Reflections

Living Abroad for the First Time

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A friend is living abroad at the moment and going through some blue times. Sometimes I get weird about sharing myself in black and white, and say the bare minimum. However, this makes me feel like I need to expand it out. Not sure if she’ll ever read this, but I have to share it.

When I moved abroad for the first time, not just traveling but living in one place intentionally with another person, I was so in over my head. I didn’t realise it at the time. I had left a good life but one that I wasn’t feeling fully fulfilled in anymore and decided that I wanted to do something different. I had just ended a long term relationship, had a health scare with precancerous cells on my cervix, and had become very cynical about corporations and their role in capitalism in the world at a time when I was moving more and more towards a more balanced view of living and using one’s resources. Then came along an attractive, charismatic alpha male foreigner who had me in his sights, and him in mine. It started fast like most fires do, and in a short time, even though there were some warning signs, I dismissed them, and soon he was back in his own country. I missed his energy and the way I felt around him, and questioned why I would stay where I was when this whole other life could be mine. I went on a holiday to visit him in Brazil and loved it. I was enamoured by being around him and allowing the flames to engulf us, I enjoyed the lush life he was accustomed to, and he wanted me to return. Within a very short few months, I resigned from my job after being with the corporation for 9 years, gave away everything I owned, and moved to Brazil with two suitcases. I was just 27 and had only lived in low population areas where everyone knew everyone, where I was the big fish in the small pond with a small exception when I was at University where I joined a sorority to counteract and become a big fish again. I had no experience with big city people and he was the epitome of big city and I had no idea what I was really getting into.

The beginning was fun, I enjoyed myself, it was all new, and I would share with family and friends back home about my new findings, the life I was now living which seemed like it was out of a movie, and it was incredible. After a while, the newness started to fade away though. I couldn’t easily find a job like I had before, I didn’t speak Portuguese, I realised that he was a lot different in his regular life than he was when he was traveling, or when I was traveling to holiday with him. It took me a while to understand that society people are very different from country people like myself. I hadn’t realised fully how many masks are worn, or how people associate with others just because of the benefits that they may get, or because they are the right people to know. I didn’t wear the right clothes, the right shoes, the right whatever, I hadn’t grown up in it, and that outward superficial appearance of things wasn’t important to me, maybe a bit, but nothing in comparison to the people I met and socialised with on a regular basis. I joined the “club” and did my best to make the most of it. However, it started to break at the seams.

There are so many more details to add here, but in short, I realised that I was in the wrong place. I was headed down this path with someone who wanted me to marry him, and I had already given away my entire old life. My ego was so big that I didn’t feel like I could go back, I had never actually failed at anything, and there was no possibility that I was going to admit freely that I had made the wrong decision. So I continued my best to make it work. I was depressed. I was living in Sao Paolo, the third largest city in the world, and I felt so utterly alone. I felt like I couldn’t talk about it with friends and family either, not deeply, not fully.

In this time of feeling out of alignment, I was in search of finding what was right for me. I did some dream therapy, taught myself to meditate, even fasted for 28 days to gain clarity. I wasn’t even that happy when I was at the weekend holiday homes on the island or in the exclusive private beachside community on the weekends. I was so out of it. I traveled a bit from there to Argentina for a short stint away, and the message I received when couch surfing with this amazing family near Patagonia, was that it’s not always easy but you make it work. So I returned and tried again. The day before we got married which I only agreed to for health insurance reasons and thought I had made that perfectly clear, I called an Aunt of mine back in the US on a payphone and calling card, and she told me that I could mould him into the person I wanted him to be and essentially I’d be a fool to give up the life I had in order to return to the US in any capacity like I had before. Horrible advice. I even got in contact with some old friends from Yosemite who basically were just like, “what do you have to lose?” I cried the day I signed those papers after the ceremony was performed in Portuguese. I cried and cried. It was like I was on a fast moving train and I just couldn’t get off.

I started indulging in more drinking than I had in a long while, I would smoke a lot of cannabis, and still none of it made a difference. I would go to acupuncture weekly and then listen to this jazz band every Tuesday afternoon and that was like a salvation for me. Eventually I felt afraid to continue being there with him but didn’t feel like I had an out. I had transferred all of my money into his name, which was a ludicrous thing to do but I was so naive and trusting especially when I first arrived.

