The Truth of the Matter

Her: “Who told you that you were a big woman? You seem pretty normal sized to me. You might want to consider letting go of that idea, especially if it isn’t serving you.”

 ~

Me: “I wish we’d had this conversation much earlier.”

Him: “Why?”

Me: “Because I somehow had the idea that you would be critical of what I believed or thought if my ideas weren’t based in science, and it kept me from telling you things about myself.”

Him: “I tried to disabuse you of that idea. More than once, in fact.”

  ~

Her: “I don’t believe in THE truth. I believe in MY truth, and that my truth is going to be different from others’ truths, even if we’re recalling the same situation or moment.”

  ~

Oh Jesusfuckingchristonastick, invisible audience.

So it turns out that reality IS what you make of it, and over the last couple weeks that’s become so apparent, it’s like someone has taken a baseball bat to my reality and beat it repeatedly until I saw stars through the cracks of what I always believed to be true.

I’ve talked about this a lot, but it turns out that I’ve actually been injecting meaning into conversations that wasn’t there, because finding proof of the reality I had built was much more important than hearing the truth of what the other person was saying.

I recently sat down with a woman who asked me to tell her my story – my life story; what had brought me here, to this point in time. What I told her was basically what was in the book I’ve been writing, in the same way I told it in the book -- a book that I now could care less about publishing.

She listened, quietly and respectfully, and said, “You did a great job. Now, I want you to tell me that story again, but I want you to retell it so that, ever time you chose something different, you claim responsibility and credit for it instead of claiming you were a victim that was forced from one part of your life into another.

“For instance," she said, "Instead of saying, ‘I was drowning in depression and felt like my only option was to move to Panama,’ what if you said, ‘I chose to break a pattern that wasn’t working and move away, and because I am adventurous and resourceful, I knew that it would work out and I’d be able to take care of myself, because I’d done it countless times before.’?”

I thought a long time about it. She sat patiently and waited.

The new story that came out was jilted, lumpy, and hesitant. It took me four or five times before I could say it with any sort of fluency. I could actually feel the new pathways trying to form in my brain; trying to pull out of the paths they’d been in for so long -- paths that had cast me as an unwilling player in this game of life -- and reform me as a courageous woman who had managed to make a monstrous change despite deep fear; a woman who somehow knew under all the other chatter that the unknown held much more freedom than the predictable.

That new story has freed me, invisible audience. Not only that, but many subsequent conversations have made it clear how deeply I had subscribed to the reality of the victim, even as a braver, wilder part of me would sneak out every now and then – but with more and more frequency – grab the reins, and yank them to a new, thornier and incredible path, away from everything that had ever been and into uncharted territory.

Now that I can own my story, I can see that that person was me.

I have realized that I took the words out of peoples’ mouths and twisted them into stunted little beings that would better fit into my idea that I was worthless. I realized that I have discounted the many, many ways I have been shown that I am loved and sought signals of my mundaneness in others’ eyes, looking right past the sparkle that came over them when they looked at me. I refused to see the magic, invisible audience, because there was no way to explain it, and it didn’t fit into an idea of reality that I’d picked up from others; a reality that has nothing to do with how the world actually works for me.

I have a magical existence. What I need shows up when I need it. The people I love show me that they love me in the ways that they know best. When I keep that in mind, I see huge, fragrant gardens where before I only saw dead, barren landscape.

All because someone helped me see that my story was writing my reality, instead of reality creating my story.

Love and choosing your own reality kisses,

Morgan

I Give Up.

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I give up.

I say it in my head a lot. When I’m shaky, exhausted, owing things to people or to myself, I let myself think it. Riding on the tail end of that thought is always another one: you can’t give up.

Let me clear: I’m not talking about ending it all; about pouring my blood out onto the floor, or swallowing something to make all the hurt and the pain go away. When I say I want to give up, what I mean is that there’s a deep, dark part of me that wants to just fucking let go – to say screw it to all I understand to be right, good and moral in the world, pick it up like a piece of electronics, smash it on the floor multiple times until both the tile and the apparatus are no longer recognizable, and then heave it out the window in a fit of rage.

I want to give up. I want to give up the socialization of my gender, of my age, of my role, of my humanity. I’m tired of being told why I’m the way I am by people who can’t hear what’s racing through my head; who have no idea that I have not just taken their words to heart, but swallowed them into the nuclei of all my cells, where they have multiplied like poison into my innards, soaking their way through my flesh.

I can name them like dark eyes in the night, peering at me from the darkness, waiting for my guard to be down so they can run at me full-tilt and tear out my throat, destroy my peace of mind and feast on my very self. They are the rules that I have tried to push away from: the ideas that you must be either mother or career woman; busy or lazy, driven or a failure. I want to chase after them with my sword and my warrior war cry, but the minute I get away from the shelter of my own sanity and run out into the dark after them, their eyes wink into blackness and there is nothing where they once stood, as if I was imagining their stench; their laughter, their very existence.

I want to give up. I want to rip away the fabric of what I have learned and discover what’s underneath. I want to stop taking it for granted that bloodletting kills the infection, and see what feeding the flesh does instead. I want to find the brave, courageous part of me that stands wide-legged with her sword and yells, “Who fucking SAYS that’s the only way to do it? I want you to bring them to me,” and waits, patiently, smirking, as no one is brought forward.

I want to give up. I want to stop gnashing my teeth and wailing that it’s not fair, that I don’t want to do it anymore, that if only someone would listen to me they’d see that I’m not crazy; that world can, in fact, be different than what we are taught that it is. I want to give up needing someone else to tell me I’m right, and just know that I am – know that I know what’s best for me, and if that is threatening to someone else, that actually has nothing to do with me at all.

I want to give up, and I think I’m almost there. Knowing is half the battle, after all, and now I know what it is I want to step out of. I know what expectations I will no longer buy into. I know what ideas I’m casting aside. I am tearing at the scab and willing to see the blood welling up underneath it. I am ok with sporting a scar, if it is one I can show with pride as I say, “See this? This was a battle won. This was a messy yet successful escape. Without this scar, there would not be me…the me I am today, the one that finally gave up.”

Love and given up kisses

Morgan

Rewriting the Rules

I have suddenly and recently realized how much I internalized and followed a set of unspoken rules that in reality make absolutely no sense to me. Suddenly, I have the ability to think something, catch myself in the thought, and think, “Wait a minute, where did THAT come from, does it really serve me, does it have to apply to me, and have I actually found it to be true?”
And you know what, invisible audience? In a lot of cases, the answer is no.
So I made a list of 9 new rules that I’m going to strive to live by that make more sense to me than the unspoken and unconscious ones I've been buying into for so long; rules that haven't served me and have, in fact, made my life less fulfilling or much more difficult than it needed to be.

1. I do not have to work hard for my money.
Last week I wrote about how I don’t need to be so miserly with myself; that it does not actually serve me to deny myself simple pleasures and creature comforts in the name of cheap living. Another realization I’ve had lately is that working does NOT have to be hard. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying that I don’t do my best when I do a job, but at the same time, somewhere I picked up an idea that it’s only worthwhile if it makes you sweat: if it’s long hours, a sacrifice of time away from things you really want to be doing. That’s just not true. Work can be fun and rewarding without being hard – it doesn’t have to be an all-consuming sacrificing mind suck.

There are actually more choices than parenthood or a career, or both, and “having it all” doesn’t mean having to have everything.
I don’t have to focus on my job. I don’t have to be a parent, either. I can have a completely blissful and fulfilling existence, living the very most of every single day and wringing the very life out of my life, without my life having to be defined either by my career or my family. I identify as a writer because writing makes me incredibly happy, helps me process and feels good, but if I never wrote a word that I wanted to make a living from, I could still be a writer, and I would STILL be a functioning, worthwhile part of the world.

I can be my own guru.
I do not have to listen to someone just because they speak with authority or are considered an authority. I can agree with someone’s message and totally disregard it because I hate the messenger. I can decide that a tried-and-true method is not going to work for me, and I can borrow small snippets of many different ideas to make up my own idea of what living a compassionate life of integrity looks like. I can discard any piece of any message that I don’t like. The most important part is that it resonates with what my gut is telling me. Period.

