them.  I didn’t at the time, realize what an addictive personality he had, but thank God I drew the line and told him not if he wanted to stay with me.

Anyway, now, 45 years later, I find that both my sisters and I smoke pot once in awhile, once in a great while.  My old high school friends too.  We didn’t, for so many years.  And now, with retirement in my sights and the pressures of raising a family and paying off the mortgage lessened, it is nice to do, once in awhile.  I smoked with Scott, twice in all the time I knew him.  And a couple times with Addie.  I’m still much more prone to have a glass of wine, if I want to relax.  Even moreso, just to have a glass of water.

I still, even more passionately, seek enlightenment.  And I find it not through pot, or psyhedelic drugs, but through meditation, gong baths, sound and vibrational meditations, reading as much as I can of the great teachers we have today.  I have never gotten as high on pot or LSD as I have from a gong bath.  It’s different, it expands by going within, peeling back the layers, facilitating a reconnection to our true selves, our spirit, our souls.  We come into this world on the breath of angels, and then begin to forget, and begin the battle of the ego vs. the soul.

This is why Learning to Live Like Water is the journey BACK to source.  Because I know I was there, and I want to get back there.  I am so pleased to have so many people join me on this journey.

Love and light, all….