One Love, This Life

Stay.

For the first time in my life, I didn’t run away. I felt a knife pierce my heart, and in that moment, I chose to stay. I remember it all too clearly…my inner dialogue, arguing back and forth and then there it was, from deep inside my soul, stay. 

Stay. It took a while to really start feeling…well, anything. And then I felt them come on all at once. My demons, whom I’d been running from my entire life. Whether it was through a new belief system, moving to another city, or traveling the world, almost every decision I had made until this point, came from a place of survival.

Stay. Over and over again I hear it, praying for me to feel every single ounce of my pain, my trauma, those demons who’ve been following me my entire life. I felt abandonment, grief, humiliation, and depreciation. It swallowed me up like an animal, forcing me to set myself on fire, over and over again. Because that’s it, isn’t it? The point of it all. We must be willing to shed our skin constantly, whether it’s humbling ourselves enough to take responsibility for the way we feel, the choices we made, or simply allowing our hearts to break wide open.

Stay. This process of dying again and again may look, and feel, like self-destruction.  I believe that enlightenment, awareness, wisdom, whatever it is we’re looking for, is found inside our self-destruction. The challenge is to stay with it. Sitting with our demons is both the most difficult and most necessary thing we could ever do for ourselves. It’s also one of the boldest ways to show ourselves love. Let’s love ourselves enough to self-destruct, to sit with the feelings we most want to forget about.

Stay. Sometimes the hardest part is even admitting to ourselves that we need to set fire to our hearts. So I’ll start. I’m broken, shattered even. So I vow to light myself up. The more times I recognize this and choose this fiery path, I see that the parts of me which are truly me, will stay with me always. This is a process of getting rid of that which we do not need. What is truly a part of us, the things we really need and things that make us ‘us,’ will never leave. So, let’s burn it all up on the side of love. For love equals humanness and that is something I am not willing to forsake.

Stay. Our demons will chase us until we acknowledge them. I thought I could run my past clean, but life keeps going. No matter how far away we run, life will continue to happen. What kind of life would it be to feel nothing? To hide away in constant fear of the things that make us human? It doesn’t matter how far we go or how long we’re gone, we simply cannot outrun our brokenness.

Stay. Let’s allow our shattered selves to be where they are. To stay. What a beautiful thing it is to self-destruct, no matter how loudly or quietly we choose. Break yourself open in order to let your light in. Your light. Not mine, not your partner’s, your very own. For the light that heals us, that allows us to stay in these moments that we so badly want to run away from, can come from one place alone. And that is ourselves.

The Climb

Considering we’re at the start of a new year, I thought it’d be appropriate to share my own journey of a resolution I made for myself about five years ago. It wasn’t a New Year’s resolution, I actually decided it in the summertime, but that’s beside the point.

In the summer of 2009, I went to see an acupuncturist for a recurring shoulder injury. I had already had a shoulder surgery, years of physical therapy, rest, and nothing was helping; it was time to turn to alternative medicine. I was so excited for my first appointment, and a little bit nervous. Before I went to the appointment, I had to fill out a questionnaire about ten pages long of information about myself, from my medical history to my diet to my family life. I found this quite daunting, but followed through nonetheless.

After taking a few minutes to read over my questionnaire, the acupuncturist, let’s call him Juan, came in and wanted to ask a few questions. After all, this was a consultation so I welcomed some questions, hoping that we could just get on with fixing my shoulder. After a few questions about my injury, he asked me about my mom. One of the questions on the questionnaire was about my family history, so when it asked about my mother and what she does for a living, I put what has become so natural for me to put on this line, ‘Deceased.’ But when Juan asked me about her, more than anything, I was confused. At first, he simply wanted to know how I old I was when she passed away, so I told him I was five, hoping he’d stop there. He didn’t, and I was furious. “Who the hell does this guy think he is?” I thought. He wanted to know the cause of her death, how I had dealt with it, how I continue to deal with it, and so on. I made it quite clear that I did not want to talk about this subject any further, he took the hint, and we moved on to the actual acupuncture.

I was hesitant to go back to him after that first appointment, but since my shoulder felt great after just one session, I scheduled another one. Again, he brought up my mom. He told me that in acupuncture, there are pathways that run through the body, and our hearts just happen to be connected to our right shoulders. He hinted at the possibility that maybe some of my pain was coming from my heart and the pain in my heart coming from unresolved feelings about my mother's death. While I only found this infuriating at the time, in hindsight he may have had a point. It was only a few months earlier that I had gone to the doctor for an MRI and my doctor couldn’t see any actual tear in my shoulder. He did say that it was a messy shoulder, and definitely should not have belonged to a twenty-year-old, but there was no tear. After leaving this second appointment, I was sure I didn’t want to go back. I just couldn’t believe that this stranger would have the nerve to continue to probe me like that, and about something so personal, not to mention sensitive. But after I cooled off a bit, there was something about the idea that my shoulder pain wasn’t actually shoulder pain, but heartbreak. It sort of stuck with me. Even writing this out right now, it sounds sort of ridiculous to me, but I know it’s not. There are plenty of illnesses that people grow through that we create ourselves. Anyway, I made yet another appointment. And then another. Without fail, every single time I was in there, Juan would ask me something about my mom. After about a month, he suggested a Reiki session. For those who aren’t familiar with Reiki, it’s a Japanese stress reduction and relaxation method. It’s known to promote healing by a “laying of the hands" over the chakras, our body's energy main energy points. Juan offered one complimentary Reiki session to each of his patients and thought it might be helpful for me. I agreed to attend one, mostly because I was just hoping to get him off my back, but also because I found it intriguing.

