This action cannot be undone. Are you sure you want to continue?

Posted on August 4, 2013 by rangotti

View of downtown Seattle from Kerry Park

I woke up this morning to the quintessential Seattle summer day. Temperatures in the mid 60s F, no humidity, beautiful blue sky. It is the exact same kind of day as the day I moved here 6 years ago. I spent some time this morning reflecting on that move. Reflecting on what it felt like to leave my (adult) children and family back on the east coast, a job in which I excelled, a community of friends, a beautiful home, a life that I had thought was perfect, and the ruins of my marriage. I didn’t think I would ever be happy again.

Northern Cascades

When I first got to Seattle, all I wanted to do was go back home to a place where I understood the culture, job, everything…I just wanted my old life back, but that couldn’t happen. I couldn’t go back in time, no matter how much I wished things were different. So I struggled to create a life here. I made friends, had some career success, explored new hobbies, and discovered the beauty and majesty of the PNW. I carved a life for myself here and I didn’t realize it until recently when I gave everything up and now am on the precipice of changing it all again.

Liberty Bell Peak

When I woke up this morning, all I could think of is that I don’t want to leave. I want my old apartment back, to go on daily walks with Tony, have coffee with my beautiful daughter, ride my bike, ski with my friends, write papers, go camping, and enjoy the place I live. For the last 6 years, I have only thought of this place as a temporary stopping point, and it has taken giving up everything and getting ready to leave to make me realize how much I actually love it here. I don’t think I would have come to that understanding without having gone through the exercise of leaving.

Commitments have been made however, so there is no backing out now, nor would I want to. I need to finish the “reboot” of my life which has only just begun. Right now, I have deleted the hard drive, now it is time to reinstall and update the software. That is an analogy to the changes that I need to be made so that I can come back to this place from a position of strength and continue the identity formation to become the woman I want to be. I think Africa is going to do that for me. At the very least, it is going to change me.

So leaving today is bittersweet. I will miss this place but at the same time will have a great adventure. The learning, growth, and change that has happened to me in Seattle will happen again in Africa. I have a feeling at the end of next year, when I get ready to leave Africa, I am going to feel the same as I do right now, I won’t want to leave.

Seattle, farewell for now. I leave you with a cheesy movie line… I’ll be back.

All changes are more or less tinged with melancholy, for what we are leaving behind is part of ourselves. ~Amelia Barr

Things that are important..

Posted on July 22, 2013 by rangotti

Charlotte & Brooklyn

I have two beautiful twin granddaughters, Brooklyn and Charlotte. They are the most amazing children ever (spoken like a true grandmother). They are intelligent, inquisitive and involved with the world and people around them. As I have been getting ready to go to Africa, it had been weighing very heavily on my mind that I would not see them again until the holidays. They are growing so fast and I am missing so much of their lives.

So I made a decision. Even though I wanted to hike Kilimanjaro and had paid for the excursion, I want to use the time to go for a visit to two of the most important people in my life. So I am choosing to give up my trip to visit with my family. My daughter and her new boyfriend are going to join me so my whole family will be together.

It is the right decision, I would have been hiking Kili and not been able to get to Ethiopia until the day before school starts. This way, I will get there a couple of weeks early and be able to settle in, write lesson plans and get ready for school to start. And I get to spend a few days with those beautiful girls before I leave.

I have been overwhelmed with details of getting my stuff together, deciding what to take and what to leave behind, knowing that I really have no place to leave anything since I don’t have a house anymore. I am really having to think carefully about everything that comes with me. I want to have enough room in my luggage to bring school supplies and things that I might need for my classroom.

I have to admit, I have been struggling with it both emotionally and physically. The stress is getting to me. It has made it hard to write this blog and be positive. I make it harder because I expect a lot out of myself and I expect to be handling everything perfectly. Not only have I not been doing it perfectly, I have pretty much sucked at how I have handled stuff so far. From procrastinating on details that need to be taken care of to avoidance of the emotion of leaving, I have been making a lot of mistakes.

When something is right though, the universe will make it happen despite my attempts to derail it. Everything is falling into place. Visas have been arranged, travel is straight, vaccinations are finished, even the packing will get done. Because I had already culled my possessions when I moved out of my house, there isn’t a lot to go through now, so it really won’t be as hard as I am making it out to be in my mind. And I know that soon, I will be on a plane going to the birthplace of humanity and the soul of the world. I am excited, anxious, happy, and terrified all at the same time.

Maybe those bumps aren’t in the way…maybe they are the way.