About ten months after the marriage, my grandmother fell ill and I took the exit opportunity. I told him we were separating, and I left. It was emotional. I got back to the US, and I felt so completely broken. I wore my wedding band and tried not to talk about it with anyone, I just couldn’t. My ego was shattered. I lost my once tangible level of confidence, and I was lost. My grandmother wasn’t doing well, and I spent time with her, and I bounced around from place to place because there wasn’t any room for me to stay at my parents house, that was never a backup or fall back plan for me in life as they never really had it together enough on their own to offer such stability or security. Eventually I made my way back to Yosemite to stay with a friend. My heart was back in tact or at least starting to mend. I learned about Vipassana meditation, and enrolled in the next available course. There was a blip in there where the Brazilian came to the US on a work visa for his American based corporation and terrorised me, but I don’t want to get into that now, but it was so scary as I hadn’t told him where I was staying and he still found me. Meditation helped me to reset, my grandmother passed when I was in between sessions, and I was the most level emotionally I had been in a long time and was able to act as support for my family.

I got offers to work back in Yosemite but I couldn’t I couldn’t go back to a life that I had left. So I traveled. I roadtripped with friends, learned about my own country, went to Burning Man, just lived and experienced life like a rolling stone. It was exhausting. By New Years a year later after returning from Brazil, I was on this three day party bender, and I knew I was also not in the right place. I wrote down that I wanted a flight someplace else in a journal, and an email showed up from the Brazilian saying he had bought my ticket to Australia and to just get on the plane, no expectations, just to come and stay a year. Up until the day of the flight I wasn’t sure if I was going to go, this same person who scared me, was offering this opportunity, he had all my money still, and was promising no expectations of what was to come. I had offered up to the universe what I wanted and it came in a way that I hadn’t envisioned, which does happen often. I took the flight, and soon after separated from him again, and it brought me to Australia. The story continues as does the scariness but it’s all resolved now. It took a very long time and a lot of internal strength to get through it all.

If I have learned anything from all of this is that it’s okay to fail. It’s okay to say that things didn’t work out. It’s okay to return. It’s okay to try again. The beauty is that every moment contains the seed of something new to become. It is because of these experiences that I have grown in ways that I have, and I have no regrets. Also, I listen to my internal voice a hell of a lot more than I ever did when I was younger. I don’t know everything, and am open to seeing what presents itself. Life is a wild and glorious ride.

Rekindling a Sense of a Freer Version of Myself

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Recently I was listening to Dave Matthews Band after a huge hiatus of hearing them. The feelings that arose were those of freedom, ease, happiness, romance, and fully living. It was unexpected and it felt so very good. I realised that I haven’t had much room for those feelings in the last stretch of time. I wouldn’t change where I am as I know I left all those other places, people and times in search of something more, or better, however, I do miss the nights where I danced with reckless abandon under the stars of the Sierra Nevadas in Yosemite National Park and just lived life as I wanted to. It’s been so long since I’ve felt so expansive and easy go lucky.

The years that I have been in Australia have been intense and full in a completely different way. Having a head on collision, a stalking highly emotional stalking ex partner, the restriction of going through the very long immigration process, the near death experience of giving birth and the trauma the ensued after, all the while moving from an area that was progressive, free thinking, open, and inviting, to Western Sydney which is nearly the opposite of those things I value, caused me slowly but surely to close myself in more and more and more. Then choosing for various reasons to stay at home full time with our child just compounded this. Thank goodness for my Mother’s Group because they have well and truly been the support that I have needed in a time when I needed community, connection, and a feeling of having people around me who understood me in some way and what I was going through.

Listening to Dave Matthews Band rekindled something inside of me, something that makes me realise that as I continue to grow this second child inside of me and expand our family, that I must make myself a priority. I must make room for me to feel like I have some freedom and choice in my life. I must make room so that I can  feel alive and expansive, and independent, and strong, and capable. When I feel those things then I feel sexy, I feel accomplished, I feel intelligent, I feel invincible, and that is what I want in my life on the regular. I want to feel all of these things because when I do, I live in my full expression of who I am, and who I am becoming.

I know I needed these last years to go inward, to restrict myself so intensely so that I would know the feeling of breaking out of it. I MUST incorporate ways in my every day daily life where I feel more free and easy go lucky, and healthy, and smart, and strong. It is essential to my personal well being. It is essential and it is something that I MUST cultivate because I am reminded now that it is a part of me. I may not be the free dancing young Jennifer that I used to be, and I don’t want to be that person again as I’ll never be again and I understand that I left those places, those people, those experiences for a reason, and I’m not looking back in the sense that I want to recapture that youth, or that way of life, I just want to cultivate those feelings again and let them fly high and in every direction!! I want to be that force of life, that joyous force of life that brings light and energy to every experience and don’t apologise for it, but completely one hundred percent owns who I am and what I want and need in such an easy manner.

This is what I need. This is my intention. This will happen. This is happening.

