We all know that to live well and nurture the body means we must eat healthy, exercise and drink lots and lots of water.

I have this down. Kale and I are best friends, bordering on becoming lovers—I feel like this means I am healthy.

To nurture the body also requires feeding it something much different. To ignore that deep desire for art, music and words means that you are nothing but a vessel for your blood, your organs, the flesh and tissue.

I sometimes lose sight of this. I focus on how my skin is glowing. Or the way I have tricep muscles now. Not all that important, but it is visual reassurance that all of my running, yoga-ing and veganism has paid off.

I needed to feed my soul.

This weekend I made a trip up to Bellingham to see my family and one of my oldest friends. We have faded a little bit, letting petty opinions and emotions put up a wall between us. Here is the thing; she is a part of me. She isn’t something that I can lose. That isn’t how we work. Finally, I have learned how to deal with the sticky stuff, talk about my issues and admit to my faults. It is a rough road, but so much weight is lifted off my shoulders.

After heartfelt talks over peppermint tea I headed north to the border. Vancouver, I love you. My brother-in-law, the one and only Anis Mojgani, invited us to a poetry/dance performance by his buddy Derrick Brown.

If you don’t know who these men are, stop everything you are doing and watch Anis and Derrick perform magic before your eyes.

See? Their talent is limitless. Unbound. Incredible.

The performance was a collaboration of Derrick’s poetry, a modern dance troupe from Holland called the Noord Nederlandse Dans with music by Timmy Straw. Basically, it was mind-blowing. Check it out.

We all felt the full spectrum of emotions—laughter, tears, the full kit and caboodle. This was the kind of performance that left us feeling emotionally drained, in an inspiring way.

It also lit this fire in me. Just like how when I went to visit the otters and was reminded of my love of spending long days outside.

This was a different kind of push. A push to immerse myself in art again—to wander through the SAM and revel in the beauty that is paint on canvas. To find a corner of a coffee shop and read until the story line and reality blend together. To go to the orchestra, the theater, the opera or find myself drinking one too many PBR’s at a show. Lastly, to move my body in that way that reminds me of two things: a) I cannot dance b) it feels so so good to shake and shimmy, to rock and roll.

To live fully is to discover myself through movement, through food, through art.