Posted on July 13, 2013 by rangotti

Ferris wheel on the Seattle waterfront

Watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you, because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in the magic will never find it! ~Ronald Dahl

I have had several “ah-ha” moments this week which all have a common theme. Sometimes I get mired in my own fears, disbelief, and insecurity and when that happens, I lose my clarity on the world around me. Instead of trusting my instincts and believing that everything will work out, all I see are the bumps in the way.

But I am also the luckiest girl in the world. I am blessed with amazing people who give me shifts in perspective, essentially helping me open my eyes to what I am not seeing. And that is where the magic of my life occurs.

This week, I spent some time with a friend while he was in Seattle getting fitted for a new bike. I have known him for awhile online and he always seemed to be a bit self-centered in his online persona. I hadn’t spent any time actually talking to him in person so I was a bit apprehensive when I offered to be his tour guide while he was in Seattle. Come to find out, I was totally wrong in my perceptions about him and if I had let my original insecurity stop me from getting to know him better, I would have missed the opportunity to learn from his unique perspective on life.

He is a photographer and I have always been captivated by his work. He has an awareness of the world around him that comes out in his pictures; an awareness of himself, the world around him, as well as the people in it. In person, I realized he is probably one of the most adept people I have ever met for staying in the moment and being totally present with you. Without even seeming to pay attention he noticed details about the scenes and people that I, even living in Seattle, had no awareness of. He is someone who utilizes all of his senses and his intuition to understand the world around him and that is what makes him a great photographer. I didn’t realize it until I met him but that is what I was drawn to in his photographs. He captures the moment in an elemental way that activates all your senses and immerses you in the scene which brings forth things that you didn’t even know were there. Magic.

In talking with him, he told me stories of traveling around the world surfing and becoming comfortable in other cultures. He told me stories of triumph, failure, joy and agony and he embraced all of those things as what life is about. He told me his philosophies of life and gave me the space to be myself and share mine in return. He is the type of person I have always wanted to be…embracing life, accepting his mistakes with grace, being truly in the moment, caring about the people in his life, and just being wonderfully alive.

Since he left, I have been having a ton of difficulty in getting things ready to leave for Africa and I started going into meltdown mode. I was freaking out over logistical details. I could only see the obstacles, the bumps in the road. I made a post about my fears in my online forum and a friend said “maybe those bumps aren’t in the way…maybe they are the way.” BAM…that is the perspective shift I needed.

It made me think about the person I had just said I wanted to be. Someone who embraces all of life, both the part with bumps as well as those that are smooth sailing. Someone who can be truly in the moment, caring about people, fully alive…and it hit me. It would all work out.

I just need to be confident and trust myself. The path I am on is the path for me, I just need to keep walking.

You have to let go of all you have … in order to gain the world

Posted on July 7, 2013 by rangotti

Real freedom is having nothing. I was freer when I didn’t have a cent. ~Mike Tyson

I have struggled to write this blog post. Sometimes, I am overwhelmed by too many choices. For most of my life I haven’t had to face a lot of choices. My life has been one of survival. The choices I faced were almost always binary, i.e. do I keep this job or be unemployed, can I afford to buy this or not. Binary choices are easy. An abundance of choices is more difficult.

I have worked very hard throughout my life and for the most part, have done a very good job at what I do. It has gained me some notoriety and opened lots of doors for a successful career. I also have been a relatively decent human being and that has gained me a fair amount of people who love me and who I love spending time with. I am extremely grateful for both of those things and for all the choices they have given me.

One of the things I have struggled with is how to make a choice between several equally great things where there is no bad choice to eliminate. I struggle with trying to figure out what I really want. Right now, I am struggling with my sabbatical. I have had so many great offers to do incredible work in exotic places. I have choices to have amazing personal experiences like riding bikes, hiking, diving, etc with fascinating people in places I have never dreamed I would get to go in my life. I have wonderful choices to visit and spend time with people I love in places that are dear to heart. And I haven’t been able to choose.

So I tried to think about how to combine them so I could do it all, and frankly, it stressed me out. I struggled to make the choice which will make everyone happy and meet everyone’s needs. But what I really needed to be asking myself is “what do I want to do?”. Such a simple, yet complex question.

In writing out this blog post, what I realized is that it is about letting go. I have already let go of my physical stuff. Now I need to let go of people’s expectations for me. I need to let go of the idea of disappointing people. I need to let go of my own ideas of failure and success. I need to let go of fear of the unknown. I need to let go of all of those things so that my hands are empty and my heart is open. Only then will I be ready to reach for whatever is to be my destiny.

I have decided this week to accept an offer to teach in Ethiopia for the next year. There will be some side trips to a few other countries for vacation, other work and to visit with my beautiful granddaughters, but the majority of my sabbatical will be spent in Ethiopia. It is a chance to do work that is some of the most innovative and has a greater potential for impact on humanity, on my career, and on me personally than anything I have done thus far.