So, I went to the Reiki session with no expectations, and left with a much lighter heart than I’d gone in with. I’m not going to go into the details of Reiki, because it was for me and that’s all it needed to be. But he said something to me after the session that really stuck. He told me he kept seeing me as a little girl who was dancing around the room during the session. But she wasn't happy, she was scared. He told me that maybe I should try visualizing myself as a young girl and tell my child self that she's so so loved. I didn't know what to think about this. Suffice it to say, though, I left the session knowing that I needed to make a change.

I hadn’t been happy for a while. I knew it, but I didn’t want to admit it to myself or anyone else. In fact, I hated myself. And I couldn’t figure out why. Maybe that’s why I kept going to back to acupuncture; I knew that Juan would force me to face myself. But the second I actually made the decision to change my life, I saw a mountain range of challenges ahead of me. So I began to climb, and it was hard.

Once the decision has been made to look inside yourself, there really is no going back. I believe that every challenge we face is like climbing a mountain. It’s steep, gritty, painful, and unknown territory…but have you ever climbed an actual mountain, gotten to the top and thought to yourself, “Eh, totally not worth it.” Probably not. From my experience of climbing my own spiritual mountains, the messiest, most painful, and most difficult climbs in life always result in the most beautiful view at the top. But here’s the kicker: we can’t stop climbing. I used to think that there would be an end point, and maybe there is. But one of my favorite things about life is that it’s life.  Sometimes we don’t have a choice of whether or not to climb. We often must climb in order to live.

When I left that Reiki session five years ago, I made a resolution for myself. I made a resolution to love myself. And within that, I found mountains of challenges that have shaped me to be exactly who I am now. And you know what, I am so in love with myself! Not in a way that is full of hubris and narcissism, but in the way that I accept myself for all of my good and bad, my ups and downs, my love, my tears, my crazy, my strengths, my flaws, me. I accept myself even during those times that I don’t accept myself because we have to remember that just because we are whole and beautiful just as we are, we aren’t always perfect. It can be so easy to forget about all of the summits we've crossed, and that’s okay, as long as we remember to get back up. So climb your mountains and really feel every bit of it. Cry as much as you can, and love yourself with everything you’ve got along the way, because it’s always worth it when you make it to the top.

"Life is simple. Everything happens for you, not to you. Everything happens at exactly the right moment, neither too soon nor too late. You don't have to like it... it's just easier if you do.” – Byron Katie

                                                                    Photo Credit: Andrew Schoener

Being You

Have you ever wished you were someone else? “I wish I was thinner, smarter, richer, taller, blonder. I wish, I wish, I wish…” Me too. In a world where pop culture and social media call the shots, it is easy to get caught up in the Land of Comparison. We have films, music, and now even our ‘friends’ telling us how we should look, act, and live; and all of this sends us down a tunnel of shame. We become ashamed of who we are and who we have the capacity to be. We spend our days trying to become who we think we should be.

Where does this shame come from? Why do we submit to the standards of the rest of the world? We convince ourselves that we aren’t good enough. We are taught humility, and somewhere along the way, humility turns into unworthiness. We are taught to love others as ourselves, but what about learning to love ourselves first? For without this kind of love, we are unable to truly love another. And so shame saunters into our minds and wards away any trace of love we have for ourselves, therefore hindering our ability to love anyone else fully. So where do we go from here?

Kryptonite. We need to find shame’s kryptonite. What can give us the power to live as truthfully and openly as humanly possible? What is it, that when we fall in love with someone or something, that makes our heart feel as if it cannot recover? It is in this place that we experience shame’s kryptonite. Vulnerability. We often feel pain when we love someone so much, be it our partner, spouse, child, or friend, and we recoil our love. That pain is simply our heart telling us that it hasn’t been used enough. We haven’t been vulnerable enough to share ourselves with someone else, to share a connection with another human being. And that’s ultimately what this life is about, relationships with people.

Real connections come from unequivocal vulnerability. We need this vulnerability to live the lives we were meant to live. Yes, with vulnerability comes uncertainty, confusion, fear; but it also comes with openness, bliss, and love. If we truly want to find joy in our lives, we must be willing to live with our hearts wide open. We must have the courage to be boldly and shamelessly ourselves.

What we give to the world is what we will receive from it. Open your heart, slap fear across the face, and throw all of your shame into the garbage. We are all deserving of a full and happy life. Each and every one of us has all the tools we need to live in exactly the way we dream of doing.

28 November 2013

The Un-Comfort Zone

Well, another Thanksgiving goes by that I’m spending in a different country. I thought today would be an appropriate day to write about….gratitude! But wait a second, didn’t I do that last year? Yup, sure did!

You know, I think it’s kind of silly that I’m only writing about gratitude once a year, on Thanksgiving. Shouldn’t we celebrate gratitude each and every day? Absolutely. Unfortunately, we all (myself included) tend to get caught up in our own lives and often forget the magical gem that is gratitude. Then something awesome happens, and we’re all of a sudden grateful for how wonderful our lives are. And that’s great. But what about those times when life isn’t so amazing? Life is hard. Fortunately, it’s also the most incredible thing that we could possibly be a part of. How lucky are we to be able to feel, to love, to cry, to sing, to scream, to breathe, to die, to know that we’ve even been alive? That’s pretty cool, to say the least.

I’ve been unemployed for over a year now (eeeschk!) and while a lot of people may think that that’s a negative thing, I can promise you, it’s not. In the last year, I’ve lived out of a car, played volleyball on a beach in Australia, done yoga in Bali, I’ve walked across a country, met some of the most wonderful people one could ever hope to meet, and I’ve earned myself a teaching certificate. A waste? I think not. But, getting right to the point, if I were to sum the last year up in the same way we sum up an education, I would give myself a certificate in Gratitude. Not because I’m way better at everyone else at being grateful. Certainly not. But because I’ve never experienced gratitude in the ways I experienced it over the last year.