I get to choose my own priorities.
Even if I have nothing better to do; even if I’m totally bored out of my mind; even if I have a gift for whatever task you need done; even if it will only take me 5 minutes; even if I need the money and you’re offering it, I don’t have to do it. EVER. I don’t owe anyone anything: my precious time, energy, skills or abilities. This doesn’t mean that I don’t ever help people, but I don’t ever HAVE to help people, for any reason whatsoever. That means that when I do choose to help people, it’s because I want to, not because I’m manipulated, forced to, or adhering to some deeply unconscious idea that it is my duty as a member of the planet to sacrifice myself for others instead of helping someone out of my own volition and because I want to.

My worth is not diminishing as I age.
This one is pretty deeply ingrained and totally underground, but it’s true: every magazine, advertisement and unspoken mass media message has told me that my worth diminishes with the amount of wrinkles I gain, the amount of gray hair that grows, the more my boobs sag. That’s bullshit. With every day that I learn something new about myself, become more comfortable in my own skin and develop relationships based on what is important to me, the more beautiful I become. The people who can’t see that can’t really see me, and fortunately that invisibility can work to my advantage: I’m not on their radar, and I can spend my time with people who DO see me instead.

I don’t have to respect my elders if they don’t respect me back.
No one deserves the right to be a condescending asshole. It’s true that there are people who know more than I do about many, many things, but that does not give them the right to treat me with disrespect or talk down to me. Respect must be earned, and the idea that we’re supposed to politely listen to people who are older than us for no better reason than that is ridiculous.
On the flip side, I have many, many friends that are older than me. They have already gone through the things that I am currently struggling to wrap my head around, and yet they never tell me that my journey isn’t worthwhile or tell me how I should walk it. Instead, they are wise enough to offer me support, give me advice when I ask for it, and let me do the same thing that they did that brought them to where they are now: figure it out for myself.

I have a right to think the world of myself.
I once had a coworker named Murph. He was old enough to be my dad, and he had a daughter my age. He was telling me about her once – how proud of her he was, how self-possessed she was, and her ability to surround herself with people and boyfriends who valued her for the wonderful person she is – and I asked him what he had done to ensure that kind of self worth.
“All I did was constantly work to boost her self-confidence,” he said. “When you believe in yourself, everything else falls into place.”
If anything has become apparent to me in the last year, it is that I have been crippled by self-doubt. It is only now, after more than 30 years on the planet, that I have finally started to listen to my gut; to think that I might know better than anyone else what is best for me, and to strive to surround myself with people who see me for the beautiful human being that I already am. It feels a hell of a lot better than it ever did to have to humbly deny my abilities, play down my intelligence, interests or personality, to try to not be seen or heard so that the brilliant flame within me wouldn't burn anyone else. No more playing it small. It’s not helping anyone; it certainly wasn’t helping me.

There is nothing needy about needing people.
There is more strength in vulnerability, in opening myself up to others, and in asking for help when I need it than there is in silently trying to suffer through everything and do it all myself. It’s ok to admit that I am sometimes afraid; that I often just need a hug; that I am not an island. If I want human interaction, it’s because I’m human. There is nothing to be ashamed of about wanting to share myself with others who are worth investing time and energy in. There’s also nothing wrong with that being a very small, select group.

And most of all, I have the right to fuck up, over and over again, without having to think less of myself.
Some of the biggest lessons I’ve learned have come from situations that didn’t work – things that I thought I wanted but didn’t; things that I knew weren’t going to work but went through with anyway; ego trips that told me that I had to do whatever for whatever reason if I wanted to consider myself worthwhile.
For me, it’s become clear that striving for perfection leads me away from my humanity, and enlightenment comes in small moments, not in a bolt of lightning where all of sudden I know everything and can do everything right.
To be honest, I hope I always have something new to learn and discover about myself; otherwise the world would get really boring for an introspective person like me. However, I need to remember that just because I haven’t learned a lesson yet doesn’t mean that I have done something wrong – you can’t know what you don’t know, after all. This whole existence – all the moments of intense joy and soul-crushing pain, all the beautiful sunrises and dreary rainy afternoons – is part of the package. There’s no hurry. I will learn as much as I can in this lifetime – no more, no less. The only person I am striving to know more than is the person I was yesterday, and the only one I am now striving to be is the one I will be tomorrow.

Love and new rule kisses,
Morgan

Taking Up Space

A couple of weeks ago I bought a box of Kleenex. Not a knock-off version, not the small box, but a big ol’ box of name-brand Kleenex. You would think that this is hardly worth mentioning, but it has become a symbol of sorts in a drastic shift in perception that I’m still trying to wrap my head around.

I can’t even tell you the last time I bought a box of Kleenex, because ever since I have had control of my own finances I have chosen to skimp and save – why buy Kleenex when toilet paper works just as well? You’re just going to blow your nose into it – or, especially recently, sob into it – then throw it away.

For that matter, why buy half the shit that people do? Nice lotions, hand soaps, aluminum foil, good knives, new shoes, jeans that fit, bras that enhance rather than just suspend breast flesh?

All of these are things that I have denied myself in the past. I can still tell you how much money I spent on Victoria’s Secret bras when I finally broke down and bought a bunch. I feel better when I wear them, but some part of me can still take that amount of money – $200 – and turn it into how long I could have eaten on that same amount, or how many nights in a hostel it would have bought me. To some extent the ability to be a spendthrift is helpful, especially for stretching funds to live longer abroad, but there’s also a point where enough is enough.

Invisible audience, enough is enough.

My dad loved his work as an orchardist, but the orchard never did much more than break even, so when we tore out the trees – still one of the most heart-breaking days of my life – he considered himself a failure, despite years of patient and diligent work and hundreds of bins of beautiful fruit, not to mention the happiness it brought to him to do his life’s purpose. My mom, on the other hand, is an incredible nurse but was always in it for the paycheck – she used it to buy all the creature comforts any of us wanted, but would come home exhausted, spent and hating her job.

I thought that growing up with this difference in career strategies led me to fear seeking my dreams less than I would otherwise (taking my dad’s view) but I think that I internalized some pieces I wasn’t aware of until now. Now, looking at how much I have proudly denied myself in search of my dreams, I think that I learned that you either 1) made money or 2) followed your dreams. I learned that the two sides were mutually exclusive, and that perhaps the only way to know that I was really following my dream was to allow myself to suffer for that time and effort.

It stretches far beyond actual income, however. With this unconscious mindset, I have allowed myself to work for less than I have ever been worth; I have worked for others when some part of me knew it would not ultimately work to my benefit; and I have settled for less than I deserved in both the amount I earned and also the work I did. Some part of me embraced this as part of martyrdom: see how much I’m doing below my capabilities in the name of my dream? See how I’m suffering? See how I embody the starving artist? Because all artists must suffer, you see: it’s the only way to do it; there’s nothing to make art about if you aren’t suffering.

Perhaps it’s because I’ve been sick. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been letting go of so much. Perhaps it’s because of all the soul searching I’ve been doing, but suddenly I have no more patience for denying myself.

I have suddenly realized that although there is pride choosing where I spend my money based on what I really want, it is actually detrimental to deny myself basic comforts and experiences just so I can claim that I live on $800 a month.

I deserve more than this, invisible audience. I deserve to live well, to believe in myself enough to keep searching not just for the type of writing that makes me feel alive, but also to find the way to make that fun, fulfilling and amazing life experience into my life’s work – work that will support me, too. This feels different than making a decision that I HAVE to make money off my writing and more about finding work that makes my heart sing AND brings me a paycheck. On top of that, it is finally deciding that I am WORTH the kind of money that will not just support me, but make me financially stable and comfortable, and living a lifestyle that may not necessarily cost a lot more, but will feel a lot less like denying myself for the bragging rights of living a small existence.

