 Thank you so much for having me here as a little surprise today. I was a little worried about speaking at the conference because I didn't know if I was going to end up being after someone presenting on something very technical about everything you all have been learning about, but hearing Gary and Michael's story so personal, talking about their own journeys kind of paved the way for what I want to share with you. So a little bit about me. I'm native Oregonian and grew up in Portland so it's nice to be back in my hometown. I'm in Eugene right now and I'm about to embark on graduate school for counseling for couples and family therapy. I'm very, very interested in the kind of modalities that get people out of their heads and embodied. I think that is really where counseling and therapy is going and floating is a very exciting way to engage people on that level. Without further ado, I want to again thank you so much for being here and participating in something so meaningful. And I'm going to share a piece with you that I wrote after my first float through the Writers Program that float on dead. It's called Doors in the Sky. Invited to experience a saltwater float last minute, my answer is an easy yes. I've journeyed deep inside during a Nipi, a sweat lodge ceremony, a handful of times, and those ceremonies pushed me a long way out of comfort before retrieving me. I feel more curious than fearful about sensory deprivation. Naked and rinsed, I close the tank door behind me and slosh into the dimly lit pool. As soon as my whole body is settled, weightlessness reaches my consciousness and I feel relief. Air bubbles pop noisily out of my ears and warm salty water backfills the canals. I reach over and turn the lights out, easing myself into darkness. The next thing I notice is the sound of breaths and a thudding heartbeat, and I think about how babies might hear their mother's hearts and lungs, just like this in utero. For a while, my thoughts skip around erratically, like lightning bolts, and soon my mind tires of its own compulsivity. Raw emotions float up now, anxiety blights the mental and emotional landscape inside. Work stress intrudes unpleasantly, and so does the relentless babble, am I good enough? Are all the problems my fault? Will things ever get better? Did I do everything wrong? Am I wrong? Eventually, my preoccupations fall completely away, and I realize with a great deal of relief that I am a solid state under all those tumultuous thoughts. Eventually, I sink fully into this native calm, surrendering to the greater truth of I am whole and undisturbed. It's time to journey now. Where am I? I open my mind's eye, and it is a gray evening. I see a late winter garden with nothing growing in it. Is this my garden? Yes, I hear. I approach a raised bed and plunge my hands into the soil. Can I grow something here? Yes, but you must clear the soil first. I rummage around in the black moist earth for a while. Soon my hands collide with dark things, hard things, excuse me, and I start to pull them out of the bed and set them down on the ground beside. They are bones, skulls, arm bones, leg bones, bony hands, bony feet, dismembered beings that beg to be remembered. I dig until it is dark and moonlit. I dig until there's nothing left but soil and collect the sad bones in my arms. I set them all down on a potting bench and begin to dust off the soil, revealing clean white surfaces beneath. I tell them I'm sorry they have all come apart. I start to cry. I weep because I don't know how to put them back together correctly. My tears wash them the rest of the way clean, and they begin to self-organize, to reassemble, to remember. I stand back as they become partial bodies, half bodies, then eventually there are several whole bodies. The skeletons blink and fade and then become people dressed in clothes, wearing glasses, walking around together slowly. I realize they're my ancestors, my kin. I have never met any living relative. And though I've longed each day of my life to be reunited, this will be the first time. I'm filled with hope and grief and know that I must speak to each of them, must face them all. One by one they approach me and look into my face with love. They whisper messages lighter and softer than summer wind. They reach out, they hold my hand. They each have gifts for me to remember them by, as I must let each one of them go to the great beyond forever. They need me to liberate them. My maternal grandfather gives me a pocket watch, maternal grandmother a spatula, paternal grandfather a pocket knife and a hatchet, paternal grandmother a shell or a whale bone hair comb. My older brother gives me a harmonica and my little sister gives me a lollipop. With each interaction I weep with sadness and express my gratitude. I caress their faces, squeeze their hands, hug them. Each one whispers goodbye and then wanders over the grassy hill to a door in the sky. They open their doors, enter the light and close the star-speckled sky behind them. I cry hard and the rush of pressure into my ears and sinuses is very forceful. So are my sobs which echo in the float chamber and threaten to shake me out of my reverie. But I sink back into the scene and realize it's time to face my parents and let them go as well. My psyche resists, next time maybe I can face them. No, it's time and you can do it. So I wait and they come around. I've never seen their faces. My mother approaches me first and my sobs become uncontrollable. She's so soft and beautiful and much smaller than I would have predicted. She offers me a luminous red glass heart and we hold each other for a long time. Let me go, please. I will never really be gone, you know. I desperately do not want to let her go, but I do. She finds her door in the sky and the stars unfold her, closing the door behind her. My father approaches me last. Child, you are amazing and we will always be with you on the other side. Know that you are as whole, know that you are whole and to keep these gifts close to you. Here is my gift to you. My father has made me a lush cloak of ferns. He drapes it around me gently and places a crown of flowers onto my head. He holds my face, looks at me with utter love and he smiles. He turns and walks to the star-scattered horizon and opens his door to the sky. He enters this tomb and it closes perfectly around him. One last great wave of sorrow washes through me and I feel my sob shake the fern cloak and then it all settles down. My tears cascade down the cloak and they call forth flowers. There, an assertion. There, a morning glory. There, a lily. Tiny green frogs venture out of the fronds and let the moonlight wash over their smooth backs. Moths emerge in a light on flowers to drink nocturnal sweetness. I gather the gifts of my ancestors into my arms and breathe. The glass heart becomes a real heart and it beams joy through my whole body extending beyond me in a golden corona. At last, I am a Madonna pregnant with the miracle of my own life force gifted with all the necessary tools for my survival swaddled by a cloak of nature. I am free to hope for anything now. Free to plant the garden soil that once was filled only by bones. Thank you.