Empty Space

I’ve had a weird feeling the last week or so, and there was nothing much I could attribute it to. It was a mix of nausea, exhaustion, a stomachache and an overall tiredness. It was at once a mental tiredness, an emotional wailing and a physical pain. It was all these things, and yet there was nothing much I could pin it on. I wrote about it, thought about it, ruminated on it, changed the diet around it, tried to walk it out and couldn’t get myself to cry about it.

And then it came to me: it was an emptiness. 

I’ve tried to write this blog post three times, and it hasn’t come out until now. This is unusual for me – usually I come up with an idea, toy with it a couple days, and write it in one fell swoop. My last post felt more like pulling teeth than writing, and this one is also not coming as easily as they usually do. The difference, I think, is that suddenly, out of nowhere, I’ve finished writing about what used to hurt me as if it defines me. 

A couple years ago, I wrote a post called “I Used To Be Funny,” about a shift from writing self-deprecating emails about traipsing through the world one mishap at a time into needing to take myself more seriously and writing about what I really thought and felt. Even sometimes when I wanted to write something funny, all that would come out is what you will find on my blog: deep introspection over what has made me tick, made me cry, and made me into the person that I am today.

But here’s what happened: nothing. Nothing happened, except that I had a conversation with someone who had gone through a lot more pain than I had, pain I couldn’t directly identify with because our lives are very different, and I realized that I didn’t want to engage this person based on our pain. Whereas usually I would listen to them and then break in with a similar way that I had hurt, I found that suddenly it wasn’t that I didn’t care to hear what he said, but I didn’t want to share it with him, or step into times in my life where I had felt the same way so that I could understand what he was going through. I found the thought of continuing the conversation as it was exhausting, so I changed the subject to something lighter. In doing so, I realized that suddenly, it wasn’t so important anymore: my past, the scars that I bear, the hurts I have suffered and the people who have suffered with me. Suddenly I realized that where there was once a need to explain myself in terms of my past and ruminate on it, today there is simply a desire to move forward, into whatever is waiting for me in the empty space when my need to explore what brought me here is gone.

Eleven months ago today, I arrived in Panama. I wrote a blogpost not long after defending my need to come here, explaining that I was not escaping my problems, rather bringing them with me so that I could look them over, one by one, and try to understand what they had to tell me. Obviously this is a work that is never done, but it seems that the specific hurts that I brought with me have now all made it through the line and are gone. I have looked up from my work and realized that I’ve done it: for now, and perhaps for a little while longer, my past can be safely tucked away in the past where it belongs, and I can now look forward into the future to see where I’m going after having determined with greater clarity what made me into me and who I am because of it, even if I no longer need to define myself by that information. 

It’s a little scary. I’m not sure what it will look like. The words don’t seem to come as easily here, not yet anyway, but I’m sure the more time I give this space, the more it will reveal itself to me in terms of who I want to be when I have put down all the expectations, taken away all my limitations, and moved on from what has held me back for so long. It’s a vast and echoing empty space, but it doesn’t have to be a scary one. There’s all sorts of room for growth here: for new relationships that celebrate this new person, for more time spent in the moment instead of reliving past moments, for continuing to feel lucky for the existence I have created here, not just as a shelter to weather an emotional storm, but as a place to enjoy the newfound person I have become. It’s been a rough journey, but an important one, and I’m ready for the next step: ready to explore this new empty space.

Love and vast empty space kisses

Morgan

Choosing to be Authentically Me

“I read your blog. I loved it. It felt so real; so authentic. You talk about the things that all of us experience and yet no one really says out loud. It’s wonderful.”

My new friend Jemma and I were sitting at a restaurant on Boca Brava Island, on Panama’s Pacific coast. We were eating yucca fries and drinking fresh tropical juices. As it always does, it made me incredibly happy to hear that someone had read my blog and enjoyed it; even more so that it sounded authentic, because that has recently been an important part of what I write here: that it presents me: the truly, deeply, unequivocally human Morgan.

