Tag Archives: courage

Letter to my older self…

Posted on by

So many people asked me to do this that I had to comply.  Last week, I wrote a letter to my younger 25 year old self of things I would want her to know from what I have learned over the last couple of decades.  A lot of people asked me to do the same with my older self, that is, what I would want my older self to know.  Since I am 50, I decided to write a letter to my 70 year old self.  I have to admit, I struggled with this one more than the last letter.  Thinking about being 70 and entering the last couple of decades of life is harder than looking back and imparting wisdom on a younger Robin with a future stretching before her.  I am not afraid of death, but I am afraid of getting old.  When I get old and outlive my usefulness, I want to have the capacity to walk off into the wilderness where I can look up into the mountains that I love and just die. No fuss, no fanfare.  Just the natural end of a life well lived.

Robin,

Wow, you’ve made it to 70. There have been many times in your life that you didn’t think you would ever see this day.  Yet here you are.  Hopefully, you have taken care of your health and are still active.  Finally, you get to have that discounted ski pass at Stevens!!!  Woot!! You’ve been waiting for that for 25 years.  I hope you are still active enough to enjoy it.  I hope you are skiing every weekday and get at least 50 days in.

Retirement finally came for you two years ago.  I hope you stayed on track to have at least a million dollars in your retirement account.  It will suck if you didn’t and you have to eat cat food to survive. My hope is that you learned from the lean years of paying off all that debt incurred during your marriage and have kept saving money.  It is okay if people call you fiscally conservative or even if they call you cheap.  It still beats having to survive off cat food.

I hope you kept on learning and trying new things and experiences, it is how you stay young. Try not to be like some older people and get too set in your ways.  Remember Matt? Remember how much you learned from him all those years ago and the fun that you had? Don’t forget that you can learn a lot about life from people of all ages, so don’t be the old fuddy-duddy who thinks they have all the answers and won’t listen to anyone else, especially younger people.  Be open, listen, learn.

And don’t forget, if you are lonely and think no one comes to see you, then get off your ass and go to see them.  People want you to care about their interests, they want you to be interested in their lives and what they are passionate about.  Go to your grandchildren’s games, graduations, weddings… call them, listen to them, make time for them.  Don’t just sit around and bemoan that no one wants to visit with you because if you do, guess what will happen?  No one will want to be around you. If you want people to be interested in your life, you have to start by being interested in theirs.

P1080687The twin granddaughters are about 23 now, graduated from college.  Hopefully, you kept your word and have been taking them on trips every year to show them how big the world is and that you made that same commitment with your other grandchildren you had too. I hope you took them to Nepal, Africa, Myanmar, South America and let them see some of the remote places of the world.  I hope you took them diving, paragliding, cycling, and I really hope you taught them how to ski.  A great graduation trip might be a ski trip to the Alps or to Whistler where you can rent a nice apartment and your old lady self can go to bed early and where the grandkids can stay up and party all night.  Remember that experiences are worth more than stuff, spend your money and time having experiences with them.  It is the best legacy you could leave them. 

I hope you are living in a place where it is easy to get around.  A nice, one bedroom condo in an urban area.  Easy to clean and you can spend your time going to the theater and concerts and have adventures easily. That way you can give up the drivers license and still have your freedom. Give up the driver’s license before you don’t want to, that way it isn’t an issue for your kids having to take it away from you.  Make plans for the last years of your life.  Pick out the retirement community and assisted living facility you want to be in now.  You’ve worked your whole life to take care of your family, take care of them now by making those decisions for yourself while you still can so that you won’t be a burden to them in a few years.

The end of your life is coming.  Just like with the rest of your life, you get to choose how you face it.  Face it with grace, courage, and dignity.  Choose to live your life on your terms, each day giving your best, caring for the people in your life, and remembering how much you are loved.  Choose to keep having amazing adventures and always be thankful for how great your life has been.  It truly has been an incredible ride. 

No regrets, just go enjoy the sunset of your life. 

Robin

Letter to my younger self…

Posted on by

robin25I read a book a long time ago called “What I Know Now: Letter to My Younger Self”.  I was in my office the other day working on a grant and saw it on a shelf and thought about what a great idea it would be to write a letter to my younger self.  What would I want her to know?  Then I realized it would depend on what age I was so I decided on writing a letter to my 25 year old self.  At 25, I was in my second year of my master’s degree program. I remember wearing a tie-dyed t-shirt that my husband bought me for a birthday present to teach class in that day.  I remember having a huge existential crisis over the fact that I was turning 25 and that seemed so old and grown up.  I was already married with a 7 year old and a 2 year old but for some reason, turning 25 made me feel very old.

graduationAt 25, I had already put myself through undergraduate school and graduated Magna cum Laude and was driven to succeed in graduate school.  Even though I had gone through a teacher education program, my teaching assistant position at a 4 year university felt like an internship where I was able to get more practice at being a teacher before teaching high school. I had the help of a great friend and math teacher Danny Lueck who passed away a few years ago.  I remember those times sitting in my living room grading 120 papers and he would be giving me advice on how to grade them more efficiently so that I wouldn’t go crazy. He was a good friend.  I would go on to teach public high school for over a decade before returning to graduate school again to get my PhD and moving into higher education. Along the way, building my career, I sacrificed a lot of my personal life. I don’t regret my education or my job path.  It has allowed me to make an impact on the world, but it also came with a price.

