Passion and Pixie Dust…

Posted on November 1, 2015 by rangotti

The other day, I clicked on my memories in Facebook and when I did, this old blog came up. When I read what I wrote two years ago about the person I wanted to be, I had to be reminded that I am that person. I have the characteristics I admired in my friends, I have grown and allowed myself to become what I wanted to be. However, just like with many lessons in life, sometimes things need to be revisited.

View from the porch with the fog rolling down the valley

A year ago, I came off sabbatical, got a fabulous house, moved into a fantastic new job that challenged me and had the thought of “I have arrived”. Hmmm, it is almost like I regressed and forgot all of those lessons I learned. I have been in this “stuck” headspace, feeling something deeply lacking in my life and divorced from any sense of community. I have been on autopilot. So I realized it was time to renew the blog, and write another manifesto for where I wanted to go now.
Recently, someone pointed out to me that it is my spirit and passion that draws people to me, not my intelligence or sense of adventure. It reminded me that my friend Matt once said, “Robin, you have this beautiful carefree spirit that you put walls around by intellectualizing. Let that spirit out. It won’t appeal to everyone, just the people who want to be in your life.” I think I need a little more practice on that area.

So I started writing the manifesto and asking myself some questions like, now what? Where do I go from here? Where am I going in this life next?

The first words I wrote on the page were that I want to live my life with integrity and transparency, honoring the strengths that I have found in myself and not making excuses for the weaknesses. I want my words to match my actions in everything I do in life. Two years ago, I set out on a journey that made me focus inward and that journey was successful in helping me to be the person I am today. Now, having met all those goals, in order to move on, I have to focus outward. How am I giving back to the world that has given me so much? What am I doing to make my community better; personally, professionally, locally and globally? And how do I allow that spirit and passion to be infused in everything I do? Because to live with integrity, I have to let that spirited, passionate woman come out in all the areas of my life.

Software designed to help people learn math.

Professionally, I have a pretty well articulated vision of what I want to do and who I want to be. With the help of a great group of colleagues from around the country, the vision remains crystal clear and I have no problem striving toward it because it flows from my passion. I want to be an integral member of a department that is willing to take pedagogical risks to research and find the best practices in mathematics education for all students for the 21st century. I don’t want mathematics to be a gatekeeper, weeding people out of STEM disciplines. I want it to be a gateway for any student who chooses to walk through the gate on their way to whatever career they desire. I don’t believe we will solve the problems of the world by doing the same thing over and over again. We need new ideas from places we haven’t thought of for humanity to move forward. That means more scientists, engineers, computer programmers, mathematicians that are from underrepresented groups in those fields. I want my voice to add to the conversation of how to make that happen.

Nana and Brody dancing in the kitchen

Baking Easter Cake with Brooklyn and Charlotte

Personally, I haven’t had as clear a vision. I just know that I have been feeling a soul-sucking lack of community lately. The only time I feel that I am fully connected and being myself is when I am around my grandchildren. With them, I am this carefree spirit, willing to take personal risks of looking stupid or failing, in order to achieve real connection with them. A whole continent separates us, so I don’t want to spend our precious time together having to peel through layers of social constraints. I am present with them, in the moment, and in the moment we don’t care what our hair looks like, how fit we are, or what our bank balance is. We are just there.

Joy

I listen to what their dreams are, take into account what they want and need, and then allow myself to be outrageously myself while I try to meet those needs in ways that encourage their growth. And through their failures and successes, I listen to their laughter which, in turn, floods my soul with happiness. We dance around the kitchen, bake cookies, go to the library, play in the park, look at nature, pretend we are horses and gallop around, we make mistakes and celebrate tremendous successes. The word that defines how I am with them is carefree. I am a Nana who is doused with pixie dust that I want to spread al over them.

Climbing Seminary Hill during the 7 Hills of Kirkland Ride

I want to find a community in which I can be that way, where I can let that spirit and passion be present and be accepted. Matt is right, to find that, I have to be that because people who will accept me will gravitate toward it. So my personal manifesto is to embrace my crazy. I want to be that person that lets her spirit and passion be first and foremost in her life. In looking outward, it is that carefree, passionate part of me that will impact my local and global community the most. There are lots of people in the world who are more intellectual than I am, who have way more financial resources than I do, who are more beautiful, more fit, more creative. But there is no one that has my unique spirit.