So now let’s come back to the present moment, and take a look at gratitude. After the events of the last year, if I’m being honest, my life feels very boring to me right now. I’ve been job searching for the last four weeks and have stayed in the same place the entire time. This is the first time in a year that I’ve been in the same place for a month straight. I got into the habit of moving and not thinking about what was happening next because I knew that whatever it was, it would be amazing, and whatever was happening in each moment was too good to be thinking about anything else. So here I am, with a roof over my head, food on the table, clothes to keep me (relatively) warm, and I often find my mind a’wandering. I think I’ve forgotten how to appreciate each moment, sitting still. I mastered mindfulness in movement, but sitting still is my challenge. 

So, back to gratitude again. How good am I at showing gratitude when I’m outside of my comfort zone. Or when I’m sitting still? When I left for New Zealand last October, I wanted to see what I could do. To see if I could put myself in uncomfortable situations and make it out alive. I did that, and I came back even more alive than when I left. I think my challenge now is to see what I can do in this new un-comfort zone. And I don’t know what that means for my near future. There are so many opportunities that are uncovering themselves all the time, so knowing right now where I’ll be one month from now is impossible. But for now, I am going to be grateful to be in this new, still time in my life. How easy it is to forget that life is not always about how much we do. Maybe it’s more about how much we let ourselves feel, how alive we can be in every present moment, how willing we are to love and to open ourselves up to others, to be exactly who we are in any given moment, and allowing others to be who they need to be.

29 September 2013

Fear(less)

This is what I’m afraid of:

Public speaking. The ocean and most of the fish in it. Stillness. Heights. Riding a bicycle in traffic. Me and/or someone else putting me in a metaphorical ‘Box.’ Making decisions. Enclosed stairwells. The potential disappearance of honeybees. Vulnerability.

I have never been good at making decisions. My mind rallies back and forth with pros and cons, the benefits and repercussions, what I want to do versus what others want me to do. I’ve also never been one of those people that just knew what I wanted to do. You know who I’m talking about. The ones that are born to do something and they spend their entire lives working towards it. I always envied those people, and more than that, I thought I was doing something wrong because I  literally had no idea what I was supposed to do with myself. In fact, I still have no idea what my path looks like. In a way, I’m sort of grateful that I’ve never had a direct career path because I’m not sure I would’ve had all the experiences that I’ve had. And I wouldn’t exchange those for anything.

In the last three or four months, I’ve been faced with several decisions to make. At some stage, I reached a point where I wasn’t willing to sit down and waste hours on making a choice. So what did I ask myself? Which option scares me the most? Will this challenge me in a way I haven’t been/have avoided being challenged in before? I choose that one, the one that I’m most afraid of.

I think a lot about the idea of living in fear and how there are so many people that choose that life. It’s always seemed a bit depressing to me, how afraid of things we are. But I’ve decided that fear is a good thing….as long as we don’t let it grow. It’s like bacteria (maybe. Fungus? Yuck?) If we let it sit, it creates more yuck and grows and gets bigger and bigger until we’re covered in it and we haven’t gone anywhere or done anything. We just sat in yuck, and no one really wants to do that. So, my point is, if we recognize our fears we should do something about them.

This is why I think that fear is actually a positive thing when recognized: it forces us to expand our horizons. If we weren’t afraid of things, our incentive to do them would be a little bit different or maybe not there at all. I have had so many people ask me if I am afraid of traveling alone, and I’m not. That’s why I did it in the first place, though. The first trip I took by myself was to Ireland, Spain, and Portugal for two months and I was terrified getting on that plane. But when I left for New Zealand, I hardly even thought about it, and now traveling has just become my life. It’s one of the most normal things in the world to me. And I’m not sure I would have done any of it, or be where I am now, if it hadn’t been for fear.

So, one of my biggest fears ever? Standing up in front of a group of people and pretending that I know something they don’t. In other words, teaching. What am I doing about it? I’m dancing with it. I’m moving to Berlin, Germany to take a course in English Language Teaching, and when I finish the course I’ll begin my job search.

19 June 2013

Traveling

29 May 2013

The Camino

I don’t know where to start. I’ve been staring at my computer screen for a couple of days trying to figure out what angle to take for this post. And I just don’t know. I could start by telling you that I walked the Camino de Santiago, that I finished it and it completely exceeded my expectations in almost every way. I could start by saying that I’ve never made a better decision than to walk the Camino. I could tell you about all of the wonderful people I met on the Way, all of whom taught me a little something about everything. I could share each lesson that I learned along the Way, but that may take years because some of those lessons aren’t even clear to me just yet.

So, I’m not going to start with any of those things. I’m going to start by talking about blisters, because you know what? Blisters suck. They’re funny things, blisters. I always sort of thought that once your shoes were broken in, you wouldn’t get blisters. Oh, how wrong I was! Blisters can form on any day, with any pair of shoes, and on any part of the foot. When I thought about the physical challenges that the Camino would present to me, blisters were more of a side note. Wrong again. There were people who had to go home during the first week because their blisters were so bad, and others who suffered from blisters for the entire five weeks. And as for me…

I think it took about two hours before I started to feel my first blister coming on. Luckily, I was walking with two Aussies, Steve and Gary, who have done many treks in the past and had told me that as soon as I felt a blister coming on, I needed to stop and cover it up. If they hadn’t told me this the morning we left St. Jean Pied de Port, I probably would have been stubborn (and stupid) with myself and just left the blister until I couldn’t take it anymore. I can feel myself starting to ramble so, long story short….Even though I did stop to take care of it right when I felt a blister coming, I ended the day with two very bloody feet (I apologize for the visual). I later found out that people had heard about me because of these blisters. Over the next few days, I’d introduce myself to people, and they’d say, “Are you the girl with the really bad blisters?!” Yes, yes I was.

