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

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

A Year in Review

A year ago almost to the day, my boyfriend and I broke up. I had quit my job that had seemed like a perfect fit because it was part-time with benefits just a month before, and although many people didn’t know it, my family was struggling with my dad’s depression, which was the worst it had ever been in my lifetime, and most likely the worst it had ever been in his, too.
If you had told me that a year from then I would be living in a beautiful mountain town in Panama, about to perform in two one-act plays and 80,000 words into a book I’ve been wanting to write for years, I would have wept with relief, even if I didn’t believe you. This time last year was the toughest time I’ve probably ever lived, and it has become a central theme in the book I’m writing.
Last weekend I spoke to my dad on the phone, and he asked if there were parts of the book I didn’t want my parents to read. I said yes, but that it wasn’t for the reasons he might think.
“I can’t tell my story without telling part of yours, and I’m worried about what you might think of what I have to say,” I told him.
“Well, I’m not afraid of the truth,” he said. “It’s no secret that I was really sick, and I would hope some good comes out of it – that maybe you learned something from the experience.”
It was exactly what I needed to hear.
Even as it has become obvious that this book is most importantly a processing of the last year of my life, it has also become apparent that the story is not over: that there is more to learn. I am continuing to write it, not about the past anymore, but about every day that I live here, everything I learn about myself: where I've come from, and where I want to go. I’m not sure when I’ll reach a good ending, but I just have to trust that I’ll know it when I see it.
An important part of the journey, however, is gathering the courage to share some of the most painful parts.
Below is a letter that I wrote to my dad last October – when he was already MUCH better than he was at this time last year. I share this partly to gather the courage to share my story, and also to celebrate. I’ve come a long way in a year, and truth be told the mileage from home is the least important part.

Dear Dad,

I can’t keep the silence any longer. It is excruciating to me to see you in pain. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have a child, considering the powerlessness I feel that you are my parent and there is nothing I can do to make you better.
For as long as I can remember, my universe has been shaped by your depression. This fact of life was discussed in the family, but not outside of it. You wanted to wear your anonymity like a cloak of invisibility, but when I borrowed it – which was often – I wore it like a badge of honor, especially because you wore it so well: so bravely, so stoically. Few of my friends could claim a depressed father, even if, at that point, your depression was held in check by medications that no longer work.
Do you realize, Dad, how inextricably we are linked? When I fled to a yoga retreat center in Canada this summer, you asked me why.
“Is it the money?”
“No, it’s because of you, Dad.”
“Me?!?” you exclaimed, as if you existed in a vacuum; as if our family hasn’t been battling implosion as we helplessly watch you suffer.
I am not without resources, thank goodness, and they have told me in many ways and under no uncertain terms that there is nothing I can do to empower you more than to simply live my own life and love you for who you are, regardless of how you feel. I am to trust you to your own path, as you have trusted me to mine.
I can know this to be true with all the intuitive fibers of my being; I can know I am attached to my laundry list of ideas to banish your depression and I want them to work, but there is no guarantee. I am just one in a room of many voices, clamoring for your attention, wanting to be heard, insistent that I know you better than all the other people you see for their professional opinions.
I know my role, but I want you to know: if it were in my power, if I could change it, fix it, or take it away, I would do it. I would not hesitate for a single moment, if it meant you would never wake up depressed again.
Do you know that watching you struggle is terrifying, horrifying, painful? Every time I talk to you and you say you don’t feel better, that you feel worse, that you’re anxious, or afraid, I want to hunt down a physical version of your illness and cut it to pieces and watch it die a slow, painful death so that I can know it has suffered even a little bit for the vast amount you have endured on its behalf.
You cannot see out of the hole you’re in; even when we assure you that you’re improving, that the treatments are helping, that you are better, your shoulders stay drooped, your spirits stranded, your eyes downcast. What I wouldn’t give to make you smile; a smile that would lift the corners of your mouth and cause you to laugh at the absurdity of it all, of your life, of the little problems that you used to remind me meant nothing, but now weigh you down like cement shoes.
I may think I have the answers for you, Dad, but they are my answers applied to your questions. Until YOU find the answers to your questions, there is only one thing I can do: stand next to you, hold your hand, and tell you that I love you; that I always have; that I always will. Because I do; I always have, I always will.