Rachel riding a coffee ride with me. I know I have made as much of a difference in Rachel’s life as she has in mine.

So who do I want to be? I want to be a Pixie Dust spreader. I want to be this carefree person who uses her passion (for adventure, art, cooking, travel, cycling, mathematics, learning, people, and whatever else happens to interest me) to engage with other people, especially those who have not had the same opportunities as I have, not for my own self-gratification but to give back to a world that has given me so much. I want to be a person who asks about other’s dreams and goals, who listens to what they need, and then who helps in whatever way I can as they make their dreams come to fruition. I want to be supportive when they struggle and I want to celebrate with joy the accomplishments of their hard work and watch as they thrive. I want to be a person who commits my time, resources and passions to people that are willing to try, to risk, to live. I want to give back to the world to honor all the people who did that for me.

“Community cannot for long feed on itself; it can only flourish with the coming of others from beyond, their unknown and undiscovered brothers.” ~Howard Thurman

Lesson Five: Be who you want to be

Posted on August 30, 2014 by rangotti

One of the best things about writing this blog has been all the responses I have received from people around the world. Some said “thank you for sharing so openly, it has helped me realize I am not alone”. Some have told me their stories. Others have asked for advice, questions such as “I am over my head in debt, how do I pay it off” to “I am not happy in my life but I don’t know how to change it, can you help”. I am not qualified to give anyone advice. I can only tell you how I dealt with similar problems.

One of my greatest take-aways from sabbatical is that I don’t just have to be who I think I am. I can be who I want to be. All my life, I have wanted to be this adventure girl. I wanted to be joyfully spontaneous and just willing to try things on a whim. I wanted to be athletic and participate in adventure sports such as mountain biking, kayaking, skiing off-piste, paragliding, climbing… you get the idea. I also wanted to be the sophisticated urban dweller and world traveler. I put those dreams aside when I had children and raised my family. I was responsible, a great high school teacher, a good university professor, a decent mother and wife. I took care of everyone. When I got divorced an moved to Seattle, I was a frumpy, middle class, 44 year old housewife from a small town in North Carolina, and I thought those kind of adventures were behind me. If you have read this blog, you realize that moving to Seattle was when I met Matt Tony, Ken, Rachel, Shaun, Deloa, Melinda, Rachelle, Keri and so many more great friends.. the list goes on and on here as well as all my friends from the Lounge and my own children, Patrick and Jessica who have cheered me and encouraged me every step of the way.

My friends opened my world and my mind to all the things that were possible, regardless of my age, weight, marital status, debt, … none of that matters. Those were all excuses to keep me paralyzed to whatever dysfunctional fear I happened to be harboring at the time. The one single thing I needed to learn was that all I had to do was try. I didn’t have to be perfect or even successful the first time, or the 27th time, I just had to keep trying. It didn’t matter if I was laughed at, judged, or taunted. I have learned that those kinds of limiting comments from other people aren’t about me, they are about the shallowness and fears of the person who is uttering them. I don’t take those kind of comments personally anymore. I am a different person. I am the person I have always wanted to be.

I set out on a journey to carve out a new identity. I thought that meant discovering who I am. It didn’t. I realized that it meant creating who I am. It is funny, as I have been reflecting on sabbatical and all the years since I moved to Seattle, my train of thought started with “I didn’t”, and “I am not” until about a month ago when trying to write this blog post and I asked myself, “so what HAVE you done?”. It was a perspective altering question.

I have rolled a kayak, climbed mountains, and jumped off those mountains in both a harness and with a wing on my back. I have skied through powder, down fall lines, under chairlifts and on glaciers. I have ridden bikes on several continents, in varied conditions with incredible people. I have ordered great wine and decadent food in restaurants all over the world. I have met new people everywhere I have gone and listened to their stories, learned about their lives, and shared the fires of the passions that light up their souls. I gave away all the trappings of my former life, my furniture, clothing, and emotional baggage. I have lived without a home or safety net to return to. I have fed endangered vultures from my hand both on the ground and while gliding in the air looking out over the Himalayas. I have traveled alone, with no plan and no itinerary, going where I wanted, seeing what interested me, meeting new people. I have faced loneliness, fear, isolation, sickness, different cultures, ostracization, and just about every human condition you can imagine.