Fortunately, Steve and Gary are amazing and wrapped my tootsies right up when we got to the albergue in Roncevalles. Being the scatter-brained traveller that I am, I had almost nothing to cover blisters with, and had it not been for them that night, I would have had an incredibly difficult time walking over the next few days. This ended up happening anyway, but for different reasons. My hiking boots simply did not fit my feet correctly and by day three, I could hardly walk. I actually had to be escorted into Pamplona by a nice Canadian couple because they were worried that I wouldn’t make it on my own. I would have, although I’m grateful for their support because it probably would’ve taken me a good three hours longer than it did with their help.

I think it was finally on day five that I decided I needed a change of shoes. I had taken a break with a few other pilgrims and took off my boots to let my feet breathe a bit. When I put my boots back on to continue walking, I took about five steps, and thought, “Nope. Not going to happen.” So I stopped, dug my old Columbia sandals out from the bottom of my pack and put them on, tied my boots to the outside of my pack, then went and got a beer with some friends I had met earlier in the day. It was one of those moments where I kind of threw every guideline I had made for myself, out the window. I don’t think the boots touched my feet again. About three days later, I left them in an albergue in the university town of Logroño and walked the rest of the Camino in sandals.

It was around this time that I fell into a group. I had met a guy named Sean on the second day and we’d been walking together ever since. Sean is from the UK and he was my rock on the Camino. Our meeting was comparable to that of two five-year-old school kids on the playground. I was sitting by myself, taking a break and surrounded by people who were not speaking English. I had been walking for about three and half hours without running into anyone (even now, this baffles my mind…never again along the Way did I go that long without seeing someone) and was desperate to talk to someone. I heard three guys behind me speaking English, so I turned to Sean, who happened to be closest to me, held out a massive block of chocolate, and said,

“Anyone care for some chocolate?”

“No, thanks. Want some peanuts?”

“No, thank you. I’m Anna, though…”

“Sean. Nice to meet ya.” Magic!

So anyway, Sean and I had been walking together for a few days and had met a few others along the Way. They were Heather from England, Hillary from Seattle, Shane from Ireland, Martin from Denmark, and Tim from Colorado. At some point during the first week, we all started walking together and there was no looking back. This was to be the beginning of my Camino family. About a week later, we stumbled upon beautiful Lisa from Canada, who, to our pleasant surprise, nudged her way into the family as well.

When I decided to walk the Camino de Santiago, I thought I would be doing it alone. I made the decision to walk the Camino alone, but I met my first Camino friend before I even left the airport in London (Steve)! I actually found out later that Heather, Sean, Shane, and a couple other pilgrims were on the exact same flight as Steve and I. I see now that the second I decided to walk the Camino a few months ago, I was no longer alone, even though I didn’t know it yet.

There was quite a big group that started in St. Jean the same day I did. We would see each other at all the different albergues and along the Way during the days. Our little Camino community consisted of: Steve and Gary, John and Peter (Australia), Holgi (Germany), Manuel (Austria), The Four Aussies–Neil, Carl, Ivan, and Willie (Australia), James (USA), Nicole (USA), Mark (England), Jasmine “Grapes” (Korea–she wore these amazing flip-flop sandals with rubber grapes on them and always greeted everyone with a huge smile. When we made it to Santiago, she gave each of us a grape from her shoes! I think it’s pretty safe to say we were beyond ecstatic about this), Zane (Latvia), and many more. Seeing all of these people along the way just became so….normal. It was normal. By the end, we were more than a community, we were all family.

When we walked in to Santiago, we ran into Steve and Gary right before we got to the Cathedral, and I turned to tears. These men had taken care of me from the start, for no reason other than kindness. They were my first ‘people ‘on the Camino and seeing them as I walked in was the perfect way to finish. And that’s just how it is on the Camino. Everybody takes care of everyone else. Talk about a lesson in vulnerability! This was huge for me. It has never been easy for me to ask for help. I’ve always been the person that would rather do it myself, even if I know just a little help will go a long way. Then the Camino laughed in my face and forced me to ask for a little help. No, a lot of help. One of the biggest lessons the Camino gave me was the power of vulnerability. I had become so dependent on my independence. Lucky for me, the Camino, nor any of the people I was walking it with, were going to let me do this alone. Thank God.

My heart grew in size along the Way. Remember what I said in my post on Bliss? About how I felt like I was going to burst because life is so amazing? Now my heart feels like that. I’m going to pull out my Flower Child card again…my heart is so full of love from each person I met along the way and from all of the love that I have for each and every one of them. Never in my life have I felt so accepted by a group of people, so free to be exactly who I am. I’ve heard about unconditional love my entire life, and I truly feel like I experienced it on the Camino.

I met a man a few days after I arrived in Santiago who had just finished walking his third Camino. He said something that really resonated with me. He told me, “The Camino doesn’t give you any answers. It prepares you for the questions that you’ll find when you get home.”

And that’s the truth. I know I’m not home yet, but I didn’t realize until I left the Camino, what I had done it for. I still don’t know the whole reason, but I know part of it was to meet these people, love them, and let them love me. To be a part of a community and to understand just how important that is in my life.

12 April 2013

Hello Blogowers (Blog followers)! I have to make this quick as I am minutes away from falling asleep, but I felt that I should update this now because I won’t be able to for the next five or six weeks.

London. London has been amazing. I’ve sort of fallen in love with it. Of course, what’s not to love? There’s a little bit of everything here, and I cannot argue with that. I also got my stint of some cold weather which was much needed after spending the last ten months or so in summertime weather. I think it may have snowed three times while I was here? Amazing!

