#1/30 name drop like a mofo

I am committing to writing an email per day for 30 days.  This is the first one.  
~

When I wrote this story down, I was just sitting here having a memory wash over me and so I decided to share it with you.  I want to introduce you to my good friend DJ.  The pics above and below are me, DJ and some some dancers on the set of a dance film I made Many years ago.  DJ who also shot the film for me, is the bald guy looking effortlessly magestical next to me.  

I’m in that soft place today.  That feminine part of myself I only visit on rare occasions. Its Quiet here.  Not so Taurean as my sun sign makes me on most days.  Today I’m more Receptive. Something about the moon.

What’s on my mind is how I want to be more like Georgia O’keefe. Or PJ Harvey.  I want to embrace the quiet storm both women exude so effortlessly, that delicate fury encased in radiant non traditional beauty.  Neither of them give HOOT what anyone thinks of them or their choices. I crave that too.

Both women I mention have an extremely quiet power that has nothing to do with vibrato or volume. 

I met PJ Harvey once so I know How it feels to be in the presence of such an ember.

PJ or Polly was in a film of Hal Hartley’s and on set had became friends with my friend DJ.  DJ AND PJ.  Uh huh.  That’s right.

So DJ is a friend of mine and he was directing a show downtown that was in previews.  He called me and said “Please come and laugh loud (as you do Toback bc you're so damn loud) Critics will be there tonight and the house will be empty. So please come laugh”

~

You may not know DJ Mendel by name. He performed in the plays of Richard Foreman and also amongst the Wooster Group scene but he had a magic all his own.  I found myself immersed in this world w DJ and his famous friends. Cynthia Hopkins. Lauri Anderson. Jonothan Demme R.I P & Lou Reed R.I.P. All these brills were hanging around this dumbo brooklyn theatre scene at St Anns Warehuse.  VERY Artsy.  VERY experimental Performance art. Intellectual more than entertaining.  Sometimes too heady for my pop sensibility But its where I landed After my touring life began to slow down and it was a fine replacement.  I made a lot of great work that I am proud I was a small part of.

Anyhow DJ was a centerpiece in that scene and he often hired me to choreograph his shows.  So even if you have no idea WHO DJ is, trust me he is a gem and genius and when he says ‘Come Laugh!’ You Do.

~

So in the empty house of The Ontological Theatre at St Marks Church in the East Village sitting quietly in the dark that night is me, a girlfriend I invited to join me, AND PJ Harvey.  Ya I am pretty sure there like 3 of us in total.  I think it was a double billing of DJ’s one man play MY DICK DONE BROKE and our other friend Bob Cucuzza’s play SPEED FREAKS. Some scotch soaked dark humor in a Proscenium setting.  Totally downtown iykwim & If you haven’t guessed yet, This used to be my playground.

but DJ didnt tell me PJ would be there.  Neither did Bob.   & I WAS FLOORED.

HOLY SHIT.  It was all I could do to stare at her.  Her slight frame, so very thin and delicate.  Her big face, so dramatic and compelling.  Her quiet simmering energy.
She was in town doing research for her album and the bf was escorting her around town, showing her all the art she could possibly see in one month in NYC; research for her album that ended up being ‘Stories of the City, Stories of the Sea’.

Star struck does not describe what I felt in the theatre that night. She had always been my idol. My goddess. Her rage, her vocal screams, her incredible sense of rhythm and melody and poetry spoke to me like she wrote the songs for me.  Her other worldly style. Her biblical classicism mixed with punk hard edge tenacity.  She was my end all be all Rockstar. 

After the show, we all went to a local bar. DJ handed me a shot of whiskey and said  “CALM DOWN Toback.  Just fucking talk to her!”

So eventually after 2 or 3 Shots I approached her.  There was never a voice more whispery, or a character more etherial.  
I think I even said to her HOW CAN YOU BE THIS QUIET WHEN YOU PERFORM SO BIG?  Thankfully I dont remember much of our convo But If you have never seen her live, google her and include the word live.  There is no one more massive.  No one more subtle, more intriguing, more uncontainable.  They said they were seeing as much theatre as possible so I told her about my upcoming show. Which was conveniently happening the next weekend and I happened to be doing a solo where I sang a song of hers. Is that even fucking possible?  I did not believe for a second they would come.  Her bf said he would bring her though. And DJ said he wd make sure she got there.

AND SHE CAME.   SHE FUCKING CAME TO SEE MY SHOW.

I sang a PJ Harvey song called WATER with PJ HARVEY in the house.  Think about that for a minute.  You meet one of your idols and then sing for her. 

{This was not unlike the time I sang with Madonna.  You know you want to hear this one but you‘re gonna have to wait for it. ASSSSHtanga & Madonna is another email} but singing PJ’s song TO HER was out of this world.  Not real. A dream come true.   The song I sang, WATER,  is about Jesus walking on water but its also about feeling all the love Mary must have had in her heart for Jesus. Its an aching love song about proving to someone you love them.  Go find the old live version of this song and listen the fuck out of it.  Set aside a quiet moment and let the song take you. Wait for the end when she WAILS “WAAAAAAAATTTTEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRR!”.  Believe me, you will not regret it. Just click here. https://open.spotify.com/track/6bYC4SGw6ucZpSIdo8WY1h?si=nTEpi5plRhGYLLyiOfMRQA This isnt the live version but it will do.

~

Meeting your idols is satisfaction at its finest.   When PJ’s new album finally came out my friend Bob who had written one of the plays she came to that night called me. We were both squealing like children.

“HEY JOBACKI TOBACCI, DO YOU THINK THAT SONG IS ABOUT MY PLAY???  OMFG!!!!!!!!!!!”

We continued to scream “OMG PJ liked us” before hanging up the phone, totally lit with hope

At least that’s how I remember it.  My version of this story is that she loved spending the night with us so much she wrote a song that reflected our evening.  I guess I cant really state that as fact but 🤷🏻‍♀️Whatevs.   When you play ‘Stories of the city’ on your Spotify, think of PJ wandering around downtown late at night and catching shows.  Think of her seeing dance concerts and experimental theatre and live music. Then listen to the song ‘The whores hustle and the hustlers whore’ https://open.spotify.com/track/27teiR4hpiFzsWnstV4Ad9?si=AETcNQhMSdCTop51_SAGKg because this song describes the characters in my friend Bobs play SPEED FREAKS the one DJ had invited me to.  I am pretty sure she was writing about the world of the play in that song.

The truth is we all inspire each other.  If we could only feel & acknowledge how much we want to be like our inspired friends and how much they want to be like us.  If only we could give that complement to one another and then give it to ourselves as much as we actually think it & feel it.

Let’s all be more of ourselves so we can continue to be each other’s fire. We do not have to be famous to do that we just need to be LIT.  We dont have to have accomplished everything yet, we just need to KEEP GOING. 

Let’s be each others spirit animals.  Our own personal rockstar visionaries.  Let’s help each other ignite by being ignited ourselves. 
So whatever you’ve been doing that you love to do, please don’t stop.  Keep doing what you’re doing. I am watching you and learning and admiring you all. 

Don’t forget that. We do it for ourselves but we also do it for each other.

XXJT

#2/30 I don't have time for this shit

HEY!

So, I have been following http://ryanorrico.com/ since last fall and I took his online marketing course Rabbit Hole which is what inspired me to torture you all with #30daysofthesefuckingemails.  Have you checked him out?  So many of you on here are selling your wares even if you aren’t aware you are selling them YOU ARE and his course got me thinking about ways I can make money while I sleep.  In other words, ways I can make money and continue to build my cult following without being there in person for the brain washing and the mind control while also benefiting from the brain washing and the mind control. 

But seriously, you can do this too.  We all can.  So I’ll be sharing my process & you can apply it yours if you like.  

In fact, the reason this email is late (should have gone out 6pm yesterday) is my entire Mail chimp account and email list got swallowed into the cyber waves yesterday.  Does it matter why?  No. What matters is this: I lost my shit you guys.  I let it t ruin a couple hours of my life, until I couldnt take it anymore.  Then when I stopped throwing a tantrum in my head, I asked Tom to watch Una to give me some time to reload my email list and just dove into the work. 4 Hours of extra labor.  FUUUUCCCCKKKKK if it didnt piss me off that I had to work so hard to get this to you, but that’s life isnt it?  What doesnt force us to work our asses off isn’t usually worth having. 

~

SO I’m in the planning stages of the first project I want to sell which will be 3 short meditations.  My husband Tom is a producer and composer who has made many healing music albums with a similar purpose in mind.  Check out this beauty https://open.spotify.com/track/2TIM42f3MrSH5BxUer8NoD?si=LodFb0zkTcO0h-dKOjr_gg  I have had many people tell me they have sex to his music so I think we’re in good hands... & my meditations will make you want to have sex with YOUR ENTIRE LIFE...Or at least that’s my goal.  

Here are some of my personal thoughts on Meditations in general.  Feedback is welcome.

Who has time to meditate??  
For real, No one.  So a good mediation needs to be short and accessible, something you want to come back to because it works in helping you set the tone for the day.  We all need to make time for ourselves & time is often the obstacle in the way of us meditating at all.
So it needs to be short, sweet, and possibly a little bossy.  (I am short, I’ll-be-your-honey-if-you’ll-be-sweet AND I’m the boss.  Check, check and check)

Should a meditation be funny?  
I think so yes.  Everything has to have some entertainment value in order for us to connect to it.  Laughter is a form of medicine.  So in my opinion YES a meditation should be fun or funny.  And if there’s time, a little bit dirty. (I got this one in the bag)

The speaking voice must be smooth, soothing and relaxing. (Check).

The music must be smooth, soothing and relaxing. (CHECK). Because https://www.tomrossi.com/ is the producer, you guys are in for something special. In other words, we are going to ASMR the shit out of this thing!  In other words, get ready for ear porn.

When I look for a meditation to listen to, I always turn to the same one. Its called Patience Pays : Its Yogi Bhajan talking sweetly and compassionately but also with little sass about cultivating patience and having faith.  I will make sure my Medications HAH I mean Meditations live up to the Bhajan standard.

I am thinking of doing 3 because one for morning, one for afternoon and one for evening.  Are you with me on this?  Not that you wd do all 3 in one day but when you miss one you can always catch another and also because I need a different meditation in the morning than I do before bed.  Let me know what you think.

Tom wants to call the morning meditation “Wake the Fuck Up - Aliens are coming to probe your anus! ” but I am leaning towards “For fucks sakes wake up!”  Or maybe just “My morning Meds”.  

~

And no stories today I guess.  WELL OK JUST ONE. Its about unsubscribing

I knew my first email out I might get a couple unsubscribes.  BUT DUDE! I only got one and it was a HUGE SURPIRSE.  Not who I was expecting to unsubscribe AT ALL.  

The person who unsubscribed is a healer but she’s not just any healer.  She is a magician, a wizard of ancient ritual and mystical magic medicine as well as plant medicine, naturapathy, homeopathy, nutrition and by title, acupuncture.  This person diagnosed me while the fertility docs said I was fine.  She made me get the blood test which proved I had an over active immune system so I could eventually find the medication that would help me hold the final pregnancy with Una.  So this person is more than a friend, she is someone I will love forever and would walk in front of traffic to protect because she walks through traffic daily protecting her patients and fighting for them.  BUT EVEN SO she’s allowed to not want to hear from me!   And so are you. 

As it turns out she was doing a mass unsubscribe of spam and did not mean to unsubscribe BUT IF SHE HAD I INSIST it would have been fine fine fine.  If you dont want to hear from me daily, I GET IT. I am not for everyone.  An acquired taste.  Like sake. Or fine wine.  I consider your unsubscribe a step closer to folks who want me Bad.  The ones who think my word is brill, my humor is on point and my ass is perfection. THAT’S WHO I AM LOOKING FOR because they will buy my shit & get something from it & that means everything to me.

XXJT

#3/30 That time I danced for Peaches

Lovertits!  How do you NOT know who Peaches is?
https://open.spotify.com/track/3xhg9Aq50p2KPjHACAVR95?si=wJ3cTyM1SoiF_Nz5Ckb8zA 

I first heard her album The Teaches of Peaches  while getting into make up for Fischerspooner  performance at the downtown Standard hotel when it was a construction site. Yeah we were performing in a construction site that would become what you now know as the downtown standard hotel.  We were freezing, we were rehearsing in hard hats, we were peeing in porta potties but DAMN IT we were making great art. Those were inspired times and the song book for those times was Peaches.