Does this make sense to anyone but me? I’m still trying to wrap my head around what I mean, but I guess that part of it is letting my talents sing instead of hiding them, waiting for someone to accidentally stumble across them. It means taking up the space I have always denied myself –letting go of the idea that I have to hide or apologize for being different, and also, once and for all, letting myself live as largely as I deserve. This isn’t necessarily about living in a mansion, but it IS about being less apologetic for my differences, and embracing the lifestyle that I have nothing to apologize for, and in fact can be proud of. If I’m going to be proud of myself, it’s important for that to be reflected in how I act: buying the jeans that fit, wearing the bras that give me confidence, and wiping my nose with Kleenex, simply because I’m worth the extra effort, the extra time, and the extra money to do so.

Around the same time I bought the Kleenex, I started wearing earrings again. I started wearing my hair down. I got new tennis shoes. I took some effort in my appearance, because I realized that I felt better when I did it, and when I felt better, I acted like I was worth more. And if I act if I’m worth more, I am treated better, not necessarily because other people see me differently, but because I see me differently and in turn I demand what I deserve instead of being apologetic or trying to fade into the wallpaper.

There’s a quote that I keep seeing on Facebook. Of course I can’t find it now, but it basically says that you aren’t doing anyone any favors by playing it small. I guess that’s where I am now. It’s time to take up the space I deserve, and stop playing the humble martyr who gives away all she has in the name of some undefined ideal that she no longer subscribes to, especially since the original subscription was unconscious. Now that I’ve figured it out and given it a name, I can’t abide by the feeling or the lifestyle it has given me: one of self-deprecation, denial, and apology for the smart, sensitive and wonderful person I am. When I’ve seen it in others it’s made me impatient with them; it’s no wonder the same thing in me made me want to punish myself by denying me everything that I have ever been worth, both in terms of connection, intimacy, love, and basic creature comforts. No wonder, invisible audience, I have felt so diminished trying to hide myself.

Until now.

Love and living large kisses,
Morgan

Me, On Being an Empath

My entire life I’ve been told I am sensitive, and very rarely was it presented to me like it was a good thing. Within the last couple years, though, the word, thought and significance of empathy came to my attention; someone called me an empath and it finally prompted me to do a little bit of research about what it meant for me specifically.


Described by Psychology Today:  

Empathy "is the experience of understanding another person's condition from their perspective. You place yourself in their shoes and feel what they are feeling."

What I found astounded me because it described me so well. The layman’s term empathy means being able to feel what another person feels; actually taking it into yourself. This is different than sympathy, where you simply imagine what it must feel like to be or experience something from someone else’s perspective, and perhaps think about a case where you were in a similar situation and how you felt then.



Even though I had known the word empathy before, when I started to look into it and how it applied to me, the more parts of my life came into focus and made sense.

There are many positive parts about being empathic. In general, empaths are good listeners; they’re the people you can talk to when you need support and encouragement. They’re the type of people who are really good at finding the answer to questions like, “I want to surprise my loved one in a way that they would really enjoy. What would they like most?” Because an empath can feel what you feel, they’re less likely to go out of their way to hurt your feelings; they’re better at giving constructive criticism and being able to sandwich suggestions between compliments; they can be soothing and caring individuals and amazing therapists and healers.

In that sense and for an empath who knows how to deal with what they’re receiving, empathy is a powerful gift, much like acute hearing, good eyesight, or a great sense of balance. For the unaware empath, however, these “gifts” can feel like a nightmare that won’t end.

For most of my twenties, I compensated for my oversensitivity by being a rock hard bitch. When that started to dissolve, I became even more sensitive and, especially over the last couple years, I've found it tough to cope with how much I feel, not only with my own emotions but also emotions that I couldn't always attribute to what I personally was going through.

I never realized how tuned into everyone else I was until recently. I would even blog about how the volume seemed to be turned up on everyone else’s needs and ideas while my own voice was barely audible over the din without making the connection. In fact, I have realized that this is the reason I enjoy living and traveling in foreign countries. Even if I speak Spanish fluently, it is not my native language, and therefore I still have the ability to “turn off” my eavesdropping in public places. If someone’s speaking English, especially loudly or emotionally, I can’t help but understand, process and take on. Spanish-speakers, on the other hand, I can tune out, leaving me to a blissfully silent world full of noise.

The way that this has been the most harmful to me is when it comes to saying no or even saying what I think or feel to other people. I have realized that when I am having a conversation with someone, especially when it is obvious that they need something or are in pain, my first response is always going to be what they want to hear most, regardless of what those words – or actions, or jobs I agree to – will do to me, physically, emotionally or mentally. It is my first response because I have picked up on what they need, it becomes my need in the moment, and I want to fix it, partially because I want it to stop hurting them, but most especially because I want it to stop hurting me. (Note to self and others: this doesn’t actually work.)

It was also harmful to me because I would imagine how anything I wanted or needed would affect someone else, and hesitate to say it because I had already felt that pain for them and didn’t want to feel it through them again.

Before I knew this was the case, I had at least finally gotten to the point where I realized that I could not trust the first response that wanted to come out of my mouth when someone asked me for something. Instead of giving an answer in the moment, I now say I will think about it. Then I go home to my quiet space where I live alone and reconnect with what is best for ME underneath all those whirling emotions and ideas that I was caught up on in the moment. Almost always, the answer that reflects most what I want is different from the one that I would have blurted out in the moment.

I’ve been beating myself up for this for years. It is not ok in our culture to not have an instant answer; to not be able to negotiate in the heat of the moment, to not be able to state your needs when asked. It is part of a larger system, you see, which I recently learned was called the paradigm: (once again I knew the word, but never in context to myself) unstated yet understood rules about the way the world works. Or, as Merriam Webster puts it, "A theory or a group of ideas about how something should be done, made, or thought about."

Not only can I pick up on what others want or need, especially if I’m close to them, but I am also extra sensitive to this overarching idea of what I should be doing to be considered a successful part of the machine. This is why it has felt like such an uphill battle with each of the decisions I have made about my lifestyle, and why, over and over again, I have tried to justify myself and my actions: I have been trying to shut out of the ideas of what I should be despite the fact that it seems to be screaming at me in Dolby Surround Sound while I’m trying to hear myself on a cheap ass cell phone with a broken volume button.

A couple months ago, I found the Empath Community. Not only are there like-minded people there, but the woman who founded the site created a survival guide to turn down the volume on others and up on your own voice (it sounds ridiculously simple, but imagine two knobs. One says, “me” and one says, “others.” Turn yours up and the “other” knob down. Practice and practice. Also, create imaginary shields, and think about distancing yourself from anyone else when you need to connect with what you want.)

I almost cried when I started reading through the pages. Not only was I not alone, I wasn’t crazy for feeling this way, and I wasn’t weak for being unable to disconnect from what others wanted or needed, or what the culture as a whole was telling me. It had nothing to do with strength and everything to do with having the tools and believing myself when I realized that the feelings I had and the desire to fix things weren’t always my own. It’s as if my ego was trying to fulfill orders for comfort, help and support and handing them back to my body and soul without looking to see if it was more than they could handle.

There’s a single phrase that has come out of this that has become essential to me: “I believe you.” Before, I would sometimes get a pain in my chest and a panicked feeling that I could not attribute to anything going on in my own life. Now I know it’s someone else’s pain or panic I’m feeling, because I believe me when I know that instead of thinking that’s a crazy possibility. Instead of trying to unpack an emotion that isn’t mine, I let it go. When it seems like a task is small and no big deal and I should be able to handle it, but the little tiny voice in my head says no, I believe it. When my intuition tells me that even though all logic is pointing in the other direction but that tiny voice of mine chirps in to say that she thinks it’s not a good idea, I believe her. With each instance, her voice becomes a little louder, and my ability to hear her and ignore the other ideas and feelings coming at me gets better. Despite all this, I still tell someone who wants something from me that I need to think about it, because it’s still easier to hear myself when I’m alone, and I’ve decided that that’s ok. If I’m going to turn down the volume on the paradigm, I can turn down the volume on that idea too: instead of thinking I’m a failure for not being able to connect to how I feel in the moment, I can let go of that yet another self-worth-crushing idea, because the little voice that is me told me it was ok to do so, and I believe her.

Love and believable kisses
Morgan

Letting Go

When I first moved to Panama nine months ago (!!) I sent an email to an author I knew who told me that after self-publishing his own book, he eventually got to the point where he had to have the majority of the stock destroyed because it didn’t sell.