I’ve been staying with couchsurfing friends over the last two weeks, and am amazed, yet again, at the kindness of human beings. My friends live in a flat in east London, and they took me in right from the start. I feel like part of the family! I also had the chance to see some old friends from junior high school who live up in Yorkshire. It was wonderful to catch up, and again I was welcomed with open arms.

Unfortunately, my brain is not allowing me to expand on the wonders of travelling and meeting new amazing people tonight. Bottom line: human beings are incredible. You know that cheesy quote that says something like, “Strangers are just friends you haven’t met yet,”? (I’m pretty sure I messed that one up, but you get the idea.) It’s so true! Again and again I am amazed at how good people are. And that’s that.

Tomorrow I fly to Biarritz, France where I will take a train to St. Jean Pied de Port. From there, I’ll begin the Camino de Santiago. In short, the Camino is a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compestela, Spain where St. James is said to be buried. I’ll be walking 790km across Spain over the course of five weeks or so. As I was packing my things tonight, I thought to myself, “What on earth made you think this was a good idea?!” Well, why did I start travelling in the first place? Because it felt like the right thing to do. And somehow, that’s all I need to make a decision.

Wish me luck!

27 March 2013

Bali. I will forever associate the word, “bliss,” with Bali. Over the last three weeks, I believe I have experienced the true meaning of bliss. Bliss is one of those words that can have different meanings to different people. For me, bliss is the liberation from anything and everything that tries to put me in a box (figuratively, of course. Although, if something were actually trying to put me in a box, I’m sure the escape from that would be blissful, as well) Do you ever have those moments where you look at the scene around you and just think, “Holy crap, how is my life this incredible?!” I do. And you know what? Sometimes I get so overwhelmed with gratitude and joy that I just start to laugh and cry simultaneously because I feel like I’m going to burst if I don’t. I may have painted a picture of myself as a crazy person, but I don’t care.

From the moment I got off the plane in Bali, I knew I was going to have an amazing three weeks. I started in Seminyak where I met a lot of amazing people, all of whom were in Seminyak to surf. I quickly learned that I had booked myself into a surf camp without realizing it. Whenever I told people I was from California they’d say, “Oh you must be really good at surfing then! You’ll love it here!” To which I would reply, “Pshh, heck no, I’m terrified of the ocean. Never surfed in my life. But yes, I will love it here!” Not once while I was in Seminyak did I go to the beach. Not even to look at it. Oops. From Seminyak, I headed straight to Ubud. I wasn’t planning on going there so soon in the trip, as I was scheduled to do a yoga retreat there the following week, but I just couldn’t help myself. It was the right decision. Again, I met some wonderful people, went to the Monkey Forest and did some yoga. In fact, I was lucky enough to do a one-on-one yoga class with a Balinese instructor. It was very different from any yoga I’ve done and extremely difficult, but how cool is that?! I was happy about it, to say the least.

After this first trip in Ubud is when Bali really started to pop. I’m sure you all remember Sir Cade? Well, it just so happened that he and I were in Bali at the same time! We decided to meet up in Padangbai, a sleepy little beach town on the east coast. There wasn’t much to do there, but when the two of us get together, we don’t really need much. Reminiscing about our New Zealand travels, eating way too much food, and laughing until we (I) cried was enough to keep us entertained for a few days. Then it was off to the retreat. I’d been looking forward to the retreat for a couple of months and it had finally arrived! At first, I was a bit worried that I’d built it up too much in my head, but it didn’t let me down. Really, there is so much to say about it that I don’t know where to start, so I’ll give you the highlights, or the “Bliss” moments, if you will.

First, let’s begin with the people I met. Talk about a beautiful group of humans. I’m not going to go into specifics about each person because there’s just too many positive things to say, but I will say that I’m a better person for knowing each and every one of them. A couple of days in to the retreat, we went to a water temple, Pura Tirtha Empul. This temple has a small pool with fountains spraying spring water out of them. This is a purification area. Every single day, people come and move from fountain to fountain, saying prayers, and purifying their spirits. We were lucky enough to witness that, and further, we had the opportunity to do a purification ourselves. When I heard we were going to be able to do this, I was ecstatic. This was exactly what I needed. When I left for New Zealand last October, I was in a weird place. I felt like the previous months had really tested me out and I had turned into a version of myself that I didn’t love or really even respect. I’m happy to say that’s changed quite a bit since I left, and I felt like the water temple was the perfect way to literally wash away all of the negativity that I had allowed into my life over the last year. And it was. That’s really all I can say about that.

I discovered partner yoga at the retreat as well. Basically, partner yoga is two or more people working off each other’s bodies to do different poses. I don’t know when I’ve had so much fun! It’s great, too, because there’s so much that goes into it. You have to trust the person/people that you’re partnering with, and considering we had only known each other for about five days, I think we did a great job. I believe I have found yet another new passion! On Friday we went to the Bali Spirit Festival, which is a big yoga festival in Ubud. I took the best yoga class I’ve ever taken, which included dancing and yelling and laughing and a big circle of energy. Talk about blissing out?!! I also went to an African Dance class, which basically rocked my world. Enough said.

After the retreat, I met up with Cade yet again and spent my last four days in Bali bumming around Ubud. When I booked my ticket to Bali in February, I figured three weeks would be more than enough time to explore the whole island, and I had every intention to do so. But from the moment I set foot in Ubud, I knew I wouldn’t be venturing too far from there. There was just something about it, I couldn’t bear to leave!

As I look back on my experiences over the last six months, I can’t help but smile (and maybe cry). I know I’ve expressed this before, but I am just so grateful to be doing what I’m doing and learning about myself in the ways I’ve been able to. Never in my life have I been so careful to really be in each and every moment, because I know that when this is all over, I’m going to want to remember it. I believe that Bali sort of brought me to life. You know, I really feel alive now. I don’t know any other way to explain it.