The Immigrant Process

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I am an immigrant. I chose to leave my home country in pursuit of a new adventure, a new life, with new opportunities. It’s taken a considerable amount of courage, bravery, and resilience. Being an immigrant is a hard road and comes with many challenges, especially as the global powers tighten boarders and make the pathway to citizenship longer and more complicated than it needs to be.

My niece has asked me about my experience as an immigrant and specifically my pathway to citizenship as there are bound to be many similarities that I have faced that immigrants to America would also face. I’ve been wanting to write about this for some time, I talk about it a lot, but haven’t fully put it in to black and white, and I welcome that chance now.

I read somewhere a line that went something like to be an immigrant, you will always have your heart in two places, and that’s as true as it can be. My heart has always been torn between forging a new life for myself in Australia and leaving behind my family and everyone I have known before now in order to do so. It’s a compromise that has to happen when you venture out into the unknown of anything, and absolutely applies to traveling and making home abroad.

The process to citizenship here in Australia has been very long and convoluted. I still, after being here for more than eight years, being married to an Australian, having an Australian child, owning a business in Australia, and having gone to University here in Australia, I have still yet to be granted citizenship. I’ve had various visas that always cost a lot of money, and I’ve had to learn to live with the instability that comes with not being fully allowed to live in a country. Honestly the stress that this has caused, I’m certain has negatively impacted my health and also my first pregnancy. The stress that you can be asked to leave at any given time because you don’t have the right to stay is ever present. It’s like holding your breath, and wanting to give all you can to the country you are now living in, but at the same time holding back because why set down roots if you will have to cut them off and move again anyway.

When applying for Permanent Residency which precedes citizenship, there are typically requirements that need to be met like being in the country for a certain amount of time and not having any issues with visas before. For PR, as it’s commonly called, you have to submit so much paperwork not only about yourself, but you also have to give information about your friends and family as well, private information like their birthdays, their occupations, their own families, their marital status. It’s incredibly invasive, and asking friends and family to do this feels like one additional barrier that we have to go through. There’s a thorough health check, at designated immigration doctors offices, and you are treated like just another immigrant, no bedside manner, all matter of fact, and then you’re on your way awaiting the results. There’s character checks that happen from your original country, then within the country you are trying to immigrate to, along with any other country where you have spent more than a year. If you’ve married a citizen then you have to prove your relationship, which feels so false, and the things they ask, normal couples wouldn’t do. Specifically, who opens a joint bank account with their boyfriend or girlfriend the day they decide they’re going to be exclusive? If any regular couple did that, it would be a huge red flag, but for immigration, that is one of the ways to prove your relationship, and if you don’t have that you get knocked back in the queue.

The hardest part of all of it, beyond the utter lack of privacy, beyond the inane requirements that normal people wouldn’t do, is that the government is always changing, and with that, their stance on immigration changes. So you can call up and be told one thing on Monday, and then call back the next Monday and be told a completely different thing. For us, we were advised to wait until our three year anniversary before applying for PR because it would go right through, no more than six months the immigration agent said. So, we waited the additional year and a half and when we applied, the rules had changed, and had to wait an additional two years, not six months, to finally hear back, which gave another waiting period of a year. So it took a total of three years from the time I applied for PR to the time of being granted it, rather than six months, and that was after waiting for the full three years beforehand to apply. In this time, the fees go up, the waiting stretches out, and you find yourself checking your email account every single day, and every single day you feel disappointed and feel like it’s not going to happen.

Also in this waiting period of seeing if you will be accepted, and this could only be me, but I felt completely restricted about what I could say online. It was during a time when America was changing greatly, and Trump had been granted President, and the whole world was in shock and disbelief. Even before then with whistleblowers being outed and vilified, I didn’t feel like I could speak freely about this. I didn’t feel like I could even seek help with dealing with the dark feelings I had after having a very traumatic birth because all of that would be linked to me, and all of that would go into the decision making of whether I got to stay in the country where my entire world existed now, and I didn’t want to do anything at all to jeopardise that.

Looking for jobs as an immigrant is always a trying situation, because employers want to know that you will not be a fly by night, and the time and training they put into you will be repaid by long service. Going to University and further education is also limited unless you have the access to pay for the exorbitant fees they charge international students, and even then only some courses are available. There are restrictions every way you look, and sometimes, it feels like it would be easier to just throw away the dream and move back to your home country. I’m lucky I’m not a refugee and that is an option for me but for a lot of immigrants going home isn’t an option, so they have no choice but to deal with each obstacle, each setback, each challenge, and trying to maintain patience with their heads down, waiting for their time to come and be welcomed officially into their new country.