Going through this letter-writing process was a great one for reminding me of where I was and where I am now.  If you are over 35, I suggest trying this.  Don’t just think of what you would say to your younger self, actually take the time to write it out.  If you are under 35, I suggest writing a letter to your older self.  Add 20 years to your age and tell that older you what you want them never to forget.  Put it away and then read it again in a few years and see how you are doing.  You could even make it a tradition every 5 years to go back and reread and then write a new letter.  Just a thought.

Dear Robin,

I see you standing there, in front of that class of undergraduates who are barely younger than you.  There are so many of them, looking toward you like you have the answers to all their problems in math.  Yet you are standing there shaking in your shoes because you know you are going to screw up.  Yes you will, so stop worrying about it.  You will survive the embarrassment of calling a hypotenuse a hypothesis for a whole class until one of your students points it out.  You will survive your first (and subsequent) altercation with students where you have to confront them on discipline issues.  You will weather the storm on the first (and subsequent) time that someone complains about your teaching.  The thing to remember is this: you are going to be a great teacher but that greatness doesn’t come without making a bunch of mistakes.  Let go of the control and thinking you have all the answers, don’t be afraid to say “I don’t know but I will find out and let you know tomorrow”, and don’t be afraid to ask the kids “I don’t know, what do you think?” and let them come up with their own answers.  They will learn more that way.  Never back a kid into a corner, always give them a way out and a way to save face.  Laugh at yourself, have sense of humor in your classroom, don’t take things so seriously. 1432_596970479433_9919_n

1432_596970474443_9679_nThat goes for your personal life too.  You are far too serious for being 25 years old.  Look at your two beautiful children, they need a mother that laughs and plays with them.  They will grow up to be amazing human beings, your pride in them will know no bounds.  I wish I could say you aren’t going to make any mistakes in raising them, but you are.  They will love you despite the times you screw up.  Play with them more, be unrestrained, show them how to have adventures.  And while you are at it, have some yourself.  It is okay to be concerned with your career, it is going to take you places you never imagined.  But don’t let it get in the way of adventures.  They are what fuels your soul.  They don’t have to be big or cost lots of money, you just have to be willing to let go of control, not be perfect, and get lost in the moment of life. 

Try not to spend all of your life being perfect. Someday that perfect life will shatter into a million pieces and you won’t know how to deal with it.  The key to surviving that is to realize that imperfection is where the good stuff of life happens. Your life will start when you are willing to jump in and do stuff without fearing you’ll make a mistake. Fear is where the fun starts, it isn’t the paralyzing emotion that you think it is.  Face what you are most afraid of head on with no hesitation.  It will set you free.

You did a great job at 25, allowing yourself to trust your husband, have kids, build a great life. Those choices will make you very happy over the next 20 years.  You will have no regrets about raising your family, living in the town that you choose, having the wonderful friends that you have.  Never look back on that time with regrets, it is magic time, filled with wonder.  Someday, after your life falls apart, you will build a new life, very different from that.  It is okay, nothing lasts forever. You will move on.  During that rebuilding time, my advice to you is try to let go faster. It really is the key to being happy.  You have to learn how to recognize when a relationship is at its end and be okay with that.  Cherish the relationship for what it brought you and look with anticipation at the next one that will come into your life.  A relationship ends when it has fulfilled its need in your life and its ending opens up a space to allow you another one that will meet different needs.

A couple of things I really want you to remember:

  • Your hair doesn’t matter as much as you think it does, don’t waste so much time and money on it.
  • Stand closer to the fire.  Don’t stand on the periphery of life, get in where it is warm, where life is happening.
  • Dance more and don’t stop singing. The day might come when you will forget how much joy these things bring to life so capture the joy while you can.
  • Make mistakes.  It is how you learn and grow.
  • Take care of your body.  You will spend money, time, and energy taking care of your house or cars while ignoring the one thing in your life that can’t be replaced, your health.  Put your effort and energy into making sure the one body you have to go through this life with is always running in peak condition.
  • Take the harder road, make the more difficult choice.  Yes, the learning curve is larger, but there is a reason the phrase “no guts, no glory” came about.  The harder road is the greater opportunity. You won’t get where you want to be by playing it safe.
  • Don’t be afraid to embrace the people who come into your life for the gifts they are.  And don’t be afraid to let them go when it is time.
  • Someday, you will meet some sketchy internet people, they are trustworthy.  They will help you find your voice again.
  • Someday, in your darkest hours, you will meet someone who is going to change your life.  He is young and it seems an odd friendship and you will question it many, many times. Don’t.  Risk trusting this person, he will teach you how to play again after a lifetime of responsibility.  He will teach you how to be strong.  He will teach you about the person you want to be. He will help you find your soul. 

You are going to have the best life ever.  Live every day of it.