When I read that list, what is clear to me is that I am not the person that I was anymore. I am strong, courageous, adventurous, athletic, urban, classy, loving, compassionate, giving, open… in other words, I am the person I have always wanted to be. How did I, a non-athletic, frumpy, boring, small-town, middle-class housewife do it? How did I learn to roll a boat, ski off-piste, order great wine, solo travel, talk to strangers, and give up all my possessions? The answer is simple, I tried. I set out on a course that was hard and just kept going. Overcoming obstacles, wanting to quit (many, many times), I learned and grew. I refused to stay in the dysfunction I was in and did the work necessary to have the life I wanted. Even though that sounds simple, it was the hardest, yet most rewarding thing I have ever done. I have no regrets.

Before I left on sabbatical, I had a chance to change course and stay in Seattle to be able to get the perfect house. I wanted that house so badly, I almost didn’t go on my journey because of it. The house was just an excuse to hide my fear however. Instead, I listened to my advisors and went on sabbatical anyway knowing that there would be another perfect house when I returned. I have thought of that house many times while I lived my homeless, nomadic life. In the last couple of weeks I started house hunting again. Guess what? THE house, the same one, was available and now it is mine. So for all my worry, I took the chance anyway and walked away from the safe choice. Now I have a house again or at least I will on Sept 15 and not just any house but the house I dreamed of. Until September 15, I am hanging out with my beautiful granddaughters waiting for their brother to come into the world any day now. So at the end of this incredible year, not only am I a new person but I will have a new home, a new job, and a new grandson.

It makes me happy to know that I am setting a great example for my grandchildren that life isn’t about limits, it is about challenging what limits us. Our biggest limitation is believing that we can’t change who we think we are.

Lesson Three: Take Bigger Steps

Posted on July 12, 2014 by rangotti

In Madrid, struggling to figure out who I was and what to hell I was doing in Madrid, I texted Matt and said I was taking two steps forward and three backwards. Matt’s answer, “take bigger steps”. At the time it made me laugh and I thought he was just being funny. I had no idea how profound those words really were until much later.

My plan after leaving Madrid was to travel around Spain and I was just stuck as to where to go and what to see. I hadn’t left the US as a tourist but as a traveler and there is a huge difference. People kept giving me advice as tourists. (go here, see that, do this) but traveling with no definitive itinerary and no plan isn’t the same thing as being a tourist. So I was floundering. Matt’s next words to me were “come to Nepal” which is where he and his lovely girlfriend Amanda happened to be at the time. Lonely and ready to see someone familiar, I threw my stuff together, left Madrid and flew to Katmandu. What I didn’t realize at the time was, I just took a much bigger step. It was a step which, eventually, would propel me forward out of floundering in a major way. My time in Nepal was magic. It was a catalyst for healing my soul, developing my identity, fueling my passion for life, and getting in touch with my spirituality in a profound way.

I didn’t realize how much Nepal had changed me until I got back to Seattle months later. Coming down from the mountaintop experience where I had clarity about my life and all I was seeking, I had to then return to my actual life with its challenges and opportunities. Trying to integrate the new growth with the old life was probably the most difficult period of all of my sabbatical. From January to April, I struggled more than I can ever remember. I would use the word depression but I wasn’t sad, just stymied. I couldn’t figure out where the girl I had left on top of Sarangkot, the girl who did yoga and mediated every day and then climbed mountains for fun, I couldn’t seem to find that girl again. And that is the girl I wanted to be. Instead, with no structure to my days, I was on the couch in my pajamas at 7:30 pm after never even getting dressed all day. I was again moving two steps forward and three back.

It was mid April and I realized I had to take bigger steps. Movement is life and I had to start moving, physically, mentally and emotionally. The next day, I was up at 4 am for meditation, to greet the day, and was at the gym at 5 am. I have started my day the same way on the majority of mornings since. And guess what? That girl that I left on top of Sarangkot? She’s back.

When you are stuck and you feel like you are doing the right things to be on the path you want to walk but you don’t seem to be moving anywhere, take bigger steps. It is funny how that is actually true in so many things. Physically, I had plateaued in my fitness. I added Tabata training to my regular working and that propelled my fitness level upward. Intellectually, I needed a challenge so I changed jobs and jumped into a visualization project that is totally stumping me and, even though it is frustrating, I can’t put it down. It is a huge intellectual challenge for me and I am loving it. Emotionally, pushing myself to go back to therapy after I swore I would never trust another mental health care professional again, was a giant step forward. All these things have helped me get to a place where I am stronger in all those areas than I have ever been in my whole life. It is a great place to be. I feel integrated and whole, that my internal view of who I am meets the external life that I display. It is a pretty awesome place to be.