Lawmakers must be so removed from this process, because I can’t imagine that they would put us through all of this hardship, which ripples out to our new families here, and our friends, and the economy because we are going through unnecessary challenges to gain access to stay in the new country. I would definitely recommend a change that would include having English classes for migrants who don’t speak English as their first language while in the process of immigration because everyone benefits when we can speak a common language. I would recommend each immigrant being issued a clear plan with dates for them to apply and what to do at each step, currently the information is all over the place, and it changes so frequently that making a timeline with a plan is almost a joke currently.

Immigration and Permanent Residency

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10 days ago I got the email casually in my inbox that I had finally been approved to stay in Australia. The glorious electronic communication that will forever change the course of my life. Now I know that I am able to stay here with my family, in the home, in the reality that I’ve purposely crafted. There isn’t the fear that was looming before that I would be asked to leave. I guess it’s still there until I get citizenship, which I will apply for when I have met the new requirements, which are 4 additional years of waiting after gaining PR to apply to take the citizenship test. This citizenship test is apparently so difficult that when Media people have taken it, they have even failed despite living and growing up in Australia and working here their whole lives. I’ll worry about that later.

It had almost been a full three years since we applied. The application was submitted after my husband and I had reached our three year anniversary as being an exclusive couple. The immigration representatives that we spoke to on the phone before applying all said it would be faster if we just waited until the 3 year mark, then it would only take six months and I’d have PR. We qualified after one year of being in an exclusive relationship, 5 years ago I could have applied, but listened to the authority and went along with what they suggested, after all, they know best, right? The political winds changed, immigration became a very sore subject for Australia with tons of refugees trying to come to the country, and immigration around the world due to wars, had created a big division amongst the people in western countries. England closed it’s borders and left the European Union over it, Trump was elected president in the United States with his claim that he’d build a wall to keep the Mexicans out, and Australia elected one of the most right wing, anti-immigration ministers Pauline Hanson, lengthened and delayed their processing times. Australia also has kept refugees essentially prisoners on some islands outside of the country in order to send message. I’m not sure where and how common decency and the humanity left these western countries, but it’s a sad sight, and horrible to be caught in the system, even when I’m doing it willingly.

After the six month mark came and went from after applying, then a year later, they requested more information, then more time passed, and a year later more information was requested, and finally one last time, again a year later, more information being asked, and I was approved. The information was always the same information. It was always about references from people we know, it was how our relationship began, what we do together and how we are building our lives. It was always about character and police reports, and official documents. I get it, I understand all of it. When we didn’t get the approval straight away, we were scratching our heads, it didn’t make sense. Tony Abbott had recently become the Prime Minister in Australia and the Labour Party no longer had the majority. Liberals, strangely that they are called liberals, are pretty much anti-immigration, and seemingly anti-women, as we watched Tony Abbott become the Minister for Women, and for Aboriginals’s Indigenous Affairs while he was in office. The liberals have nearly completely undercut the government funded science branch CSIRO, nearly put out the Australian Broadcasting System which is truly the only for-Australia station on radio and television, and reduced funding in schools and universities. It was a crazy time, it still is. There’s a new PM, Malcolm Turnbull, but he’s just the same, he just presents better at face value.

Being an immigrant during this tumultuous time, has come with a lot of hardships. Honestly it’s nothing compared to the people who are kept at Manus Island. It is nothing compared to Syrian refugees searching for a new home. My hardship has been an emotional one. Not knowing that you have a base, being told one thing and then years going by before you actually know what’s going on, has left a bitter taste in my mouth, and in my husband’s as well. The first time when the application didn’t go through they basically said that we needed to have started a bank account or had some kind of authority confirmation like buying real estate together, from the day we started our exclusive relationship, in order to count as that being our “start” date. It would be so suspicious if when entering into a relationship, on the day you have the all important exclusive talk about being committed to one another, that you then say, “okay, now lets share a bank account”, who would do that? It’s so far from what is normal that we were appalled that this was the requirement. We had tons of support from multiple articles posted in the paper about us, to starting our own business, but apparently that wasn’t enough. Since we lived in a share house, there weren’t any actual receipts saying that we both lived there, and although we honestly could have forged them, we didn’t because it’s not the right thing to do, even though it was true, we both did live at the same address even in those early days.

I’m glad that I’ve been granted PR, and if anything it makes me want to, in the future, run for council or get involved in politics, specifically because of immigration, and to humanise the process again. The emotional toll is so big, and the rule makers obviously don’t understand this, or rather they don’t care. I am also certain that my health was impacted because of this. Having to carry that stress for so many years, with a newborn, impacted me, how could it not. Now I need to somehow brighten this thought, move forward in a new way, and start life again knowing I can be here. This includes taking some classes so I can reskill to create new opportunities for this new life. Six years after starting a life with my now husband, we get to start again.