~

But back to yesterday and my technical meltdown. Everything that was in my mail chimp account is gone; my old email list, all my half written emails and stories, all the chapters of my Miscarriage Manual which I was first writing in the forms of these emails... all of it cyber dust.

Sometimes everything goes away and we have to just keep moving forward before we even have time to mourn the loss.

~ 

Shortly after that LA show at The Standard, Fischerspooner broke up.  We broke into tiny fragments and I was one of those shards of glass cracked into a million pieces on the ground. I was sharp and edgy, I was bloody and broken, I felt like I would never recover. Who was I without them?  I know that sounds dramatic but its how I felt.

Pulling myself together to  keep making dances was almost impossible but I did it. Tom & I put together our first POON show and performed it at PS122 to sold out houses and lots of good press but the loss of this particular group of friends continued to haunt me. 

Around that time I was still living in Williamsburg which had become MECCA for the art world.  I was eating at Empire Diner one afternoon and saw Peaches having lunch at the counter if I remember correctly she was alone so I walked up to her and said "Hey!" and introduced myself.  

She was friendly with FS, they were both part of the electroclash movement / moment and so I worked the angle that I had been the FS choreographer and was wondering if she ever needed some moves or dancers on stage.  She said her band was performing that weekend did I want to go-go dance? HELL YEAH I WANTED TO GO GO DANCE.

Because 'Fuck the pain away' people.  Fuck it AWAY. 

So I grabbed my friend Rachel Murray, a signature Mark Morris dancer who knew her way around a stripper pole and we showed up at the theatre and sat backstage with Peaches while she proceeded to tell us little or nothing about what she wanted us to do.  or to wear.

We were on our own.

I am a girl who likes to plan.  I enjoy rehearsal because then I can shine. A total improv on stage scares the bejesus out of me.  but thats what we did.  We took PEACHES bumper stickers and covered our breasts with them.  Then bootie shorts and stripper heels and some fishnet somewhere covering something and we strolled out on stage during 'Lovertits'.  I don't remember all that much but it was the 'keep going' in me that took this opportunity as CRAZY as it was and ran with it. Sadly I have no documentation from this evening. TERRY RICHARDSON took pics of me that night and I don't have anything to show for it.  But its embedded in my memory and that will have to suffice.

~

I read some new age kook on twitter the other day saying some bs like "if things aren't easy, if they aren't flowing for me, I am not doing it"  Biggest pretentious whine ever tweeted. This is literally the opposite of what I know and have come to believe as The Truth.

Everything falls away a lot of the time and this doesn't mean its not worth working hard to put back together or to start anew. Easier is not a way to evaluate anything.  The only way to evaluate is your desire to push through, this is all that matters. Desire keeps us working hard and feeling accomplished and  it also keeps us connected to one another, helping each other.

Work it and work it hard. That's my tweet in response to some new age "things should be easy" BS.
That and
‘Fuck the pain away’.
https://open.spotify.com/track/1XHFob24QklIXtLRopKirJ?si=AD1y61A5Spyk479FmbsMTQ 
Come on let’s 'Set it Off'.  
https://open.spotify.com/track/3lwQpz9k4qPDGBzBfbuPaw?si=7pW_o8eVQI2GcE7PtG25PQ 
And
‘Diddle my Skittle’.  
ttps://open.spotify.com/track/5XZzxaNL75CfMS14Ht0ztA?si=d2Dx-jjwR-KdBg16AU_UBw

Its worth it - this much I know for sure.

XXJT

PS We'll be getting started on recording our short, funny, sexy meditations this weekend. I ll keep you posted.

Below are pics from our show POON @PS 122 in 2013. Photographer Rachel Elkind

#4/30 They say that falling in love is wonderful

I have only fallen in love a few times in my life.  Wonderful is not a word that comes to mind.

For me the falling in love experience has been with a person romantic and sexual but it has also been with a creative partner or collaborator who I thought was incredible.  In all the instances I can think of where I have been IN LOVE I have never brought my full self.  And I found it hard to stay present.

This has been consistent my whole life.

For me, and maybe this is universal, being 'in love' means I have given up some of my personal power.  I only give up my personal power when I believe this other person is better than I am therefore I am probably not worthy of their attention therefore I need to PROVE to them I am worthy of their love.

When I put it into words it sounds gross, but there it is. What follows is that I am not contained, self supported or in reality.  I go off balance and I am in fear. Its exciting but in the end, unsatisfying.

I realized today that I don't bring my full self into the moments I am most 'in love' bc I am frozen paralysed by the impossible standard I have set up for myself and for others.  

So in that moment the fear of not being seen or of being seen and then being passed over or rejected is very real and can seem life threatening or unenduringly humiliating.  So I freeze bc its better than the alternative of being rejected. Pretty safe bet what the outcome will be and no one will have SEEN me so I AM SAFE.  

Gives cupid's arrow new meaning right?  Cue the above image of the Ecstasy of St Theresa. 

~

I remember feeling this way when I met Mark Morris. I was so blown away with his genius. He paid very careful attention to me at that workshop at Jacobs Pillow Summer of '90 when we first met and it scared the shit out of me.

"Jordana.......JORDANZZA! Come back tomorrow and show us this phrase on the left. We'll all watch you do it.  You can show us how its done."

And I did it.  I remember coming to class the next day having rehearsed the phrase on the left all night long, but feeling like I could barely move. I could barely show him how much I loved his movement because I was frozen with fear.

This has been consistent my whole life.

~

I recently found myself pointing at someone I think is incredible and saying "He is unimpressionable.  He is unimpressionable. He thinks he is better than me so he won't let me make an impression on him.  He is unimpressionable".

It hurt my heart to say this.  Something about it just felt unfair and untrue. So then I brought it back to me.

What if I am the one who is unimpressionable?

And I could feel how true that is.  So I went deeper.

Into the exact moment where I felt I could not make an impression on this person. If I am honest with you today and with myself, I could barely stay present. In fact I felt like I had to hold myself together from coming undone with ME. With the exuberance I feel.  With the giddy excitement I can't always contain. With the power of my sexuality. With how much space I take up when I embody all that I feel.

I thought bringing ALL OF ME into the room would embarrass me. Or him. Or would not be received / will be rejected.  Or is just. not. acceptable.  

~

So here I am, scared to bring all of myself forward and I am ready to blame someone else for being unavailable. Or for being unimpressionable. Or for being unimpressed with me. And I have not even showed them who I really am. Or what I am capable of.  

WHAT A TRAP.

I'm holding myself SO tightly because I am in fear. I'm scared to move too much or to dress this way or that. I am scared to make eye contact, to speak or to touch.  To make the jokes I want to make.  To dance. To sing. Even if others are dancing and singing.  When I danced for Mark Morris, I definitely tried to show him who I was but I was coming from a place of feeling so small, I never gave myself a fighting chance.

When I see the discrepancy between how I'm acting / what I'm projecting in that moment VS. what I want, how I want to be treated & how I long to be seen,  I see every significant disappointment I have ever had in my life, explained.

I keep seeing IG gurus touting this idea that we need to teach people how to treat us.

AND I AGREE

Walking into a room feeling powerless and frozen and then expecting others to be impressed with us ANYHOW and to come towards us with love in their hearts is crazy.

I have basically been teaching everyone in my life that I fell in love with to treat me like a deer in headlights.

Bringing our projections back to ourselves is profound.  This one is happening for me today and it will take me some time to really incorporate it but I wanted to share this with you anyhow.

TAKE THIS WITH YOU:

Think of someone you are blaming for something in your life. Take that story you are projecting onto them and see if you can try that jacket on yourself.  And see if it fits.

Let me know how that feels to wear it around the house.  It sucks for a second but it explains so much.  

HERE is the silver lining:

I barely showed up to most of the love in my life and still got a lot out of it.  
I got so much accomplished ANYHOW.
IMAGINE what  I can accomplish when I bring my entire self to the table.  
IMAGINE what I can create when my light shines fully my heart radiates all the love I feel and I don't hold back my exuberance! 

The world will be my oyster.....and it will also SURELY BE YOURS.

XXJT

'They say its wonderful'   
https://open.spotify.com/track/3vgNELn8MEMjWbdb3hAi3P?si=yd_ZNgcNTLmw3CaBt3POqghttps://open.spotify.com/track/3vgNELn8MEMjWbdb3hAi3P?si=yd_ZNgcNTLmw3CaBt3POqghttps://open.spotify.com/track/3vgNELn8MEMjWbdb3hAi3P?si=yd_ZNgcNTLmw3CaBt3POqg

#5/30 Nude Model

I used to be a nude model for artists in NYC.  It was a blast (as in it was a power trip) and also very strange.

I wandered into almost dangerous situations weekly & didn't focus on the danger bc it didn't occur to me to. Being naked in front of a room full of artists was a way to feel empowered, to get attention and to make money. I was naive. And lucky.

One time a painter guy from one of the classes at Art Students League invited me to pose for him at his home.  I called my friend Jon before I entered the guys flat and said "Call me in 1 hour and make sure I am ok".

The painter guy asked me to pose for him in white tube socks and nothing else. I tried to talk him out of it but he had a fetish or something.  Think of those thick white ankle socks Kim Basinger wore in 91/2 weeks but ya also naked. That's how he painted me.  When Jon called right on time the guy said to me “I bet you have to set up things like that to protect yourself. I mean you don’t know me and you are naked in my apartment”.

Naked, vulnerable,...with tube socks.

I met a famous sculptor once at the restaurant I worked at in between touring gigs. David Rabinowitch was his name and I wasnt familiar with his work but somehow we ended up at his table talking at the end of the night. I said to him  “If you're an artist you must work with live models” and he thought that was a fine idea and did I want to come model in his soho loft for him.

I charged him a shit load bc his loft was the size of a city block but when I realized how abstract his work was (HELLO NO PORTRAITS NO HUMAN FORMS at all whatsoever anywhere) the whole thing felt pretty silly.  So I laid on his couch naked while he sketched me and we hung out. I think we drank wine. He may or may not have thought it was a date.  He drew squiggles on a pad of paper and then I left. I don't have a drawing from that night I wish I did but at least I have this memory.

There are more stories - all of them could be filled under ‘Jordana put herself in danger a lot in her 20’s’.

Are there ways you have put yourself in harms way? Is this email reminding you of any of them?

I made a pretty hard turn one day when I re watched a film I was in.  The part I played in Happy Birthday Miss America is pretty raw: I am mostly exposed, I smoke, I drink, me and DJ the director simulate sexual acts and then I pee on him as a birthday present (not real pee guys, its the magic of cinema please).  DJ’s film is pretty genius and there's nothing wrong with my part in it but something about the exposure felt like maybe I had gone too far.

For myself.

Like what am I trying to prove? 
And I didn’t know any more.
So that's when I stopped making a habit of showing everyone my tits.  

~

The Sikhs believe women have many auras and one is an arcline from nipple to nipple. To expose it to too many people can potentially weaken her aura and since auras are for protection and projection this can be problematic. For a woman to have sex with multiple partners can weaken her aura (bc she connects with each lover energetically and exposes her auras to each lover) but to build a sexual connection with one person can add strength to her aura which can already be strong from meditation and clean living. Men have a different lot in life. Their aura will be strengthened by ‘marriage’ and monogamous sex too but not weakened by exposure to multiple lovers.

So YEAH GUYS go GO! GWON!  Fuck a lot with multiple partners, flash your stash and STAY AURICALLY FIRM!  

MANOMANOMAN

Whatever - I don't know what I believe.  Some days I think I have an aura between my nipples and it feels true.  Other days I am an exhibitionist. Some days I'm shy AF.  Mostly I am proud of all the art I helped create with this body and I wouldn't change any of it for the world.  All my dancing body adventures have taught me something necessary and continue to teach me things when I share them with you.

Its getting late so lets bring it home shall we?