Love and a whole year of 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

You Can’t Know What You Don’t Know

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Last summer I was working in the kitchen at an ashram in British Columbia, and I got put in charge of hard boiling a bunch of eggs. Someone explained to me how to do it, but I misunderstood, and basically didn’t cook them long enough, then didn’t test one to see if it was done. All of them came back to us from the guests, soupy and raw.

Every time someone mentioned those damn eggs in the kitchen after that, I would leave the room crying. I don’t eat hardboiled eggs, so I’d never made them before, and since I thought I was doing it right, it didn’t even occur to me to crack one open. It was supposedly a fool-proof recipe, but I didn’t do one vital step: put the eggs in the water first, THEN bring it to a boil; once it’s boiling, set the timer for eight minutes.

I beat myself up for days, and beat myself up again whenever we were having hard-boiled eggs and the subject of the raw batch came up. I was much harder on myself than anyone else was on me: the cook in the kitchen that day took responsibility and forgave me; the person in charge of the kitchen was surprised when I brought it up as something that I was still mortified about months later. I was hard on myself the way that I have always been: I was beating myself up for not knowing something that I didn’t already know.

Yes, I should have tested an egg. However, the bigger problem is not even what happened, but how I continued to berate myself for not knowing something I had never been taught. It seems that even though I learned how to hard boil eggs, I am still working on the bigger lesson: accepting that I can’t know something until I learn it, and that  sometimes it’s not an easy lesson.

For years I have been beating myself up for things that I could only learn through experience: that I am not happy in 9-5 jobs; that I need more space than most; that I can’t speak fluent Spanish until I’ve misspoken and embarrassed myself over and over and over again. However, the biggest one that I have learned recently is that I cannot know what the right living situation is until I’ve tried it.

I am getting ready to move for a third time since coming to Panama. For various reasons the places that I have moved into have not been the right places. The hardest part about this for me is that it seems like a great idea when I am planning it out, and yet something isn’t right when I start to settle in. If I were the only one involved in these decisions it would be easier, but it tears me apart to let someone else down. The same thing happened when I went back to Wenatchee after spending the summer serving undercooked eggs to yogis in Canada: I thought Wenatchee was where I wanted to stay, until I was there and I realized it wasn’t.

This ties into a bigger realization that I have had that I try to plan for every eventuality in advance. Although sometimes this can be helpful – like carrying jumper cables in a car – sometimes it limits me, because I am always planning for the worst possible scenario. It limits me because I will only enter a situation if I can guess the outcome, then I beat myself up if the outcome is not one I predicted, and have made plans for.

I miss out on so much this way, invisible audience! How can I fully step into the adventure I am living here if I expect myself to know in advance what I want, when I haven’t ever been in this situation before? How much do I miss if I’m not willing to let myself learn the process without judgment along the way?  A lot. The answer is A LOT.

A friend’s mom told me once that there is a concept in yoga called neti neti. Although when I look up the actual meaning it’s not exactly what I understood when it was explained to me, I nevertheless took much comfort in the original explanation. She told me that neti neti means “not this, nor this;” that the only way to find what I am is by figuring out what I am not.

This is most likely a life-long process, and yet it applies first and foremost to today. Today, I know more than I did yesterday about what I want and need. Today, I am choosing to use that information to build a life that feels comfortable for me. Today, I am working on not berating myself for picking out a brick for my home and hauling it all the way up the hill to put in the foundations only to find that it doesn’t fit. Instead, I will be grateful for the knowledge that the brick gave me, and know that it’s all part of the process of learning to build.