You don’t have to jump off mountains or get up at 5 am. But you do have to keep moving, physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. Whatever your challenge is in your life, wherever you feel stuck and can’t figure out what to do, take bigger steps. Do something that will defibrillate that area. Challenge yourself physically, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. Movement is life. Live it.

Lesson two: Sometimes a woman has to let her garden get out of control to see what sticks

Posted on July 3, 2014 by rangotti

Once, when I working on my yard and garden, I apologized for it being a little out of control with new plants springing up everywhere. I am used to gardens being orderly rows, not a chaos of wildflowers growing up everywhere. My friend Deb said “sometimes a woman has to let her garden get out of control to see what likes growing there, to see what sticks.”. And that is sabbatical lesson number two.

My friend Matt has never given me a tangible gift in the 7 years that we have been friends. He has paid for dinner a few times, he tried to pay for a paragliding lesson once but I paid him back, but he has never given me something that I can touch for a present. Simultaneously, he has given me the best gift I have ever received in my life.

For most of my life, I strove for perfection. I had goals and expectations for my behavior that were ridiculously high and I met them. There was no space for spontaneity, no time for emotion, no allowance being out of control. People would have described me as dependable, stalwart, and driven. Then my life got divided by zero and life as I knew it fell apart. Throughout the next year as I tried to Band-aid it back together with marriage therapy, I grew more spontaneous, but slowly, in a planned controlled way. I didn’t really understand truly letting go, to not be constrained by standards of polite society. And then, I met Matt.

One of the first times I ever allowed myself to loosen the grip on perfection around Matt was after a Sunday morning kayaking pool session. Matt wanted to go to brunch but I didn’t have any hair ties to contain my wild “Albert Einstein mad-scientist” hair. He said don’t worry about it, just come to brunch. Since it was a new friendship, I was torn between wanting to spend time with my friend but worried about him rejecting me or making fun of me. I decided to trust him and see where it all fell out. So we are sitting at a nice restaurant, outside in the sun, with all the other well-dressed Sunday brunch goers. I am dressed in a t-shirt and shorts and have wet hair. As my hair dried, it got crazier and crazier and I got more and more self-conscious until one moment Matt looks over and says, “you’re hair is so wild, it is awesome”. Gotta love that kid. Hundreds of times in our friendship, that same type of scenario played out. He watched and encouraged me to engage in some of the most outrageous behaviors. And I was always rewarded with his unconditional acceptance.

One way I am outrageous is with all my “woo-woo” theories that I am always coming up with. My friends just roll their eyes when I get started on a new one. For example: I believe in using all of my senses as I walk through life, one of which (often overlooked) is the sense of smell. My theory is that perfume and cologne can kill a relationship. When we get to know someone, one of the things we filter them is through their scent, for example I loved the way my ex smelled. I believe that the problem with perfume and cologne is that they mask our natural scent. But when you get to know someone and like how they smell with fragrance on, what happens when they aren’t wearing any? Will that change the way you feel in a subtle way?

The cologne is an example of something we use to mask who we really are. Whether with cologne or outrageous behavior, this is the lesson. I only want people in my life who want to be with the authentic me. I don’t want to have to keep putting on airs or living a farce to be included as someone’s friend. What I have learned is to be myself, to be wild, crazy, and unrestrained. Those who want to be in my life will gravitate toward me, whether I am “perfect” or perfectly crazy. They have to want the whole package. If they don’t, then I move them to the outer periphery. There are only be a few people in my life who can handle my “crazy” and my crazy gives them the freedom to let their vulnerability show in return. Those are the few people I want to find and keep. The rest need to be let go.

Your “crazy” is a filter, it filters out those who want to truly be part of your life from those who only superficially want to be there. We need both kinds of people, but we give our hearts to the people who accept us as we are, authentically in all our crazy glory. I believe there are many people who never allow anyone to be that close to them in their whole lives. They never can give up the control and worry over what society will think of them if they allow their true selves to show. They are too hung up on being criticized and rejected.

One of the great aspects of this lesson is that I have learned not to take rejection personally anymore. When a relationship ends, I can hear Matt’s voice say, “it just wasn’t the right fit, try again”. I realize that not everyone is going to gravitate toward me and that is okay. Let them go be free to find the people they can be authentic with. My self-esteem will still be intact.