Empowerment and posing nude don't necessarily go hand in hand. (although they can)

The only meaning ANYthing has is the meaning we give it

Sometimes people get naked for cash because their body IS their art, and art is commerce, baby

Stay cool. Stay naked. But don't forget the tube socks.

Love,
Jordana

Sculptures by David Rabinowitch

#6 That time I realized I was psychic

Well, it didn't happen all at once.

Its taken years for me to come to terms with this mostly bc the world we live in measures everything from proof and its hard to measure the truth of what I get.  

The hits I get tend to come and go without much rhyme or reason so for many years I just shook it off as nothing.

Not knowing someone at all and meeting them for the first time and shaking their hand I can have a lot more intel come through then when I know them.

One time I was in the subway in NYC.  A guitar player was performing and singing. His name was Theo.  His eyes wandered.  He had a lovely way about him.

When I arrived at my friend Karen's apartment I said “Do you know that guy Theo that plays on the subway?”  Somehow even though he played all along the 4 5 6 line And the N R line I sensed she knew him personally.
She said “Yes. Yes I do.”
“When I watched him play I saw a photograph over his forehead. The picture was of him being severely abused by his father. He was a heroine addict right?”

Her jaw dropped.  She sat down and said “How did you know that?”  

~

The thing was he wasn't an obvious recovering drug addict. He looked like a kid who went to college in New England and was the star of the Crew team.  Mostly what I was seeing was pretty far into his past but Karen knew from personal experience who he was and what he had been through at the hands of his father. So it was wild to have her validate the hit I got in the moments directly following my vision.

This was not the first time that happened to me but its the first time I took note because there was no guessing. I saw a picture like a Polaroid over Theo's third eye and it depicted his past.  And what I saw was true.

There is a lot of this type of alchemical magic in my life and I have always had preemptive warnings of the biggest magic, where I see what's coming to me whether it be love or a dream job or I conjure exactly what it is I am fantasizing about. The most curious part of my super power is that its the only time I have felt / feel a steadfast confidence. That I am in the right place, that everything is in the right place,and that indeed, I am safe.  Its me at my most relaxed my most centered and my most productive.  I don't need to push or pander or beg or seduce, I can just be. And I can just allow all the good stuff to flow into and out of me.

I have more stories about how I see things about people, or how I've both consciously and unconsciously manifested INCREDIBLE SHIT but what's important tonight is I am finally able to own up to the strange concoction of healing, intuition, body work, artistry & wisdom that  I have to offer.  

The meditations that I have been telling you about will help you connect with yourself in new and shape shifting ways.  You know that, right?

Just think about how you're already shifting because of the nature of what I have been sharing with you in these emails.  I am choosing to tell intimate stories because if you watch me take a chance and be vulnerable,  you're energetically invited to soften along with me.  If you watch me fall on my face and see how I never give up until I get what I want, you will believe the same for yourself.  We light each other on fire.  We melt together.  We cool each other off.  We do it without thinking.  And we do it because we can't help ourselves but feel for each other.  

~

So I am working on writing the meditations and will get them out one at a time as they get completed.

Morning Meditation is called WAKE THE FUCK UP
Afternoon Med is called MAY THE FUCK BE WITH YOU
and Evening Med is called CHILL THE FUCK OUT

Yes - they are all about fucking bc connecting to the kundalini is connecting to the creative force is what gets you fired up is what will fire your frightened ass straight through desire and into enjoying your own company bc you are so damn fuckable.  


More soon.
XXJT

Here's what others are saying about me, these emails and what I offer:

"You make me feel.  Which is saying so much about you and your abilities to connect through your own vulnerability" 
- Jamie

"Simply sublime"  - Erin. 

"You are sharing some powerful truths.  Blowing my mind!" - Alex

"Going nuts over your email today.You blow my mind and I m not surprised at all that you are a magnet for woke people. You are bright as the sun in charisma and charm"  - Rachel

This woman is lightening and grit and I am just drawn to her" - Also Rachel

"Holy smokes!  Keep it coming Jordana"  - I don't know who wrote that but its in my file of reviews & testimonials.

Everything in its right place.   https://open.spotify.com/track/5AiNZnMDCWwujIENPj9PV9?si=rcvhIBJoRWumk7S_UbLeZA

#7 That time I was named after an Argentine Revolutionary

I was named after Che Guevara

I am not a Che specialist just one of many who hold a piece of his spirit in the idea form of a name.

My closest friends call me Che and my brothers kids call me Auntie Che Che Bc my brothers nickname for me growing up was Dena Che.  It makes my heart smile when someone refers to me as CHE. The name translated means ‘buddy’ so trust me when I say hearing someone call you CHE feels like hug around your heart.

~

About 2 years ago I got stopped by the TSA agent. He asked me for another form of ID in addition to my Drivers license. WTF since when was a drivers license not enough??  This was before the Muslim ban and right around Trump deciding to run for Potus and it was a WOW surpirse to me.

“Why do you need another form of id? Why would I have a second piece of ID when I have my License?? Why are you asking me this?” I got loud.

My white privelidge allowed me to bitch this guy out bc if I had been browner it would not have gone over well.

What I realized in this moment is when you’re named after someone, its a legacy you need to pay attention to. No matter who your namesake is, there is information in a name and there is energetic history in a legacy.  

Some thoughts running through my head tonight.

I am exotic. I stand out.
I am a russian jew. I am proud to be one. I look like I could be Spanish or Greek or Hawaiian or Mexican or Israeli or Italian.  I only know this bc I traveled a bunch and when I was in Spain, Greece, Hawaii, Mexico, Israel AND Italy people spoke to me in the native tongue and assumed I was theirs.  One time I was told I looked like those Tahitian women Gauguin painted so let’s throw in Tahitian but I‘ve never traveled there.  

NYC subway I was spoken to in Spanish MORE than English.

The point is I currently enjoy standing out as ‘maybe not white’ and I enjoy that my ethnic backround is a bit of a mystery. I currently like the attention that being different pulls in but this wasn't always the case.  When I was a kid I hated my name. My mom said I couldn't change it but I added all sorts of ‘regular’ names to it when I signed my art work. My name became ‘Jordana Robin Heather Cindy Snowflake Toback’ for a while.  I basically threw Che to the curb. 

My parents were hippies and they were also commi friendly. In the intellectual sense. 
This means their outlook was a bit socialistic.  Everyone should have.  They gave to every charity and did not want Reagan's tax cuts for the Upper Middle Class.  Pretty far left to some.  You get the picture.

Che was fighting for what he believed in.
Whether you know of Che or his plight or not, he fought for poor people who could not speak for themselves or could not be heard. In his mind that‘s what he was doing whether that is how we remember him or not. 

Che traveled by motorcycle through Latin America and that was when he saw too much suffering because of poverty to stay in his field of Medicine, feeling he could transform more, & help the impoverished more in the political arena of armed struggle and resistance.

My personal business cards just say my full name Jordana Che Toback.
I do many things and I always have had multiple jobs (nude model, event performer, part time amateur psychic) so my card just has my name. I figured if I met a potential client or intersected with a possible employment opportunity a general card was best.

One class I taught back at Crunch NYC, a woman approached me and asked me for my contact info. As she walked away reading my card she said,

“Wait wait wait a minute - your middle name is Che? As in Che Guevara?”

“Yeah I said. He went missing when I was in my moms belly.”   He died October 9th and I was born exactly 7 months later on May 9th.

Apparently my parents were drinking expensive wine that night with other hippy friends and when they heard on the news Che had gone missing in Bolivia everyone feared the worst.  My mom decided that night to name me after Che bc they were drinking this expensive wine that Che would have scoffed at. So Bourgeois!  'He would turn in his grave' she always used to say so she honored his sacrifice by naming me after him.

But the woman holding my business card trying to figure out how I got this guys name was from Argentina and AS IT TURNS OUT (alchemical magic 101) was the daughter of Che’s medical school professor.  When she was a girl Che would walk her to school every morning in trade for her helping him with his English.

She told me personal stories about Che, his 19 year old ambitions, his dreams of saving the world.
I got to hear all about the man who I was named for.  He was obsessed with medicine and the body.  The human form and all its power and mystery. He was deeply compassionate. He loved all languages. He loved to accumulate knowledge. He was charming.  He was genuinely kind. Meeting this woman was nothing short of awesome.

~

Were coming into a time where we all need to be Che. We all need to stand for who we are, who we were named for if that applies and what we believe in. What is your legacy going to be?  The more we can embody and honor who we are, the more our integrity will be reflected in our work, our abundance and even our society.  

Yogi B used to talk about how the healers and the teachers would be needed now more than ever. That the Aquarian age would bring with it a lot of chaos and the healers and the yogis would need to stay mentally fit, balanced, steadfast and true to help others.  

So keep taking care of yourself. Be yourself. Fully. Meditate. Listen to your body. You know the drill.

I have decided there will be 4 meditations - a complete album
WAKE THE FUCK UP
MAY THE FUCK BE WTH YOU
CHILL THE FUCK OUT
and the final chapter
KEEP ON FUCKING

Keep on fucking you guys. Do it for the children. Do it for Jesus.

~ 

But seriously Do it for Che. Do it for the YOU you need to be so nothing will fucking break your stride. 

XXJT

Some stuff Che said:

'If you tremble with indignation at every injustice, then you are a comrade of mine.'

'The true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.'

'I know you are here to kill me. Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man.'

#8 That time I got sued for no reason

I don't have much to say about anything today.  Its Tuesday.

Everything I have to write about is making me overwhelmed and angry.

For example I have an IG friend whose next door neighbor had a breakdown and was stopped from jumping out the window by SWAT at 5 am.  She could not help but be exposed to the entire meltdown bc she could hear it and see his balcony.

She is a brave warrior & I have total faith in her but a lot of pain was unearthed for her during this guys mental breakdown.  Someone lovingly advised her to sage and say to herself "I am safe" which might really help my friend.  For me, it brought up some thoughts and memories and inspired this email.

I was in a similar situation once and someone told me to do this. She kept telling me I was safe and to tell myself I was safe But I knew deep down I was not safe so the words meant nothing to me.  And it absolutely backfired. This makes me angry to even think about right now.

Let's start there:

I do not have it in me to tell the whole story of my loft:  How I had the lease on a 3000 sq ft town hall in Park Slope. 3 bedrooms 24 ft ceilings.  It was divine.  How I covered the rent with sub tenants renting out the bedrooms and danced in the middle area which was an actual ballroom in its heyday.  How I was unknowingly subletting one of the rooms to a dry drunk who 5 years in, brought home a real life succubus demon (his new gf) How he would move her into his room without telling anyone & together they would do a bunch of drugs smoke a bunch of cigs and set their room on fire.  How this fire would ignite on the eve of my 5th miscarriage and how when I asked them to leave they refused. How instead of leaving they found a pathological lawyer who had no moral issue creating a fake lawsuit accusing me of assault and battery with one goal in mind:  to empty my bank account so I would let go of the loft and they could take over my lease. 

~

Yes this really happened and yes I was in the middle of fertility treatments and multiple losses, and yes it led to having what I think was akin to a partial nervous breakdown.  If there is such a thing.  It was a dark time. 

A woman who attended healing school with me and who meant well told me "You are safe. You are safe. keep telling yourself you are safe"  But I knew I was not safe. I was not able to hold a pregnancy.  My lease was keeping me in constant contact with two crazy liars who were suing me and my money was dwindling.  I was trapped in psychic agony.  Telling myself that I was safe made me more nervous more anxious & more ANGRY bc it did not acknowledge my emotional reality.   Its superficial to put a bandaid on a cancer just as affirmations cannot technically help if they simply lie on top of unprocessed pain.  It just takes too much energy to convince ourselves of something our heart knows isn't true.  

Putting idealized notions on top of unacknowledged pain squanders your energy. Even if they are awesome idealized notions, filled with love and good intentions, they only help when we're ready for them to help.

But you know what's easy to digest? The truth. And you know what gets us right into our hearts? The truth. And you know what helps us align and move forward and balance and enjoy and manifest?  You guessed it bitches.  Its the truth.

I will interject here that YES language and self talk must be clarified and looked at.  Must be in tune with what we want.  BUT FIRST WE NEED TO ACKNOWLEDGE OUR TRUTH.  