If I were to do it again, and I know that this isn’t possible, but I would have applied straight away, as soon as we qualified for the visa, because looking at that old timeline, I would have already had citizenship. I can’t do anything about it now, but that is exactly what I would tell someone else now, don’t wait, just do it, do it now, you never know what the future holds, you never know how the political climate can change, and you have to think about you and your family first and foremost, and take the least risky way.

One Child or More?

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How do you actually know? How do you know for sure you want to have another child? How do you know for sure that the one you have is the only one you’ll ever want and need in your life?

Always torn between the longing of having a big family, I always think it will be different from my own, that we’ll get along, live nearby one another and be doing well in life. I don’t know this from experience, and I haven’t seen it modelled very much in my life, but I think it can happen, I feel like it can. I would love to see my husband be a dad to another child, he is amazing with our sweet two year old son. I would love to see our sweet toddler be a big brother to some one and teach the new baby how to do things, I can imagine he would be great at it, patient, kind, naturally sharing like he is with our mothers group kiddos. I think myself how lovely it would be to experience this kind of love with yet another person, having a son has opened my heart in entirely new ways, and has helped to deepen my relationship with my husband in so many ways too, it feels secure, it feels strong and I love that feeling.

There are parts that still get me tied up, the parts that make me keep using birth control and keep with our family only having one child. This morning we were having smoked salmon on croissants for breakfast. How decadent really and it’s in part because I am a stealth shopper, but also because it’s just the tidy three of us and our food money can go a lot further. When I think back over the weekend when we went to two different community style festivals, it was awesome for many reasons, including that since there’s only one child, the burden of looking after a child in a crowd is distributed, we can each carry him and still give him attention while we explore ourselves with a bit of freedom for each parent. I guess it’s freedom that is the part that always comes back to me when thinking of staying just with one child. The freedom of being able to quickly get up and go when we want, the freedom of a set sleeping schedule that allows my husband and I time to do other things at night that interest us. I like the idea of a large family, but for practical and slightly selfish reasons I think having just one is great, we can go on trips easier and for a lot less money, we can help educate him in so many different ways because we have the time and resources to do so.

Sleep is such a big deal. Maybe it wouldn’t be if I were in my early 20s and am considering having another child, but now in my late 30s it is a consideration. I like sleep, I need sleep, and when I get enough sleep, everything else feels better in my life. I also like to have independence and now that our son is a toddler, it’s great because he can play on his own and then we can play together, and it allows me a bit more breathing room, especially compared to early on.
Speaking of early on, those newborn weeks, and months, were the darkest, hardest, most gut wrenching and challenging time I’ve ever had. It was compounded by the fact that my body was in such poor repair after the emergency caesar, slipped disc, sciatica, and DVT in my left leg, but also emotionally from having been in the hospital for nearly 3 weeks straight, having to take pain medication when I had set out to have a natural pregnancy and natural birth, and then not knowing if either of us were going to make it through the delivery, then the 5 weeks in the NICU never knowing if he is going to die, or if he can come home and all of it being so emotional, so bizarre, and so surreally horrible. I know I had, or perhaps still have undiagnosed PTSD. I have so much fear wrapped around pregnancy and birth and when I allow myself to really think about the whole process, I don’t want to go through it again. Even now thinking about how horrible, isolating, and confusing that stage was, brings tears to my eyes and my stomach goes in knots. I don’t know if I can actually do it again.

Then, and I know what ifs aren’t so good, but really, what if… what if the next baby has something that needs special attention too, what if it’s special attention beyond just the newborn phase, like a disability or something else? What if adding another child to our very cohesive family messes it all up and we really struggle? There’s no guarantee of who will come next and I know from my mother’s group that they really are their own person, a fine mixture of nature and nurture and sometimes it feels so very much like we just totally lucked out to have such an amazing, well behaved, kind child. He really is special, I mean, it’s like we have totally won the jackpot with our son, I’m thankful all the time. It was such a tremendously challenging start, but gosh, he’s really great. We’ve all started to really find our groove and I don’t know if I want to rock that boat.

The other part of this, which is a huge part, is that I am in my late 30s… and that means a deadline is looming. Maybe it’s not really by the end of the year, but I keep getting fooled into thinking that I have to do it now or never… that if we are going to have another child, if I am going to give birth to another child, then I need to fall pregnant by the end of the year, before I turn 38 and hope that my eggs are still nice and healthy to produce a nice and healthy baby.
I go back and forth with this decision. Having endometriosis just adds another dimension to it because the doctor said that if I have a baby then it puts the oestrogen on hold until after… so if I get pregnant, sooner than later is a good choice, because I *may* have to have a surgery again, this time to remove some of the endometriosis cells, and if it all goes south, then even more would need to be removed. I also have found out that the endometriosis cells have pretty much covered over my left ovary, which is likely why I get so much pain on that side, especially around my cycle time.