Love and learning kisses

Morgan

Baby Steps Still Propel You Forward

I can be an impatient person. I see an end goal, a final project, and all I want is to have it DONE. Although I have the ability to also foresee the many, many steps involved in getting to the end of something, it is often hard for me to calmly take each step, knowing that eventually what I want will materialize before me, not with a *POOF* as if out of nowhere, but instead out of the many small steps I have taken in the right direction.

This has been especially hard for me lately. I am planning a move, and the move requires many small steps that will eventually leave me in the new place where I desire to be. In turn, moving will give me some time and space to focus, which will then lead to more time to write, something I want so badly it leaves a lump in my throat.

I have been craving time to write for years. This craving is what led me to quit my job in Bellevue – it led me to make a decision to divert part of each paycheck into a savings account that I never touched; to stay at the job in Bellevue for a year, wanting to tear my hair out, as my baby steps eventually led to the day that I turned in my resignation and walked out with the money to start again.

I learned about publishing in baby steps: how the industry worked, the advantages of self-publishing, the slowly changing behemoth of traditional publishing, and the joy of learning of other like-minded individuals who want to breathe life into their words and share that life with others.

I wrote my cookbooks in baby steps. Talk to wineries and restaurants; create recipe templates, call, email and cajole contributors, make appointments to take pictures, test recipes one at a time, lay out pages, edit, edit, EDIT, print, sell, one Facebook post, one local retailer, one Amazon sale, one new friend at a time.

I have grown confident of my writing in baby steps. Regardless of how long I have called myself a writer, it has only been recently that I have started sending out essays to publications, no longer afraid of their rejection. Suddenly I realize that I have something important to say and all I need is to find the right place to say it. This is not to say that I will not continue to improve, but only through writing for the past four years have I finally gotten to the point where I can realize that I am actually a writer in a way that feels real and visceral.

I have found my way here through baby steps. I feel a book trying to emerge, and I want it to come out in one fell swoop, leaping out of my brow much like Athena leaped, fully formed and ready to fight, out of Zeus’ forehead. The task seems overwhelming. It seems like I will never finish, because it is so hard to start; because the baby steps seem so infinitely small.

More than a year ago, two writing friends and I decided to do the Artist’s Way. It is a 12-week program to help people rediscover their creativity, in whatever way, shape and form it may take. One of the essential parts of the course is the morning pages: first thing in the morning, you take a pen and a notebook and write. At first, I got up an hour early to do this. At first, I wrote the three pages suggested, but then I realized that I was taking on more than I could handle. I cut it down to a page, got up a half hour early, and found it was the most joyful part of my day. Fifteen months later, I look forward to waking up, making coffee and settling in with a cup in one hand and a pen in the other, a notebook resting on my lap. More often than not, I fill two or three pages before I realize what I’ve done. I have filled more than 500 pages – front and back – with my scrawling handwriting. 

I am impatient, and yet the mountains I have moved the farthest are the ones that I pushed a little at a time. Although the ones ahead seem daunting, all I have to do is look behind me to see how far I’ve already come, one baby step at a time.

