Today I wore a vintage sailor’s cap and a vest, and tonight during our monthly comedy show, the other performers referred to me as both “Oliver” and “a Newsie.” I saw my therapist this afternoon, and she said I looked very “Fiddler on the Roof.” (My response to this was to start singing, “If I were a rich man.”) But clearly everyone agrees–I look like a character from a musical, someone one who can sing and dance but doesn’t have a lot of money.

Sounds about right.

My therapist’s big push this afternoon had to do with patience and abundance. We talked mainly about my quirky immune system and how I’m currently dieting and mentally considering everything from paleo to past-life regression as viable options to figure out my body’s problems and therefore cure myself. My therapist’s suggestion was to hang tight, be patient. She said it sounded as if I’d landed in the right place with both my primary care physician and immunologist, that surely they could find an answer. “In the meantime,” she said, “if your body is tired, take a nap. I know you’re hung up on being productive, but you’ve produced for years. It’s okay to rest. No one is judging you. You’re THE ONLY ONE judging you.”

Boy, does she know me, or what?

In terms of abundance, she said she thought I’d made a lot of progress seeing both the world and money as abundant. Now, she said, it’s time to focus on seeing health as abundant, to believing that my body and my doctors can and will eventually find an answer to whatever is going on. I don’t mind saying this is a challenge for me. I’ve dealt with sinus infections for so long and have been sick so much recently, it’s tough to believe–like really, deep-down believe–that things can turn around. That being said, the way I see the world has completely turned around in the last several years, as has my internal health, my mental and emotional health. So surely if the inside can turn around, the outside can too.

Fingers crossed.

Tonight at the comedy show, I went around to all the tables close to the stage, introduced myself, and passed out little slips of paper that we use for one of our skits. This is something I almost always do, but I normally do it with a glass of scotch in my hand. Tonight, however, since I’m on this Autoimmune Paleo Diet, I did it completely sober. Y’all–talking to strangers is MUCH easier when you’re tipsy. I mean, they don’t call alcohol a social lubricant for nothing. That being said, I survived. And get this–I met one lady who ended up giving ME a pep talk. She’d asked if we ever bombed, and I said, “MOST of the show usually goes well, but there are always moments when we struggle.” Then she said, “Yeah, but you’re up there trying, putting yourself out there, and that’s what matters.”

Isn’t that great? I said, “I’m going to blog about this tonight.” (I think she thought I was kidding.) And get this too–she was wearing a necklace that said, “Hope.” Well, I’ve been really working on hope lately, so it was the perfect reminder. Maybe someone else would say my seeing this lady’s necklace was just a coincidence, but I took it as a personal message from the universe that I was on the right track, that hope was actually an okay thing to do. This is something I’ve been thinking about today, whether the universe puts certain people and messages in my path (or anyone’s path), or whether those people and messages were there all along and I just finally noticed them. I’m honestly not sure that it matters, since it seems that when a person’s subconscious is ready to work on something, it can clearly use anything–a therapist, a total stranger, a necklace–to get its point across.

Tonight the lady I met, along with her husband, said, “Don’t be nervous. If your family’s not here, we’ll be your family tonight. We’ll cheer you on.” How cool is that? For me it felt like that moment in Oliver! when he gets adopted by The Artful Dodger. Consider yourself at home! But seriously–I think abundance starts this way, recognizing a stranger’s smile or someone’s random and generous offer of support for what it is–a form of healing. And I am slowly starting to believe this, really deep-down believe this, that the world is our home, that people are good, and that healing is possible.