With that, I’m currently sitting in the airport in Kuala Lumpur waiting to board my flight to London. Yes, London. Why? Who knows. Who cares, really? It felt like the right thing to do, so here I go!

4 March 2013

Well, my time in New Zealand has come to an end. I’ve decided to go to Bali for a few weeks, and then continuing my travels from there. So, I figured I should do a quick post about some of the things I’ve learned while being in New Zealand and some of the top moments of the last few months.

This is what I’ve learned:

- How to drive a manual car. If you’ve been reading this, you already know how much of a success that was for me. – How to poach eggs. Nope, I didn’t know how to do this before, and it is a skill I will take with me for as long as I eat lunch. – The proper way to iron a man’s button-down shirt. I had to do this at a help exchange. My host was running through a list of tasks that I had to do for the next week while she was out of town. One of the tasks, the most important one, was ironing shirts….in a very particular way. When it hung on the hanger, the collar had to pop out and the first three buttons absolutely had to be buttoned, or else it wouldn’t be worn. She instructed me to iron it like I would iron any other button-down, showed me how the collar was supposed to be done, then she left. Easy enough, right? Sure, easy if I had ever ironed anything before. So I googled it, and some nice woman taught me the proper way to iron a shirt. A star was born. – How to drive a tractor. This was a lot of fun. It’s a good thing I learned how to drive Bryce just before this, or I would not have enjoyed the experience at all. – The sky is bigger in New Zealand. You’re just going to have to trust me on this one. – How to destroy sandflies. Let me tell you about these stupid little bugs. As the Maori story goes, the god Tu-te-raki-whanoa had just created Fiordland, and all of the people were so taken away by its beauty, everyone stopped working. They all just stood around admiring the landscape. This maddened the goddess Hinenuitepo, so she created the sandfly to get people moving again. I loved that story when I first read it four months ago, it’s not so great anymore. I have never been a person to kill bugs. Even spiders, I always put them outside. All of this changed when I was introduced to the sandfly. Sandflies are tiny little flies, that buzz around in groups of about a million, and literally attack people with bites. They put mosquitoes to shame. There have been of couple of instances where I have had at least 30 bites on me at one time. I have scars from them. They have woken me up in the middle of the night countless times. I actually felt like I had the chicken pox again, at one point. The worst part is, these bites can last for weeks. Fortunately, sandflies are probably the stupidest living creatures on the planet, and are therefore very easy to kill. I may have scared Cade once or twice with the intensity that I was attacking these insects with. Usually it involved the bottom of my shoe and a window. Probably not my proudest moments, but something to laugh about to say the least. – Fishing. I learned how to fish! I caught four fish (maybe they were snappers? I can’t remember), it was very exciting. We did this on a help exchange in Coromandel on the North Island. The same place with the humanure toilets! Afterward, we went back and scaled them, filleted them and the next day we smoked them! – If you want squeaky clean windows, use newspaper instead of a cloth to wipe them down. I don’t know if this is common knowledge to the rest of the world, but it was news to me! It kind of blew my mind the first time I did it. I was on a help exchange at a couple of months ago, and my host asked me to wash the windows with newspaper. I was skeptical at first, but did it anyway. Streak-free shine!! It’s fool-proof! – How to sew. I was telling a friend a while back how both pairs of my pants had holes in them, in places that stopped me from wearing them, so I was going to have to get a new pair. He said, “Why don’t you just patch them up?” Duh! I had never done this before, but it seemed like a fun, if not obvious idea, so I gave it a go. Not only did I successfully patch them up, I enjoyed it immensely! So much so that I decided to redesign the pants entirely. I went on to turn a frumpy old pair of jeans into cigarette pants! This is my new favorite thing to do.

Highlights:

- Hiking in a magical forest in the Coromandel. Yes, a magical forest. Cade and I went on a hike one afternoon and sort of got split up. Well really, Cade was just moving a lot faster than I was. He’d stop and wait for me every few minutes, but there came a point when I hadn’t seen him in a while. I was starting to get a little anxious, as it was getting later into the evening, and I wasn’t sure if one of us had gone off track. So I started to pick up the pace, until finally I was sprinting. After a while, I heard a noise behind me, so I turned around, and Sir Cade was sprinting down the track towards me! We both just stared at each other for a second before embracing in a huge hug. I was convinced that he was playing a trick on me, but he swore he wasn’t. We still have no idea how I somehow got ahead of him without passing each other, but it was pretty eerie. What did I tell you? Magic. – The first night we slept in Bryce. While this was terrible at the time, it’s hilarious now and therefore one of the top moments. – Cade (attempting) to roll down the sand dunes in Northland. – Meeting new friends in Auckland…Rachel, I’m talking about you. – Our help exchange in Coromandel: humanure toilets, bush baths, fishing, beautiful people. It doesn’t get much better than that! – Cade is really good at voices. He’s got a myriad of different voices that he uses, and he never ceases to crack me up. There were a few different voices in particular that he used, and one night we gave them names. I know, it sounds a wee bit crazy, but it was hilarious. Let me introduce you. There was Roger, Squid, Major Cobsack, Gram, Pat Terry Pat-Terry, Old Wizard/FDR, and Steve. This was one of the funniest nights of my life. – Spending Christmas with one of the nicest families in the world. Seriously, that’s not an exaggeration. – Sydney, Australia. We stayed with two amazing people, Stephanie and Barret, who showed us around Sydney. Our time staying in King’s Cross (the red light district) also showed us a good, albeit scary, time. – Luminate Festival. I didn’t get a chance to write about this, but it was simply life changing. – Hanging out in Wanaka for a few weeks. I met a ton of incredible people, had a lot of time to myself, and was working at a beautiful help exchange. – Staying in Christchurch for a couple of weeks with the same family we spent Christmas with. I am so grateful to the Sparks family for allowing me to take up some of their space for my last couple weeks in New Zealand. It has been so much fun hanging out with the kids and I’ve had the opportunity to bake and cook a bit, which I haven’t done in a very long time.