So it’s my body, it’s my mind, and it’s my emotional health that all needs to be in consideration ALONG with my own family dynamics. It isn’t a straightforward thought, and honestly since I was deadset against having children when i was younger, I didn’t have the whole dream of a big family after a big white wedding, that simply wasn’t me and wasn’t my life plan, so it’s not like I can just fall back on some projection that I’ve already made. Well, expect that one image that came out of no where when I was living in Brazil… it was so far away from where I was in my life, but I knew it was what I was needing in my life… and in that there was a house on some land with veggies, fruit trees, animals, a natural water source and the ocean nearby, with me, my husband and two little people… two. I don’t know where it came from, it had shocked me at the time… so part of me feels like I need to fulfil this. Maybe I just need to focus one step at a time on my health and well being and then worry about whether or not to have children after that… Gosh I just don’t want to miss that boat, if that’s the boat we really do want.

 

Shaking my head. Still not clear.

Overwhelming Sense of Love

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It can be and usually is in the most mundane and ordinary of moments when I feel this overwhelming sense of love for my child. This feeling of love and warmth and sparkle just sweeps right over and through me in a big wave. It’s amazing when that feeling happens, and it happens regularly. It can happen when I’m giving him a hug, or picking him up out of his crib from his nap, or when he’s eating in his high chair, or as today, doing imaginary play. I never expect it and am always so happy when it comes. What a beautiful gift to experience.

It’s a different kind of love than I have for my husband, which is also a love I have never known before. It’s a special pure love that permeates my being. I love my child. I am very happy to have this role as his mum. Really what a gift he has been in my life.

Somewhere Along the Way

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Somewhere along the way I grew jaded. I mean that has to be the reason right? The reason I am questioning so much after spending so much of my time in this way of thinking. That I would devote so much time and energy into the thought and lifestyle of “following my bliss”. I curated the thoughts in my head, I used mantras, I cut out people from my life, and even would steer away from friends who had gotten sick because they must not have been aligned for something to go wrong, right?

I’ve always been an optimistic person and I’ve always been one to dive right in, and this stage of my life was no different. I had been living in Brazil and was totally lost, I knew I wasn’t where I needed to be and was searching for clarity. I was trying anything and everything and even fasted for about a month on just water with alternating days where I would drink some coconut water or some sugar cane juiced with lime. I taught myself to meditate and would create art for arts sake to see what was going on. This was all back in 2007-2008 and the internet was really just starting to kick off there weren’t a lot of resources like you can find now about all of these topics, so I just kinda figured it out as I went along. A sort of friend of mine said that he had been reading Joseph Campbell and in a short email exchanged mentioned the term “follow your bliss” and I grabbed ahold of it with all of my might.

I made posters with that wonderful phrase and hung them on my dingy apartment wall overlooking one of the busiest street intersections in Sao Paolo. I scribbled in my journals, and I meditated with it in mind, hoping to figure out what that actually meant and how I could use it to help my situation. One day at a friends ranch in the countryside, we ate some “Hawaiian babies” which were seeds from one of the plants in the yard. I had broken my fast by taking them and drinking watermelon blended up, a strange way of ending it, but I got the clarity I needed. I wasn’t a very good guest that weekend, I scribbled in my journal, I drew the fabulous magical plants around me and I came to realise that for me to follow my bliss meant that at any given time I needed to do what felt best to me, even if that meant being anti-social and completely doing my own thing, which I did. I had so many realisations that weekend while I was off my head and it certainly was an awakening of sorts.

Eventually after I was back in the US after my escape from Brazil, yes it was like an escape, but I’ll write more about that later, but after I was back in my home country I was even more lost than before. Familiar people, familiar places, familiar smells, but none of it felt fully like home. Yes I snuggled and cried and danced and swam and stomped through the snow in my beloved Yosemite, and did think about returning for another round, but I just couldn’t. I wasn’t the same, I was a different persona and I needed more than I knew how to get there. I continued to listen to the writing on the wall or take tips from people to heart, and one gave me a tip about a meditation centre nearby, one that had been there the entire time I lived in Yosemite but never knew about.

