Prodigal Daughter Returns

The first time I left California, I drove away with tears in my eyes and I promised myself that I would never move back. While driving through Oregon and Idaho (with more tears in my eyes) heading home for the first time in 10 years, I promised myself that I would only stay in Utah for 6 months.

Whelp. Neither of those promises lasted very long. Because after 6 years of living in Utah, you are reading the blog of the newest resident to San Rafael, California.

In the past, the decisions to move were under slightly different circumstances. This time, I left Utah with a boat load of supporters and well-wishers in my pocket. And I had even more here in California to welcome me. The whole experience has been somewhat surreal. I mean, I live here now. I have a wonderful fiance here. I have to figure out things like where my spot on the (uncomfortable) couch is going to be and where my new favorite coffee spot/book nook is. My clothes hang in the closet in our bedroom (and in the coat closet and in the bathroom closet). This is not an extended vacation and I don't have plans to leave California any time soon. I say this because after the move I'm drastically broke and the Jetta couldn't make the trip so I'm out a vehicle. I'm not stuck here though. I'm not trapped. This is exactly where I want my life to be and I moved here on my terms and I am happy here.

So this is me, a Californian, checking in with those of you in Utah, letting you know that I am okay. I'm still adjusting to life here in the Bay Area, but I'm alive and doing very well.

Mis En Place

Noun, singular:  French term meaning ‘everything in its place’

You know that map in the mall that helps you find the way to your next shopping destination - the one with the big red dot labeled “You are here”?  Well, without that dot, the information contained on the map is somewhat useless. Wouldn’t you agree? Especially if you are in a really big shopping mall with multiple floors and it’s the holiday season and there are one bajillion people all trying to buy last minute gifts and you just want find one thing but had to park on the opposite side of the mall because the parking lot was full and then there’s a baby crying somewhere in the food court...  (can you tell that I have just described my own personal hell?) My point here is that until you are able to locate that red dot on the map, you can’t really be certain where you need to go. Sure you can meander through the mall and by trial and error, you can probably find your way to where you want to go. Nothing wrong with that approach at all. But what if you just want to get to where you want/need to be? And what if you want to take the most direct route to your destination to avoid the crying baby in the food court? Well, then you better get a plan together and it should start with you locating that red dot on the map so you know how to interpret the information given to you.

The same can be said about any journey you take in life – you have to know where you are before you can move forward.  And more importantly, you have to have some idea of where you want to eventually end up so that you know which routes to explore and which you should avoid. That’s what my focus for 2013 has really been all about – putting everything into its place so that I can move forward with purpose and clarity.   

So where exactly is “here”?  To help explain this, I will quote one of my favorite movies, “I believe we have two lives:  the one we learn with and the one we live with after that.”  Based on that quote, I guess you could say that “here” for me is somewhere in between those two lives.

I have successfully made it through the first life – the one I had to learn with - and by successfully I simply mean that I survived. Yes, I managed to make it to the light at the end of a very long tunnel, but make no mistake; I did not, or was not capable of, thriving. So, I emerged from that life with deep scars and no real sense of purpose and I was beaten down in every sense of the word – physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. I met some of the most wonderful people as a result of that “learning life”. And for those reasons, I don’t know that I would want to change a whole lot about it. I realize now that this insight comes only after having a few “transition years” under my belt that have allowed me to muster up enough courage and strength to acknowledge this.

But, now I can feel myself shifting from the “transition years” to the 2^nd life. And while it would be nice to say that I started the 2^nd life with a clean slate – that is not the case. I still have to take ownership of the disasters I created during the 1^st life. I have a lot of damaged terrain to navigate through and Lord knows that I’ll probably be paying off the financial mistakes I made until the day I die. But the 2^nd life offers something to me that the 1^st life skimped on - the opportunity to control my final destination and more importantly to have a say in what path I take to get there.