20 February 2013

I always wanted a junky car. Growing up, I’d see these beat up VW Bugs/Buses and old Geo Metros and just think, “Gosh, I have to have one of those when I get older!” Unfortunately, (but fortunately) my dad wouldn’t think of getting me a beat up old car, too dangerous! So I got a safe car, and I’ve been spoiled with healthy tires, air bags, doors that open and close without problem, etc. Then I came to New Zealand, and a little 1993 Toyota Corolla hatchback that had been so lovingly jacked up by Waiheke Island’s finest, came into my life. As you know (or should know) Cade and I named him Bryce. Bryce Elizabeth Cobsack III, to be precise. Cade and I found Bryce while we were on a help exchange just outside of Auckland. We were sort of desperate for a car at this point, we’d been in New Zealand for almost two weeks and it was time to start moving. Our HelpX host, Michelle, found an ad on Waiheke’s own community trade website for a little Toyota Corolla. The owner’s were selling him because they had a baby on the way, and needed to invest in a more baby-friendly car. It was by luck, or good karma (or some kind of karma) that we were able to buy him. Just as we were about to board the ferry from Waiheke Island to Auckland, we received a phone call saying they’d like to sell us the car. (We’d been trying to get ahold of them for a couple of days, expressing interest, with little to no response.) They came and picked us up at the ferry, said we could take the car for the night so we had a place to sleep, and we’d meet them at the bank in the morning. Our first night sleeping in the car was, to put it lightly, a complete disaster. We didn’t have blankets or sleeping bags or mats to sleep on. The back of Bryce is ridged plastic and he doesn’t have awesome (or any) insulation, so not only were we cold, we were beyond uncomfortable. We decided to park near our help exchange house, just outside one of the wineries. Just as we were going to sleep, a car drove out of the winery and spotted us. Now, before I go any further, let me remind you that Freedom Camping is no longer legal in New Zealand, so technically, what we were doing was not allowed, but we were so far from the main road, we didn’t think it’d be a problem. So this car drives out of the winery, stops in the middle of the road and sits there a couple minutes with it’s lights on us. We were both a little weirded out by this, but didn’t think much more of it until the car came back and decided to scope us for another few minutes. This is when I got a little concerned. No, I’m sorry, this is when I started freaking out. We decided it might be best if we went somewhere else to sleep. Cade jumped into the front seat and started driving out to the main road. Meanwhile, I’m in the back of the car just waiting to hear sirens behind us, and instead of just staying where I was, I decided it would be a good idea to put the backseat up. Seatbelt on, check. When we finally decided to just park in one of our HelpX hosts’ driveways (they had three houses right next to each other) we settled back down in the back of the car and tried to sleep. A couple of minutes later, Cade burst out laughing. I turned to him, utterly confused, and asked what was so funny. His response, “You put the backseat up! You put the backseat up!! Why did you think that was necessary?!” Since I didn’t really have a good explanation, except for that my brain immediately went into worst-possible-situation mode, I burst out laughing with him, and that became (one of) the big jokes between Cade and I for the rest of our trip. In my defense, though, I put the backseat up for the sake of normalcy! Plus, I felt weird being driven around while lying in the back of a car. Sitting in a seat just made more sense! This was the first of many ridiculous moments with Bryce.

I knew I was going to fall in love with Bryce as soon we named him. Cade and I took him in as our messed up kid. He was our emo step-child, who we just wanted to be a little more like his older brother. I commonly referred to him as our “piece of love,” especially if we were talking about him while driving. After almost every Bryce conversation Cade and I ever had, Cade would finish it with, “Couldn’t be less proud of him.” We referred to him as a human being, for goodness’ sake! It was hard in the beginning, between Bryce and I. Before New Zealand, I had never driven a manual car. We sort of had a love/hate relationship until early December when I finally became comfortable driving him. I have to give major props to Sir Cade for having the patience, and mostly courage, to teach me how to drive this car. If you know me at all, you know I don’t like to be bad at things. I’m very hard on myself, and I get frustrated quickly (I’m working on it). Take that, and the fact that I was driving on the left side of the road, and I had someone else’s life in my hands. Talk about anxiety. I’m not sure I’ve ever hated anything as much as I hated driving Bryce in those beginning months. If I was driving, it was sure to be a tense day. But after a few weeks of practice, a couple of freak-outs, and an argument or two, I did it! I learned how to drive a manual. And Cade’s still alive! A success on both accounts. Over the last four months, there have been countless moments with Bryce that still stick in my mind. Like turning the windshield wipers on every time we made a turn. It just so happens that the windshield wiper switch and the indicator light switch are on opposite sides over here. Or the time we opened the back hatch, and the speakers fell on our heads. How about not being able to open the passenger side door, having to roll down the window, and open it from the outside. Or this one. One night, this was the first night I was camping alone, I was in a crowded campground, setting up Bryce for sleep (this was always quite the process). I was putting the speakers that had previously fallen on our heads in the front seats, and the speakers just laid on the horn. Everyone in the campground stopped what they were doing and turned to see what was going on. The more I tried to pull the speakers off the horn, the more they seemed to hit against it. When I finally got the speakers and horn under control, I turned around to find several pairs of eyes watching me, spat out a quick, “Sorry!” and turned around and burst out laughing. It was one of many moments that I wished Cade was still with me so I had someone to laugh about it with. It was typical Bryce!