Robin

That was when I lived in a morgue…

Posted on by

Of all the stories I expected to hear on my story collecting adventure, the words “I lived in a morgue” probably never made my list. But my friend Keri did, in fact, live in a morgue and even has some incredible pictures to prove it. In the midst of a casual conversation the other night, she uttered the words “when I lived in the morgue”…say WHAT?  When prompted for the story, she revealed that she and several other ski instructors lived there together when they were working in Garmisch, Germany. She dragged our her old photo album and told the story as we scrolled through her awesome pictures that showed a bunch of twenty-somethings living it up in this funky place with a half-moon shaped area where at one time bodies were viewed, a kitchen that had once been where embalming happened and had no counter space at all because of that, and Keri’s bedroom which had previously been where the crematorium ovens were located.  There were also some underground tunnels from the old hospital to the morgue that were built during the war so that the German public wouldn’t know how many men were dying in the war.  It was kind of freaky, but they had some incredible parties in that “house”.  Halloween must have been awesome.

It is funny because I have known Keri for the last seven years but did not know that about her. What made that story even more interesting is Keri herself.  Of all the people I know who might have uttered the words “I lived in a morgue”, she would have been the last person I would have expected. Keri is one of the most amazingly even keeled and centered people I have ever met.  Yet, in hindsight, maybe it isn’t so surprising after all.  Keri also flows easily in her life taking whatever opportunities that come up with little hesitation.  She lives her life fully every day.  She is a remarkable and courageous person.

One of the things I love about our friendship is how easy it is.  When we haven’t seen each other in a while, we can pick right up where we left off.  We talk to each other about our lives, dreams, fears, joys, and sorrows.  She gives the best advice and I value her wisdom.  She has a way of understanding human interactions that cuts through all the subterfuge. Out of all my friends, she is one of the best at self-care and boundaries.

I have been thinking a lot about relationships this week, both friendships and intimate relationships. I am in the midst of taking a hard look at my relationships and reflecting on the ones that add value to my life and to which I am adding value in return. Great relationships that add significance to my life, like the ones I share with my closest friends, take open communication of both the good and the bad of our lives. These relationships are easy because we are willing to be open and authentic with each other, telling each other our truths while respecting how each feels.  Frankly, I don’t want any other kind of relationships in my life other than easy ones.  Relationships with people who don’t keep their word, lie, use subterfuge, give you the silent treatment, or omit details to try to avoid conflict just take too much effort and energy. Relationships should be easy.

However, I think a mistake that is common in intimate relationships is believing that one person can meet all our needs. It is impossible for one person to meet all our needs and it would be a huge burden on any one person to try to accomplish that.  Life is enriched by all our relationships not just the intimate ones. Relationships with a variety of people give us perspective from many angles and broaden our understanding of the world around us.. Life becomes rich and full when we embrace all of those various relationships.

As a caveat, it also must be considered that inherent in relationships is a measure of risk.  When we trust others with our vulnerabilities, we stand the risk of being rejected, hurt, used, and taken for granted.  When that happens and a valued relationship ends, it is hard to pick up the threads of trust to try again.  But try we must.  Human beings were not meant to live in isolation from others.  Our relationships bring us wisdom, joy, beauty, poetry, happiness, physical comfort, sorrow, grief, and the whole range of human emotions.  Through those relationships we find strength and comfort when the problems of the world rise around us.  It is also through those relationships that we grow and reach our fullest potential.  Without them, we die, maybe not all at once, but our soul dies day by isolating day.  And we live in our own private morgue, not one that has a bunch of fellow ski instructors who are full of life, but in the shells of our bodies going through the motions of life.

My Life Divided by Zero advice for this week is to collect a story, have a conversation with someone, find out a really interesting fact that you didn’t previously know and tell them something about you in return. Risk, trust, open up and be vulnerable to someone.  You might get hurt, but at least you will be alive. And you will probably come away with a great story to tell.  And that is what our lives are…a collection of stories.

You’ve got to dance with the one that brung ya…

Posted on by

You’ve got to dance with the one that brung ya…I have always liked that phrase.  To me, it is a reminder to do what is right even when others would suggest otherwise and to be loyal to those in my life who have helped me get where I am.

The reality of my life is that I got to where I am…a person having great adventures, happy, centered, feeling, and living every moment… because of all the things that have happened to me.  Take away any part and I wouldn’t be me.  I have spent a lot of time bemoaning things especially when I am at low points like when I am scared or lonely… but bemoaning and regrets are not only futile, they take away from my power to be who I think I am and that I want to be.  And that is my goal, to be the person I think I am.

One of the things that got me here is the loss of my marriage to someone who I loved with all my heart which was the catalyst for change, good change that brought me to where I am at this moment.  That path to change started with marriage therapy, it was the first dance that got me here.

I am not a big fan of the mental health care system even though I have several close friends who are therapists and I respect and appreciate what they do.  One of my major concerns is that there is too much power given to the therapist with the assumption that they will act with ethics but no policing of that system unless a client complains.  However there is little client education of boundaries and appropriate behavior so when the therapist crosses a boundary, the client takes it on trust that the therapist knows what they are doing, even if the situation feels icky and uncomfortable.  The trust required in the therapeutic relationship allows therapists to wield enormous psychological influence which, when handled correctly, produces the magic of positive change in people’s lives.  But when handled incorrectly can produce devastating results.  I know because it is what happened to me.