The gift Matt gave me is in allowing me to see what life looks like when we do let someone in that close. Life changes when we live with that kind of authenticity and whole-heartedness. It is richer, fuller, just more vibrant in every way. I now have a small core group of friends who truly know me and who I can be absolutely outrageous around. I wouldn’t trade them for 1000 superficial friends. I trust my friends love me and care about me always.

So let your garden get out of control and see what sticks. The joy and beauty of your life will open up in ways you never imagined.

Forgiveness

Posted on May 24, 2014 by rangotti

I have come to realize, in order to be free of the sorrow of the past, I have to truly forgive with all my heart. So I enrolled in a 30 day course with Desmond Tutu, a forgiveness challenge of which I am almost at the end. In the course of doing the daily activities, I have realized how far I have already come down the road of forgiveness both for my ex-husband and the former therapist, the protagonists of two devastating events that have defined 7 of the last 8 years of my life. Most of the activities in the challenge I completed easily which showed me how far I have already come. But there came a point where I hit a wall, one made of crumbling emotional bricks. I realized the best part of this challenge was illuminating for me where I was stuck.

One day, a week or so ago, the activity was a meditation where I was to envision myself in one of my favorite places, a place where I feel safe and which calls to my spirit. I was also tasked with envisioning myself with someone I trusted without reservation. So I envisioned myself sitting at the top of one of the mountains in the Northern Cascades with my friend Matt. The goal of the activity was to tell him my sorrow, to speak the words and tell him the hurt that I had endured and to let it all out. Since I have no secrets from Matt, he has heard the words from me many times, more than he has cared to hear them. He knows all my sorrow, even my darkest secrets that I share with no one else. So the telling of my story during my meditation and envisioning Matt listening was not difficult at all. But what came next was very difficult.

The second part of the meditation was to envision a box. Since I love boxes this was easy for me. If I was ever going to collect anything it would be boxes. I envisioned one of the shaker boxes that my dad made me before he died. Then the meditation called for me to take that story and to put it in this box and to name it The Box of Sorrows. After closing it up, the story sealed, I had to envision handing it to my trusted friend. That was the part where I was just paralyzed for a few moments. I was paralyzed to hand over what I have held onto for so long. But in order to move on, I have to forgive and in order to forgive, I have to first let go.

Matt getting ready to fly

So in my mind, I looked into the eyes that I have looked at so many times in the past, eyes of a man I trust with my life, and I handed him the box in my mind. I did what he has always taught me to do when I am scared, I look into his eyes, trust, tell myself I can totally do this, and take the risk. So I held out the box and I just let go. He took the box from me, nodded, got his wing and harness set up and then he jumped and went paragliding down the mountain with my Box of Sorrows… my history and my fears, in his possession. Amazingly, as a mediation, it was like I was actually there. I felt it, deep in my soul, the moment of letting go.

So how did it feel? It was like the ultimate freedom. It was like everything else I have done the past year, letting go of the possessions, the apartment, traveling, changing jobs, all of it was preparing me for that moment. As tightly as I was hanging on, letting go lifted this huge burden I was carrying.

Part of me felt so strongly about it that I had a pang of fear that I had burdened my friend with my box of sorrows. But what I realized is that I already had been burdening him every time I talked about it without being able to let go and move on. Essentially, he had to help me drag that burden around in our friendship all of these years. So even though he had to carry that box down the mountain, he did it without struggle because he finally gets to be free of it also. And besides, he is also the strongest person I know. If anyone can carry that burden for me down the mountain, it is Matt. Then I got to follow, light of heart, centered in my mind and my spirit. It was very powerful.

And yes, I know I will get criticism for how “woo woo” this is. I don’t care. Every culture and religion in the world knows the value of symbolism and visualization so I won’t make any apologies for anything that makes me feel and great as I feel right now.

TextMatt.com

Posted on February 19, 2014 by rangotti

I had a lovely meeting with my friend Sally yesterday. She wanted to hear about my sabbatical adventures. I told her about being in Spain and feeling like I was emotionally and mentally going backward and texting my friend Matt and saying “I am taking one step forward and three steps back” to which he replied “take bigger steps forward”. He always knew just what to say to make me laugh and put my issues into perspective. Sally was laughing at the story and said the same thing many of my friends have said. She said “I need a Matt to text when I am struggling”. To which I thought…don’t we all?