Yesterday, after four adventure-filled months, I sold Bryce. It was heartbreaking. Not really. In all seriousness, I was quite sad to see him go. He was my first junk car! A car that I’d wanted since I was seven years old. He made dreams come true; learning to drive a manual, living in a car, road-tripping around another country. Cade and I also had probably some of our best memories in Bryce. Considering we spent the majority of our time driving and camping, that’s where the magic happened. I’ve never had so many philosophical conversations or been made to laugh so hard that I almost cried so many times, as I did in Bryce. Without Bryce, this trip would not have been the same. While I did consider shipping him back to the States so I’d never have to part with him, I decided selling him to a nice couple in Christchurch was probably the better option. It was time. I will miss Bryce dearly. He and I shared only the purest kind of love….but all things must come to an end, eh?

26 January 2013

I’ve decided, and there was a lot of thought put into this, “equanimity,” is my favorite word. Just do me a favor, no, do yourself a favor, and say this word out loud. Do it. Done? Great.

While this word is very fun to say out loud (I do it often), it’s the meaning of equanimity that makes me love it so much. Now, for those who don’t know this word, I’m going to give you good ol’ Merriam’s literal definition of equanimity before I explain why I love it so much..

1 : evenness of mind especially under stress 2 : right disposition : balance

I’ve become very close to this word over the last year. I had heard it before, and sort of knew what it meant, but it wasn’t until I went on a Buddhist retreat last January, that I finally felt like I understood it and could actually use it in conversation. It’s the idea that we can sort of keep ourselves calm, our emotions under control, even when life decides to give us a good kick in the face. That we can have the ability to not react emotionally, regardless of outside circumstances. It’s sort of a difficult concept to wrap our minds around, at least it was for me. How can we, in moments of stress, shock, anger, jealousy, keep our emotions out of the way? That’s not an easy task, by any means. At this retreat that I went on, one of the dharma talks was specifically about equanimity, and it just hit home for me. I made the decision that night, to do everything I could to find some kind of equanimity in the way that I lived my life. And I was doing a pretty good job. Well, I had the illusion that I was doing a good job. And maybe I was, but then I was thrown into situations I hadn’t been in before, and everything changed very quickly.

In a very literal sense, equanimity is about staying cool in high-pressure situations, or not allowing our emotions to dictate the way we react to a situation we find disagreeable. In a more spiritual sense of the word, equanimity is about detachment. Detachment, what a scary word. It’s so often taken in a negative way, and so often seen as a very admirable quality, as well. Detachment, in this use of the word, is basically being able to detach ourselves from difficult situations, but not before we’ve really felt however those situations make us feel. Take death, for example. There are people who learn of a person’s death, and they cry and grieve and move on. Then there are people, and this was me, who learn of a death and skip the crying and grieving and just say they’ve moved on. They probably haven’t moved on, though. (I know this is a big generalization because everybody is different. However, for the sake of example, just hear me out.) That second person, who skips the grieving process, will probably say that they can just detach themselves from things easily. And maybe they can. Or maybe they’re just avoiding feeling altogether. This is where equanimity gets a little tricky. If, in order to act with equanimity, we have to detach ourselves from our emotions, then how are we supposed to deal with the big things, like death? We have to feel them first. Really feel them, acknowledge them, and once that’s been done, we can accept them and move on. Without that acknowledgment, there is only room for emotional reactions; taking things out on other people, refusing to be happy for our friends because we’re so unhappy with our own lives. It’s a lot of work, but in the end, I think really feeling whatever we’re feeling, sitting with it, accepting it, is totally worth it.

Anyway, this is where I got my rude awakening. As I said, I thought I was doing a pretty good job living with equanimity. But all it takes is for Life to walk around the corner, slap you across the face, punch you in the gut, and stomp on your toes, for a nice reality check. Something happened, and all the work I’d done seemed to vanish overnight. I felt as if any shred of equanimity I had been living with was gone. And that’s definitely something I’ve struggled with over the last three months, trying to find my way back to a place of balance. So, as you know if you’ve been reading this, the last help exchange I was set to do kind of fell through. Something I didn’t learn until I’d made the five hour drive to get there. As soon as my host told me, “No, I didn’t expect you. And, no, I don’t have work for you,” I was angry. And I didn’t hide it very well. Until her phone rang. While she was on the phone, I took a step back from the situation, and realized that, in the grand scheme of things, it does not matter if I do this help exchange or not. This is so obvious! But in the moment, it wasn’t. In the moment, all I knew was that I was being turned away for no reason. And that’s exactly what I want to get better at. So, when she got off the phone, I apologized, then she apologized, and we kind of worked out a mini-stay for me. Easy peezy.

If there is one thing I’ve learned over the last few years, it’s that everything will work out in the end. Things are going to go wrong, we’ll make mistakes, we’re going to get hurt, but that’s what this beautifully chaotic life is all about. Living and learning. And then continuing to live, with twice as much passion as before. There’s really no need to get angry over the little things, or avoid feeling the emotions that hurt us, they’ll only make us better, more grateful for the beautiful things in life.

It turned out, a couple of days after I got to that help exchange, a woman in Wanaka contacted me about a different help exchange. She needed a little extra help at the Lakeside Lodge she runs. So I’ve been in Wanaka for the last week and a half, and it’s been simply amazing. I went on the most beautiful hike to see the Rob Roy Glacier (it may have even been better than Milford Sound!) and I’ve met some pretty awesome people here. I’m off on Wednesday to go the Luminate festival up in Takaka, which I am beyond excited about! Seven days of yoga, music, dancing, art, camping, and it’s all off the grid!! http://www.luminatefestival.co.nz/ I’ll be sending my love and all of the positivity your way!

But for now, I’m signing off,