As I was writing out that line, I realized…it is what I want to do.

Try the mustard on the chips…

Posted on June 28, 2013 by rangotti

One day when my friends and I were skiing, we stopped for lunch. One of my friends had a sandwich that came with mustard, just the plain ordinary yellow kind. He also got potato chips with it. After the sandwich was gone, the side of mustard was sitting there and he started dipping the chips in the mustard. He commented on how good it was and I said “ewwww” because I expected it to be yukky. He kept saying “try it”. I finally relented and had to admit, it was pretty good.

Expectations are where we get in trouble. We set ourselves up for suffering by having expectations for what the future holds, for what our lives will be like “when…”, for what people will do, and for what we ourselves should do. When those expectations don’t come to fruition, we suffer. And the reality is, lots of time life doesn’t work out the way we think it is going to.

Expectations color much what we do and cause us to get stuck. We don’t want to try new things because of an expectation that we won’t like them or they will be scary or that we will look silly or we can’t afford it. We get mired in keeping the status quo even if it isn’t working for us because of an unwillingness to let go of our expectations of what we think our lives “should” be. And we suffer.

When I was mired in the emotional turmoil of divorce, loneliness, debt, stress, etc., one of the key reasons for my distress was being unwilling to let go of all my expectations for my life. That was when I met these people on a bike forum. At first I was a little sketched out that I was talking and sharing so much of myself with these people I had never met in person. After reading their posts, “listening” to their ideas, realizing how intelligent and thoughtful they were, I couldn’t help but trust them. So I reached out and asked a few of them if I could meet them in person. And they were even more spectacular in person than they were online.

Each time I would meet someone, I would post what I thought and felt when meeting them. I told them all how much they exceeded my expectations of what I thought they would be like. It became the running joke that the next one I met would be the one to disappoint me. To this day I continue to keep telling them that it isn’t going to happen. What they don’t know is in reality, they already have shattered all my expectations.

Today, I am riding in a 24 hour bike ride for charity and I am riding with a large group of these remarkable people. I am nervous. What they haven’t realized is that what I am terrified of isn’t that they aren’t going to meet my expectations. What I am scared of is that I won’t live up to theirs. And I don’t want to disappoint these people who mean so much to me. I guess that is the legacy of my perfectionism. I don’t want to show them that I am not who they think I am.

What I keep telling myself and trying to remember is whether I meet their expectations or not, there is still some learning for each of us by having the opportunity to interact.

Because sometimes, you just have to try the mustard on the chips.

Walking with the Raven

Posted on June 17, 2013 by rangotti

I flunked therapy…not the class, the actual experience of psychotherapy. Yes, that is right, I am too crazy for the mental health community to “help”. Today, I am going to give you a clear glimpse into my “crazy”.

I traveled from Seattle, stopping in Oregon then Nevada and down to California to visit Yosemite. I spent a couple of days of camping and cycling. Then I drove through Utah, spending some time at Great Basin National Park, before heading to Moab and doing some desert hiking and then to Colorado. I cycled in all of those states and I am getting more comfortable riding in new places by myself.

Cycling near Moab. Colorado River

I am starting to look forward to heading to Europe and even considering taking my bike when I head off to Africa to work.

Home sweet home

I also am getting more comfortable camping by myself in unfamiliar places and, in general, with the whole experience of living a very minimalist life. I am becoming pretty good at setting up and taking down my tent, I have had my first bear experience, my first injury by myself when I cut my foot pretty badly, and have been challenged by laundry, disorganization, and lack of electricity. My grooming has suffered and I am looking like the dirty filthy hippie I think I am. I seriously could use a spa day and some waxing. But that isn’t why I am crazy. Now I just look as crazy on the outside as I am on the inside.

What makes me crazy is how I see the world around me around me. In the last two weeks as I have traveled through six states and three national parks, I have seen some of the most amazing sights my eyes could have ever looked upon. Truly, I live in a wondrous land.

Ships made of stone

I have seen ships made of stone sailing on a sea of sagebrush. I have seen stone sentinels, guardians of the ancient places where men long dead once walked. I look in awe at stone monuments which allow me to understand how fleeting my time is upon this earth. I feel the magic in these ancient places.

Sentinels

I have seen the bones of creatures long dead and pots made by women who gave birth and raised children in caves that could only be reached by rope ladders hanging hundreds of feet above the ground. Can you imagine raising a two year old in a cave 200 feet above the ground, with no baby gates, and the only way out is up a treacherous rope ladder to the top of a mesa? The only thought to why they would do that would have been protection, safety. I allow myself to imagine the fear that it must have taken to drive these people to live in such a dangerous place. These are a people who have long been gone from this earth, leaving no history except for broken clay pottery and crumbling ruins of caves. We use their artifacts to recreate what we believe their lives were like. Will someone do that with our plasticware and ruins of skyscrapers?