I trusted my marriage therapist with all my heart, way more than I should have ever trusted a service provider. I told him all of my secrets, things that I had never told any living person.  As a result, therapy was very successful for me, although not so much for my marriage.  I sent him daily journals via email, he said it helped make him a better therapist knowing all my thoughts.  I paid him even though he was still in graduate school and shouldn’t have accepted money.  When therapy “ended” when I moved to Seattle, I continued to communicate with him weekly and send him my journals.  A couple of months later, he moved to Seattle where we started riding mountain bikes, kayaking, skiing, I introduced him to my social group, I watched his dog every weekend, took him to dinner, he stored his stuff in my house and even stayed at my house.  In all of this, I paid for everything.   All the while I was still sending him my journals and telling him my problems. In my mind he was still my therapist.

We first crossed the major boundary the night before Thanksgiving in 2007 when we went out drinking and he got hammered. When I drove him home, we stayed up talking until after 3 am.  That started a three year “friendship”.  Multiple times I told him that it didn’t “feel” right, that I couldn’t separate the therapist from the “friend”.  He would assure me that it was all in my head.  And he was right, it was.  In my head, I knew it was wrong.  So I found another therapist to help me figure that out.  She reported him to the licensing board. The state of Washington found that I was an “isolated incident, unlikely to happen again” so he can keep his practice. End of story. Except that it wasn’t.

For me, the loss of this person who had been so instrumental to me, who I had trusted without question, was psychologically and emotionally one of the most devastating ordeals of my life. I almost didn’t make it.  It was with the help of a bunch of people from an online bike forum that I found my voice and my power again. I can never repay what they gave me, freely, without knowing me or expecting anything from me in return.

Needless to say, there have been some huge violations of trust for me from the mental health community. So what I am about to do scares the absolute daylights out of me.  I have realized that, although I have the best life ever, there are a couple of areas that I could work on to make it even better. And I need some help with that.  So I am leaping…I made an appointment and I am going back to therapy.  This time, I am armed with knowledge of what therapy should and should not be. This time, I am going to therapy from a position of strength, not in a moment of weakness. I won’t allow myself to be preyed upon because I am not the same person anymore (thanks Matt for the reminder). It is time I learn how to trust again.

And so I am dancing… with the one that brung me… not the former exploitative therapist, but with the mental health care profession in general. I am taking the risk to be able to have the life I want.  My goal is to be the person that I believe I am.

Resolutions…

Posted on by

I have never been a big fan of New Year’s celebrations.  I love the idea of spending the night with people you love, but I don’t have to get dressed up, blow noisemakers, and be out with thousands of other people to do that.  I prefer intimate gatherings of friends, soft comfy warm clothes, good music, a fireplace, and some nice hot beverages.

New Year’s is just a day, like all the other days in the year.  Our calendar date for the new year is arbitrary and there are other cultures that have a different date for the new year.  I do, however, like the symbolism of new years as a time of transition.  It is out with the old, in with the new.  It is a time of renewal.

This idea of transition from one year to the next is why people make resolutions.  I am not a big fan of resolutions either although in the past, I have always made them.  This year, I am going to try something different.  Thanks for the suggestion Deloa!

One problem I see with resolutions, at least for me, is that the resolution adds something I want to do onto my life, but my life is already full. Instead of out with the old, in with the new, my resolutions are add-ons and I have left out the part that I have to take something out. That is, I want to: lose weight, get in shape, spend more time with family, strengthen my relationships, etc. but in order to add something in, what I don’t consider is that I have to first let something go to make space for that new thing. I made resolutions and then six weeks later when I don’t have time for them or they are stressing me out, I drop them.  Yet I still keep walking around with the baggage I was carrying in the past year.

So this year, instead of making resolutions, I made two lists.  I made a list of things that aren’t working for me anymore and titled it Releasing.  Then I made another list of Intentions for the new year of changes I wanted to make in my life.  The releasing list has some relationships that aren’t working for me as well as organizations I belonged to that weren’t adding any value to my life, activities that I no longer do but still have gear for, etc. The intention list has the new relationships I want to cultivate, behaviors that I want to adopt, and activities I want to explore.  Beside each item on each list I am finding a symbol or a photo that represents each thing.  At midnight I am going to take my Releasing list and throw it into the fire, symbolically releasing the things that aren’t working for me, then I am going to throw my Intentions list into the fire and offer it up to the universe.

This might sound a little “out there” but really, is it any worse than making a resolution that I give up six weeks later?  In the past, I have found that by putting my intentions, dreams, hopes and desires out to the universe that it opens up the space for it to happen. It doesn’t always happen in the way I had envisioned, but nonetheless, I can create the life I want.