Part of the purpose of this blog in general is to help me figure out what I want out of this life. And to be honest, because I have never really had the opportunity to ask myself this question, I have adopted the trial and error method of exploration. (Hence all of the random things on my Do-Over Life List) But recently, I have been looking for more specific answers to this question. For me, the only way to narrow things down is with a list. In addition to the list along the right side of this blog, I also created lists of things that I wanted for the core people in my life (family and friends) and how I saw myself being involved in or contributing to those things. And then I made a list of the things that I wanted for myself, which I referred to as my Selfish List. This was the list that I struggled with the most. But I held up the mirror and really thought about what I wanted/deserved, and then I shamelessly added it to my list.

I read somewhere that “intention is defined as a desire without attachment to the outcome” and that is what the Selfish List became for me. I put out into the Universe a list of exactly what I wanted for myself and then surrendered control of the outcome. By removing the attachment to the success or failure, the items on the list simply became part of how I lived my life and, over time, I started to notice that everything that I had added to the list had either already come true or was well on its way to coming true. Every. Single. Thing. Needless to say, after that realization, I started making lists for everything! The power of intention is something that never ceases to amaze me and if you haven’t read into the subject, I highly recommend that you do. Because then you learn that “when you really want something, all of the Universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.” God bless you, Paulo Coelho.

In making these lists, I quickly began to notice they all had something in common. My lists told me that the most important thing to my soul is my family, my friends, and eventually finding love. While the 1^st life provided me with the amazing friends that I often write about (friends that have basically became my family), the “transition years” provided the opportunity for me to rebuild the relationships with my family members that were lost to the bad decisions that I made during my “learning life”. At that point, it became clear to me that part of what was missing in my life was finding love. My soul needed its mate.

Red dot on the map? Located.

Final destination? Identified. 

And just like that, everything started to fall into place.

The process of finding my soul mate began with trying to figure out what qualities that person needed to have in order to fit well into my life and, twice as difficult, what qualities I wanted them to have in addition to that. Needs and wants. Needs and wants. To the shopper at the mall, it would sound like this: I need boots and a wool pea coat AND I want the boots to be under $50 and I want the pea coat to be teal. <---someone fall.="" i="" loves="">

So, on April 1, 2013 at 9:45pm I created a word document called “Crazy in Love” where I listed all of the things that I was looking for in a soul mate. Here is a good portion of the list that I made:

  

• Patient
• Kind
• Passionate
• Compassionate
• Funny
• Adventurous
• Loyal
• Supportive of my passions
• Wants children
• Loves to travel
• Creative
• Hopeless romantic
• Playful
• Love for sports
• Close with their family
• Amazing friend
• Loves to read/write
• Protective of me & our relationship
• Ability to make me feel safe emotionally/mentally
• Likes to watch movies/snuggle
• Likes to be active & will encourage me to be active
• Loves me for who I am, not who they want me to be
• Not afraid to tell the world they love me, over and over
• Someone who is not afraid to try something new (food, travel, experiences)
• Someone who can make me laugh hysterically every day
• Someone who values late night conversations
• Someone who chases me around the bedroom with passion and gusto!
• Someone who is more financially stable than I am
• Someone who enjoys “culture”
• Someone not afraid to pursue their passions regardless of financial gain
• Someone who can cook
• Someone currently attending or graduated from college
• Someone interested in life-long learning
• Someone who loves to be near the water

You get the idea…the list went on and on. Anything that came to mind at all, no matter how fantastic the idea seemed, I added it to the list without hesitation. It was like flipping through a catalog and saying, “I’d like some of that and a little of that and I can’t live without that!” The sky was the limit. When I completed the list, I put myself “back on the market” in a variety of different ways – some of them were incredibly bold and others were more subtle, but I was making a conscious effort to be 100% open to the idea of finding love again.

In love, timing is everything. Sometimes the would-be-soul-mates paths can cross, but if the timing is not right, they can brush past each other without a second glance. One person’s strategy for finding their soul mate will be to look to the right – when really all they need to do is look to the left to see that the person has been standing there all along. My Grandma O. has always said that I am one of those people that have to learn all of life’s lessons the hardest way possible. So for me, when it came to finding a soul mate, not only was the timing wrong on several different occasions, but I was also looking to the right when I needed to be looking to the left. Now, throw in the fact that I am incredibly dense when it comes to noticing when people are interested in me, and you can probably see how frustrating this whole process was.