I am crazy because I look around the world and I see the textures of the land. I see the contrasts in colors. I see beauty everywhere. I believe you can find beautiful things even in the most “ugly” of places or people. I see a land of valleys so vast they seem to be endless…the mountains that bound them so distant as to seem a mirage. The mountains that ring those valleys are so high they are like great stone ramparts cast before the distant sky. When you climb them, the decrease in oxygen is noticeable, your head hurts and your actions, even simple steps, take more effort.

There are barren valleys filled with salt, a world so harsh and desolate that it is amazing that anything can survive.

Yet everywhere you look, there are living organisms, creatures that eek out life in the harshest of conditions. There is cactus, sagebrush, tumbleweeds, lizards, snakes, birds of all kinds. And there are ravens.

When I was a younger, I had a rough time and was pretty messed up for a while. I had several Native American friends. One of them said to me at one time that I would never find my true spirit until I walked with the Raven. Whether that was said in a drug induced marijuana haze or if he really had a vision for my life, I don’t know. I only know that I have long had an affinity for corvids and on this trip, everywhere I have gone, every time I have had a powerful physical or emotional experience, it had been punctuated by the presence of a raven. Crazy huh? That is a hard thing to admit. Here I am trying to do some pre-sabbatical solo cross country cycling/camping trip as a warm up for heading off into Europe and Africa. I really am out of my mind.

I believe there is more to life than what we can see and hear and touch. Isn’t that what faith is? Believing in the unseen? Trust is another one of those things that isn’t tangible, yet we do it anyway. So every time I see a raven, I think of the prophecy. Who am I to say that it is too fanciful to be real? I am beginning to believe this trip is really what my friend was talking about.

At this time in my life, I am dependent on no one. This time, I walk freely with the metaphorical Raven, learning, growing, feeling, allowing myself to just BE. I am struggling to define my new place in the world as a single woman, an academic, a writer, a grandmother, a cyclist, and a traveler. Crazy.

Just Zen it, your body knows what to do. ~Shaun

Posted on May 17, 2013 by rangotti

I grew up skiing in Maine and I was pretty good. I moved to North Carolina when I was 19 and didn’t ski regularly again for 25 years. When I moved to Washington, the first thing I bought was a pair of skis. I was a comfortable and happy blue run (intermediate skier). But I would watch those people who would ski off-piste, through the trees, down fall lines, and on the steepest stuff I could ever imagine and I longed to be like them. I believed that I would never be able to do it, that I would never be that good of a skier. Then, I met Shaun.

Shaun is the best skier I know and for some reason, decided to make me his personal project. So he skied with me, he would give me advice, he helped me choose a new pair of wider skis for powder, he watched my form, he laughed with/at me, he became my friend. Then one day, we had a reasonable dump of powder and Shaun texts me the night before skiing and says “bring the fatties” (fat skis). I will never forget what he did when we got up top. Instead of the usual…”this is what I want you to do”, Shaun just shows me the run we are going to go down. Instead of waiting for me to go first and then giving me advice, Shaun just takes off and yells over his shoulder, “Just Zen it Robin, your body knows what to do.”

WHAT? I remember yelling “what does THAT mean?”. But Shaun was getting too far ahead of me so I had to catch up so I could ask him. The whole way I am mumbling and cursing to myself that he is giving me these directions and then just abandoning me to figure it out. When all of a sudden, I realize, I am skiing off-piste, through the powder and the trees. When I realize I am doing it, 3 things happened: 1) I immediately panic, but then realize that I am okay, 2) I yell to Shaun: “I am doing it!” and see him just shake his head and 3) I start giggling.

When I am pushing myself, stretching my boundaries, taking a risk, and being successful, I have an giggling problem. It has annoyed a few people who are no longer in my life because although I try to control it, when I do something I thought I never could do and have fun, it just wells up from inside me and I can’t help it…I giggle. And skiing through those trees and in that powder was FUN. Shaun knew that I had the skills to do it. With his help support and a few big pushes, I have no problem going through trees, down fall lines, and can pretty much ski wherever I want. But I still keep giggling. Life should be fun.

The reality is that I am a pretty competent person in a lot of things. What holds me back is that I can’t get out of my own head and overcome my fear of the unknown in order to do them. As soon as I get out of my own way, sure enough, I can do it. I believe many of us are the same way. So my advice…Just Zen it, your body knows what to do.

Where fear is, happiness is not. ~Seneca

Life Divided by Zero

The Journey of Becoming Undefined

Tag Archives: unknown