Take any moment that affirmations seem to not be working, seem to be stubbornly empty and just fill in the blank with the truth and sit with it.  

It is such a relief to stop the vicious cycles within ourselves.

Give yourself time to dance with the truth. To argue, bash to oblivion and eventually embrace the truth.  But sit with her and honor her.  She is there to help you. I know bc she saved my life.

This is what will eventually comfort us and teach us. and guide us towards wholeness.

That's all I got today.  Pretty sure my friend IS safe and is FEELING safe too - but her story reminded me so I dove in. 

XXJT

#9 SWEETNESS

"There were many outstanding things about this wonderful woman.  Her voice was like a freshly opened bottle of champagne. She was warm and honest. I still smile when I think of Gwen laughingly calling me. . . Tabhuntah. . . One word. . . with a New York accent. Gwen has not only left an indelible mark on Broadway, but she lives on in the hearts of those who were fortunate enough to have known her and worked with her. . .When I think of Gwen, I think of the word “Vulnerable” and she was just that. . . “vulnerable”. . . You will be missed dear Gwen. . . God Bless You.  TAB HUNTER  

~

I love this quote about Gwen Verdon.  Ever since I read it, I cant stop thinking about how I have never been proud of my vulnerability.

When People tell me I am sweet or say “She’s a doll” it really bums me out.  It Depends on the circumstance of course but for the most part, it rubs me the wrong way.

First of all I am not sweet, really. I guess I have moments of sweetness but they’re rare.  Its just not my way. I am critical, I think critically. I am sarcastic. I enjoy a good complaint. I LOVE TO RANT. ESP if its ALSO funny and I get a laugh then I can't stop.  I don't kiss up. I don't kiss ass. If I like you you can feel it.  If I don't like you you can also feel it.  In short I don’t hide much.  Even when I dig someone especially when I dig someone in a big way,  I find it EVEN HARDER to be sweet.  I am usually a jokester or take the piss instead of straight up sweetness. 

I grew into being this way because I am highly sensitive but I sometimes feel as if someone is trivializing my power with “awww you’re sweet”.  Like they don't see me. They don't get me. They're trying to keep me small by buttering me up.  They’re letting me know they think I can be taken advantage of. 

I once asked my friend Rachel if I seemed like a bitch on IG and she said "No you seem tender" and I liked how that sounded so I borrowed it and now its mine.  My empathy used to look different : saving stray cats, uncontrollable crying on the subway because I was sitting across from someone who was leaking psychic pain, swallowing someones pain so that I could manage it or be in control of it because it was overwhelming to me. But in the end, this backfired terribly.  In fact all of it backfired terribly.

Currently I am getting to know my tenderness and I am stepping into sharing it. This is leading to me enjoying myself, enjoying my sensitivity and my own company more and finding a new found self assuredness that is steady and safe.  My contentedness IS its own container, its own boundary, its own energy field that sees what's outside of me but doesn't take shit on.

I am discovering that part of my mission is to share honest reflection through story telling to inspire others to connect to themselves in the same way.

In my mind its an invitation for you to connect with yourself and to reflect on your own stories. The ones that made you, shaped you, the ones you took the most from.  To those of you who have responded to me with your stories I LOVE IT.  keep it coming.

I used to be MORTIFIED to bring honest reflection and to share what I saw in others.  I attended the IM school of healing arts and every time I spoke up to comment on something that was happening in the room, I would contract so hard.  My teacher never told me I was sweet he would just say with love and reverence in his voice YOU ARE SO HONEST. His complement was such a reward for me bc in my house honesty was not rewarded it was punished.

People leave you when you're honest.

Or so I was taught.

Levent told me on many occasion that my honesty was a gift and necessary for the group to shift and that my presence was needed in the room.  He made it seem like the healing was aided by my honesty.  Its taken me years to really own up to what he was asking of me back then.

Currently Levent rests in a nursing home, unresponsive but alive. I miss him the most when big events happen, like the birth of my daughter.  He would have loved spending time with her.

I visited him a few short months ago and held his hands and we connected on the spiritual plane.  I cried for a while and then I promised him I would visit even if it was from my mind.  I promised him I would communicate with him through the ethers if I needed him to guide me in any way and I promised him I would continue to share.

And I will.
Have a great night you guys.
XXJT
 

The Smiths bc Morrisey is the QUEEN of vulnerability
Sweetness I was only Joking
https://open.spotify.com/track/2OErSh4oVVAUll0vHxdr6p?si=WCmJ5hWhRfue0Fvv8toyeg
Reel around the fountain
https://open.spotify.com/track/5bSASu4W0HJx6CuG8rbRcA?si=a0_bDaUJRbmZTPHeX9UBoQ

#10 That time I was speechless

MOOD.

This is my mood.   Not filled with words.  Working on WAKE THE FUCK UP so I’m thinking of all the ways to wake up your Kundalini - your life force- your creativity- your INSPI!  I am thinking of what helps me when I’m stuck what keeps me going when I’m already on it what keeps me pushing through to the finish line when things GET REALLY HARD bc things always get impossible before they resolve.  Finish lines are painful and beautiful and everything.  

These are pics taken by Christopher Duggan in the 2011 of an evening length dance performance called Crush The Pearl set to Radiohead and Thom Yorke songs. My dancers posted from the Radiohead show last night in NY so it made me think of them.  One of them looks like she is pushing through a finish line. 

More words tomorrow.

XXJT

#11 Favorite T. 

The Lemonheads.

https://open.spotify.com/track/15T5zb1i1cq9liKNrg3N78?si=9rjoko9SS9CAAQwO81VQB

I took my favorite line of this song as a prompt for this email.

~

When I was 11 I had a favorite T. I used to wear it every day.  Come to think of it it was a button down plaid very thin cotton shirt but I loved how it breathed in the LA heat and I loved how it looked with my favorite jeans.  So that was my uniform.  And that was that. 
Simple times.

But even when things were simple and I would sit in contemplation in my favorite tree wearing my favorite T, I was always thoughtful.  And by thoughtful I mean full of thoughts.  I was always aware of my internal dialogue.  

I was with one of my friends who knew me from my grammar school-favorite-tree-favorite-T days.  We were casting ourselves with current comediennes.  We agreed she is Melissa McCarthy all the way and I thought for me Maya Rudolph or Sarah Silverman.  She said "MAYA ALL THE WAY!  You were always the sensitive one".  

~

As an adult, even when failing or falling flat on my face, this recording of self awareness has been instrumental in my healing and being able to recognize the truth.  Truth is a combination of things but I have always had a sense that there was a way to hold both sides at the same time maybe multiple sides at the same time, even when I was not capable of doing it for myself.  Even when I was stuck in vicious cycles sabotaging myself left and right, I knew the truth was out there waiting for me.  And when I was ready I would be able to jump in.  I had faith I would get there.

Getting there (which is currently HERE) has not been easy in any respect but getting here has shown me what I am made of.  What I am made of is lightening and grit & my willingness to learn has made me indestructible.  

I have stamina if I need to.  When I need to.  And if I need to get to a finish line, for me or for someone else, I have no doubt in my mind that I ll get us there.

~

Healing is multi-dimensional.  There is no fix it plan.  There is no one way.  There are no actual rules except you have to show up.  We have to approach it from many angles.  We need to come armed with willingness.  That is all.

At the time where we lose patience (which will inevitably happen) we need only be willing. 

At the times when we are UNwilling we just need to know that there is another side and eventually we'll get there.  If not today, tomorrow.  So we just need to know there is more.  Even when it feels like shit.  and even when it feels like there is nothing worth living for.  and like hope is a foreign word.  There is always more.

~

Whenever I hear teachers gurus therapists talking about ways for you to fix you, through rigid re patterning or layers of affirmations or positive this or that or you know "Stop following accounts that make you feel bad about yourself" I say YES do that.  Do all that. But there is more.

I wonder does everyone know that there is more?  That other people annoying or distracting us isn't the problem so deleting their accounts is not a real answer?  Deleting someone from your life is not an answer that will provide deep change, not when WE are our own problem And we need to take of care of ourselves better. 

The More I refer to is that radical honesty with yourself about yourself.  

Radical honesty leads to accountability.  Which leads to self trust.  Self trust becomes pleasureable..... more pleasurable then letting others tell us who we are.
Then THAT becomes a boundary of sorts. You are contained in your own self trust you are not leaking and wont let yourself be leaked on.  

So this is my mission.  (To keep bringing us back to this truth) This is why I need to speak up.  Its not fair that you are only being offered superficial answers. Fix it plans. Affirmations that don't do shit.

Real healing takes time patience energy. There is no fix it.  Its multidimensional bc you have to approach everything with the same honesty.  And you need your cheerleaders (or as Brenee Brown calls them your Move-The-Body friends), to be folks who understand this premise:

How you do anything is how you do everything.  Approach all things in your life with radical honesty when in conversation with yourself.

Everything good I have ever received or experienced has come from the above statement bc it has multidimensional benefits. 

This is the only fix it plan I know that you can rely on day in day out.

~

Here’s a song for you.   Whether you just came back from a night on the town Or you spent the eve in your cozy T, snuggling with your honey and your kitty cat
Because its Saturday night.

Another Saturday Night / Cat Stevens
https://open.spotify.com/track/3ekij6XVw1F5dFX9oLvNU0?si=LfsypkC3TAa7-Q5p-AryXw

Love,
JT

#12 Hide & Seek 

Imogen Heep 

https://open.spotify.com/track/7mMlbJlXXo2mRtQ4R9sIzD?si=zI5D947KSPyKhzE87cXVLQ

I think I need to be honest about something and not just push through it bc I said I would.

I set an intention to do #30 emails in 30 days.

Weekends are impossible for me to take time to write.  I have a 4 year old who is amazing and also exhausting.  I get to the evening after a full day of my boonce and I need to chill out. It might be because I'm an older mom and I am not getting any younger but whatever the reason, here I am. ALSO I lean towards workoholic ism and need to be careful that not everything is a hard push.

So l'll be doing Monday - Friday daily emails bc that is realistic for me. 

~

Setting up unrealistic goals and disappointing myself is familiar though.  So I am putting a chink in the pattern.

Another familiar pattern is putting someone on a pedestal and then feeling rejected by any response they have towards me.  When I am in this dynamic with myself, basically everything this person does feels like rejection.  Even in the past when I have checked in with the person only to find out I was wrong, the person WAS seeing me, I couldn't feel it or take it in.  THAT'S how much of a hold this pattern has on me. and that is how strong my projection can be.

This pattern was ingrained during childhood, a time when parental validation frames if we will be getting fed, nurtured and cared for, so some of us take this getting validated issue into adulthood as if its life or death.

Even though I don't do this with most people in my life, I do it with folks I deem better than me.  People who are in positions of power, who seem to be dangling what I want in front of me.   When I look to others for validation this internal dynamic comes up for me so looking deeper and holding myself accountable for this pattern is starting to be a useful tool for my growth.

Its rough at times & I do feel discouraged when I am inside my blind spot but also I am getting somewhere with it these days. Starting to see it for what it is.  So I am sharing.
~
Stephy Birch was just talking on IG about how we’ve been trained to look outside the self for validation. I love her take on this and I think about this a lot with my daughter especially bc she loves to perform. She’s an only child which can be problematic with no one else vying for our attention but also she is very effected by even the slightest look on my face.  For example, she had a heat rash over the weekend and it troubled me. Whenever I looked at it and she could visibly see my worry she was effected.

We are trained to look outward because we are human and we have parents.
Parental validation is necessary to our survival.  If and when parents unconsciously distort their power, flame is added to the fire. 
This is why meditation is everything.
Meditation is basically the antidote to being a human being who survived parents.
Training ourselves to look inward for validation should be the Bible of our world as well as the Bible of THE world.
Because Only you know when its time to move.  How to move.  Where to move to.
And yoga / meditation is a great to way to VALUE and VALIDATE your own experience.

~

The other night I was contracting hard and I wanted to delete all my posts.  Its because I have been posting some very new stuff for me & its a big step towards living outloud.  I understand that with every expansion comes a reactive contraction, this is life.  But when the contraction comes it tends to be uncomfortable.
I wanted the discomfort to stop. I found myself thinking of folks to call who might tell me who I am!