In the end, I think that the Universe grew tired of me failing to “embrace the obvious” (remember that mantra from a previous blog post?!?) So the Universe just plucked me from the path that I was taking, then placed my soul mate directly in front of me and firmly pushed us together.

I have always believed that the best love stories are those that begin with a friendship that evolves into more over time. My own love story is blessed enough to have this type of beginning. Danielle and I have known each other for more than 1/3 of our lives. She was in the trenches with me during some of my most difficult struggles and she has always been one of the first to celebrate with me when things went right. She has always remained someone whom I love, respect and trust. But I have always only considered her just a friend. One late night, while ordering chicken at a restaurant called Sol Food, I put my arms around her waist and hugged her and things immediately fell into place for both of us. Given my history, I should have known that I would have found my soul mate at a restaurant called Sol Food.

Not wanting to jeopardize our friendship, and quite frankly because the idea of us being soul mates seemed “too good to be true”, while walking along the beach the next day I asked the Universe to confirm if Danielle was my soul mate. The Universe responded in the form of heart shaped rocks washing up on my feet at 3 different beaches in the Bay Area. Almost anticipating that I would again question the Universe’s answer, Danielle then presented me with a heart shaped rock that she had found while walking along on the same beach saying, “I found this for you.” From there, we have “slipped briskly into an intimacy from which we have never recovered.”

A lot of people have asked me if I am settling in my search for love because I found someone who already fits into my life as a friend. The answer is no. I’m not settling for one thing when it comes to love. Re-read the above list of things that I was looking for in a soul mate as “things I have found in Danielle” and you will understand that I have everything that I have ever wanted or needed or deserved in a relationship. And with each passing day, my love for her grows exponentially. I am exactly where I need to be in my life. I am home. Everything is mis en place. And with the continued love and support of my amazing friends and family, I’m ready to begin the next chapter of my life with my best friend and soul mate by my side.

I Needed This Today

Brave - by Sara Bareilles

Enjoy!

xoxo

Mande

Do What You Love

.....Whatever satisfies the soul is truth.....

So what satisfies my soul? What do I need to re-examine? What is my truth? I've been struggling with these internal questions for months, evaluating each nuance of every possible answer. And I've been trying to do more listening than talking throughout the entire process. What I keep hearing is: eliminate the chaos & embrace the obvious. Random, right? But meditation after meditation has resulted in this message.

While my life, in comparison to previous years, is by no means chaotic, there are things (and people) that I have been holding on to for no particular reason other than sometimes it is harder to let them go than it is to keep them with you. This month has been an emotional cleanse of sorts for me, coinciding to a series of eclipses this spring. Normally I don’t pay much attention to astrological things like eclipses, but with the flood of emotion that I have been experiencing this month, reading things like “eclipses inspire looking at soul sickness, toxic people and atmospheres, and negative controls of all kinds” one is really forced to sit up and take notice.

Sadly, this process has included eliminating more people than things and it has weighed heavily on my heart. Realizing that you don't mean as much to someone as they do to you can really do that to a person. But by definition, doesn't that make the very relationship toxic? It feels toxic when you're in the trenches experiencing it. It even looks toxic now that I'm on the outside looking in. And because I feel attached to someone/something that doesn't reciprocate the same feelings, it acts as a negative control in my life, making me feel guilt where there is no need for guilt.

So right now, I am really putting faith in the idea that what appears to be lost or leaving your life is really just the Universe's way of creating a path for something new to emerge. Sometimes things have to fall apart so they can fall into place.

Since this process has forced me to look at the things in which I invest the most amounts of time and energy, I feel as though there will be some major changes that will be happening for me over the next few months. The answers that have been surfacing lately remind me of my 3 year-old nephew's response when I gave him chicken nuggets for dinner instead of his absolute favorite food - cheese sandwiches.

"This isn't my favorite thing."

Leave it to a 3 year old to school a 33 year old on how to live their life. The things that I invest the most amount of my time or energy in are simply not my favorite things to do. I think this is where the Embrace the Obvious part of my meditations comes into play. Do what you love. So what do I love to do?