Love and baby step kisses

Morgan

My New Relationship with Me

Six days after I got to Mexico, I wrote a blog called "My Relationship with Me." The blog was my way of admitting that I knew there was something missing – something that had been missing for a long time – and that I was hoping to find it. It was a blog about needing to work on my relationship with myself, and being glad I had the time to do it. It’s now six days before I head back to the States, and I think it’s probably fitting to write about how my time went.
When I lived in Spain, I remember telling my friends that I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to remember all the days that I spent there and all the things I had learned – that I would have to summarize my experiences, and in doing so, I would leave a lot of stuff out.
Well, of course that’s true. When people ask you how your time was somewhere, they’re generally looking for a one-sentence answer, something along the lines of, “Oh man, it was so awesome!” or “I had a blast.” At the time I was worried about this, but it’s not something I worry about anymore. What I worry about instead is not whether or not I’ll be able to summarize my experiences to tell my friends, it’s about whether I’m ultimately going to remember more than a summary of what happened to me.
Mexico is a great example. I’ve been here a little over three months – not much time in the grand scheme of things – but I feel like the things that I have done and learned here should have taken years of mental and emotional energy to have experienced. Ask what exactly was so great about it, however, and I can’t exactly tell you. Was it the women’s group I started going to every new moon? I know that was part of it. Was it the yoga class I went to three days a week, and Pilar, the yoga instructor who became my friend? That was part of it too. Was it my new friendship with Pamela Bishop, all the time spent around her pool, and the fact that she made me read The Power of Now, which I probably would never have picked up at any other time in my life? Yes…but that’s not all of it either.
I expected that a lot of the time I was going to spend in Mexico I would spend alone. I expected that my days would be full of walks on the beach with the dog, writing, and keeping in touch with my friends back home via internet. I didn’t expect that I would learn so much from so many other people, or that I would even get to know that many other people. I didn’t expect a lot of things, and I think that’s why my time here surpassed my expectations so incredibly.
So, what did I learn about me, you ask? I learned that I am tired of being angry, at others but mostly at myself. I learned that my writing is not as funny when I’m really in touch with how I’m feeling – I hide behind my sarcasm and my funny stories so I don’t have to tell others or myself about the pain. I learned that I can let go, and the whole world won’t fall apart. I learned that I don’t have to have it all figured out, and that you can learn a lot from people who have one part of their life under control while the rest of it is falling apart. I learned that it’s okay to fall apart, and that the sun will still rise and set despite all the things you think you have to do to keep it moving. I learned that despite what I always thought, I am my own worst enemy, and that I am incredibly, horribly insecure: any impression I’ve given to the contrary was just a way for me to protect myself from getting hurt. I learned that I have the ability to poison relationships in a single sentence, or save them with one sincere compliment. I learned that I am deeply, deeply afraid of letting people know who I really am, and I lead people to talk about themselves so that I don’t have to share anything about myself.
I learned that I am not afraid of many things that others fear…except for spiders. I learned that I actually like earthquakes. I learned that I am like a child when the waves are big, and when they crash I get an adrenaline rush, even if I’m just watching from afar. I learned that I sleep best when it’s raining outside, and that thunderstorms are as beautiful to me as a night sky sparkling with stars.
I learned that I am really bad at catching waves when trying to surf. I learned that there are some people that it’s best not to be friends with. I learned that there is a fine line between my gut instinct and my insecure ego trying to destroy my happiness. I learned that German Shepards can learn a trick in three tries. I learned that Micheladas have Worcestershire sauce in them, that I love Oaxacan cheese, that I can eat quesadillas for most meals without wanting anything else, that I don’t like swimming in really warm pools, that it’s not as scary as I thought to drive in Mexico, and that I should never be hired to translate about cars, car parts, car problems, construction or paint materials. I learned that chipotle guacamole is one of my new favorite concoctions, that I am no longer capable of drinking all day long and lasting all night, too, and that sometimes it’s best just to let go, even if you don’t want to. I learned that regardless of where I am, I am addicted to sleeping in a cool room, swimming in cold water, spicy food, laughing so hard it makes your stomach hurt, and knowing people that you can show your worst to and they simply shrug and bare themselves to you in response.
I learned that you can get great cheap haircuts in Mexico, that some places are worth coming back to, and some places you will carry with you always. In three months, I learned that there is always more to learn, and that I can’t wait to see what else the world has in store for me.
So, you ask, did I find it? Did I find what was missing? I’m honestly not sure. I think I found part of it, but perhaps not all of it. Regardless, I feel a lot more whole than I’ve ever felt before, and like a I know myself a lot better than I ever have. I know there’s more to learn, but I’m no longer afraid to find out what it is. Like any healthy relationship, I’ve realized that it can’t be all good, but that doesn’t mean that it’s all bad. I like the person I discovered here, and I can’t wait to get to know her in the time we spend together from here on out.

