Greetings Beloved Friends,

Wishing you and your loved ones never-ending peace, joy, health, ease, and success.

Here is my annual letter for 2024. (One day, I hope to get it out by the end of December, like most everyone else - haha!)

2024 saw me continue my career as an unpaid professional rester (Ha!). I take periodic breaks from the grind of lying in bed to facilitate group meditations with the Boundless Love Project, socialize, and keep myself hydrated, fed, and — if I’m up for it —clean!. Huge shout out to my parents for letting me live with them! (Applause!)

Below are the year’s highlights in pictures and videos.

2024 in Pictures and Videos

On February 1st, Yoga and I went to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the St. Paul Conservatory. During the Spring and Summer, we regularly got together to hike at Theodore Wirth Park in Minneapolis too. The hood and fabric I wear on my head shields some Radio Frequencies and allows me more freedom to go to a few public places that have limited Radio Frequency pollution at times when there are few people present.

From left to right: Michelle (standing), XXX (sitting) , Dani (lying), me, Starshine, Jordan, and Anna.

On a weekend in February, Starshine (in pink) invited us all up to her cabin up north for a weekend of socializing, sauna, and Community Heart Share. I am so thankful that my friends are wiling to accommodate my body’s needs so I can attend events like this. They avoided bringing smart and WiFi tech, turned off routers, powering down their phones, shut off power to the rooms that I slept in, and more so I could attend. How awesome is that to have such supportive friends?

I did a lot of polar plunges last year, and several friends joined me for them. Cold exposure helps my body have more energy, motivation, and a clearer mind.

But on a very cold, windy day in March, it turned out to be too much for me. My blood pressure dropped to the point that I fainted while driving home. The SUV veered off the road, ran over several bushes and small trees, and came to a stop when it hit a larger tree. I was driving my dad’s SUV and it was totaled. Thankfully, no humans or animals were injured. Huge thanks to my parents being so supportive of me, and so forgiving of me destroying their car.

Since then, I have done Matrix Repatterning to help with the aftereffects of the crash. I also now have more safeguards around polar plunging. I still do them, because the health benefits make it so worthwhile.

Top Row: Lisa, Angie, Natalie. That’s me on the bottom.

Loneliness is a huge problem for many of us with chronic illness. My friend Angie (black shirt) developed long-COVID, and she moved in to our home on March 30th so we could offer each other companionship and mutual support. She lived with us for several months and we had fun going to the beach, lying in the sun, watching shows, and just being friends. In this picture, Lisa and Natalie came over to visit us.

During Ramadan, I prepared an iftar (the meal that breaks the daily fast after sunset) on April 5th for Yoga, who is Muslim. On the 6th, I woke up around 4 AM to prepare suhur (the meal before sunrise) which Yoga is eating in the picture above.

On May 10th. Leah and I went for a hike at Lebanon Hills. We get together a few times a year to hang out, but it usually turns into peer therapy sessions. Haha. The mask and goggles grant me the freedom to go outside during my spring and fall allergy seasons.

On August 10th, I attended the bon voyage party for my dear friends Paula (in black), Nathan (in shorts), and Hildie (in dress) who moved to Portugal in search of safe schools and a more sane society.

Before they left, they asked me to watch over their three-person infrared sauna. This gets lot of use by friends, family, and me.

Left to right: Angie, Freeman, Tal, Anna, Peter.

On August 11th there was an outdoor dance in a park with tons of friends- pure ecstasy! I decided I would start the dance without my allergy mask and goggles until I started to feel the beginning of my symptoms. They never arrived! This was my first allergy-free fall in decades! In the picture, we are hanging out being silly after the dance.

August 22

August 24th My dear friend and dance buddy Sebastian moved from St. Paul to California in May of 2022, but we still got together on most weeks throughout 2023 to practice dancing via Steezy Studio and/or Zoom. You can check out more sick dance moves here. Haha!

Dance Performance Playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmjimr5h5W_CMJFzyUD1yI_YlsD9zq7k_

If you want to live with more love, courage, and joy, you can take the full Mindfulness Fundamentals 2.0 course online or take the new, incomplete Mindfulness Fundamentals 3.0 course online here. I hope to complete the 3.0 version in 2024 as energy and health permit. Either way, these are free resources for you to take advantage of if they call to you in any way.

Sept 13 - met Ali. He is so sweet, and kind and visits me most weeks.

Sept 16

Sept 30 we celebrated Erin’s birthday. She took me paddle boarding this year, it was so fun!

I Appreciate You

Thank you to all of my friends and family not pictured or mentioned above who I also love dearly. Your picture is engraved on my heart. :)

Thank you to all my friends and family who made time to get together with me. Thank you to everyone for accommodating my health needs so I can spend time with you. Thanks also to all of my friends and family who have sent holiday cards, emails, and messages. It is so good to hear from you all.

And a huge, never-ending, thank you goes to my parents for all their love and support. It is often challenging and inconvenient to live with someone with special needs, and they make many sacrifices for my wellbeing.

To my friends and family, thank you for your kindness, care, compassion, humor, playfulness, joy, and all the other beautiful qualities that you share with me.

I aim to use my body’s ongoing health issues as an opportunity to deepen my mindfulness, love, courage, persistence, and wisdom. And regardless of how my body and mind function (or don’t), I aim to live joyfully and skillfully.

Feel the Love

Finally, I just want to say a few things that we often forget, but I find important to remember. First, you have inherent worth and value, so treat yourself with the same level of compassion and kindness that you treat your dear friends and loved ones.

Second, all beings and life forms have inherent worth and value, and we all want to be safe, peaceful, and happy, so let’s do our best to be kind, compassionate, skillful, and forgiving with each other and all life — even those who we find mean, annoying, or hard to like.

Finally, on the surface, we are all unique, different, individual, fallible, and mortal. At our core, we are all the same Life — which is eternal, boundlessly loving, infallible, and wise. May we live from our core, while honoring and respecting the surface of everyone and everything. May all of our actions help create peace, community, health, and wellbeing for all humans, animals, and ecosystems.

Thank you for being you. Have a delightful Holiday Season and a Happy New Year.

Wishing you and your loved ones boundless love, peace, and joy,

Freeman

P.S. Ideally, I would send these out every year to stay in touch with friends who are far away that I don’t see often, but in reality they are intermittent. The only other one I sent out was for 2021 — and I think I sent that pretty late into 2022. Anyways, my love is there for you, even though I am inconsistent with these aspects of relationship.

P.P.S. Never forget your inherent worth and value. Even when you don’t feel it, you are cherished and loved. <3