Here is the key…whatever you do, whether it is make a resolution or throw intentions into a fire, you have to believe, really believe, that you are worthy.  The energy you give off will come back to you. If you believe that you are worthy of happiness, love, success, abundance, joy…then that is what you will create.  But if deep down, you believe something else, then that is the energy that you are giving off and that is the energy that is going to gravitate back to you.  So whatever your intentions are, put them out to the universe with your whole heart.  In a few weeks, if you aren’t keeping your goals or working toward them, ask yourself if you truly believe you are worthy.  And if not, what is it that is holding you back?

“We can either watch life from the sidelines, or actively participate… Either we let self-doubt and feelings of inadequacy prevent us from realizing our potential, or embrace the fact that when we turn our attention away from ourselves, our potential is limitless.” ~Christopher Reeve

Happy New Year!

The 8 boxes…

Posted on by

Yesterday, I unpacked my suitcase for the first time since May.  It was bittersweet, I hadn’t expected the mix of emotions it would bring.  As I unpacked and put my stuff away in a new house, new room, I couldn’t help but remember my last apartment and the last time my clothes hung in a closet. I was a little overwhelmed by all the changes.

I think that not having a home to come back to made my time travelling both physically simple yet emotionally challenging at the same time.  Travelling and knowing you have a familiar and comfortable place to come back to is very different from returning home to the unknown of having to find a place to live.  Add on the fact that I gave up all my stuff, an act which was both freeing and yet again, ridiculously challenging emotionally, and it made coming home and unpacking my clothes this surreal experience.  And yes, I found a great house and a super roommate.  Now I just have to adjust to a totally new life.

For those of you that haven’t read the back story, when I gave up my apartment in May and then started traveling in June, rather than put things in storage for a year, I reduced all of my possessions from the last 50 years of my life to 8 boxes, my checked bag of clothes and a carry on, and some gear stored at a friends house (thanks Jason!).  It was the hardest thing I have ever done. At least, it was the hardest thing I have ever done…until now.

heartYesterday, I opened one of the 8 boxes. I had thought that it would be a fun adventure to see what I had saved.  Instead, it felt more like opening Pandora’s Box.  The box I happened to open had pictures of my kids, a wood bowl that my uncle made, a ceramic heart that my daughter made when she was in elementary school, a box my son brought back from Australia when he was a teenager.  Similar to the experience of hanging my clothes in the closet, it was like a blast of memories rising up out of the cardboard.  I took out the big pieces and set them on a shelf in my room and then closed the box without going through the pictures.  I didn’t open the other boxes yet.

Today, my roommate and I are going to put up a Christmas tree.  I took out the two boxes of ornaments that I had saved.  Everyone that knows me, knows how much I used to love the spirit of Christmas.  Those ornaments represent 50 years of family holiday memories.  I have to admit, I am not sure I can open the boxes.

So what is my problem?  I had this amazing experience over the past 6 months.  I am a different person.  I shed the memories of the past and stepped into my present and hopefully my future.  I am happy and moving on. The problem is, I don’t want to go back to revisit the past at all, I want to avoid thinking about it and just continue on with my happy life. It isn’t that I want to erase it or forget it, it is all part of what made me who I am.  I just want to keep moving forward.  But there is one thing I know for certain, when something feels difficult and I don’t want to do it, that is the very thing that I need to do the most.  The hard things show me what I still need to work on.  Hmm it might be time for some brutal honesty here Robin. I hate it when I have to really reach inside for the hard emotional stuff. Okay here goes…

So I am looking at those boxes and part of me wishes I hadn’t saved anything… and that feels like a betrayal to all the people who gave things to me. For example, in one of those packing crates are the Shaker boxes that my dad made me before he died and I should feel excited to open them up.  But instead, I am torn.  On one hand, I have these possessions that have memories of the people I love attached to them, possessions like Shaker boxes and ceramic hearts from people like my dad or my kids.  On the other hand, I have the memories and the love of the people, I don’t need “stuff” to feel that. In fact, somehow the “stuff” diminishes from that love.  I guess what is confusing me is that, in the last 6 months, I have felt the love of the people in my life in a really powerful way and that couldn’t have happened with possessions detracting and getting in the way.

I guess when all the possessions in my life had been stripped away and all I had was the love of my family and friends, my whole life was just clearer and uncluttered.  The love I experienced over the last half year felt like the pure essence of what we are as human beings.  I want to make sure that I don’t lose that feeling in the trappings of “stuff” again. That is really what I am scared of.  Because material things, even handmade Shaker boxes made with love from my dad, can never replace the time spent with the people I love and who love me.  So even though I have those boxes, they aren’t more valuable than all the memories or the time I spent with my dad when he was alive.  The mementos and things I have from my children aren’t anything compared to the time I have spent with them and the love that we share.

I guess I have come to understand how much of a distraction all the stuff we have really is.  Obtaining and caring for possessions, working to pay for them, using them to substitute for emotions, buying things to fill voids in our lives, all those things distract us from what is really important in life which is loving the people in our lives and spending time with them. That is the greatest lesson I have learned and I never want to forget it again.  That is what I don’t want to go back to.  Ever.

So I guess I am scared that opening those boxes and reattaching to things will distract me from putting my emphasis on people. Today, opening those ornaments, is going to be a challenge, but I have to do it. Avoidance is never a solution.  I just need to breathe, stay present, be aware and I can totally do this.