I thanked her, and I told her something that I have felt hesitant to share, and yet have been telling people anyway, as if my mouth has attached itself to my heart instead of my head.

“I’ve been writing my book as fiction, but the truth is it’s going to be based on my life, whether I present it as fiction or not. It’s starting to feel important to me that I write and present it exactly as it is: my life and experiences, as I have understood them.”

Of course, she said. Not as simply as that, but that is what I heard, and what surfaced in my mind as I explained to her. Of course it has to be a memoir. Of course the only way I can even pretend to live authentically is to present my story authentically. Of course.

As I step further onto the path I have sought for myself, the easier it seems to be to consider this possibility. The more space and time I have to think about what I want and need, the more it becomes clear that my need is to tell my story: all parts of it, the joys and sorrows; the large and small everyday miracles; the pain, anger and betrayal; the realizations that came along with each of these emotions, and the eventual ability to let them go.

This realization could not have come without my final decision to stop worrying about what people think, because that is the only thing that has stopped me from writing this book already: how others will react to what I have to say, about myself, and about them as part of my story.

I am less worried about what others would say about me, because it is my story. I can take responsibility and appreciate that not everyone is going to agree with what I say; what I have learned; what I need for myself to feel fulfilled and joyous in my existence. I have learned that the hard way, and I am not letting go of the lesson.

What worries me more is something I have only imagined I have any control over: how others will interpret what I have to say about them as part of my story.

I have often wondered at the courage that Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love) and now Cheryl Strayed (Wild) exhibited by writing such raw accounts of their lives in their books. To me, it seems that they were able to discuss their relationships and interactions in a way that made it clear that they valued and honored the people in their lives, even when the lessons they learned from them were hard ones; even when heartbreak was the result. I’m not sure how those actual people feel about what was written about them, and yet I find myself compelled to try for the same idea: to present the things I have learned from people without laying blame at their feet.

This is important for two reasons. One – and most important – because I don’t blame anyone for what has happened to me anymore. That would make me a victim, and I am tired of giving away my happiness and power to others by making them the reason for my actions. Two, I have realized that every single person in my life has been put there to teach me something. Often it was not the lesson I wanted to learn, and rarely was it the way I wanted to learn it, but all in all I have come to the point where I realize that I can take what I have given and use it to make my life what I want it to be, or I can hold the pieces up as excuses for why I’m not somewhere else. I feel more empowered by the first option: it allows me to take responsibility for myself and own who and where I am today.

I have to let go, invisible audience. I could write the most loving, amazing account of someone and they could be insulted; I could rip the same person apart and find that they thrive on the attention. I can’t control that. All I can really control is myself. I can only hope that my humanness will come across in my writing in a way that will show I am not out to hurt anyone; that being included in my story at all means that you have made a deep and lasting impact on me that I found worthy of sharing. I have to remember that it is my story, after all, and I have a right to tell it.

I have decided to write authentically, in first person, telling my life as my own, and I have to trust that if I do it from the heart, from a place of love instead of a place of revenge or victimization, the people that it is supposed to touch will be touched. As much as I wish I could keep anyone else from reading it, anyone who would not understand, there is only one way to do so: to not write it at all.

In my search for authenticity, there is no room for that kind of silence.

Love and authentic kisses

Morgan

Time: All We Have; All It Takes

 

Hello invisible audience,

I’ve been meaning to write, but the things I want to write about are all the same, and I don’t want to be accused (even by myself) of beating a dead horse. Nevertheless, you are invisible and I have been pondering quite a bit lately, and I find that there are a couple things that I need to get off my chest – again.

One: time. That precious little gem that is really all we have. The one thing that we bargain for, that we trade money for; that we use to buy possessions. How many hours of work is my car worth? How much of a day am I working to pay for my phone bill? How much of my precious commodity am I trading in now in the hopes that the money I make will support my leisure time in the future?