I spent time at this meditation centre and there’s more to this story too, but I’ll share more about that later. I will say that it was another one of those times where I met the right people at the right time, and forged friendships that would definitely support that stage of my life. I had learned about the power of manifesting along the way by writing down what I wanted and watching it unfold. I noticed this happen again and again and again. I also felt like it was contrived and I came to the point where I actually wanted to be surprised and let go of trying to be the master of my universe. I have still used that over the years though because I know the power of my words and the strength of my mind can cause tremendous change in my life and those around me. It sounds like a god complex kind of thing but it wasn’t, or maybe it was? Is this the heaven on earth scenario just a bit manufactured? Who knows. There are always questions.

So fast forward and I got into head on collision and I was fully into that mode of thought of Law of Attraction where what I think becomes, and was certain that I had created this crazy accident in some far-fetched way because I wasn’t on the path I needed to be on, so the Universe not so gently helped me correct course. Okay, I accepted that and it made sense. Maybe that’s the biggest part of all of this line of thinking, we always want everything to make sense, I always want to put everything into some neat little informational package so that all the pieces fit together, to tie up loose ends and ensure that it all flows so I can continue moving on to the next thing.

When my very complicated pregnancy came around, I did try to change my thoughts, I did try to manage my vibration but sure enough I couldn’t do it well enough, if looking through that lens, and had extended hospital stays, prescribed pain killers, and an emergency cesarean of my baby two months too soon, followed by an intense section of life of the emotional hell that is the NICU. I felt embarrassed that I wasn’t strong enough to handle the way it happened. I felt that I had failed in my own way of thinking and had surmised to this weaker state of mind which allowed all of the heartache and pain to happen. I didn’t want to share pictures of my child that would normally be joyous of his first days because to me he looked like an alien in a clear box with all kinds of tubes and wires hanging off of him, I had failed to create this birth for both of us, for all of us. Whoa it’s hard to confront this truth and I’m getting emotional typing it. I really felt like I had failed and let myself, my new son, my husband, and every other person I have every talked to about the power of thoughts, down. Like going through seeing your child like that and dealing with my own pain wasn’t enough, that feeling of failure was absolutely soul crushing. How could I have not been able to practice what I have preached and been able to do again and again in my own personal life before then? Oh boy it was a hard time.

I see how “thought leaders” in this industry of selling the thought that you have control over everything in your life attribute being poor with not being spiritual. I see them also attribute not being healthy or having an illness as not being spiritual, that you can just turn it around with your thoughts. I think it’s all a big pile of bullshit these days. I believe in optimism and I believe in setting goals and doing your best every moment and really finding the goodness in life, but everyone has the path they need to walk and to justify it one way or another is just making a huge pile of excuses and it may sell books or speaking gigs or classes, but I don’t subscribe to this thought any more and it feels like I am breaking up with it.

I do however still believe that my thoughts influence my life, absolutely. I absolutely believe that being optimistic can bring sunshine into the gloomiest of areas and help a person get out of situations to where they really do have more sun in the sky than rain, metaphorically speaking. I’m just dropping the judgemental part of it. We all get a starting point where we are, and sure enough we can do whatever we can with it, and that’s great, that is fine, that is enough, and things happen in life, it is our attitude that helps guide us through the process but that still doesn’t justify why there are kids who starve to death, or young people who get cancer or other atrocities like this, it’s not because they aren’t spiritual enough, it’s just the hand they have been dealt and that’s it.

I’m still holding onto the need for joy and laughter and fun and time off in my life. I am still holding onto the need for beauty and smiles and healthy living. I am still holding onto the fact that loving someone else and feeling that love back is one of the most precious gifts in human existence. I am still holding onto my way of being that likes to see the bright side. I am still holding onto my understanding that we aren’t really all created equally and that we all don’t have equal ways to get ahead or to progress and I have compassion for this. I am holding onto my belief that I still get to choose in every moment who I get to be and can be that person and allowing change to happen this way in my life now. I still believe that if you surround yourself with things/people/environment that make you feel inspired to be your best self, then its a hell of a lot easier to do so. I am still in total belief that I am here to make a positive impact upon the world and will continue to do so, even if with only my smile as I pass a stranger. I will continue to share love and be love because I can.

Location and ReJoining

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Perhaps if you were to return to a location that you had once lived, where you were a different person and you understand that the nostalgic part of it is just that, then it could be successful. Ways to make it successful would be to acknowledge that you are indeed a different person, the place itself, even if it does seem the same at first glance, is also different. There’s no way that any of it is the same as it was, especially if time has passed since living there.

Perhaps taking the stance of embodying the new you, the new role you’ll be playing as you reenter would be helpful. Creating new contacts and a new sense of community could also be very helpful. The thing is anything you create when you return, would be more aligned with who you are and who you are becoming. Of course, feel out the old ways you used to live as well to see if they resonate, but do not get stuck in the slippery slope of nostalgia, and choose based on now.