"Hi Lisa! How are you?  Hey listen, can you tell me something?  WHO AM I?  oh good ok JUST CHECKING. THANKS!"

Cuckoo.

Why do I want to delete my RTV's?  I am taking the stance that I know myself (I do) that I get psychic input (I do) that I take what I have to say seriously (I do) and that I share it bc I know it can help people the way its helped me.

But I have never done this before - put myself out there as if I have confidence - as if I know myself and have worked on myself bc though I am trained in the healing arts and am licensed to lay hands on and hold space, this was not my 'training' if you catch my drift.  Dude I have so many certifications its stupid.  plus a BFA in dance and a professional touring resume under my belt.  None of that matters to my addiction to validation. 

Anyhow, where I come from, confidence in yourself was often confused with arrogance which was deemed a no-no.  Also outshining the parentals would inspire everyone to get as loud as they could.  It became easier to stifle myself and run in circles than it was to fully express myself and to shine as brightly as I was intended to.

So here I am; confident about something I have to offer and I want to hide under a rock.
But I wont. I wont hide. I am soldiering on guys.
Thank you for being here, for reading me, letting me share. 

Buy my meditation series now and get it for cheap.

Right now and all this week it will be $20 bucks for all 4
Morning : Wake The Fuck Up
Midday : Keep On Fucking
Evening : Chill The Fuck Out
On the go : May The Fuck Be With You

Love, JT

#13 The Mechanic

The only ‘mechanic’ I ever knew was some guy named Steve who attended NYU the same time I did. He was drummer and I thought he was rad.

But first : do you believe that everything is cyclical?  I do.  Everything comes back around.  Life has shown me this again and again.

Early on before I understood how legit cycles are.....I broke up with a dude bc he just didn't make sense to me.  His story is an entire email's worth of odd & in his wierdest move yet, during the break up he said "Let’s have dinner for closure".  So we made a date and then he didn't show up.  No phone call.  No explanation.  NADA.  I was perplexed.  My friend Rachel told me (oh have I mentioned I have about 10 beautiful friends named Rachel? more than 10.  ITS CRAY)  So this one Rachel said to me "You will have your apology at some point.  It all comes back around bc everything does.  It might look different than you expected - you might not want the apology anymore - but you’ll get it." And a few years later, I did.  But Iike I said, that weirdo needs an entire email devoted to him.

The resolve you crave will come back around to reveal itself to you and you will have your moment with resolve.  As predictable as the sun.

So, THE MECHANIC...

My best friend freshman year at NYU was named Brent. He was born and raised in Brooklyn and his dad was a butcher on Coney Island and he loved to give nicknames.

Adam Joseph, the frizziest Woody Allen bespectacled film school student you ever saw was a kid we called "two jackets".  Adam "two jackets" Joseph was his full nickname bc one time Brent saw him wearing two jackets as layers against the NYC winter.   So that was that.  Tall, way too skinny, rolling his own cigarettes and acting 40 at age 18, Mo Willems  (yes The Mo Willems of many children's books) was "Bone bag". He looked like a sack of bones and also he was annoying with a fake Brittish-y accent so "Bone bag" it was.  Eric Brown who was from soho born and raised was renamed Eric 'Downtown' Brown.  Kirk Ellesworth Marco a good looking actor form Bermuda who I made out with once much to Brent's chagrin, had long blond hair and sort of an Ethan Hawke (but not so much dirt under the fingernails) way about him. He became "The Hair Bag".

I was just "Ja Duhhna".

Brent worked the front desk and knew everyone and kept tabs on everyone. He liked me so when I had a huge crush on Steve and couldn't talk to him Brent would accompany me to the cafeteria and goad me on.  Coaching me.  

"Go talk to him!  For crying out loud!  Who is this guy?  What’s the big deal?  He’s from Long Island (that apparently meant something nefarious to Brent) and he always wears the same jeans! What is he, a mechanic?  

And so rad drummer Steve became 'The Mechanic'.

I had a pair of my dad's shredded jeans I was wearing ala madonna's wardrobe her first years in the big apple (she was JUST LIKE me) and I wrote on the inner thigh of these jeans "The Mechanic was here" with an arrow pointing to my sex. It felt empowering since I couldn't muster the courage to speak to him.  Pretending he had ripped off my ripped up jeans was the best I could do.  18 years old. Just graduated all girls HS.  Equal parts introvert and exhibitionist.

Back at my dorm I made a new friend Karen. She was cool and we looked like sisters although she was more exotic like an egyptian queen.  Kinky dark hair.  Russian Jewish. Theatre nerds.  Loved music and fashion.  We had dinner one night together in the caf and I pointed out the mechanic. BIG mistake. She started dating him that night.

~

I got over it pretty quick. I mean the dude didn't know I existed so it was more theatrics and nicknames and fun than it was even a crush.  Years later Karen and I were still friends.  I left town to go on tour with Mark Morris and she subbed for me at my hostessing job at Frutti Di Mare, a local Italian joint owned by crazy Israelis.  So I leave town and when I get back Karen has a new bf who lives in Boston. I remember her telling me about him how she met him at Frutti while hostessing. I remember pretty clearly thinking stop w the details. This is TMI. His name was Tom.  She looooovvvved talking abt him but for some PRESCIENT reason I did not want to hear the dirty details.

~

Years later when I first started dating my husband Tom, he called me one night and said "Here's a story....are you sitting down?"

He had run into an old gf, was telling her about me and she said "WAIT JORDANA?  Jordana Toback is your new gf?"
YA.  It was good ole Karen ‘steal my crush’ Ginsberg!  

So, IN SHORT,  Karen stole my mechanic from under my nose in the Rubin Cafeteria on 10th street, then years later, at MY JOB on 4th street, she met Tom and he broke her heart.  Then years later, Tom found me and we got married.  My friend Lisa has nicknamed the kookie coincidences that swirl throughout my life "The Jordana Toback Its a small world club". 

I never felt like I won or Karen lost.  I really didn’t.  She is still my friend after all these years.  It just felt like finally, some energy between she and I, and between me and what I wanted had been resolved.  Whatever knot she and I came into this world with that tied us together via our hearts, had unwound.

All this to say, everything cycles back around. The good stuff. The bad stuff. The affirmation you wanted will always come when you don't need it anymore even faster when you do it for yourself.  The world is cyclical.  I trust this.  

Allow it to be so.  It is yours to have and to lean on while you work on affirming yourself for yourself.

Oh and Why aren’t you meditating?  Why aren’t I?  

I ll be making a free meditation 101 video tomorrow and sending it to you all probs over the weekend.  Its for you on my list and no one else.  It will be fun and a great way to either start your sitting practice or to refresh yours.  I promise to keep it entertaining and fucked up if you promise to believe me when I say trust that everything comes around.

XX JT

Email #14, Miscarriage #6

Which one/ Nick Drake

https://open.spotify.com/track/4d0eRQkWI8LrRJfCHmyOVI?si=v_va8mWXRtiktucDVYVOVg

~

If you're newish to my list you may not know I had 6 miscarriages while trying to conceive and I am writing a manual about them loosely titled Lucky #7.  Each chapter will represent a miscarriage.  #6 will always be Nick.   

About 10 years ago I reconnected with my childhood crush on FB and we immediately entered into a pretty inappropriate cyber relationship.  Its not a secret.  It went on for some time.  But for me he was a true confidente, the best friend I ever had listening to every word I said, fascinated, complimenting my beauty, reading every story I wrote with attention to detail and tenderness.  Looking at my dances and taking notes he would share with me later.  He asked me to leave my husband the entire time we were involved until one day he gave me an ultimatum.

He said "Are you ever going to leave Tom bc I am ready to leave Sarah for you."

And a voice from deep within me said "NO."  Just like that "NO".

It wasn't a conscious choice really and it wasn't my voice.  Just an awkward guttural "NO" came busting out before I had a chance to soften it or caress him w a better explanation. Words were coming out of my mouth and I do not remember choosing them.  It had to end though.  I was using him to feed my non existent ego because I couldn't be alone with myself and my fears. 

"NO. No I am never leaving Tom." I remember thinking to myself, "Never? really girl? that's pretty extreme."
Then he said
"So, are we ever going to have sex?"
"No.  NO.  I don't think so.  Ya....NO."
"So something has changed. We had what I think of as an affair for these past couple years but now something has changed"
"Yeah. Something has changed."

~

Leaving one relationship for another does not suit me. I felt loyal to Tom. In many ways Nick and I were not compatible anyhow.  but I didn't know this would mean he would take his friendship away.  That he would ghost me.  Or that his ghosting would be one of the most educational heart breaks I have ever experienced.  

He proceeded to disappear from my life over the next few months slowly deleting the places we communicated on line bc they held all of his letters to me.  He basically erased me, deleting FB friends we had in common (we had a ton of grammar school connections he had to erase) in the hopes of not feeling for me anymore. or because he no longer felt for me.  You decide.

Until finally I confronted him.
I said “What's up Nick where did you go?  Why aren’t you speaking to me anymore?”  I really had no idea that after almost 3 years of his claiming he was in love with me that suddenly he would just stop when he realized I couldn't give him what he wanted.  
This was my first experience with such adept compartmentalization.

For the record this is not how I experience love. If I love you on any level were gonna be friends. Even if you wake up one day a die hard republican jesus lover with a penchant for assault rifles (true story) I will always hug you across the cyber waves forever.  I may not follow you but I will never ignore you. Moving on with decency and respect is just step one in being a mensch.  Forgiveness is in my DNA.  
Not his apparently.
He responded with this gem
”I don't want to have lovers spats if we aren’t going to be lovers” 
and those were his last words texted to me. 

Well almost, we had one last actual phone call where he seemed numb and his voice sounded funny. He told me he had been having a bi polar episode the entire time we were in contact.  The dude was asking me to spend the rest of my life w him but hadn't revealed he was bi polar. He told me that he was on a manic high the entire time we were in contact and then dropped into a low suicidal state that brought him back to his psych for meds.  He just didn't have it in him to fight anymore.  We had barely spoken in the months following my NO so the 'fighting' he was referring to must have been with someone else.  or with the voices in his head.  Who fucking knows.  

At the time of this last convorsation, I was in the middle of fertility treatments, miscarriages, a law suit over at my loft. I could barely get out of bed in the morning.  So I did not give any of this much thought for a good 6 months. I was too focused on my own rock bottom.  When I had my 6th misc I reached out thinking "well he loved me once he wd want to know if I was suffering.  Maybe we can commiserate the way only an old friend who knows everything about you can."

Quick side note: Any human being who does not respond to an email where you say
"I had another miscarriage and I feel like I'm dying inside.  I am not sure if anything will comfort me but talking to you might"
is pretty much losing at life.

A couple months later, I got pregnant with Una.  Bc Nick delivered babies in his clinic as a family doc I began allowing thoughts of him to enter the room when I would visit the OB.  I began allowing myself to wonder:  How could I be such a good judge of character and yet ignore the red flags that warned me this WAS his character?  Why didnt I let it sink in that he was bi polar bc on a psychic level I did know.  Why had he to shut me out so hard and fast?
How did we get here?

This is not a sex thing or a romantic thing.  Not an affair thing.   This is a human being thing.  I really cared about this person and he treated me as if I was less important than a stranger.  Nick would have picked up trash on the ground with more care. Apparently it was very important to him that I feel invisible.  

For a sensitive intuitive person like me, who rarely makes this sort of a bond with someone, this was the most hurtful thing I have ever experienced as an adult.  Miscarriage #6 was outdone by his silence. I am not exaggerating.  I felt his ghosting like a murder. In my chest. 

It occurs to me he wanted me to FEEL how small I made him feel when I said NO. or maybe he was trying to erase history. Take back his power. Reclaim the narrative. After all he did spend almost 3 years trying to get me to leave my husband. and it didn't work.
I often wondered if he just shifted his obsession to someone else more receptive.  