When he told me this story – as we were sitting at a Farmer’s Market and I was trying to sell my cookbooks – I remember being astounded that he could admit it so easily and without any self recrimination (it was years later, mind you, and he did admit it was a really humbling experience) but I also remember having a sense of envy that he’d been able to let go without it being a sign to him that he had failed.

Somewhere along the road, I started to hate my cookbooks. There are many reasons for this. One, they never made me any money. Two, for the first time in my life I was (and am) in debt because of them. Three, I felt like a fake when it came to talking about wine; I learned a lot about local wine from writing the books, but it was also the part that I needed the most help with, and I felt like a fake pretending that I knew anything. Four, and most importantly, it felt like the books were tying me to North Central Washington when everything else in my body was telling me it was time leave: that my destiny and my heart lay elsewhere. Cookbooks were never what I wanted to write when I quit a corporate job in Bellevue to write a book, but there was a niche and I had the skills to fill it. Even if I didn’t know a lot about wine, I did and do know about layout, design, cooking, project management; I had just spent a year researching the publishing industry for books closer to my heart, and of course I knew how to write and edit. I also knew the people in the local wine industry. All of this made sense, but it didn’t really make my heart sing the way that other writing did.

Before I go any further, let me say that I know this is a skewed perspective. When my first cookbook came out it was invigorating; I was on a high and I loved it. It was only later that the cookbooks began to weigh me down, and that I realized I had veered off of the path where I had originally wanted go. Obviously I learned a lot from writing the cookbooks, and any experience that teaches you what you don’t want is just as important as teaching you what you do want, so I don’t consider it a complete loss. All I am saying is that I am finally processing some things that I pushed down and out of the way in the process of writing the books because what I was hearing and experiencing from everyone else didn’t jive with what I was feeling internally.

Anyway, when I first got to Panama I sent an email to this author, asking him how he had arrived at the point where he could let go of his books and simply move on. He gave me some simple yet profound advice: they will be important to you, until one day they aren’t. That day, his advice implied, you will finally be able to let go.

That day arrived about a week ago. In the midst of being sick, I have started to really look at my life: what I’m still carrying around that doesn’t serve me and the things that I keep to myself that cause me to be alienated. My cookbooks are something that I have wanted to let go of for a long time.

So I did. Without much ceremony besides a post on Facebook and some emails, I put them down. I deleted the Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest accounts that I only had because of them, I started selling them at cost, and I completely let go of what I had been holding onto, because it was no longer important.

Invisible audience, I have not felt this free in a long time.

I’ve been doing some SEO marketing work for a freelancing blog lately, and one of the final nudges I received was from this blog post. It talks about how many of the most successful people in business today never finished college, have never really followed all the rules, and that they know when to let go and move on.

It made me realize that not only was it ok to let go, but it was actually the BEST THING I could do: put down what wasn’t working to make room for something new, something that DOES make my heart sing, doesn’t feel like a drag and will make me money. Not only that, but I realized that with every other big life-changing decision I've made, I have had to leap first, and THEN the net appeared: with my cookbooks I had been waiting to pay off my debt before letting them go, instead of trusting my intuition and past experiences that told me that it was ok to let go first and find another income source to pay off the debt in the new space I'm creating.

It also made me realize that, as much as it appears I don’t follow a lot of the rules, I can actually disregard the rules entirely. I see a counselor here, and many of the conversations we have are comprised of me telling her something that I think is true and her asking gently, “Whose voice is that?”

The number and depth of these “rules” that I have internalized is staggering. I am selfish for moving far away from my family. I am selfish for wanting to take the time to figure out my own emotional issues and try to heal them when I should be focused on a career or starting a family. I am worthless because I’m not making more money. I am unsuccessful because I don’t have more to my name. That if I possess a skill, I am required to use it; if there’s a niche I can fill, then by God, it is my moral obligation to fill it. That there is something wrong with me because I write a blog like this one, where I share the parts of myself that should be kept quiet. There is something wrong with me because I need a lot of alone time; that the thought of the white picket fence “American dream” existence literally makes me want to run; that I will be burned at the stake for admitting that I am not Christian or atheist, but pagan. That no one will love me if I finally let go and admit that there is a growing part of myself that I have kept hidden for too long that is fascinated by a divine feminine power, astrology, the phases of the moon, tarot, energetic healing, and herbal remedies. 

There. I said it. All of it. And you know what? This is not new information. It is simply information that is no longer important to keep to myself. I have finally let go of the idea that I can control anything that anyone thinks about me by hiding the parts of myself that are most sacred for fear they will be trampled on. If you’re going to think I’m a failure because I gave up on my cookbooks, there’s nothing I can do to change that. If you’re going to think I’m loony because I would rather celebrate the solstice than Christmas and because I feel more connected to God, the Goddess or the Universe on a hiking trail or with my feet in a river, then you’re in the wrong place, invisible audience member. I have already let go of you, and you are welcome to let go of me.

I am letting go, and in that process I am making room for better things to come along: opportunities, people and situations that make my heart sing instead of making me want to hide my head in the sand; adventures that energize me instead of those that suck the life out of me and make me feel like I have to hide who I really am if I want to be loved.

So here’s to letting go, and the lightness of my new existence outside the rules.

Love and light kisses,

Morgan

To Barbara, A Year After Your Death

Dear Barbara,

It has been nearly a year since you died, on September 12, one day after the anniversary of 9/11, and five days before my 31^st birthday.

The day before you died, I made a meal for the ashram where we were both staying: squash enchiladas, a variation on the sweet potato enchilada recipe that I made up myself, and that I have served at various times in my life to convey community, comfort, and thanks. I made this meal for the ashram on the edge of the beautiful Kootenay Lake because I was about to leave, and I wanted to show my thanks that they had provided what I needed when I needed it: a place to rest after what had been a really tough year.

And then, in one single hour on a clear night, it became tougher still. I stood next to you as you struggled to breathe, willing the time to pass and also to stand still; willing the ambulance to hurry and simultaneously willing your throat to stop closing up in response to something you ate.

You knew you had severe food allergies; we all knew you did. There was nothing we or you could pinpoint that would have set them off, but it had happened all the same. I was the one standing next to you when you went unconscious; I told you weren’t alone as you gasped for air, and I told the people running in and out of the room trying to help that all you wanted was to breathe; that really there was nothing else that would make you comfortable as we hoped and prayed the ambulance would make it in time.

It didn’t.

In the days following your death, we talked in many groups and instances about you; about how you had already touched people with your gentleness and life; how you were so glad to be there, and how somehow you must have known; that you must have been ready to go on some level.

I listened to peoples’ opinions of this, and I stayed silent, even as tears slid down my face. The truth in that room with you was much different; never in those 45 minutes I spent mostly alone with you did you ever look like you were ready. You fought for every breath you could, and your fight for survival has stayed with me, even now.

It is something I had always wondered at: humanity’s struggle to survive; the desire to cheat death, when it is not actually possible: ultimately, it is a game none of us will win.

When others said afterward that your death reminded them how precious life I was, I nodded in understanding, but that was not the message I took from you. Instead I felt that what you had offered me was voice. At one point, you could not tell anyone that all you wanted was to breathe – not a blanket, not an oxygen mask – and when I seemingly read your mind and conveyed that, you gave me a look that momentarily did stop that clock.

I thought your message to me was that I could be a voice; that I was meant to help others by saying things that they could not say themselves. I thought I was destined to write a book that would facilitate others’ journeys; I thought my role was to take what I had learned and put it out there so that other people could gain strength and wisdom from it.

It is a year later, and I am something like 5,000 miles away from the ashram on Kootenay Lake. I am currently writing that book – editing it now, actually – in Panama, where I fled after realizing that whatever comfort I had hoped to find at home was not ultimately what I was looking for; that the people there that I thought needed my help were not only not interested and didn’t need my help, but that in trying to help them, I was ignoring myself.

It is only now, Barbara, that I think I really understand what our short time together was about. At first I thought I was the one that gave you something larger, something that I dearly wish every person could have: someone to stand next to them at the hour of their death and tell them that they are not alone. The gift you gave to me, however, was tenfold the comfort I gave to you: when I thought you were telling me to be another’s voice, you were telling me that I needed to find my own: that ultimately I was the one who needed saving; I was the one who needed to be heard, and I was the only one who could hear me.