Adventure of the day…

Posted on by

Sorry for being so absent about writing this blog.  I have been distracted by having adventures with a beautiful set of two-and-a half-year-old twins.

I have mentioned that for a long time I was stuck in longing for my old life back.  Even though I kept plodding along seemingly moving forward with my life, my heart was still wrapped in memories of the past. To those looking from the outside, it might seem like that time of longing was wasted, but it wasn’t.  Everything is a process. For me, letting go of my life took a period of grieving and mourning.  It took me a while to go through that process but it was absolutely necessary to be able to actually move on.  Even when I was mired in that process and it seemed like I was stuck, I have come to realize that I didn’t keep standing still and I am proud of that. I made some mistakes, had some successes, and even though my heart was caught up in another time, I kept moving forward regardless. Or maybe, it was just that my friends kept shoving me forward but either way the result has been the same.  Here I am.

P1080687Today, I am packing to leave my son’s house after a lovely visit with my son and his beautiful wife and the two most amazing grandchildren in the whole world (I might have mentioned that before). Although I am sad to be leaving, this time it isn’t the soul-sucking sadness that it has been in the past where I was pining for my life back. This time, it is different. I know that I will wrap these memories up from this visit and all the love they contain and I will keep them close to my heart while I am living the life I am in right now at this moment, confident that I always have the love of my family. And I know that someday soon, Patrick, Heather, Brooklyn, and Charlotte are going to come to visit me in Seattle and we will make a whole host of new memories.

So I am heading to Boston to visit some friends and play tourist in a city that I have loved since I was a teenager in New England.  Then I am heading to Maine to see my family and to do something that I never ever thought I would do.  I am going to go to a party where I will see all my friends from high school that I haven’t seen in 33 years. I have had a few pangs of trepidation, wondering what to heck I am doing that for, but then I realize it is a great story collecting opportunity. And that is what life is, a collection of stories.

You see, high school isn’t for everyone and it certainly wasn’t a great time for me. Having been the victim of an early sexual assault as a pre-teen, I turned to drugs and alcohol at a very young age because I didn’t know how to handle the emotions of what had happened to me.  My parents went through a difficult divorce, my dad remarried, and I just spiraled out of control. So my memories of high school and my friends memories of me aren’t the greatest. I wasn’t a very nice person.  But here is the thing…I am not that girl anymore.

So I get to go back and meet these people again.  I am a new person and so are they.  We get to laugh and enjoy each other’s company.  I will get to hear their stories of how their lives have evolved; stories of love and loss, joy and heartbreak. I want to listen and understand who they are as people. I want to know what touches their soul.  It is an opportunity to make new friends all over again.  So even with my moments of trepidation, I find that I am really looking forward to the opportunity.  I want to see them with new eyes and an open heart and hopefully, they will be able to look at me the same way.

Then, after spending some time with my extraordinary brothers and their families, I am heading back to Seattle to see my beautiful daughter and her amazing partner Ethan and their new puppy.  I am going to visit with my friends and do some skiing and spend Christmas at Tony and Ken’s beautiful home.  I get to ride my bike and talk math education with Keri. I have to say, I am looking forward to being back in Seattle.

Everything is different.  It is like my life is brand new. Every day is an adventure.

The best kind of guide…

Posted on by

A few years ago, the day after I took my first and only powder skiing lesson and while I was still only a comfortable blue run skier, my friend Matt and I went up to Stevens Pass where, on the first run of the day after a foot of new snow, Matt suggests we go up Seventh Heaven, an ungroomed, black diamond run.  Matt, with his usual encouragement says “Robin, you can totally do this, I will stay right beside you the whole time”.  We get off the chair at the top, Matt straps his boots into his snowboard and he is gone…I got down that mountain by myself solely for the purpose of wringing his neck when I finally got to the bottom.  His response to me, “but you did it, and now you know you can do it again”.  I swear I don’t know why I listen to that kid sometimes.

When Matt suggested I come to Nepal, his words were “come to Nepal, I will be your guide. You just get here, I will take care of the rest”.  Yeah, I still haven’t learned yet.  When I got to Nepal, as typical of the way he “guides” me, he starts off by getting us a bus ride to Pokhara where he asks me, “did you get a hotel room”?  Hmmm…. is this part of the “you’ll take care of everything plan?”.  Typically, it was like that with everything that happened in the two weeks I was there. The kid had no plan at all… or did he?  I joked with him one day and asked exactly what “kind of guide he was” since he pretty left me to figure everything out on my own and to handle all the crises that came up.  His answer: “I am the best kind of guide”.  I am still trying to figure out whether the boy is a brilliant or just an accidental genius.  Either way, once again, it worked.

But it takes coming home to truly realize how far you’ve come.  The greatest gift of travel isn’t the adventure, new countries, languages, foods, customs, etc… or all the things that traveling brings.  Those are all great but are only part of the real gift of travel.  The real gift is returning home, forever changed.  I am very proud of where I am at this moment.

P1080585So where am I? Physically, I recently returned to my son’s home in North Carolina to spend Thanksgiving (American) with my son and my lovely daughter-in-law and the two most amazing grandchildren ever, Brooklyn and Charlotte.