Travel: This answer is easy. When I was little, my sister and I spent almost every day during the summer "exploring" - which really just meant packing a lunch and wandering around my Great-Grandfather's farm. We had our favorite spots that we always visited (like the railroad tracks and the well on Ruth Clarke's property - we were country kids in every sense of the word) but we were always looking for new destinations, which required a certain amount of bravery since there was always the risk of running into a badger. Our motto for that scenario was to 'run like hell.' Now that I am older, my approach to travel is the same. I have spots that I absolutely love travelling to whether it is because I love the area or people who live in the area. But I also enjoy traveling to places that I have never been and exploring things that I am not familiar with. The motto about the badger encounter also still applies.

Write: This is one of my greatest passions, despite the fact that it is something that I have only recently embraced. I have journal after journal from my younger years full of meandering thoughts and reckless rants. They have been hidden in boxes that I have dragged through every move of my adult life. A few months ago, while rearranging my living room, I opened the boxes and found the journals, like little treasures from my past. That's when it hit me that I have always been a writer. Not a novelist or anything official like that, but I have always turned to writing to help me through experiences in my life - good or bad. So, that day, I chose to embrace my passion for writing. I have displayed my journals on the bookshelves in my living room amongst the great authors that I enjoy so much. I have also recently purchased a typewriter and have been in absolute, utter bliss listening to the plunking of the keys as I type away all my random thoughts. There's a solitude that is required when I write that I enjoy very much. It's the part of writing that involves sharing your work where I struggle. Like the badgers in my explorations, I have run like hell from that important step. But it's becoming something that I continue to push. This blog is helping to do that.

The obvious answer is that I should write a travel blog which would combine my love of travel and writing into one amazing dream job. Yes, please. How does one get into that? Because I will promptly quit my job, reduce my belongings into what will fit into a suitcase and start living the dream. For real.

Namaste

My horoscopes for the past few days have warned me to "react with kindness", "don't make any accusations", and "immerse yourself in the moment of growth and progress". All of them have been spot on in preparation for this week.

In the past, I have pre-selected the way I would react to certain people or certain situations. My ex, for example. If she attempted to contact me, my mind went to the script labeled "go to hell" and began reciting the dialogue without much thought about if my feelings now corresponded to what I was saying. In general, what was coming out of my mouth never really matched how I felt inside at that moment. It reflected something that happened years ago that I internalized and couldn't communicate until now.

When I started using "namaste" (meaning the divine light in me honors the divine light in you) as my initial internal greeting for people or my reaction to someone's attempt to interact with me, including non-face-to-face communications, I noticed that my pre-selected reactions to people were immediately thrown out the window and I began an organic conversation with that person based on how I really felt in the moment. This is a huge development for me. And because what I'm feeling on the inside is being accurately reflected on the outside, there's no longer any internal confusion for me about where I really stand on certain issues or with certain people. My reaction is now the purest reflection of who I really am.

So I took the advice of a daily horoscope app on my phone, and reacted with kindness when I received another round of emails from my ex this weekend. I didn't fall into that routine of ignoring her completely or responding with "I hate your stinking guts" or "you're dead to me" or "remember that one time you did that one thing and it ruined my entire life and now I'm so bitter about it even after 10 years?" - all of which are versions of the "go to hell" scripts I mentioned earlier. None of which reflect how I feel about her today. The truth is that while I'm not really that fond of how she treated me while we were together, I don't really hate her either. If I had never met her, I would have also never met Michele, Jeannie, Joe or Danielle - 4 of my very best friends in the whole world. And I would have never had the need to come back home to Utah and repair my relationships with my family, namely my sister Amber, and I would have never become close friends with my new family members, Kim & Ryan. Did those relationships come at a very high price for me personally? Sure. It broke me to the core. But I think that even knowing how the relationship with my ex would have ended in advance, I still would have chose to endure it for the simple fact that I would also be blessed with those friendships/family in the end.