Once Una was born and my life shifted into that baby bliss, I began looking back on the relationship with new perspective and I reached out for the last and only time since my miscarriage email.  It was an epic letter.  I owned my part in leading him on. I told him how painful his silence had been for me  I let it all hang out. And I have no tie-this-up-with-a-bow ending here guys - this is how the story ends for now. Bc he never responded

~

One day we might pass each other in an airport or he might reach out when empathy shows him he wasn't the only person who lost here.  I trust we'll have our day when everything about #6 gets resolved but for now, this is it. I use the painful memory as a reminder I am the one who picks the souls I move forward along side and I have to pick carefully.
This is a small part of my origin story. It includes my super power, my fatal flaw and my mission.
Truth be told I couldnt send it last night bc I am scared its too revealing.
Thank you for letting me practice at life with you as witnesses.

Curtain.

And Silencio.

XXJT

#15 I made some videos for you today.

I made a ‘How to sit and Meditate When You Hate Sitting Still’ video with a yoga warm up at the top.

It’s the precursor to the mediations I’ll be selling over the next weeks and it will be free. 

I also made a video with breath of fire and long deep breathing because I realized some of you might need a little How to of the basics before getting to the meditation.

Both are TOTALLY LOW FI and will be posted as private, locked to anyone who doesnt have the password on YouTube.

Hopefully we’ll get the narration recorded this weekend and get them up next week.

Once I get those to you I ll be working on the actual wake the fuck up meditations.  Which will rock your soul hard and fast. 

AND THEN I ll start a Dance like yourself movement class like on ZOOM.  I may also do it at a studio eventually but ONE STEP AT A TME.  Jesus.

~

How was your day?  Mine was long.  I worked hard and collapsed into bed just now aching and sore which is my favorite way to feel especially because I am doing what I love.  The British call this kind of tired KNACKERED. This is one of my favorite words.  I remember my friend Simon telling me it was a word originally describing how tried horses are after a race but that it now has taken on the meaning of fatigue after a long night of sex. 

I hope you are all EXHAUSTED from doing what you love the most all day long and into the dark night.

In fact, Lets Get knackered.
See you Monday, 
XXJT

 

#16 What I learned from the bottom of the barrel

~

Here is what I learned at the bottom of the barrel: 

Don't shoot low bc it doesn't work.

Don't take shortcuts bc they don't work.

Never give up bc you'll always wonder if you gave it your all.

1) SHOOTING LOW
Many times when I have not gotten jobs I wanted,  I go to see the show and I am relieved I didn't get it. Not in a mean way at all.  But when it isn't what you REALLY want, then you re shooting in the wrong direction.
Shooting high is shooting right at what you want. Take the risk of wanting what you want. For you, that may be higher than you think you deserve or some bullshit, doesn't matter.  Take time to figure out exactly what you want and shoot for it.  And then take the risk of not getting it once or twice. Its scary but who cares? its WAY better than shooting low, getting it and being a sad sack bc you didn't even TRY for what you really want.  Have the audacity to want more then playing it safe.

Also w friends family companions chosen family lovers
SHOOT HIGH. Sometimes you think someone is high and then find they aren't enough for you.  or you aren't compatible   Reassess and shoot high again.  Bounce back as fast as possible but don't skip steps.  Which brings me to

#2) DON"T TAKE SHORTCUTS
Don't skip anything and shortcuts are bullshit.  You can't kill two birds. One thing at a time.  Mourn when you need mourn.  Give every moment its time to be completed.  Don't rush.  There are no time constraints.

#3) NEVER GIVE UP
Listen there might be a time to give up. I don't know what your exact circumstances are.  It depends on what you desire and why its eluding you.  I wanted to have a baby and when I had multiple miscarriages I searched my heart to see if we should adopt but I could not move fwd w it.  Neither cd Tom. We wanted the initiation of a pregnancy and a birth.
so I kept going. Folks thought I was nuts.  No one believed in a baby for me. I had to conjer that shit up from the ethers in myself. It was so fucking hard.
But nothing will ever be harder.  And if it is I will know how to keep going bc I learned how to keep going to meet Una.  She was my desire.  
And never giving up made me a warrior who never gives up.  Or maybe I was born that way but I learned what I was made of when it seemed like I could not have a baby.  

And its one fucking fascinating origin story, this much I know.

You know what else I got from hitting rock bottom?  DEEP heart gratitude.  Ok so there is a #4

#4 HIT ROCK BOTTOM
The only reason I even know what that is is bc the ease of my life was taken away from me.  
6 miscarriages, multiple fertility treatments, constant doctor visits and hormonal fluctuations, a vicious NYT review that basically said I was not a produceable artist and a lawsuit over my loft draining all our funds, would bring any good woman to her knees.  TODAY though, at least once a day a feeling comes over me that I am lucky bc I am free. 
I AM NOT BEING SUED! I HAVE MY CHILD W ME FINALLY & SHE IS HEAVEN ON EARTH!
I AM HEALTHY AND I AM FREE!
and my breath relaxes and I feel that wholeness and how lucky I am to be living in this body, in this life.

You can't tell anyone to be grateful.  You cannot teach gratitude.  You have to want it you have to earn it & its a learned thing. And we only learn it when we lose everything.

If you just go “oh man I am SO lucky I wasn’t in that Trader Joe’s in Silverlake.  Those poor shmucks” nothing moves inside of you.  No perspective is shifted,  You don't have empathy.  YOU don’t know what it feels like to be shot at or to lose a person randomly without reason.  So you aren’t learning from actual experience. You’re just pretending at empathy.  OR maybe you're practicing at empathy.  Not a bad thing just not THE THING.

REAL empathy comes when you have almost nothing left to give yourself.  You're on the ground flat on your back and you reach out in earnest to an old somewhat estranged friend and say I need you can you help and they say YES! I am always here for you and I always have been And that little bit of kindness reminds you ITS GONNA BE OK.  That is grace. And you know you will always help that friend bc they helped you. That loyalty to generousity is what comes back to you when someone ANYONE in need knocks on your door.  If you hadn’t been so in need and been so helped by your friend, you cd never fully embrace giving to someone else in this selfless way.  You couldn’t RELATE to what desperation they must be feeling.  Being reminded of our desperate times triggers our memory and voila,
That lovertits, is empathy.


So since I cannot teach you how to be grateful at the moments you are not as I cant teach myself to be grateful all the time, here is what I can offer you today :  let yourself hit your bottom. Let yourself FEEL loss. Don’t hide from it w wine.  Or pot.  FEEL IT.  If you have friends or family who are floating in a negative spiral bc you wont let them hit rock bottom know this:  you are denying them their own gratitude which is the best feeling THERE IS.  Way better than wine or pot. Or Percocet.
So let them fall.  Let chips fall where they may.
This is not always possible I realize that too.

STILL

“Mixed up thing” Billy Holiday / Tom Rossi from our show POON.
We have a way better version of this song but its not up on spotify.  For now, here it is.
Bc you just have to FEEL it.


https://open.spotify.com/track/2By5LcL4wxUDpznyktTdcE?si=CGnHp9FaS6OS2z6ORD8ngw

#17 Summer Nights

I am in the middle of production on a documentary about my mentor Bella Lewitzky.

We had a big research day today and I have not had time for myself. To write. To meditate. To create. To dance. Tomorrow will be another Bella filled day and I will talk more about her and why she is someone you should know about.  How since we went live with our website and social media accounts about Bella we have attracted wonderful people to the project and its getting more exciting every day.
 

But for now I want to talk about this brief moment I had after the work was finished.

I picked Una up from school a little early and we went to my best friends Mom's house.  The house my best friend grew up in.  We swam in her beautiful pool in her spacious yard with her and lovely daughter.  We swam, we lay in the last patches of sun, we ate grapes and carrots as the sun went down.  Our girls although 6 years apart, play happily together and pretend they are princesses and run around the pool and tell each other stories. 

Me and Kathi have been friends since we are 5 years old when her dad, who brought her to her first day of kindergarten saw me and said to his shy daughter "that girl over there with the pigtails looks nice" as he sent Kath over to play with me.  Her dad was a famous story teller. I say that bc I don't know if that story is true but it was a story he loved to tell.  He died two years ago this week.

I was in New Hampshire that summer and I left my phone at home so when she texted me to tell me "Dad isn't doing well come to the hospital" I didn't get the text.  Her dear friend had my ipad account and sent me a message so I called back when I got it but it was two days later and her dad had already passed. 

This is the sort of friends we are.
"Dad isn't doing well. Come."
When we were 6  we jumped on her bed and sang the Defranco Family song "Its a heart beat its a lovebeat"
and when we meet its a good vibration....
But today wasn't big or funny or cute or sad. 
It was a moment.

It was blissful. The wind blew through the trees in her yard in a transporting lull.  The neighborhood sounds are familiar as are the smells of her mom's house, the feel of the warm brick under our towels, the familiar movie posters in the pool house bathroom.

We spoke about the musical she is producing that her dad wrote from one of his films before he passed.  Its previewing now on Broadway.  We talked about my core class and how its changing her body.
We spoke of making time to drink wine and see a show at the Bowl and we laughed about the silly fight she had with her husband this morning.

So actually there was not time for #30daysofthesefuckingemails
OR the videos I am working on for you.

I got home late and Una went down late and now its late.
 I have a nice tan but not much to show for it.

Some days need to be like this. 
I don't have many friends, none I have known so well for quite this long and these times together where we take an hour and look at each other are rare.
It doesn't mean I love my work less. OR I love you all less.
It doesn't mean the work I have begun will not be completed.
Just needed to hit pause and remember where I came from for a second.

Listen to my hear pound.  Listen to my love sound.
More tomorrow.
XXJT

Heartbeat its a lovebeat.
https://open.spotify.com/track/2nmcstJm068qfoxC51c3al?si=qM2YRK68Qr2gGhdD-ZudOA

Which reminds me!  Do you guys remember this song?
Sweet pea
https://open.spotify.com/track/6huU7kH11qu59yPeKwERsL?si=7_-TDcG1R7yWjxbFwBHWCA

#18 Beautiful Man

I wish I had a picture of this guy.

 I transferred from the NYU Film Department to the dance department after my film prof Daniel Kazmiersky said to me with the thickest czech accent you can imagine
"Jordana all you make are dance films.  You can make those when your dance career is over.  Go have a dance career!  You're young - GO Dance!"

So The NYU dance department was in a building on Second avenue and my dorm was on 10th street and Broadway.  Every morning same time I would take this long walk across Greenwich village and into the east village passing Cooper Union at my halfway point and every morning same time I would pass this boy.  It was always sort of dramatic.  Because this was my headphones on, connect to self, music meditation before I knew what meditation was. I would be feeling that timelessness and then he would halt that seamlessness as he entered the frame.  With long curly sandy blond hair, big sad shaped eyes, Tall, with a stompy black booted swing to his gate and handsome as all get out.  He had a formidable nose too.  This has been my type since I first met Nick too-much-of-a-douche-to-answer-an-email when he was 12 and I was 9. Or maybe this was my type before Nick.  I cannot tell.  But I have a couple types; an Irish one (see Tom) an israeli one & the beautiful man one.  He definitely held that stature in my mind as the epitome of The Type.

We both had long curly hair. We both liked feeling it in the wind as we walked to class.  We both were entranced by our walkmans.  We began waving to each other.
Of course he was shy. 
And at some point though I don't remember how, we began a conversation.  He told me his name (Rupert) and and I obsessed a little about him although not enough to do anything about it - just enough to pine.

At a local bar in the area I met a woman one night who went to school at Cooper and when I asked if she knew Rupert she said
"OH YEAH.  Everyone is in love with him.  Some woman (NOT ME I promise I pine but I would never be so bold) jumped out of cab and stopped him on the street and said to him
'You are the most beautiful man I ever seen!!!'
~

At some point I stopped seeing him. Maybe summer was at fault I dont remember.  Time went by not sure how much but then I went to Washington for the first women's march.  What year was that, was it 1991? or 2.
I met my friend Catherine in DC and had no idea how I was getting back to NYC.  Ahhh the days of being 20 something, not a worry or a plan in sight!

Walking towards the hundreds of busses in the lot, with literally thousands of other people, I ran into Rupert and his brother who was not so shy, and they said GET ON OUR BUS so I did and we talked all the way back to NYC.

It was pleasant but again my memory isn't super detailed about these memories.  I have these impossible moments of magical intersection & when I do I tend to feel overwhelmed speechless and not altogether present.  Looking back I have subsequent holes in my memory from these moments I think bc I am hopping back and forth between the earthly plane and spirit plane. 
Its as if the presence of a kindred spirit reminds me what it feels like to float in the ethers along the spirit plane and when the veil that separates the two is lifted even for a second,  I cant always tell where I am.