I have been here less than 48 hours and I am already amazed at how I feel. In the past, when I visited my son, who lives in my former marital home, I was always bombarded with memories and thoughts of how life “should have worked out for me”.  I had always expected to be living in this house, happily married to the man I loved, celebrating holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas with our children and grandchildren coming to visit us. I would ride past the university I went to and used to teach for and just be overwhelmed with missing the friends I had, the job I was great at, the life I loved, all of it.  I would long for my past life back. I hadn’t realized how much that longing was holding me back until now.

The night I cried to Matt in Nepal, something changed in me. Maybe it was the yoga and meditation or maybe it was the stark conditions of the country and pushing myself through physical difficulty and preserving.  red scarfMaybe it was the spiritual nature of hiking up to the World Peace Pagoda or up to the top of Sarankot or maybe it was the awe-inspiring site of looking out at the Himalayas which is a sight I will never forget as long as I live. himalayasMaybe it happened while I as paragliding with vultures or when I fell off the side of the cliff and was hanging by the vegetation and lost my shoes and had to walk back to my hotel barefoot. Maybe it happened through just overcoming obstacles and crises and realizing that I could face any challenge on my own.  Regardless, sometime during that time, something changed.

IMG_3305I knew I felt different when I left Nepal and went to Barcelona, I just didn’t realize how different I was until I came back into the familiar environment in which I spent almost half my life.  The familiarity of that world was in stark contrast to the person I have become. Now, I sit in this house and it glows with the energy and vitality of my grandchildren and the love my son and his wife share.  IMG_3259I got to meet my ex-husband’s lovely and charming girlfriend and watch them interact with my two beautiful granddaughters who love them dearly.  I couldn’t help but feel joy in my heart for all of it, for such a loving and happy family.  It is something I never could have imagined over the darkness of the past 6 years.

I look around this place where I used to live. I have appreciated the beautiful changing seasons, the friendliness of the people, the beauty of the campus and know that I hold no attachment to it other than in appreciation of the memories of all the wonderful times I spent here.  It was a wonderful place to raise two beautiful, well-adjusted children, and where I had the opportunity for an amazing career teaching high school and the start of my college teaching career. It is a place where I had spectacular friends and experiences, and where I loved and laughed and lived over half of my life.

IMG_3318Life is sweet, all of it, the good and the bad.  Because of everything that happened, my beautiful daughter got to finish college, start a great career, and meet her amazing partner Ethan. Everything that happened gave me an opportunity to fall in love with the PNW and all the remarkable treasures that area of the world holds. It gave me the chance to reach down into the most creative part of myself and take risks in my career. It has given me a wealth of new experiences and friends that I never would have otherwise met.

I am more centered, happy, confident, peaceful, and accepting than I have ever been in my whole life. Traveling and returning home has made me that much more aware of how great a gift my life has been.

Namaste

Like the layers of an onion…

Posted on by

I am always amazed when life lets me hear exactly what I need to hear exactly at the moment I need and am ready to hear it. I don’t know why that amazes me because it happens all the time.  For me, it happens when I feel like I have reached the bottom.  Maybe that is the only time in my life that I stop struggling and just let go trying to control everything and just allow myself to BE.  That is when I can hear what I need to hear.

It was funny, I had been stressing about filling up the next two weeks in Andalucía for the last two weeks. Nothing I tried to book worked, from my B&B reservations that got cancelled, to my debit card not working to book my train tickets, etc.  If all those frustrating things hadn’t happened, I would still be miserably stressing over how to fill up my days. Because of my frustration, I lamented that to Matt in a message a few days ago and he said, “come to Nepal” and I said, “if I can work the details out I will”. After all the frustration I had in Spain, I thought there was no way in hell I would be able to organize a trip to Nepal in 3 days, I hadn’t even been able to get a hotel room in Granada. Yet amazingly, all the plans just fell into place, like this was exactly what I was supposed to do at this moment.  Funny how that happens.

Now I sit here, all checked in for tomorrow’s early morning flight.  I have to admit, I am looking forward to seeing my friend even just for a couple of days.

I process things in a cyclical fashion, maybe we all do. It is like a spiral, where I go round and round with an issue, thinking I have got it solved, until it rears its head again. Only when I look at it closely, it isn’t quite the same, it is better than it was, just not finished yet. And it keeps spiraling around and around getting tighter and tighter, kind of like being caught in a whirlpool or a black hole, until all of a sudden, it is actually gone and isn’t an issue anymore.  In this case, my struggle has been with the same old thing that I have been whining about for months, maybe years… my attachment to the past and the way life “should” be.

And then, a couple of days ago, this is what someone told me about my “stuckness”:

Start with what is clogging you up, figure out what isn’t relevant to your life or is harmful to your well-being.  If it is still there, there is a reason.  Find it, learn that reason and then find another way to acquire that need and then get rid of what isn’t relevant. When that thing is out of your life, look again at what is holding you back.  Layer by layer, like the layers of an onion, peel away what is in your life by habit that serves you no purpose, refine what is left so you understand what’s their use. In the end it should get very slim.