Love and me kisses
Morgan

I'm consolidating my blogs! All my new posts will be at Confessions of a Travel Addict!

My Relationship with Me

The moonlight is bright outside, illuminating the waves as they beat against the shore. There are birds calling from the water’s edge, and I imagine they are feasting on their kinsman with a broken wing that the dog wouldn’t stop bothering on the walk today. I should be disturbed by this, but I am too busy feeling the breeze’s fingers through my hair, still damp from my afternoon dunking. My ears are full of so many sounds I cannot yet discern – I think I hear frogs, now and then a gecko, once in a great while a Mexican song, whistled or sung. I am here to heal, and these sounds will become a mother’s hum to me, rocking me to sleep.
I am here to heal, but I am fighting disappointment in myself that I need it at this point. I have had a year of complete bliss – of living on an island in the Puget Sound, followed by time far up a river valley, with only the mountains and the fresh pine air, followed by this: the beginning of three months next to a beach in Mexico. I am not coming off of a drug addiction, out of a bad relationship, away from a death in the family. I am not alone and drifting without direction, regardless of what it may look like to some. In many ways, I have gotten to know myself more in this past year than I ever thought possible – gotten to know what I need to be happy and begun to strive for it. Yet, despite all this, I am still here with open wounds.
In the past few months, I have been working too much with the idea that I could rest in Mexico. I have forgone sleep, healthy meals, time alone and exercise with the idea that I will get to do all or nothing that I desire in Mexico. The problem is that this is a recurring theme for me: work too hard with the idea that it will all be over soon. If it will all be over soon, there is no need to spare myself, my heart, my body, my sanity, because one day soon I will have the time for all of it.
But that’s not what I want. I don’t want to live for the times I get to escape – the times that I pick up my bags and leave my worries behind. I want to own my worries and take them with me – to appreciate and pack them along with my favorite books. I want my worries to be things that make me excited to get up in the morning, not something I am looking forward to leaving.
I want to be able to maintain something constant and healthy. I want to be able to wake up in the morning and wish for my responsibilities – to be able to leave them alone or scoop them up like sand dollars and take them with me to the beach. I want something that I think is falling farther and farther away in American society: the kind of serenity in my everyday life that most people only find on vacation.
Am I crazy? Of course I am. Is it possible? Of course it is. I’m not sure – I’m new at this, remember – but I think the secret is to work on your relationship with yourself like you would with anyone else. People who have been in long marriages, relationships or friendships for that matter always talk about finding the time to be together – reserving time for the two of you to remember why it is you like each other and why you’re important to one another’s lives. This doesn’t have to be as touchy-feely as it sounds: a nice dinner out, a barbecue, a ski date, a movie night with take-out. Enjoying the things you love to do together, together. Why shouldn’t you have to do the same for yourself?
However, I think I may need more time than most. A friend told me once that I probably didn’t really need human interaction more than once a week. This might insult some people; I was relieved that someone finally got it.
Between leaving Chelan and getting here via Mexico City, I heard it many, many times. “Just one person?” “Only one ticket?” “Are you here alone?” “Many people wouldn’t do this alone.” “I admire people who can travel alone.”
The thing is…I don’t get lonely. I enjoy my time by myself. I don’t feel alone…when I’m alone. Which is perhaps why I feel that I have been missing my time with myself – because there have been too many distractions, people, places, things -- and I haven’t been able to enjoy my time with me.
So here I am. Like any good relationship, you can’t fix it once and expect it to stay fixed just because you said so. I feel like I should have discovered this about myself already, but there are some things that you must continue to practice, even after the lesson has been learned. I will continue to spend time with me, heal the rift that has grown between myself and who I am, and spend some time – much needed time – on my relationship with me.