Congrats on entering your last season. I wish I could watch it but I'm sans TV since my recent break up with, um, very many material things in this still 'tough' economy.

But right now, I miss my dad.

My Mom and sis are off to the Toronto Film festival.

They go every year. Every year I have a memory of them going. Sometimes I am with them. Sometimes I am living in NY, sometimes I am living in LA, sometimes I am going off to work on a perfectly beautiful day in midtown and am then terrorized by planes flying into the twin towers and I remember it all like yesterday.

I remember it all and how it was so very sad and scary.

I knew then it would be very important. I knew it would change my life, everyone's life.

I knew that all that happened was so very, very...pertinent.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry that it made me selfish and look at my life in the wake of lives lost to realize that the life I was living needed to change.

If it didn't happen, I would NEVER be a teacher. I would never be teaching yoga or fitness training or writing a comic. I would NEVER be doing the things I was meant to be doing if people didn't lose their lives. I would have NEVER found my truth if their wasn't so much uncertainty in the fact that all of our lives could be taken so fast.

The temp job that I was placed in just one week prior had two locations, one was in the twin towers, one was in midtown. I was placed in midtown.

I was lucky.

And now, 9 years later, I just think of how lucky I am to continue to live my passion even though the last two years provided more loss for me than gain. More loss for me than 9/11.

And right now, I am grateful.

But, I remember, this time of year, when my mom and sister go away. And I am here and I miss my dad.

When I miss my dad, I listen to Pink Floyd, Paul Simon and Joan Baez. I think, listen, pick at my cuticles (a nervous habit I got from him) and I look to my left.

I remember him in the drivers seat, barely harmonizing, but doing his best.

I'll see you on the dark side of the moon.

I sing along while he looks ahead at the traffic and I feel love.

How I wish you were here. We're just two lost souls swimmin' in a fish bowl, year after year. Running over the same old ground. What have we found. The same old fears. Wish you were here.

My dad...is my muse. He's with me every moment of the day. And he's been gone over a year. 9/11 happened almost a decade ago. I didn't lose anyone there. I was there and I felt the terror close to home, but I will never know THAT loss.

Loss is loss though and in loss we can remember and gain. When the bulb of life goes off in one we love, it infuses us with more light to live our life more fully. I know this. I feel this. I don't know what 9/11 was like outside of the island of Manhattan, but in the island of my life, I understand the fear and terror of loss. Not the same, I know, but the same. No one likes to lose the one they love.

But in love and loss there is so much perspective, so much gain for all of us that have the opportunity to live. And maybe we can look at our lives and where we are at, right now and see where we can modify, change or accept where we are in gratitude that we have that ability to be whatever we'd like in life. We have life and we have choice.

In tragedy, I found my absolute truth and passion. In loss, I was infused with more spirit and fervor to achieve what I wanted and then some.

I have aspirations and I want more, but right now, I love my life and all that comes with it, trials, wins and obstacles.

In gratitude,

Lady