I had the sweetest experience coming down the ramp to board the first plane home from Texas. It’s hard to describe. It was a sense of being one hundred per cent with myself. With no consciousness or care of what others may think of me. I walked happily, wishing the feeling never to leave. I had no fear of flying, no fear of leaving Texas, no fear of leaving Mary and Ann and Steve behind. It was as though two parts of me had merged into one unit and it brought the sweetest peace I’ve ever known. Self-acceptance is way underrated. Now I feel so calm and pleased to only be myself. I’ve been myself a lot but always with a background program running, causing interference from stress, holding myself up to some imaginary standard based on others’ imagined thoughts, wishes, expectations, opinions, hopes and so forth. Now, at last, it’s only I in the landscape of my being, as it should be. I don’t think that’s ever happened before. Maybe briefly, for about 20 seconds one night about 40 years ago sitting still in the middle of the bed when I was with my second husband. I had been miserable, wanting connection, and then, out of the blue, came a break in the psychic storm and I felt utter peace. I never understood where it came from. Maybe I had stopped fighting for those 20 seconds, and in the resulting vacuum, things as they were, as I was, appeared, and it was goodness that I felt.