It would take more will power and probably more discipline, but it’s entirely possible, to rejoin with a location that you had left, and together, make something entirely new and better.

The Nostalgic Point of No Return

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Recently I’ve been having a realisation that I am in a relationship with my family and we as a whole have relationships with other people, family units, and places.

There comes a point in a relationship, when after you have left it, there is a time when you can return and are able to make amends, things can patch back together. However, after that time, say 2 years, if you go back, it’s mostly due to nostalgia of what was, of who the other person was, of who you were, and none of it is based in what is really happening now in your reality. When returning to a place that has already passed its point of nostalgic no return, at first you’ll be fooled by your self of all the great things, you’ll see it all through rose coloured glasses and things will feel almost better than ever before. However, in a week, the reality starts to creep in. You’ll start noticing all the things that made you decide to leave in the first place. You’ll notice that the show of good behaviour fades away and the truth of the situation, of the people, surface showing a reality that you don’t really want to be a part of anymore.

Two years, is a major amount of time when your growth game is strong. In two years, you can grow apart something fierce and still have the nostalgia to make you think that’s what you want, but in moments of clarity you realise that’s exactly what it is. The old place is the old place that entertained the old you. It’s where you grew in that stage of life. It’s a fine place to visit, but you don’t live in nostalgia as it stunts your growth.

In two years, from leaving the lovely regional area where I met my husband, we have lived in suburbs outside of Australia’s most populous city, we have had a child together, our whole lives have shifted and we are well and truly different people than we were when we first moved here. How can we ever really go back to what was, because we are not that anymore, that place is not the same either, we have all changed. AND this is all okay.

The better option is to take what you’ve learned and move into the new version of you, of your family, and align it with a location that fits your aspirations best, based on who you are now and who you are becoming. A place that supports your growth, your overall well being and your direction in life. Along with that, all of the right players will come in, at the right time, to help along this path, because it is the right path to take. It will be easy, so easy that we’ll look back at how hard the other path has been to get back to and realise that it was because that other path was never the path we were really meant to travel down together, as a family. It’s heartbreaking and liberating at the same time.

Life is meant to be easy. Life is meant to be joyous and fun. Life is meant to have more laughter than tears. Life is meant to be shared. Life flows along when you are in the path that you are supposed to be in. When aligned with the truth, all things fall into place, it’s that simple, it’s what happens. I have experienced this time and time again in my own personal life. The only time it gets hard is when I am out of sync.

By releasing attachment to the old relationship, the old path, the former town where growth occurred, it gives space for the new opportunities to arise, and they will.

It’s a blessing that things change. I also know it’s a blessing to feel that now I get to change with my family, as a unit. We together get to manifest our new lives together. We together get to build our lives how we want them, letting go of any past expectations, letting go of anyone else’s version of life. We get to forge ahead together and have the blessed life we deserve. <3

The Waiting Place

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I fear that I may have found myself in the waiting place. Not intentionally, but I think it’s where I am. Earlier I was talking to my husband and said that I can just feel like this next chapter is going to be the one where I really break out from where I am personally now, professionally now, and move forward in that area. As I said this I realised how I was unintentionally putting a “grass is greener” lens on the next phase, and ALSO putting myself in the waiting place! How could I have done that!

So whenever I realise that I am feeling weird about a place or a situation that I’m in, I do my very best to do whatever I can to appreciate it and show gratitude because those feelings, those emotions ripple into so many different areas of my life, as they are mental habits that I make and are patterns that make up me. So I am in a stage where I need to be appreciative and grateful for living in Western Sydney and along with that, all of the other aspects of my life. So…

I am grateful that I completed my Bachelor’s of Business Administration and Marketing because I’m drawn to that subject matter and it was a long standing goal that I have now achieved.
I am grateful that I got married to my loving husband, who happened to have accepted a job in Western Sydney because he is my love and I’ll go wherever he goes.
I am grateful that we chose to have a baby and that our lives have been forever changed with his blessed presence.
I am grateful that I chose to live with him and bub here in Western Sydney, because being a family is important to me, and raising our son together is essential for a family life in my eyes. I am also grateful for living in Western Sydney because I have met a great group of women who are also first time mums and we have all grown together.
I am grateful that I have devoted the time to grow and develop with bub. I am grateful that I get to experience the all the special moments with him because he is only this age once, and I am only this age, at this stage of my life, once. I am grateful that I slowed my career path down a bit while relatively continuing to keep up to date with blogs and books.

Now is the time where I need to keep writing, keep sharing, keep expressing myself. Right here, right now is where I will do it all. Period. That’s it.