It’s taken a whole year to figure out how deeply my own voice has been buried; how sunk in the mire I had lost my own needs. The book that was once meant to give others strength has instead given me strength: the holes I have wished to fill for others are being filled here, for me, with my own revelations and healing tears.

I am not sure if I’m in a different place than I would have been if you and I had never met, but I do know this: that I am a better person for what you gave to me, and what I gave to you.

Rest in peace, my friend,

Morgan

Writing 101: What's I've learned in 101 Blog Posts

Last week I wrote a blog post without realizing it was the 100^th blog post I had written on Confessions of a Travel Addict. Although I mentioned the big 100 when I posted it on Facebook, in no other way did I bring attention to it in the blog itself. I’ve been thinking about it some, however, and as much as I am not where I thought I would be when I first started the blog four years ago, I have nevertheless discovered many things, especially about writing. So, in honor of my 100 blog posts before this one, here are some things I’ve learned along the way.

Writing is hard, and not in the way I imagined.

Anyone who goes back and looks at some of my first blog posts and then reads some of my last ones will hopefully see what I mean by this. It is not that writing is hard as in sitting down and spilling words onto a page – although that’s not easy, either – it is that writing authentically is hard, sometimes so hard that I find I can’t do it. It is obviously not like this for everyone, but my need to show a vulnerable and introspective side of myself takes courage that I have to muster every time I sit down to write something I’m going to share, and courage again to share it. Writing is hard because, while the words come to me anyway, sharing them is a vulnerable act, and unlike what I always thought, being vulnerable is something I have to choose over and over again. I can’t just decide once that I’m going to do it and voila!, it’s done and easy forever.

Writing takes time.

I mean this in two ways. One, the actual act of writing out what is in one’s head takes time. This may sounds like a “well, duh” statement, but I have found that every time I put an end date or a deadline on my writing, I was killing the project before it started, because I could claim myself a failure for not finishing on time, even as I was trying to gather courage to keep going. The less reasons I have to berate myself the better; realizing that writing takes time is one of them.

The second part of that is realizing that there are many things that can only be learned through experience. When I say that writing takes time in that sense, I mean that I am a better writer today than I was a year ago; if I keep writing, I will be a better writer a year from now than I am today. I cannot rush or hurry this process; I can write every day, but it is the actual passage of time that lends itself to my improvement; time is not slipping away if I am writing, it is adding experience, emotion and credibility to what I have to say.

Not all writing is writing

I think a lot. Maybe more than most. I think a lot about writing. I think a lot about how I would write what I’m thinking or experiencing. And sometimes, I just can’t write or think anymore.

I’ve been stuck on my book, because I’ve been trying to gather courage. I’ve been stuck, and yet I think that it’s important to allow myself the rest before moving ahead. There is nothing more torturous to me than trying to force a solution that is not coming easily, and with artistic expression, forcing something like creativity can turn it into a ugly beast that looks nothing like it’s supposed to. I cannot write what I write with the idea that I must have it out in a certain amount of time; I cannot write with the idea that my life depends on my finishing it within a certain time period. Instead, I have to write remembering that it is being in the present moment with my words that means the most to me; that writing for a future outcome means nothing if all I’m ever focused on is the future.

Sometimes, silence is golden.

Sometimes, invisible audience, I’m really glad that you’re invisible. I have the ability to see the countries where my readers live; I know some of you who read my blog because you’ve told me, but there are others whom I have never heard from that keep the silence, and yet show up every week to see what else I have to say. While some part of me wonders at the lack of feedback, another part of me is glad, because it’s not always easy for me to write what I write here, and knowing that someone is listening and yet not trying to tell me how to change is a balm on a sometimes raw wound that I open to the air here, in the hopes of letting it heal.

Sometimes, feedback is wonderful.

On the other side of that coin, it helps me a lot to know that I’m not alone, and especially to know that I may say something that resonates with someone else. It helps me to know that I am not alone, and that perhaps what I have said has caused someone else to realize that they aren’t alone, either.

The answers are in the minute details.

If there is any single, large and overarching theme that I have learned from writing, it is that the answers come in the small moments. You cannot write a book in a night; you cannot become a best selling author if you lack the courage not just to publish something, but to sit down, day after day, and write like it doesn’t matter what happens to your book. Fighting the fear and the demons is not about one long, drawn out battle with your unconscious fears. It is about getting up every day and taking the smallest steps to combat them: giving yourself 15 minutes to write; giving yourself an hour to run; feeding yourself well and surrounding yourself with people who will cheer you on, not because they are excited about the end product, but because they recognize the beauty, the depth and the relief in the process. It is turning off the idea that writing is a machine that must be fed words daily, and realizing that even if words spill onto the page at the same time every day, the real depth is in the joy felt in holding the pen; in looking up at life from behind the keyboard and knowing, beyond a doubt, that the ability to paint a picture of that world with even a few words is a gift all in itself.

It is knowing that Rome was not built in a day, and that a mountain of sand can be constructed one grain at a time. For me, building that mountain seems to have become the important part, not necessarily what I will see at the top.

Love and learning-along-the-way kisses,

Morgan

The Search for Self Worth

“Crazy people don’t sit around wondering if they’re nuts.”

It’s a line from Proof, the play I’m currently in where I play the older sister to a potentially crazy potential mathematical genius, and daughter to a mathematical genius who truly was crazy. It is my job – my character thinks – to gently or not so gently convince my sister to move to New York now that our father has died, so she can be near me, where I can watch her, take care of her and get her help…because I think she’s crazy.

“I think you have some of his talent…and some of his tendency toward…instability,” I tell her.

I am undermining, condescending and even somewhat manipulative. I talk down to her, tell her what’s best for her, try to interest her in the mundane and materialistic world that I want to pull her into, and I treat her like a child who cannot possibly know what is best for herself, even though she’s 25.

Call it what you want. As of last Friday, Mercury Retrograde ended, which is one of three periods a year of a three-week window where astrologically Mercury appears to be moving backward in the sky. According to astrologists, the ability to communicate effectively moves backwards with it.

Whether or not this is true, it’s been a hell of a couple weeks for me. Not only did I find myself misunderstanding and misunderstood, I found myself fumbling around in my head, trying to figure out what my actual perceptions were and what my ego was insisting was the truth – how I was protecting myself and whether I was simply refusing to take the blame for something – many things – that were or weren't my fault.

I know that seems vague, but really the issues at hand weren’t what was at the root of the problem, it was my feeling about them. Was there something wrong with me? Why was I finding it so hard to find my footing; to acknowledge my own role in these situations and yet still be able to recognize that despite my faults I was an ok human being; that these faults did not completely define me?

Let me be clear here: I am not hearing voices, I do not see people who are not there, and I have yet to have anyone tell me that I might actually be courting mental illness. Yet in my own head, I was the sister that I talk down to in Proof. I am Catherine, struggling to find footing, vacillating between truth and fiction, between fighting for normalcy and fighting against lunacy, and finding both sides to be a slippery slope. I found a part of me telling me that there was no way what I was saying or thinking or even feeling could be true; that I am incapable of anything; that I am, in fact, crazy for thinking that my life might work the way I’ve been living it: that it is crazy to believe that I can live a happy productive life in any way, shape or form that I choose.

In the last week, I’ve found myself stuck there: my brain insisting that I am wrong, worthless, while my heart screams that the world is what I make of it; that the world I want does exist, and even if it’s not coming about in the easiest and most comfortable way possible, it is coming about nevertheless.