So we thought, why not a website? TextMatt.com. Why not indeed? In the absence of such a great website, today, I am trying to channel my inner Matt. There are a few women I can think of that need some Matt wisdom.

To Sally, Jessica, Heather, Rachel, Keri, Amanda, Tracy and all the other young women I know, some that I have spoken with recently. You are young women who are struggling to figure out how to do it all, to love deeply the men and women you care about, risk having and raising children, push forward in careers, struggle with worries about money and how you are going to accomplish everything. You think about the impact you are having on the world around you as you are managing the mundane of everyday life… Here is what Matt would say to you:

Embrace it all. All of those moments, put together like pieces of fabric in a quilt, is what will ultimately make up your life. Love, loss, careers, staying home with babies, cooking, cleaning, saving lives, teaching, jumping out of planes, skiing, getting a dog, playing softball, getting a PhD, going to China… each moment, together with the moments before it and the moment after it, become your life. None of it is wrong and every moment is as important as the last, whether you are cooking dinner, carting kids around, programming software, or marrying the person you love. All of it has value. Stop spending all the time worrying about doing it wrong and just do it. Because whether it is right or wrong, at least you didn’t let the moment pass by, unlived.

Many people live their whole lives refusing to take risks, sitting safely on the sidelines watching their lives go by, fearing the unknown of change, wrapped up in bubble wrap in a state of perfection which, underneath that façade is anything but perfection. They live in an endless struggle of wanting others to believe that their lives are perfect, afraid to show vulnerability, afraid to be real.

Matt would tell you to live a life that is sloppy, messy, and imperfect. Just let it hit you with all the struggles, joys, challenges and opportunities and embrace them all. Find sloppy, messy, and imperfect people to surround yourself with. People who accept you in all your crazy glory. You are strong and will get stronger as you get older. Don’t let anyone make you believe otherwise. Be true to yourself and keep dancing around the kitchen, unrestrained. Be vulnerable, authentic, whole, and wide open… people will think you are batshit crazy because of it, but Matt would say to you… batshit crazy is the best way to live your life.

Love the men and women you love, live the life that makes you happy, and never ever let anyone tell you that you are doing it wrong. Soon, the day will come and you will be looking back across the years at all you have accomplished. You will be watching those children become adults, with struggles of their own. You will be laughing about the adventures you had, remembering the people who have come and gone from your life, and being thankful that you were given this ride on the planet. You will look across your career at the lives you touched and impacted, whether directly through occupations like teaching and nursing, or indirectly through creating clean water or a better living environment of a newly designed house. And you will know that your lives were well-lived. There is no greater joy than that of a well-lived life. That is what Matt would say.

From me: I am so proud of all of you. I am grateful that you all came into my life. You have enriched my life and changed me as a person. I am a better person from knowing all of you. I know that when my time is up on this planet that there will be a generation of strong confident women who are impacting the world around them, making it better for the women and men of the next generation.

Oh, and Matt also says: Just say no to crack.

Letter to my older self…

Posted on February 5, 2014 by rangotti

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.

The 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 January 26, 2014 by rangotti

I 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.

At 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.

That 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

An elimination diet for your soul…

Posted on January 22, 2014 by rangotti

Have you ever done an elimination diet? It is an extreme diet that people do when they are having digestion problems or allergies and want to isolate what particular foods are causing their distress. The dieter takes their nutrition down to the basics for a few weeks and then add in foods one at a time to see what particular foods are contributing to their physical difficulties. It is really hard, but it make so much sense. How else will they figure out what makes them feel good or bad so they can make adjustments? It is virtually impossible when you are eating all your regular foods to isolate the combinations that are problematic. Before people go to that extreme, they start with a food journal, writing down what they ate and how they feel, but when that doesn’t work, it is time for an elimination diet.

Right now with everything I have done in the past year, I feel like I have been on an elimination diet for my soul and I am finally at the place where I get to add stuff back in, slowly and deliberately with one thing being added in at a time. That way, I get to try it, see how it feels, and decide if it makes me feel good enough to keep in my life. When I got back, I started off too fast, trying to go right back to the life I had. But as Matt reminded me recently, I am not that person anymore. So after Jan 1, I have been being a lot more deliberate in my actions and in the relationships I am cultivating.

So what have I added back?

