A long, expensive San Francisco driveway is where I sat. Way at the end and the home door was a few steps away. The place now comped (realtor slang for comparable property) for $700,000. From this driveway, the Bernal Heights neighborhood is walking distance and has $28 plates of pasta (one diner), $5 macchiatos and lively lesbians are often sauntering on the sidewalks. I was in a passenger seat of a beige-pink realtor’s Audi car. The woman I loved sat next to me. Michael Buble’s sappy song “Home” played loudly on the radio. How many fibers of my being would she need to simply turn and acknowledge. “I see you and we will work this out,” she might give me.

A sarcastic comment is where she went, blithely mocking that I was tearing up when the song lyrics lamented missing home, even like the one we had shared. Signs of forgiveness are a clear perspective when no one is to blame. We abandon relationships and women fail each other in multiple dagger ways. I had so clearly returned the favor many times before. With intention, not giving her closeness as we fought yet again. About the house, she had asked me the year before if I wished to make the purchase.

On the campus at Cal State Hayward is where I have recycled this memory from 20 years ago when my annual $35k graduate student salary was a sinking possibility against any kind of mortgage. What down payment? Which she knew. In reality, her asking was her offensive to my defensive, but she pretended to ask in earnest so later she had a hedge. “I asked you if you wanted to buy the place.” Initial price was $450k. She moved in on her own, swiftly remodeled, and I stayed in our prior rental while randomly continuing to sleep in her bed, in the house she bought for herself. We had been a couple the day before she signed the real estate papers and a next day not so on paper.

Mourning can be fortuitous especially when spontaneous memory arrives like this one. And I have healthy method enough in descansos where I put to rest memories that remind me of hurt even if I am not any more. Hurting. What I give the work is air and light and recall and respect. In her book Women Who Run with the Wolves, Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype author Clarissa Pinkola Estes encourages us to timeline descansos on a long sheet of paper, space enough to jot down crossroads, a time your life diverged from a hopeful path. When life visited harm or hurt in pivotal measure. At these junctures a plain white cross is marked.

Estes describes that before a woman reaches 20 years old, she will have a thousand moments apt for descansos. When I reflect on my own womanhood from birth until 20, I can easily agree. And explains a hushed poignancy during Ellen Degeneres’ final standup show. Filmed for Netflix and performed for a full theater audience, she riffed as only she can on hilarity in our mundane lives. After a sequence of lines to demonstrate pride and humility and love in her lesbian life she simply said, “I am a woman.” A quiet in the auditorium. And then the crowd thundered into applause. How powerful the words always sound. Just this achievement. Just. Makes sense why she titled her show, “For Your Approval.”

And why I celebrate AliceH9z, a creative soul selecting Tibette clips from original seasons of the L Word and placing the video on You Tube. Popular viewing over the last 16 years, having 890,000 views. With Beyonce’s song “Halo” as soundtrack we watch one scene when the couple sits in their car and Bette does say the words. She promises to love Tina and be faithful. In my own lesbian car scene moment, I may not have heard the words. And reason why film and literature are constant succor in our lives. We can read and watch what might have been. Brings solace.

Probably no surprise and yet remains so is my rage that does not consume today, simply a growth time to dance with intensity. Descansos is ideal for a woman’s rage. This afternoon on a walk with our family dog Bell, I was strolling along for several miles on a deserted dirt road in the northern tropics of Big Island. Rage is like a pothole I don’t see until I have twisted my ankle.

After the surprise rage I take very good care of myself. Listening on this walk to Estes’ book on Audible, strong headphones cocooning me in a world of interior impression, I heard her guiding suggestion: “Be gentle with yourself and make the descansos, the resting place for the aspects of yourself that were on their way to somewhere, but never arrived. Descansos mark the death sites, the dark times, but they are also love notes to your suffering. They are transformative. There is a lot to be said for pinning things to the earth so they don’t follow us around. There is a lot to be said for laying them to rest.” Descansos.

And what worked was traveling for a few weeks this summer 2025. One early New Mexico evening a gorgeous happened when setting sun was deep orange and easy, warm wind breezed. Staring at the dark green mountains surrounding our Cimarron campground, the felt-sense was being nestled in nature’s fortitude, her historical beauty. A discovery being made of this northeast New Mexico corner, a half hour or so north of Taos.

I heard the busily forwarding river behind trees where I pitched my tent and yet I could not see her. But what I did see way far high on the mountain’s edge was descansos, a thin short cross radiating brightly white. Caught my breathe and the next morning I stuck my feet into chilly temperatures. We had from Shining Mountain, an Ute naming (Native Peoples in this region), a descending water into this Valle Vidal (Valley of Life). What I had made was a ten-minute ritual of drinking one cup of coffee while observing water flow. On the bank of the river-stream’s crystal-clear power is where I placed myself whispering prayers silently and aloud that I had such luxury in my empowered woman’s life to let the past go. Descansos.