I'm not the same person I was then. And I've acknowledged those emotions associated with my relationship with her, and then subsequently let them go. Not bitterly, but gently - giving respect to a significant chunk of my life. So why set myself back all that hard work I have done all these years by choosing to react with pre-selected emotions towards someone that is not relevant to my life now? It is counter-productive to what I'm trying to accomplish. And it's not an accurate reflection of the person I have worked so hard to become.

So, namaste, Holly. I honor the light in you and thank you for what you brought into my life. I acknowledge what our relationship taught me and how it has helped me to become a better person today. And I thank you for what your presence has brought into my life in the form of my friends/family. Because without them, I wouldn't be where I am today. I also acknowledge the choices I have made to change my internal belief system and the decisions I have made to promote my own growth.

And, to all of you friends who have become family and family who have become friends, I thank you for standing by me on this incredible journey. You have been my rock when I needed to be grounded and at the same time my wings when I needed to fly. You reflect the best in me. And I love each of you dearly.

Namaste.

-Mande

#94 - Revisit the places that made you who you are

When I added this to my bucket list, a lot of people read this as an attempt to hold on to my past.  To some extent I guess it is.  And only now, at age 33, am I able to admit that I want to hold on to all of my memories - the good, the bad, and the ugly.  I like knowing that I'm developing peace with my past because that is the ultimate Do-Over Life Lesson for me - inner peace.  I was dealt a difficult hand early in my life and to this day it still affects me, so to be able to want to draw meaning from the earliest of memories is quite an accomplishment for me.  I believe by embracing my past, it will open up doors for me in the future.  So that's what this Do-Over Life Lesson is really about, not just holding on to the past, but preparing the way for my future.  

I recently had the opportunity to revisit Bainbridge Island, Washington - my absolute favorite place in the world.  For a point of reference, I lived on Bainbridge Island from 2006-2008 and I would have been 26 when I arrived and left just before my 28th birthday.  It was a blip in my adult life really, where I lived in 4 different states and too many different cities to count, but Bainbridge Island has by far been the most influential place I've live thus far in my life. 

View from Manitou Beach Drive (where I used to live)

I made the decision to move to Bainbridge Island after ending my marriage.  It was a difficult decision, one that I made hastily and based entirely on emotions, but it is a decision that I will never take back.  It was one of the few times in my life that I listened to what my gut was telling me to do.  I surrendered to the Universe and jumped from the ledge arms outstretched, trusting that I would be taken care of.  And man, did the Universe provide the perfect place for me to recover my broken self. 

I love everything about Bainbridge Island - the idyllic location in the Pacific Northwest, the rain, the fog, the rocky beaches full of sand dollars and purple starfish scrambling to beat the low tides, the isolation the island offers coupled with the close proximity to the hustle and bustle of Seattle.  What I love most about Bainbridge Island is that it is the only place that I have lived where I feel like myself.  I don't have to pretend to be anything that I am not and yet the sky is the limit on who I can become.  After ending such a restricting relationship in my life, it was nice to have so many possibilities. 

Riding the ferry into downtown Seattle was both romantic and cumbersome. 
Ferry schedules didn't always match up with my social engagements. 

Everything fell into place for me while living there.  I found a small room for rent on the Island, found a job on my 2nd day there (yes I moved 2 states away without first securing a job - it was part of that leap of faith thing) and I threw myself into recovery mode, not really knowing what that entailed. 





I wrote every single day.  Sometimes all day.  I painted on the weekends and curled up with a good book on the couch listening to the rain drizzling down overhead.  If there was something I wanted to explore, I did it without hesitation.  If I felt like staying in, I did so without guilt.  If I missed the last ferry to the island after a night out with friends, I wandered the pier and watched the sunrise from Pike's Place Market until the morning ferries started running again.  If I needed to sleep 18 hours I would, sometimes without taking off my coat or boots - falling face first into my bed. 



Mt. Rainier view from Bainbridge Island



For me, Bainbridge Island was about doing what I wanted and in doing so I found what I needed. 

Having the opportunity to revisit this Island, my Island, 6 years after leaving, I was quickly reminded of how important this place is to me.  And how important it is for me to go back.  It's time.  

-Mand'e