Remember you are not letting go of the love or the lessons, only the attachment. Some people need to stay in your life, not because of your need but theirs.  Some people need to go, not because you don’t love them but because they aren’t good for you or you for them. Be gentle but strong, lovingly push them away, send them with good wishes and a prayer but walk away. By giving people their freedom and letting go of things you find your own freedom, even though it is the last thing you planned.

Yeah… that did it.  I felt like I had been shot from a proverbial cannon.  What hit me was that is what I have been doing ever since I started this journey when I started giving up all my stuff.  I have been methodically peeling away all the layers.  With each challenge I have faced, I am more and more exposed to the core of what I am.  There is nothing left to hide behind.  I have finally reached the really, really hard internal attachments that I still cling to.  And basically, I am stuck because I don’t really want to face them. I have been blaming the lack of home and physical possessions, but it isn’t the “stuff”… things like money and furniture… where I am stuck is my story and who I believe I am and the disconnect between that and who I want to be.

I knew this would be the hardest part.  And it is. It makes giving up my physical stuff from my apartment look like it was a walk in the park.  Yikes.  I will say it again, because I personally need the reminder, life is exactly as it should be.

Eat, Pray, Love

Posted on by

I have never read the book Eat, Pray, Love.  I understand basically how it goes: girl gets divorced and travels around for a year (paid for by her publisher) and “finds herself” by going to Italy and nurturing her physical self, then to India to discover her spiritual self, and then to Indonesia where she meets the man of her dreams. It was immortalized in a film by Julia Roberts. I have never seen the film either. I just want to go on the record to say that I am not trying to recreate a novel that I haven’t read or a movie that I haven’t seen.  But I have changed my plans and am going to Nepal.

In what has been a series of events from when I first started planning my sabbatical to now, life has just unfolded and happened the way it has happened. I have no regrets in anything I have done. Life is an adventure and best savored fresh and hot in the moment. Whether I enjoyed the taste of it or not, it all was meant to be experienced and learning happened.  And with that said, it is time to stop traveling and take a break for a little while.

So I am going to meet my friend Matt in Kathmandu on Sunday morning and head to Pokhara.  I am not sure what he has planned for me and I am sure that whatever it is, it will make a good story and probably end up with me jumping off something while screaming my fool head off or ending up in a Nepalese jail somewhere. Whatever the challenge is, when Matt asks me if I want to do it, my answer is going to be yes, with no fanfare, I am just going to jump.  What I hope to gain from this change of plans is a chance to see what my friend loves about Nepal and its people.  I hope to blog about it and take wonderful pictures to capture a world that, for one of the people I respect most in life, gives him tremendous personal joy and meaning.

Another hidden agenda item for me that has made me give up my original goal of heading to Andalucía is that I want to go to a yoga/meditation workshop in Nepal. Not because of any Eat, Pray, Love ideas. I am searching for inner peace and the ability to let go of resentments. I have had some success at that in the past, mediation and yoga have kept me centered throughout my divorce and the subsequent abuse and manipulation by my therapist.  But for some reason, since this spring when I gave up my apartment, I have struggled to maintain any kind of consistent practice.  Maybe because of the inconsistency in living arrangements or the moving around from place to place.  But that, along with all the other life upheavals in the past few months, has been effecting my physical and emotional well-being. It has been too much all at once.  I am ready to change that.  I am hoping to increase my knowledge of meditation and yoga practice so that I can manage more effectively on my own regardless of where I am or what life brings me.

So, this is my last full day in my beautiful sunny apartment in central Madrid.  What a beautiful, fascinating and lovely place. I highly recommend it as a place to spend a lovely, relaxing vacation.  I debated what to do today and finally I decided… nothing.  I am going to get the big camera out walk around and take photographs.  This afternoon, I am going to find some lovely tapas bar and have my last gorge on amazing ham, seafood, and Spanish wine. Then tomorrow I am going to move to a hotel near the airport for my early morning flight on Friday to Nepal.

When I get back from Nepal, I will spend 4 lovely days in Barcelona before flying back to North Carolina to spend Thanksgiving with my son and daughter-in-law and the two most amazingly intelligent and beautiful granddaughters ever. Then a trip to Maine to visit with some friends from high school who I haven’t seen in 30 years (yikes!) and a visit with my wonderful Maine family before flying back to Seattle for a travel time-out.  I need to spend some time skiing with my friends, enjoying happy hours with Tony and Marisa, supervising Keri’s dissertation, laughing with Maurea, and just refilling my soul with some continuity and familiarity.

The traveling has given me clarity on where my greatest needs are.  I need to be exercising daily, meditating, doing yoga, spending time on my bike and skis which bring me joy, spending time with my friends who make me feel loved and supported, writing and reading for my research, and going back to therapy.  Yes, I said it.  I, the person who distrusts the mental health care profession more than anyone on the planet, am going back to therapy.  I realize there are some things in my life that I am ready to make peace with and that can’t happen without some help. Finding a therapist will be an interesting challenge.

Then, maybe this spring, I will be ready to travel some more.  But right now, I need a break.