Kneel....

And thou shall be healed.

Today in Cucuron France, while I was touring another stunning, romantic village of the Luberon something happened that changed me.

Golden hour…..

Dressed in my Vita Kin, white linen hand embroidered dress …

FOOTNOTE:

It’s a knock off actually, the dress is. I go through Etsy and employ the lovely ladies of Ukraine to make delightful linen frocks with all proceeds going to buy weapons for the war in Ukraine. These gals are some bad ass bitches. I digress….

CONTINUED:

I have spent the last five days jumping from leafy town to leafy town experiencing my own Eat, Pray, Love moment with a healthy side hustle of Under The Tuscan Sun. I am staying at French Airbnb’s dotted around Au Provence that have fig and ginger jam for breakfast with homemade croissants and Amaretti muffins, with butter and more butter. Rose colored juices made fresh from garden grapes greet me in the morning and towels that smell like lavender and sunlight get tucked around my pillows at night. Trips to Menerbes, Roussillon, and Bonnieux, reveal sun faded houses in ochres and teals and paths that wrap around the town square where the golden hour pushes well past 10 PM.

Roussillon

I kicked off my La Dolce Vita Tour ( the french version ) in Paris about three weeks ago where I was lucky enough to get to stay at my friend Anne- Marie’s sprawling, authentic flat in the 17th Arrondissement. She is so impossibly chic and kind and has taken me to many wonderful parties, feting me as the “AMERICAN-CANADIAN “ combo platter with just enough Hollywood street cred/and self-deprecating humor to make me slightly exotic and semi in demand.

Anyway, my European Sojourn was something I had been aching to do for a very long time and I had packed and planned as meticulously as I could. Yet the beauty, the history, the food and the wine wasn’t enough anymore to cover up this one little, nagging thing…

I was lonely!

Still independent AF….

But LONE-LEE!

I cannot tell you how much I hate saying that, because we are not supposed to be THAT. I, after all, have just travelled all over the South of France.

Solo!

In a Mini-Cooper convertible no less. I’ve navigated roundabouts, ancient mountain roads and the parking meters in Gordes. I’ve ordered in French, ate Carbs with abandon and finally found the perfect hat in the sleepy town of Ansouis! Afternoons were for reading and dusk for unearthing hidden gems that lurk along the fields of Lourmarin and Oppede le Vieux, where candle lit tables line sidewalks and alleyways and music is everywhere.

I mean, doesn't that sound dreamy, like a movie on the verge of being the perfect Rom Com?? Sexy, self assured woman, powerfully SINGLE enjoys sexy self assured vacation happily alone UNTIL - WAIT FOR IT - she meets an Anthony Bourdain look alike who turns her world upside down…..

I don’t know.

It’s complicated.

Exploring these small towns today, walking their streets, their secret pathways, with the birds and the smell of honey, it was enough ( sorry Anthony ). Every moment felt sacred. My heart rested comfortably and in the silence I knew which twists and turns to take. The road was open and uncluttered and all I had to do was step and observe. I have not had access to that type of GPS for years.

And this is how I ended up at the cathedral in Cucuron. It’s at the top of the hill surrounded by trees with a small park tucked into the corner, where two women sit, silently filing their nails together and enjoying a lunch of bread and cheese and peaches.

I walk in. The church is huge and dark with clusters of chandeliers and rose marble and it smells like an attic before rain. It is practically empty with many stations where you can light candles and confess your sins or perhaps ask for help with your mortgage or advice on how to handle your sister who irritates you. I rummage around my purse looking for an offering and can only find an American quarter. I slipped the change into the box, praying that God or Jesus or whoever was currently in charge would be kind to me on the exchange rate because the Euro was kicking ass against the US dollar ( thanks to the orange moron in the oval ) but that of course is a different post…..

I light my candle and close my eyes. Well, I try to close my eyes, but I can’t focus because just to the left of me there are three statues behind a woven tangle of see through bronze, with one particular character bearing an uncanny resemblance to the winner of Ru Paul’s Drag Race Season 5. I am so thrown off my game, I have to move to the front of the church where I can concentrate more on my initial reasons for parting with my money and my pervasive resistance.

So I decide to go big or go home; row two baby, front and center.

Now I am a bit of a lapsed Catholic but I do know the basic drill from years of classes and masses, so I push forward and kneel on the pew. No cushion here, just polished hard, unrelenting wood. I bow my head.

I ask for courage and resolve and peace for my jumpy brain. I ask for the ability to forgive and the ability to pursue. And I especially ask for a project that I have been working on to come to fruition because it would be a dream come true and I would really like a dream to come true at sixty three years of age.

BACKSTORY;

Three decades ago I did a TV show with my best friend and it was a huge hit. It still plays around the world to this very day and I am now in the process of trying to reboot it. Unfortunately he can’t co-host with me because I lost him in 2011. Not like I lost him at the mall, lost him; lost him like he died. He left me solo.

CONTINUED;

So keeping all of that in mind, our legacy, his legacy, I gear up for some very heated celestial negotiations, when something unexpected happens.

I no longer feel alone!

Suddenly my little row two area is flooded with light! Golden and cracked, streaming through a side window in the church, encompassing me, my white dress and my new hat. It’s transcendent. It skips along the bench and feels warm and safe and directly correlated to people I have loved and lost. There also appears to be a bunch of them standing guard. Of course Ken ( dead co-host ) was first and foremost, but Mark, Andre, Aunt Sue and Marek were also there too! I was not without.

KEN???????? MARK? AUNT SUE? MAREK? ANDRE?

It could have been a minute or it could have been a day. I am really not sure how long I sat there. I try not to move or blink, scared it will retreat, but the light where I kneeled and prayed and asked does not waiver. Not one inch, not one sunbeam, not even for one breath.

It remained. And so did I.

Eventually I make my way out of the church and the ladies are still filing and still eating and I head off towards my car to explore the next town as this one is in full siesta mode. Not a peep can be heard, just windows open and curtains blowing and a very comfortable silence fragrant with neroli blossoms and jasmine and the dry heat of the day.

I learn something there.

Solo can be both things at once. Liberating and hard, past and present or full and empty. It shifts, maybe even the time of day determines its fate and yours.

So as I sit hours later in my Airbnb, windows open above the town square, I hear the evening winding down punctuated by steps along the cobblestones and late night voices of people who know each other well.

And in an instant I don’t feel solo at all. Not even one bit.

A crack of light taught me that.

If you enjoyed this post, please share it with everyone you know!! Grazie MJ