Many years later, in fact not so long ago I believe I was already pregnant with Una and I attended an art gallery opening at my friend Scott's gallery and who was there but RUPERT. 

The crazy part about this moment is Scott was ALSO someone I met and had instantaneous recognition with while walking down street in Williamsburg back in the 90's.  I KNOW IT SOUNDS LIKE THIS HAPPENS TO ME ALL THE TIME but it does not.
At the moment the angels pushed me into Scott, I had been planning on applying for any job in the neighborhood but this gave me the nudge I needed.  I went straight into the L cafe where Scott worked and was a manager and got the job.  We immediately started a fling but it was short lived.  We both had lovers already and neither of us had it in us to continue an actual affair but we have been solid friends ever since.

So I am at Scott's gallery at this opening and his friend Andre is there with his business partner who is my beautiful man, RUPERT and after we both stand there and say OH MY GOD and Scott is even more shocked than WE BOTH ARE, we get to catching up.  Apparently Andre and Rupert they do this thing together as painters that is very secret and amazing and magical.

They imitate great works of art. Professionally. 
 

I tried to get the story out of them believe me but both of them are super hush hush.  FROM WHAT I GATHER they imitate great works of art for very rich people who take the real works of art out of their homes and put into very safe storage.  And they  leave the fakes on display in their homes. These amazing painters are commissioned to create the forgeries.

Everything you see here is not real. Everything you see is a fake panting of a real painting.
There is the earthly plane and the spiritual plane.  There is a thin veil between.  The veil need only be lifted for a moment and then you would understand.....everything.

I flip back and forth between what is ethereal and what is here and now.  When I am in the presence of a soul mate kindred spirit twin flame whatever you wanna name it, I flip back and forth between my earthly relationship to them and my spiritual one.
I cannot control it.

Do you have a moment you can recall where you felt in your body
THIS is where I am supposed to be?  I know you already and I am happy to see you again even though you've never met here on earth?
HERE IS IT.
HERE I AM.
THERE HE IS.
THERE SHE IS.
WHO IS THAT?
WHERE AM I?
~

I live here. In the space that exists between both worlds.  And very much inside both worlds.
I am creating meditations that will help you come into that connection with yourself where you can conjure the angels towards you.
Where you can thin the veil between you and spirit if you want to.

We will finish the Mediation warm up video narration tomorrow. 
All in good time.
XXJT

#19 Fishes in a barrel

Codependency in a nutshell

His wife was a teacher in her thirties who seduced a 17 year old student. 
When she ended the affair with the student, the kid had a little bit of a breakdown.  His family said the wife better not teach in their district or in their state or they would sue.  

When I intersected with them, this husband wife relationship consisted of two very well medicated folks but neither seeking help or therapy. Just taking meds to get through the day.  No yoga.  No EMDR.  No colonics or nutrition.  No psych eval to check in on how the meds are working.  No nothing. This is not uncommon.  I know what its like to keep raising the bar on how much shit you'll take and I know what its like for that behavior to bring you to rock bottom so I guess I understand more than I wd like.   For me the bottom was a wake up call I have been trying to rise from ever since. For this couple though, bottom was Monday - Friday.
And Saturday.
And Sunday.

Once he and I were talking abt his wife I suggested some therapists for her.  I had found him a therapist in his area and he seemed to be taking on some responsibility for his life. He was going to see the therapist and writing about the experience.  It sounded real to me. But when we would talk about the wife it was all victim story.  Poor (fill in the blank). She just couldn't catch a break.  She was just a mess and he didn't see her ever changing so oh well.  If he challenged her victim story, if someone mirrored to her how her behavior could be improved or accounted for, she would completely disconnect, collapse into an oral hole of doom and threaten suicide.  
THIS is one of the ways victims perpetrate to stay in their vicious cycles.  ‘Expect nothing from me or else' becomes their mantra. 

Codependency is real and for some of us its a very slippery slope.  We codas are the ones consciously or unconsciously helping people to stay in their mantra of 'expect nothing from me'.

When I hear “poor so and so” and its demanded of me that I feel sorry for someone,  I immediately freeze.  My compassion disappears whenever it is demanded of me with no explanation.  Basically what I hear is “Come be in denial with me so I can feel ok about the fact that I am a victim".  No thank you.  I don’t let anyone tell me what to see.  And I do not buy into the demand for empathy. A demand for compassion like that is a sure sign of distortion. 

But sometimes we wake up as if from a dream inside of one of these dynamics. If you find yourself inside of this dynamic, watch yourself and learn. 

I cd see his wife was a victim of a terrible childhood but she had also AS AN ADULT perpetrated her own victimhood onto this 17 year old boy. The husband told me he never even discussed the affair w his wife so he didn't know if wife/student had actually slept together (they had, even I know that) or how many times.  He didn't ask.  

When the parents of the kid she seduced called on the phone to threaten her NOT to teach in that county anymore, husband and wife picked up family & moved across the country.  His excuse for not holding his wife accountable? For not letting her circumstances hold her accountable?

“Well you know she is just fishes in a barrel”

I had never heard the expression before. He said “Anywhere you shoot you get a fish bc she has so many problems”.  As if being problematic was a reason to encourage her to not work on herself.  As if this was a reasonable justification for ignoring that she seduced a student.  
As if it was a reasonable response to move away so the student’s family wdnt sue or ban her from the education system with a damaging lawsuit or jail time.
Anyone out there on Jordana’s email list think this is normal or recognize this as familiar?  If you do, Hi there.  ME TOO

 “No use speaking honestly with me bc I am a victim, & not helpable. Too many fishes in this barrel.  Nothing to see here.
Just carry on.”

I find the telling of this story disturbing I hope you do too.

Victimhood is real.  Victims perpetrate so that you too are a victim. 
It often goes hand in hand with addiction and when you try to get someone to see differently, they refuse your truth as they refuse to give up their drink.
PUT DOWN THE DRINK sure but lets also PUT DOWN THE STORY. 
People stay stuck in old stories Bc change wd mean we have to look at how WE ALL may have contributed to the story. 

This is hard for me to write about. Its why I didnt email friday night. 
Also Una's birthday was Monday and we had a Sunday party, a Monday evening family event and after I fell into bed last night I realized I had been avoiding this email.
Been working on this one all weekend and having a hellova time releasing it to you all.

My favorite psychic says were all just at different stages of awakeness and to really embody compassion around someone being deeply asleep.  
Recently, someone in my family (by marriage) has admitted to being an alcoholic. Over the past 17 years since meeting this person I could not figure out why she was so covertly nasty to me.  Other family members acknowledge the oddity of a phoney sweet exterior and wierd outbursts of cunty but everyone wd say  
“she doesn't mean it / she's dumb / she's this / she's that / she's a victim of a terrible childhood / Ignore her.”  
But I could not.  

I would swallow her pain so quickly (in an effort to manage it I think) that I couldn't tell what was hers or what was mine so I would be in pain the entire visit.  
I would swallow her pain and think we had made a tacit deal that if I did this for her if I took on her pain she would not hurt me.  
And she would ALWAYS hurt me.
And it was EXHAUSTING to see her.  Every time.

Her announcing she is an alcoholic (even though she did it over a drunk dial and has not yet taken any steps to stop drinking) has allowed her to justify Everything in her life.  She is now saying she drinks bc of all the bad things that have happened to her.  
And then a short pause.  And now silence.  No word on rehab or any sort of attention to her issue.  Everything is fine.  Her partner is in complete cahoots with her, making sure she never hits bottom.  Says she is back to normal since the drunk dial. Back to 'normal'. 

Imagine if her partner said 'no more of this' and put a chink in this vicious cycle. What if she was allowed to feel the bottom of the ocean floor; to SEE FEEL UNDERSTAND that every heartbreak since her terrible childhood ended has been one of her own creation in an effort to replicate the only thing she knows. 
IMAGINE.
~
The silver lining to her admitting she is an alcoholic is it gave me permission to see her for who she is.  How much shame she must feel around me, someone who (flawed as I am) is not walking a lie. I struggle, I am far from perfect but I walk the walk. 

Now I have a hold of my part in this, how I would swallow her pain in an attempt to control her emotional violence, I can see it for what it is. 

We all need to hold ourselves accountable for where we are, who we are, victims we may have perpetrated unconsciously, ALL OF IT.  We need to surround ourselves w like minded angels who also hold us accountable.  We can be gentle with ourselves as we go and we can gently hold others but still, integrity, honesty, accountability. 

We can access this sort of radical honesty by listening to ourselves when we meditate.  Just listen.  Bc inside of you are all the answers to all the questions.
For me listening to myself has been like peeling an onion.  I have always had internal dialogue I was aware of. But more and more it’s becoming THE dialogue of import.  
Who do I listen to?  ME.  Whose body gives me insight?  MINE.  Who do I trust?  MY self.  Who decides how much compassion I feel for an addict? I do. 

~

SO WHY ARENT YOU MEDITATING?

xxJT

 Free video preparation for sitting in meditation will go up this evening.

Wake. the Fuck. Up.

#20 Beauty is in my eyes

So, how many of you feel beautiful?
Do you ever wonder if others think you’re good looking?
This is such a rough topic especially for how much we objectify celebrities and each other but I keep getting this intel and having these downloads about it.  
So I’m gonna share.

Yes there is such a thing as physical beauty I suspect but more and more I cant find what IT is.
We’re told its the Kardashians, The Jenners, The Gigi Hadids.
I literally don’t care mostly bc I don’t subscribe.
I look at hollywood faces and I think people who mess with thier divine symmetry often look strange. The opposite of beautiful to me.  So I was already on the same page as what I am about to say but lately I have been SEEING things morph, seeing peoples faces and radiance morph and watching BEAUTY APPEAR.
Its incredible.

I have been witnessing people I dont think anything about transform as they inhabit a tender part of themselves.  As they radiate the warmth, 
I SEE THEM AS BEAUTIFUL.
There was an RTV made by Julian a yoga teacher talking about his scars from acne as a teenager and as he spoke about his self consciousness and his painful memories, all I cd think of was wow! he’s gorgeous.

What is good looking? What is it to be pretty or handsome?  Who decides? Really take a second. Think about what you find beauty to be.

The other day a man I work out with, a cop, a huge dude w massive shoulders about 6’5” and covered in tats who I have known for months, stopped me as I got into my car. I was sorta nervous like oh shit what did I do! Haha
He made a gesture that I had left my coffee on the top of my car and we laughed together for a second.
His warmth towards himself, towards me, the sweetness of the gesture MADE HIM BECOME ATTRACTIVE. He was in a second, softer and available to be seen.
I suddenly got it :

This is what it is to witness someone.  This has nothing to do with what you look like. Bc now that I see Eddie, I really see him and he’s beautiful.
but before honestly I saw a big beefy dude. Who seemed nice but that was it for me. I didnt see handsome or not. 
Don’t get me wrong I always liked Eddie. But suddenly I SAW HIM.

I have never personally felt beautiful or pretty. I get called sexy a good amount and some IG lady friends have reached out to me and said I have IT /The thing /Charisma.
I am used to hearing this. I am also a performer so some of this has been crafted. Perfected. Worked on.
but this is different than pretty.
Its also different than being beautiful. Or being seen as beautiful.

I have never wanted to work on pretty But always yearned to be SEEN.  I see plenty of Los Angelinos, men and women who spend everything on how they look. I don’t spend much time or $$ on beauty bc for me the feeling of beautiful comes from feeling healthy.
To me not having to work superficially on looking good is FREEDOM. 

Still I beat myself up for not looking perfect or pretty.  And I hate that feeling that there isnt much I can do about it. 
I mean this is me after all.

For the most part if I am not getting the attention I want from someone in any given situation I often fall back on  
“Well, I am not pretty so they must see me as ugly. THAT must be it”
So I have no idea if I can own this truth I have witnessed in others. Can I let people see my warmth? Can I invite them in and let them see me as beautiful? This seems daunting to me.

ALSO let me just interject that with all the bullshit going on in the world, WHY THE FUCK DOES BEAUTY EVEN MATTER?