Skiing: I have been doing a lot of skiing by myself and with just a few very close friends. It has renewed my love for the sound of the snow under my skis, the smell of the mountain air, the breathtaking views, the solitude when I am alone, and just the whole body sensation of flying down a mountain. I love to ski. The last couple of years I allowed myself to get too wrapped up in the social aspect of skiing and needed to step away. It is really a joy to reconnect with the sport I love on its elemental level.

Yesterday, I got my bike ready to ride and I am going to ride either tomorrow or Saturday. The only thing I love as much as skiing is riding my bike. I don’t need to go fast, climb better than anyone else, dress in appropriate attire or any of that stuff that cyclists worry about. Getting caught up in all that made me hate riding my bike. I just love the feeling of being outdoors, braving the weather, feeling like I am one with the machine that is making me fly along, just pure joy coursing through my body as my heart, lungs and legs make me remember that I am alive. It makes me feel like I am a 10 year old. This time, I am going to take the advice of my friend, Cindy and make time for pie at the end of a ride.

Kerry Park view

I have been enjoying going to some of the great places that I love in Seattle, happy hours up on the Hill with Tony, going up to Kerry Park for meditation and reflection, riding the ferries, the beauty of rural Snohomish County, the jaw-dropping views of the Cascades and Olympics, cooking in a real kitchen again, sharing laughter and a meal with my roommate and her daughter, building a fire, chopping and stacking wood, and learning how to knit. These are all things I am keeping.

But it hasn’t been easy. I have struggled and even messed up a few times. The other day, I bought sheets and a blanket. Now I own household stuff again. I have to admit, it was a little traumatizing. It made me feel tied down. I made it worse when I then watched “Into the Wild” for the first time and it made me feel REALLY tied down. I have struggled with trying to work on a grant and a few publications. But mostly, I have struggled when the people who know me from my former life put pressure on me to be the way I was. I don’t want to be that person anymore. I don’t want to say yes to everyone and allow people to treat me badly just so that I won’t offend anyone or let anyone down. Because ultimately, when I act that way, all I am doing is letting myself down. That has meant culling some relationships that aren’t healthy for me which has hurt people because they don’t understand why I am not just like I used to be. It is hard not having any answers for them of when I will want to do things again, because the honest answer is that I may never want to do some things again.

Olympics and a Washington State ferry in the Puget Sound

Right now, all I know right now is this, I feel better than I ever remember feeling. I am making decisions based on strength and on what I really want to do. My past doesn’t control me, fear doesn’t control me, and my choices are my own. So I guess, the elimination diet for the soul is working so far.

Take bigger steps…

Posted on November 10, 2013 by rangotti

I had that excellent falconry lesson and paragliding experience the other day. Then I wrote a blog post about how great I was doing and the lessons I was learning. Well just like with most lessons learned, it isn’t a linear process.

When I was in Spain, totally at rock bottom emotionally, Matt asked how I was doing and, in the absolute honesty he and I share between us, I said “It is one step forward, three steps back”. His response was “take bigger steps forward”. He always knows how the right thing to say to make me feel better and to make me laugh. Then he said “come to Nepal”. And as with most of his suggestions, he was right. Nepal has been good for my soul. I not only feel better physically, I feel stronger emotionally. But it hasn’t been without challenges. Here it is has been two steps forward one step back, so at least I am going forward.

Have you ever noticed how powerful words are? I think it was in my last blog post that I talked about the tape that plays in my head (and every other human beings also). That tape is made up of things that have been said to me over the course of my life. From the initial words our parents used to show disapproval of something we said or did, from social groups of teenagers when identity is forming, to cruel words by a random stranger on the street. All of those words become the social norms that tell us we aren’t good enough, skinny enough, athletic enough, pretty enough, etc. And even more damaging is when we get to the place where we say those words to ourselves.

Words are the most powerful force that human beings possess. Because of that power, we should be careful what we do with them, both with other people and ourselves. Ever since I left Ethiopia, I have had the “failure” tape cued up in my head. One of the personal “laws” I have always lived by, that was instilled in me as a child, is never quitting. When I give someone my loyalty, I will stay with it until the bitter end, even at the expense of myself. Enforcing boundaries is a constant struggle for me. So Ethiopia felt like a failure. It threw me into depression. To snap out of it, I rushed off to Spain where I had one failure after another, from cycling to ordering tapas. I kept trying to get out of my head but was pretty much in a death spiral.