The other day I went for a long walk that turned into a series of short jogs interspersed with walking. I’ve been wanting to run for awhile; run, or swim: some more active form of exercise than the long periods of walking I’ve been doing. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that my epiphany came about as the result of the release of some endorphins, and it reminded me that it’s my job to take care of myself and do the things that make me feel good, physically and mentally. I was fighting with these two sides of myself as I came back up a long hill, trying to figure out what the problem was, and finally, even though it’s been there all along, even though I had been staring at it in the face, alluded to it constantly and even acknowledged it to some extent, the answer finally showed itself in full glory: I think I’m crazy because I don’t think that I am believable: because I don’t believe me. And I don’t believe me because I am lacking the self worth to believe that I could possibly have anything good to say or offer, even to myself; because, unlike what I had previously believed, low self worth doesn’t mean only that I am lacking in the confidence to know that I are lovable regardless of what I am doing, it also means that I don’t think that my ideas, thoughts, feelings and intuition are worth as much as everyone else’s...not even to me.

(Writer's note: before you panic that I am losing all perspective, please read my last post, Writer's Tourette's, about how I write about my feelings as they happen as a way to release them.)

By realizing that self worth is at the root of the issue, I have finally realized that the answer is not in asking again and again if I am justified in feeling the way I do, but instead in taking the steps to develop the self worth that will help me know that at a deep visceral gut level, without having to ask.

I can now look back at a lot of my life and see it: see this lack of ability to trust myself in situations where I might have been right; perhaps not in how I handled it, but right at least in my feelings about the situation in the first place. I would cast about for the opinions of others and ask them if my view or feeling was worthwhile; made sense; didn’t seem crazy. Every time, they said yes: that I had a reason to feel as I did, that I was right to take the step I had taken, that I had a right to my own happiness. And yet, I still found it hard to believe.

This is not to be mistaken with an egotistical need to always be right. I think for most of my twenties I angrily insisted that I knew the right way that everyone should live and would tear someone down for disagreeing with me. I don’t think I’m there anymore…most of the time, anyway.

I would like to think that the phase I have been in -- where I am struggling to see where the bullshit lies and what I actually believe -- is a step between the angry, Always Right Morgan and the Confident Morgan who can fully accept responsibility for what she did wrong, but also know what she did right, and why neither of those things really matter in the long run of who she is, only how she acts and evolves.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: I’m a work in progress. What I know today is that something set me free on that walk: it was knowing that the answer was no longer in asking if I am crazy, it is asking what I can do to improve my self worth to the point that I know when an idea I’m entertaining is the stupidest thing I could possibly act on, the best way I could handle the situation -- not for anyone else, but for me -- or somewhere in between. 

It is being able to trust the gut feeling and the logic, and knowing that it will work out for me if I follow it, because my ideas, my gut feelings, are worth just as much as everyone else’s, and because – ultimately – they need to be worth even more to me.

Love and self worthy kisses,

Morgan

A Matter of Perspective

Last week I wrote about how uncomfortable I sometimes feel when I don't know what role I'm supposed to play in a dynamic or a relationship; what, specifically, I am supposed to give. I got a lot of really great and supportive emails from friends, telling me that they have always simply enjoyed my company, and also that my description of my new (straight) male friends was hilarious, since I basically stated flat out that I very rarely considered the kind of cooperative, thoughtful and respectful attitude my new friends have to be normal compared to my other male friends.

But you know what? That's a lie. The more of my friends I thought about, the more interactions I remembered, the more I realized that it's not true: that for a really long time, I have been surrounded by men that are respectful, capable and helpful, but I was too busy focusing on the the douche bags to notice.

In a mass communication theory class in college, the teacher spoke of The Marketplace of Ideas: essentially, every idea, outlook and point of view is available for us to peruse, but we tend to go looking for information based on what we already believe to be true, therefore strengthening our case and proving that we're right.

It doesn't have to do with just men, either. Recently I was discussing codependency with a friend of mine, and she told me that she knew she was codependent when she realized that if 100 people told her how wonderful she was and one person told her she was stupid, she would believe, listen to and internalize what that one person had said because it came closest to what she thought about herself in her own mind. It made me realize the same thing: that for all the wonderful, supportive, helpful friends I have, having a conversation with one person who misunderstands me will send me into a tailspin of self-doubt and disbelief. Because I was so focused on being afraid to hear that kind of feedback, I would find myself much more capable of glossing over all the great things people had to say and instead waiting, flinching, for the blow that would come and prove I was right -- that no one understood or supported me.

I saw what I wanted to see, invisible audience; my reality was the one I created. Not only am I guilty of judging all men as equally incapable, I would take the capability out of their hands to better prove my point: I would take a capable man and reshape his role with my disbelief that he could possibly be anything but a video-game-playing meat-no-vegetable-eater, then gloat with glee when he became what I told him he was...right before I lamented self-righteously that there were no good men out there.

For all the great friends' boyfriends and husbands, all the amazing fathers out there that I know, one idiot douche bag who won't take out the garbage was enough to send me running to the hills, screaming that all men were like children and not a single one could put the toilet seat down to save his life, let alone wash a dish or avoid peeing all over the seat. 

I don't think it will come as a surprise when I say this has been a tough week for me. It's tough to realize that you've been making your life harder than it needs to be, and I've been having a lot of those realizations lately. Two small pieces this week made it hit really close to home. One, a Panamanian friend of mine asked me if I had left a boyfriend behind when I came here. "Wow, you must REALLY like to be alone," she said when I answered no: no, I hadn't had a boyfriend when I left; no, I did not have one here. The second came the next day, when an emotional man talking about his alcoholism said that his daughter had told him, "Dad, you're supposed to raise me, not the other way around."

I had to stop myself from sobbing -- stop myself from letting the hard knot in my chest over my heart rise up into my throat and come out in a keening wail. At first I didn't even know why it hurt so badly, and then I realized why: I don't actually want to be alone, but in the reality that I had created in my own head, my only choices were be alone, or care for a man who was less of a man and more like a child: in my own head, there was never any equality or autonomy; instead, all I did was give, and all he did -- whoever he was, the poor pre-programmed sap -- was take.

Someone was recently talking to me about the idea that the Universe will give you what you need, if you just ask for it. This person was talking about what a load of crap that was -- that it was delusional and ridiculous. While I don't necessarily agree with him, I am also unsure how much of it is actual serendipity, and how much could be a simple change in perspective. If you believe there are jobs, you'll look for a job like there's one out there for you -- leading you to a job that you optimistically think could be the one. If you think that you'll never be happy, you won't be, because you'll be so busy focusing on the reasons you're not happy that the potential for happiness may walk right by.

Most importantly for me, if I am focused on what is missing, I'll have to focus on the people that it's actually missing from. With that sort of concentration on the problem, I'll never see the responsible, respectful, mature and toilet cleaning solution, even if he's staring me in the face; even if he's offering me a scrub brush as if it were an olive branch.

Love and perspective kisses
Morgan

Mountains Out of Molehills

I have recently befriended some of my neighbors that live down the hill. Amongst their defining characteristics, they are all expats like me – although they hail from various parts of the world – they’re all men about my age, and they have fantastic potluck/dinner parties.

One in particular is a great cook, but the rest of them are great at asking if they can help with something: the first time I went over there for a Mexican cooking night, the dishes were scooped off the counter and washed as they were dirtied; the tasks I needed done were done without complaint and even with some enthusiasm, and the conversation – covering everything from living abroad to podcasts on NPR – was so enthralling that soon six hours had passed before I even noticed. I don’t think I’m totally off base at this point to say that these men are STRAIGHT. Sorry guy friends, but this sort of helpful, multi-tasking behavior is not necessarily something that I expect from you; considering that these men calmly discussed how other people in Boquete had assumed they were gay, too, I don’t think my astonishment is that out of hand.

Here’s the thing: every time I go to this house and my contribution is a dish I’m asked to make while I’m there, I bring a recipe. I bring a recipe because, despite the fact that I consider myself a “concoctionist” and therefore make things up as I go along for the most part, there is something about being surrounded by people good at what they do and comfortable with who they are that makes me incredibly uncomfortable.

This isn’t the first time this has happened. On my first date with my ex-boyfriend, we decided to make dinner at my house. He took on fish tacos, and I made a recipe out of my book, because I was too nervous to just throw things in a bowl and trust my ability to have it turn out for someone I was trying to impress. That night, Isaac asked me for my opinion on the pico de gallo he’d just made. It was delicious. I told him it might need more lime, because suddenly I had panicked, and couldn’t figure out if the right answer was to say it was great or to try and improve it. He very respectfully disagreed with me, and we ate it as is – truth be told, it was already perfect.