Oh man. I am not sure of anything but this much I know:
All we have is eachother.
And if we can know and understand and SEE eachother, really witness eachothers beauty, we can help eachother.
This is actually so important right now. SO DEEPLY IMPORTANT.
And as my friend Anca said in her RTV yesterday, I would die without beauty. 
This is everything.
So this is my note to self and my note to you:
Bring yourself.   Bring your warmth and tenderness as much as possible to yourself first. Allow others to witness your warmth.
And let them see you as beautiful.
And allow yourself to see OTHERS, someone you may not have even noticed before, to become beautiful before your eyes.
I will do this too.
But lets not miss this.

Inside this is everything there is to know.

~
 

#21

If you believe what you want is far away from you it will remain outside of your grasp.

Our external reality is our choice.  We paint the walls,  We choose the color to paint them.  We lay the carpeting.  We design the furniture. 

I started to see a new therapist last year and everytime I entered the office it looked different to me.

I dont have an answer as to why this was and still is an ever changing room for me.   I think its bc I am on very high alert in this space.  
When I walk in, it looks different every time.
ITS FREAKY. And it freaks me out. But also the expereince is here to offer me some wisdom around how much we decide is reality.
How much our state of mind and our beliefs DEFINE what we see.

SO if we decide what reality we see. What color the walls are, etc. IF WE GET TO CHOOSE then why aren’t we doing it better?
This is my question to myself.
If we have a deeply imbedded false belief & that false belief is what we fall back on when were tired, scared, or frustrated, than that belief is framework for our present tense.

IF we fall back on this old pattern and this false belief that tells us “Your success is over there and you’ll never get there” who’s to say it isn’t there all the time COLORING SHAPING FRAMING everything?

This then is the wall paper on all of our walls.  Its the paint color and hue. Its the furniture.
The interior design of our brains is the jumping board, the fall back comfort zone and the lense through which we see the world.

So how do we shift these false beliefs?  Bc all the RTV’s and all the emails lists, and all the selling and following marketing advice and rabbit hole excercises wont create permanent change if we re falling back on this false belief.  
I mean the excercises have helped me a ton.
And the constant work and dedication to communication has brought me some info about myself I didnt have before.
TY RTV and TY #30daysofthesefuckingemails!

But at some pt everyone gets tired, scared or frustrated and we need something ELSE to fall back on in order to bounce back fast and continue.
We need to have better framework better architecture. 

WE CANT BOUNCE back if the false belief is our fall back. Is our comfort zone.  Is our fatigue mode.  Bc that false belief being there means its shaping our present tense. Whether were conscious of it or not.

Even if you only feel like “I dont deserve to be a successful dance officiandao” when you’re tired, this STILL means the false belief is inside of you helping to mold and shape all that you do. 

How unearthed the false belief remains, how secret it stays is directly proportionate to how much we can propel ourselves forward.

How do we change our comfort zone?  How do we shift false beliefs so that the only thing framing our realities is solid architecture?
I think we open it up to the world and say it outloud.
To ourselves, to our friends, to our therapist, to our email list (wink wink).
Your choice.

In opening up our deep routed fears, we expose it to the light.  We see it for what it is.
Then we can connect to our DESIRE and let the desire be the fall back cushion. 

If you ve been writing a book for 10 years or you are Terrence Malick and you can only make one film every 10 years, for fuck sakes it doesnt mean you aren’t a genius but HOW FUCKING PAINFUL IS THAT PROCESS? And what false belief is getting in your way that makes birthing one thing so fucking arduous?
I have always thought Malick must be so miserable bc of how slow he works and how isolated he seems to be.
I dont know this for fact but I wd bet his internal life is not fun.

IF WE DONT ALLOW OURSLEVES to connect to the Desire, if we don’t open up that heart space the I WANT MORE place in our hearts. 
if we dont say it out loud there is no potential to get out of our own way.
BUT when we open it up, when we expose the desire and give it an idea form when we give the idea form space to exist it has potential to exist.
When we speak it outloud, there is the possibility of it BECOMMING.
IT cd even become your fall back and Then become your reality if you want it long enough and bad enough and with enough intention.
I have experienced this to the true.

I kept coming back to my desire.  I wanted Una.  I wanted a pregnancy.  I tried to think about adoption but it wasnt my desire. And EVENTUALLY Una did arrive inside my belly.  It was not luck.  It was consistency. And connection to my desire.
I am applying what I learned in fertility treatments to my false belief about being a successful movement innovator.
bc right now I am facing a false belief and I am opening this topic up bc I can see that no matter how hard I work if my false belief is guiding me fron the shadows, I cannot make much real progress. 

I am applying it now to my success or lack there of as a dance person, as a movement expert.
I still am scared stuff I am not enough.  I often stop and say to myself who do think I am?  I am still tired from working so hard and from all the fears in my monkey mind who try to distract me from my desire.
But my desire is to be huge.  To increase my psychic abilities and sensitivities and to help people w them. To advise them about movement, about the body, and about the mind body connection. ALL OF IT.

Watch me here to find out what transpires.
More soon.

XXJT

#22 You can't have what you want!

Of course you can!  
I’ll tell you some of the how.
But first, today was pretty epic.

I couldnt sleep bc I’m sick so I got up early and taught class.  A duet to 2 amazing women. Getting back into teaching and enjoying it.

Then I rushed to Venice (it only took one hour to get there BAH!) and interviewed some women I grew up dancing with who also happen to be Los Angeles Dance stars.  We all studied with Bella my mentor together back in the 70’s and 80’s.

These women are only older than me by a couple years but man when you’re 13 that does mean a lot.  Now were all the same age!  If you follow.

I looked up to these ladies.  Held them in the highest regard.  But today all I could see was how similar we are.  We all were wearing the same clothes,  the same jewelry,  they were admiring my sandals which looked exactly like their sandals :-) One of the women commented to me “WOW our hair is the same”.
I know these are superficial things but I cd feel the deeper similarities between us. And visual similarities do make deeper similarities more obvious, more evident
Its as if we were always sisters, walking through parallel lives. I just didnt see it until now.
I always looked up to these women.  But what I took in is I AM like them.
What I want to be, what I want to have or look like or BE like, is here. NOW. 

It was as if in a dream.  It was as if this moment happened in order to SHOW me I already AM like them And all I cd think of was
Maybe what you want to be is already here and now just by virtue of the fact that you want it.
Maybe I dont need to TRY to be better.  To TRY to feel regal. To TRY to achieve.
Maybe I AM.

My friend Casey is in town so I texted him that I wanted to see him.  He says YES LETS MAKE A DANCE.(Aubrey I promise to tag you if we go an IG live tomorrow night in the studio)
Again, I have wanted this loose loving relationship with Casey for years but for years it was elusive to me.  He was elusive to me.  Bc of things I said and did to him but also just because.  And it doesnt matter anymore because we have forgiven, we have moved on, but none of that forgiveness and moving on MEANT we wd work together again.
I asked for this. This extra bit for me and Casey.
& Its all here happening now.

I started talking a couple days ago about this idea that what you want is as close to you or as far away as you believe it is.
And here I am experiencing it in full effect. I am experiencing an extreme a mirroring.

These women I hung with today are so much who I wanted to be when I was a kid but felt I wd never be good enough to be.
Yet when I sat with them yesterday I felt our sameness. Cut from the same cloth. Twin flames.  Kindred spirits.  What have you.

THE MORE I OWN that I am like these cats, that we are for eachother other, the more that truth is mirrored to me.  

I am telling you this not to brag AT ALL. Listen,  I spent years pinning for this moment, VERY unsure how to get here. 
I have spent years not knowing how to move forward.
Wishing so and so would call and hire me. Wishing I had the opportunities or the lifestyle other ppl have.

But what I am learning and my guides are showing me on the daily is WE decide how fast or slow we want it all to happen.
We decide how close or far away our desires are.  
You want time to heal?  Take time. Seriously.  If you need time, dont be conjuring what you re not ready for.
Not everything has to be fast to be real and good.
Its taken me forever to get here. I still have ptsd and certain trauma I need to heal from.
But once I began really owning that what I want is as close to me as I BELIEVE it is, it started proving me right.
I have to remind myself that I m ready for all of it and that I asked for it. Bc I am easily overwhelmed. And I have been isolating myself for a lot longer than I have been putting myself out there!

So when you re ready for love, be ready to own that its already in your eyes. And you just need to open them.
If you re ready to teach more or sell more clothes or own a store, connect to how far or close those dreams feel to you.

Bc Maybe what you want to be and you want to do and what you want to expand into is what you have been all along. And connecting MORE to that DESIRE is all that needs to shift.

I remember someone telling me to imagine I was already pregnant when I was going through fertility treatments.  
YUP I wanted to kill them. Strangle and crush them it made me so angry. Its hard in the midst of great struggle and fear to imagine what you want is with you already.
I remember TRYING to imagine I was a world renowned choreographer.
That I could work with Casey again as well as other musicians.  
This self help simplification of layering on idealized beliefs before processing where you actually ARE will make you hella angry. And even if you do conjur some of what you want (I did) it wont feel that great. (It doesnt- believe me) bc you gotta be ready.

Owning your desires, owning your fears and remaining vulnerable to your heart regardless of fear’s terrorizing threats, makes you ready af.

What I’m saying and suggesting is connect to what you wish for, connect to what you desire and let your heart desire it!
FEEL WANT.  
Say it outloud say it to the hills say it to anyone who will listen and FEEL what it feels like to have it.

*It may bring up major fears and you may need to seek help to hold space for those fears to be looked at. In a safe envirment that is safe FOR YOU.
You may be able to hold space for yourself at some point too.
BUT
THIS is conjuring.
THIS is alchemical magic101.

There is a moment where you have to let go of the outcome.
Casey and I are meeting tomorrow night but I am not attached to what will come of it. Just enjoying that I wanted to bring him closer and to bring work like that closer to me and I did.
Anyone one of you can do this.  I know bc I did it and it isnt bc I am special. Its bc I WANTED. And I let myself WANT.

XXJT

#23 Everything happens in its own time which is now

The meditations are coming.

I swear. Every time I my time frees up, Tom gets a client ; its been busy.
Then, we had a date this week to record which got waylaid by a couple really fun things :  a cold, my daughter having her second worrisome rash this month, and a work situation I could not pass up.  So I got busy and distracted and stressed!  Then I thought ok “Well do it tonight” on the night of the day I gave up caffein.

NOT SMART.

I have had an eye popping headache since Thursday. Looking at a computer hurts my brain.  I just now had a saltless lunch (part of the same dieta as the no caffein) and SUDDENLY felt normal for the first time in 2.5 days.  SO YAY!  I am back to writing. 

I was thinking today I want to get better at just shooting myself doing some excercises and posting them for you.
Free stuff. Bc somedays expecially days I am crossfitting, I see how much is missing from their workouts (CORE) and how much using core correctly can make every excercise more effective, and more productive. It really is the end all be all answer to anything mobility work doesnt fix.

I am basically a core specialist and I love getting people to feel how to work their core but my torso STILL doesnt look normal since my kid
and this does stop me from taping myself and showing you stuff.

Its dumb.  Its superficial.  But it stops me and I let it.

I have really been focusing on getting into shape since August last year BUT it was a major comeback.  I was off excercises trying to get pregnant for 5 years (docs orders)   Then pregnant for almost a year (hah)  then a crazy C. Then baby bliss and no money for help meant we did everything until she started pre school.
When the kid started pre school I made myself an excercises sched and got back into the game.  THANKS BE TO GOD bc its saving my life. 

But my body has been pretty stubborn and I have decided not only to keep at it but to offer you stuff even though I dont have a hot yoga bod yet.

Here is the fucked up part:
I am not critical of others who are teaching if their body does not fit Hollywood standards.  I actually enjoy seeing all different body types move in all diff ways.  It part of why I am a choreographer!  But somehow I dont give my self the same leniency.  And since that might not change without a push, I think making some free core videos for you all will be a good excercise for my mental health.

SO ya free vids on how to work your core are coming at you too.

Only you will be able to access the vids. Just like the warm up for meditation video I posted.

Okay guys. 
More soon,
~ Happy Weekend to all lovers ~
XXJT