So I came to Nepal at Matt’s suggestion. I made it here, negotiated travel between two foreign countries on my own, had a successful falconry lesson and paragliding session, and was feeling pretty confident and better than I had in weeks. Things were looking up. Then, two things happened. One was a comment someone made and the other was that I went to yoga. The comment came from someone behind me while hiking in a group down an embankment into a riverbed. The path was very slippery. The person in the back, speaking to the person in front of her about the slippery path said “I would hate to have to try to get a tourist out of here if they got hurt. Can you imagine something happening to someone like Robin?” Ouch. That started the not athletic, uncoordinated, old lady tape playing in my head. And of course, about 2 minutes later I slipped and fell on my ass, unhurt.

Then, I went to yoga. I used to be pretty good at yoga but it is amazing how much a year off of regular practice will do to you. And the yoga here is very different. The teacher was great and I left the class happy, centered and ready to face the day. But before the day was out my own judgment of my performance was in full swing. Matt was leaving the next day for Shirkot so messaged me to ask me what time I wanted to eat dinner. By then, I was all in my own head and couldn’t even imagine he would want to hang out with an athletically challenged, ugly, fat old lady. *CUE DRAMATIC MUSIC*. Dear heavens, sometimes I have to wonder about myself.

So I meet my friend for dinner. If you haven’t realized it yet, Matt is good at everything he does. His lovely girlfriend Amanda and I were trying to think of something he isn’t good at and we couldn’t. He is amazingly athletic, ridiculously smart, not ugly, funny, compassionate, and has to be the most non-judgmental person I have ever known in my whole life. During dinner, he said I seemed sad. Since I refuse to be anything but honest with him, by the time we ate dinner, I was crying and had told him how pathetic I was. I had even regressed all the way to hating traveling and wanting to go home and wanting my life back. I mean, all the way back to before I moved to Washington. Matt didn’t judge, didn’t roll his eyes, didn’t even crack a smile at how dramatic I was being. He just let me get all the poison out. Then he made me laugh and reminded me about the last existential crisis I had when we went skiing one day last year.

Later that evening, nice and emotionally cleansed, I started thinking about all the adventures we have had together. From kayaking, skiing, paragliding, rock climbing, hiking, camping, riding on a motorcycle in Nepal (YIKES), wine tasting, and a hundred other things. We have had epic discussions on life, love, family, education, and just about everything you can think of. And then it hit me. In all that time, he has never judged me on how much I weigh, how slow I am at learning something like rolling a boat or tying a knot, or criticized any of my opinions of things even when they didn’t agree with his. He has never been frustrated at how slowly I hike or when I need to take a break. He has never been embarrassed by my physical appearance. There was the time Matt wanted to go out for brunch after kayaking but I didn’t have a ponytail holder so tried to beg off and he wouldn’t hear of it. When my hair dried in the sunshine, it was crazy medusa hair. He looked up at me and said “your hair is so awesome”. I looked like Albert Einstein. He has never been anything but encouraging. Here is this person, athletic, smart, funny…and he just wants to hang out and encourages me. He only gets sad when I won’t try. So if he doesn’t have the “Robin’s not good enough” tape playing in his head, why do I?

So while he has been gone the past couple of days, I took a page from his book. I decided I would treat myself like Matt treats me. Yesterday, I hiked up to the Peace Pagoda. The path was moderate, but I was definitely sweating by the time I reached the top. I just went at my own pace, I didn’t beat myself up about how fast or slow I was going. Guidebook says it should take about an hour, I made it in 45 minutes with no pressure. Today, I got up at dawn and hiked up Sarangkot which is about twice as steep and twice as far. Again, I didn’t beat myself up, just kept hiking and enjoying the moment. Made it before the clouds set in, took some great pictures and sat up at the top meditating and then wrote in my journal. I had planned to take a cab down, but it was too beautiful a day so I hiked back down too. It made me feel so good that tomorrow, after yoga, I am going to do it again.

So for two days now, whenever the tape even starts with what I can’t do, I tell myself to try…just try. Maybe I can’t do it, but I will do a little more tomorrow until I can. It doesn’t matter how fast I do it or how well. I just have to try. I am going reprogram my brain with powerful words that don’t allow for fear-based thinking. I am trying to develop an identity that has no place for emotionally poisoning and physically limiting words.

Note: Not sure why, either wordpress or the network here, but I am not having any success at uploading photos. I will try to add some tomorrow.

Life Divided by Zero

The Journey of Becoming Undefined

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