I remember telling someone about this first date later; about how insecure I had felt cooking with the host of a cooking show, even if that’s how we’d originally first met: because I had just published my SECOND cookbook, for crying out loud, and he had interviewed me for his show.

“Morgan, you’re one of the best cooks I know,” this friend said when I told her the story. “How could you possibly be intimidated by someone else’s cooking?”

I’ve been thinking a lot about this, because of how I’ve found myself feeling in the presence of my neighbors. It helped that that first night we started discussing how one of them – the really fantastic cook, actually – had healthy enough self esteem that anyone could tell him pretty much anything about himself, good or bad, and he would simply register the information without tying it to how he felt about himself, for better or for worse. Tell him he had just made the best batch of carnitas ever, and he’d probably agree with you. Tell him that you thought he’d overcooked the steak, and he’d shrug his shoulders and move on.

 I am not like that. In fact, I have found the reason that I often feel so uncomfortable in the company of these men is because they expect nothing from me but my friendship: I do not have to be the best cook there – and to be honest, I’m not – I do not need to wow anyone with all my travels abroad, because they’re just as well-traveled as I am, and I’m not even the only one fluent in Spanish.
And you know what? This is really scary for me. If I’m not impressive to someone, then what am I? If I can’t offer something to them that they don’t already have, how could I possibly be worth anything at all?

I know how ridiculous this sounds on a very basic level. I am not totally devoid of awareness of what I can offer to a new group of friends in terms of my personality or my characteristics. However, it’s brought up a very important issue that I had already been working on: if you take away or minimize my accomplishments, I struggle to believe I’m worth anything.

The second summer I lived in Mexico, I had a conversation with a woman who pointed out to me that even lazy people deserved love. My immediate, visceral response says everything: “NO,” I thought, “No, they don’t.” That means that somewhere in there, somewhere not quite hidden anymore, I don’t feel like I’m worth love if I’m not accomplishing something. If I’m just there to enjoy myself, if my only role is to be me, to know that I am worthwhile regardless of what I have or haven’t accomplished, I feel adrift and unable to find my footing. If I’m not something to someone else, I often feel like I am not anything at all.

Thankfully, aside from eating delicious food and having fun interesting company, my time with my neighbors has become good practice. I feel uncomfortable, but not necessarily in a bad way: I feel uncomfortable because I’m trying on a new skin in their presence. It doesn’t quite fit yet, but like some of the best shoes I’ve ever owned, I have to break it in before it will truly feel comfortable. As I said last week, if I want my life to be different than it’s always been, I have to do something different than what I’ve always done.

So here’s to different; to growing pains, and to new friends who need nothing more from me than me. Most importantly, here’s to being comfortable with that.




Love and still uncomfortable kisses,
Morgan

The Pattern Part 2

Author's note: I wrote this whole post without having realized that I already wrote a post about my pattern this month. They are radically different, come to different conclusions about why I do what I do, and yet ultimately both are important parts of my pattern and have led me to make the same decision. Understanding them and how they fit together is slowly leading me to a better understanding of myself. Yes, to some extent they may be arguing opposite sides of the same point, and yet that is the beauty of being human: not always hanging on the logical, and instead reacting to and living with emotional responses.

Anybody who knows me knows my pattern; I’ve written about it, talked about it, and lived it for a really long time. Save up a bunch of money. Often, sell a car or the promise of a first-born child for extra cash. Pack everything into a ridiculously small (for the amount of time I’ll be gone) or ridiculously large (since I have to schlep it myself) backpack, depending on how you look at it. Go. Adventure. Peruse. Find the beauty and excitement in each new day in a new place. Be wowed by simple differences, by people with different cultures and practices; eat new foods and stand on the tops of new vistas or swim in new lakes, rivers and oceans.

One of the new rivers I've found nearby to swim in.

Often on purpose, I then take this to an extreme, in an attempt to suck every last endorphin, pleasure and moment of joy out of it. I call myself a travel addict, and this is why: I go seeking the hit, overload on the hit the way you would a meal that’s just too good to stop eating, and wind up comatose and lamenting your inability to know when to say when. I do this on purpose so that when I go home, the everyday will be welcome; the lack of new and exciting will come with a sense of peace, and I’ll be able to work on settling in without having to listen to the small voice in the back of my head that says, “But, I like it out there in the world.”

This is perhaps not really that big of a confession to make anymore, but my pattern was all about going to get what I needed and hoping, desperately, that this time it will be enough: that the 3 months backpacking through Australia would exhaust me enough that I would never need to do this again; that diving in the underwater caves on the Yucatán was something so amazing that it would tide me over for the rest of my life; that a summer in a hiker’s hut in the Alps working for a quickly degenerating alcoholic and beautiful views above the clouds from the summit would help me to realize that what I really wanted and needed was what was waiting for me at home: the chance to live a normal life, where these adventures are only part of the package, not the whole shebang.

I know, it sounds ridiculous to even say it. It sounds ridiculous to think that I could saturate my need for the unknown and the new adventure once, and never have to do it again. It sounds ridiculous, and yet somewhere in there, I thought it was the only way to do it, based on one small assumption: that I could not support my travel habit if I didn’t live in the States and have a job that would pay for it.
I kept coming back because I thought I had to; that that’s where the money was made. I kept coming back because I believed what everyone kept saying and what was implied: that there’s no way to make a living outside the States, that there’s no way to make a living without benefits, 401K’s, that life is not worth living without the creature comforts that are wanted and expected in the States. Ok, no one said that last one to me, but it’s apparent in the everyday there. In Boquete, I have seen perhaps one stroller; most women carry their children on their hips, without diaper bags. Most Panamanians don’t have cars, and therefore the public transportation – while fun, colorful and entertaining – is much more advanced than in a town of the same size in the States. It’s true that you can live on a lot less down here, but you also need less: there are fewer smartphones, two-car households, new fancy anything, multiple heavy bags of vegetables for sale at the local markets for more than $6. It is a relief to me because I live better here on less money, with fewer gadgets and a simpler way of life, and, despite what I’d always heard and always said, I’ve found work: more than I can do, and more than enough to sustain me while also giving me my time to write and continue to explore; jobs that could go with me if I left.

I was always looking at my pattern the wrong way, invisible audience. I thought the answer would come in figuring out how to fit into an American society; in getting a job that didn’t eat the life out of me, despite the fact that anything revolving around working for someone else outside of my own hours always has. I thought that my travels were a way to recharge, and yet I could never understand how people thought they could rejuvenate in the two-week window they would get a year at a corporate job. I had it all wrong not just because I was trying to work for someone else, but because I was trying to live a life I had never really wanted.

I am blessed, however, with an inability to stay in any single situation for a long amount of time if I am unhappy, and therefore I would escape again – even as I berated myself – almost every year, searching once again for the joy that I always found with little more than a backpack, a pair of tennis shoes and something to write in. I had my pattern wrong because I always believed people when they told me I was escaping, when in reality I kept running TOWARD my future, my joy, and my happiness, only to find it, get a hit and decide that I now had the strength of character to go back and try again: try to fit into a culture and a way of life that had never spoken to me, that I found confining and chain-like.

Even though I decided it awhile ago, and, in fact, on some level knew it before I left, I have realized that breaking out of my pattern has nothing to do with ending my desire to be abroad. Instead, it has to do with finally letting go of the idea that I am supposed to fit in the American box. Breaking my pattern has nothing to do with going back to a life that I ultimately always want to escape from. It has everything to do with running toward the life I have always wanted without apology, regret, or looking back. It has to do with closing the door once and for all on all the ideas I’ve had on the way I’m supposed to live, and finally wholeheartedly embracing who I’ve always been, and the truth that most people probably knew about me before I did. That’s right, invisible audience: breaking the pattern has little to do with going back, and everything to do with embracing the new adventures.

This morning as I sat outside in the yard, drinking local organic coffee and writing in my journal, a line came to me that I can't get out of my head:

If I want something different from what I've always had, I have to do something different than what I've always done.

You guessed it: I’m staying.




Love and new life kisses,
Morgan

Asking for Permission

Not long ago, I sent an email to a friend, and referred to her as a writer. She replied and said she was flattered; that she doesn’t consider herself one yet. I replied back, telling her that of COURSE she was a writer. Of COURSE.

What she may not remember was a moment in 2010 when she and I had the same conversation, but I was on the opposite end. I was just about to publish my first cookbook, and I was trying to decide if I had done enough of the work – after all, I just compiled the recipes, most of them weren’t mine – to be called an author. And, if I wasn’t the author, what would I say on the last page about me? “About the Compiler”?
She did a search on Amazon, and came back with her results. I was an author. I may not remember correctly, but I believe that what she said was something along the lines of “You’re an author, toots.”

It took a lot to get there, but I now call myself a writer. I put it on foreign customs information; in profiles I fill out; I even put it down as my occupation when I got an eye exam before I left the States and ended up selling a book because of it. It took me a long time to get here, but it’s not the only thing that I am, and there are many things that don’t feel comfortable to call myself yet; one of them is author. It may feel like splitting hairs, but for me it has felt like an important one to split. I realized why not long ago: I am waiting for permission.

Permission. I have a degree in print journalism, I have written two books that are published and several more that are not. I write every day, and yet some part of me is waiting until I have published something wildly popular – like a bestselling novel – before I call myself an author. It’s a moving target, you see: no matter how much I strive toward a goal, I always find myself only halfway there, waiting for someone else to tell me what I already know I am.

This isn’t my only example. I don’t call myself a chef because I’ve never gone to school. I don’t call myself a Spanish teacher because I don’t have a teaching degree. I don’t call myself an expert in how to create the life of your dreams, because there’s no degree for that, and because I haven’t quite figured it out myself yet, even if I have started to compile the steps through years of trying to figure it out. I am waiting for permission, you see, and I have just stumbled upon a realization: I’ve been waiting for permission from the wrong people.

It all has to come from me, you see. I cannot wait for someone else to tell me what I am. I cannot wait for all the markers that apply to doctors or lawyers to be applied to writers, authors, life coaches, or adventurers. Even if I do all these things well, I have been shying away from calling myself anything that would cause someone to say, “Wait a minute, what school did you get your degree in travel addiction from?” and I would have to defend myself. No more.

My friend is a writer. I am an author, because I say I am, and because in the end, it’s me that has to believe it. I am also an inner voice coach, an adventure coach, a life of your dreams cheerleader, a Spanish coach, and a damn good cook. I am none of these things because someone gave me a certificate that said them; I am all of these things because I say I am, and I’m the only one I need to ask for permission to call me whatever I am, and whatever I want to be.




Love and authored kisses,
Morgan

The Four Stages of Change

“I had a gall bladder attack today – the worst one I’ve had in a really long time.”
I was sitting in a hotel lobby talking to my new friend Judy, a naturopath from the States who I was just about to make some phone calls to Colombia for. We trade a fair amount of things between us: Judy gives me advice on how to monetize my books and my website, and in return I give her Spanish lessons. I help translate for her, and she tells me the fastest way to get over the flu (lots of sunshine, rest and Vitamin C on the hour). I asked her about my gall bladder because I needed help: it wasn’t the first time I’ve had pain, but it was the first time in a long time, and it seemed to have come out of nowhere and taken me by surprise.
“Ok,” she said. “Do you agree that physical pain has emotional components?”
I thought back to the 40 pounds I gained without an ability to stop while I dated a man who sucked the life out me; I thought about the cough I had for 9 months while dating the same man. More recently, I thought about the stomachaches that had told me under no uncertain terms that I was in the wrong place, that had ultimately led me to where I was today, in a beautiful little house in the mountains that I love.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I agree.”
The gall bladder, Judy said, is tied to bitterness. It is also closely tied to the liver, which is tied to anger. An important part of healing, she went on, is to figure out what I have been bitter and angry about, either in the past or now, and work through it. Although she also gave me advice on how to treat the symptoms – lemon juice in my water, cutting back on high fat and greasy foods, etc. – it was her advice about processing emotions that really got to me, because it was something I had never heard before – related to my gall bladder, anyway.
I write in my journal every morning, so not long after that I sat down and thought about what was happening when I first started having gall bladder attacks. It was almost a year into my year of trying to get published; I had picked up a part-time job, and I was thinking a lot about whether I wanted to write my wine-pairing cookbooks. The money I had saved was dwindling, and my friends were telling me I didn’t have a job, even if I wrote, researched publishing and otherwise did something related to writing every single day. Bitter? I’ll say I was bitter. At the time when most of my friends were settling into career tracks and thinking about starting families, I was poor, struggling to follow my dream and yet unable to see where it would lead me. Sometimes I seemed to be the only one who believed in me, and even that wasn’t a guarantee.
I wrote about all this, and realized how deep it went; how many things I was angry and bitter about at that point. Unfortunately, though, the bitterness and anger didn’t stop there. I thought I had processed it, and within a week my gall bladder pain started to disappear, but in its place came something else: a huge wave of anger.
I suppose in retrospect it is inevitable. Before I came to Panama, I thought a lot about how to explain my need to be here, and lamented the fact that no one understood. Once I got here, I stopped worrying so much about it, and instead began to realize how wonderful my life could be when I followed my heart. Third, I started to focus on making major changes to the decisions I made so I would attract the kind of people who would lift me up instead of bring me down.
Really, I should have seen the next phase coming: the phase where I get absolutely pissed at anyone who’s standing in my way.
This doesn’t even need to be someone who is physically blocking the aisle to the grocery store, standing between me and the chocolate. I have found myself angry at anyone who doesn’t understand me, who doesn’t seem to hear me, who acts on my behalf when I have not asked for their help; the internet when it doesn’t cooperate; the men who want to date me despite their wives and girlfriends; the people who want me to volunteer, to translate for them, who don’t smile at me, or the men who whistle at me. Most of all, though, I am angry at myself.
I can recognize that it’s just a phase, but it’s just a phase the same way that you can assure a woman that the pain of childbirth will end, but that knowledge will not necessarily help in the middle of a contraction. I know in a logical part of my brain that one day I will not be as angry, and yet for now, it seems important to acknowledge this anger for what it is, and what it is supposed to be: a lowering of the bullshit bar; a sudden inability to take anymore shit from anyone.
Yes, I am over-swinging on the anger meter, but I refuse to try to talk myself down. I have done it for too long: placated, accepted, acquiesced, submitted. Although I am sure that some of you would not agree, believe me when I say that I have walked away from encounters countless times in my life, cursing my inability to speak up on my own behalf, and trying to quell my impotent rage.
I can’t do it anymore.
I cannot give anymore. I cannot give away all my energy, all my needs, because someone else has decided they need them. I cannot make excuses for others, and I cannot excuse them when they are rude to me, or thoughtless. After I put down the feeling I had that I must put everyone else’s needs before my own, I have found my own needs rising to the surface at lightning speed, spilling over the sides and flooding the room. It may not look different from the outside, but from the inside I am boiling, and I’m glad.
After my relationship with Mr. Add-40-Pounds ended, I wrote a blog post about how I wished that someone would stand up for me. I didn’t mention it there, but it was my ex-boyfriend that I wished would have acted on my behalf instead of his. Now, I am incensed that anyone would assume to know what I want more than I do; I am outraged at the thought that anyone else could make up my own mind for me. It may be just a phase, but it’s an important one: after all the grief, the fear, the questioning of whether I had enough strength to do it myself, I have found the answer: I do, I can, I will.
Don’t worry, invisible audience. I am sure that soon I will get my equilibrium back; that I will have less moments of envisioning I am slapping someone upside the head. What I hope as well, though, is that I keep a little bit of this edge, specifically the part that absolutely will not accept less than I deserve anymore. First I longed for it, then I found what it was, and now I am willing to fight anyone who will not let me have it. I don’t need to keep the archers on the castle walls, but that sure as hell doesn’t mean I’m going to let just anyone into my fortress anymore. Instead, I’m going to choose more carefully; create a vetting process, and trust myself: if I know it won’t wholeheartedly serve me, then why on earth would I let it in?

Love and anger phase kisses
Morgan