That leads me to pondering number two: why do I worry so much about what others think about how I spend my time, or where? Even more important, why do I think others are even interested in how I spend my time? Yesterday I told my mom that I felt pressure to conform: pressure to want the things so many people seem to want, or already have: stability, 9-5 jobs, company-paid health insurance, houses, kids. “But, you don’t want that,” she said, looking at me with a puzzled frown.

It’s true! I don’t! So why the heck am I constantly berating myself for not wanting these things? It is related to another one of Mom’s statements. “I hope someday you find somewhere that you really like and want to settle down and stay there.” I wanted to hang my head in shame, not because she said it, but because I constantly catch myself thinking the same thing. Yes, that would be great. It would be great if I wanted to stay in one place. It would be great if I wanted a life that was readily accessible to me without any sort of social clash. If I could convince myself despite what my soul is shouting at me, what I am yearning for, that my happiness is found in a house with a yard and a job with x amount of weeks of vacation a year and a benefits package, I WOULD HAVE IT ALREADY. I can’t. Each time I get settled into that groove, I feel more unstable than when I have no idea where I’m going next. I feel hemmed in, fenced in, terrified and depressed. I feel less alive.

I’ve been reading a book that makes me feel guilty about this. You can change, it tells me. Any time that you say you can’t do something, you’re subscribing to your own limited behavior. Except I’m not. I’m trying to buck a deep trend, and move on. I’m trying to let go of a lifetime’s worth of shoulds and have to’s and live authentically, just for me. And God damn it, it’s harder than it looks.

In the soul searching I did this summer, I realized first that I had been listening to a lot of what I thought other people wanted or expected of me. Not even what they said out loud, but what I thought they wanted me to be. This was a big step, but the bigger and scarier one was when I realized that I had been welcoming these impressions, because I could use them as excuses. I kept trying to fit myself in the box because it was easier to complain about how I felt different from inside of it. I have tried to live a life of responsibility and fun based on other peoples’ definitions because it was easier than having to admit that I found nothing they did fun or rewarding. And that leads me to horse-beaten point number three: I got myself here.

And just like I got myself here, I am the one that can get myself out. Over-stated point four: I have to choose to be authentically me, not just once, but over and over (and over and over) again. No one can do this for me. No one else is going to come to my rescue and tell others what I want and need. The only way to meet like-minded people is to continue living and know that my lifestyle will lead me to them. They’re not in the box, so why do I keep looking for them there?  Not only that, but why am I focusing on people in the box when I have so many more friends that are bucking the trend in their own way?

There’s really only one answer: time. I am going over the same things in my head and revisiting the same mental real estate because these realizations are still new and they haven’t quite sunk in yet. I am still in the phase where I am unsure about what I’m saying, no matter how good it feels. At one time I didn’t know anything about writing a recipe; now I could teach a class about it if I wanted to. In between then and now, however, time passed, I learned some things, and I gained the necessary experience to feel confident that I know what I’m talking about. I’ll get there with these poor dead-horse points, too, invisible audience. All it takes is time.

Love and time-filled kisses,

Morgan

P.S. No horses -- dead or alive -- were beaten in the writing of this post.

Self Acceptance and Enjoying Life's Adventures

On the surface, this past year has seemed to be one of the hardest of my life. On the surface, I have never felt that I looked more lost. On the surface, I have often felt that I have little to recommend me. On the surface that may be true, but perhaps just to me.

Almost every day, I catch myself thinking that I should be something else that I’m not: more settled, more secure, more mature maybe? I have friends around me that are married, having children, in good jobs. I see these things, and I think, “I am doing something wrong because I don’t have these things.” From somewhere deep inside comes something else, a faint voice that is nevertheless fully audible: “Says who?”

There is no one that tells me to my face that I am doing something wrong – that my erratic path doesn’t seem to be the right one; that I had better knock it off and get down to business. No one says that to me, but I find myself imagining that there are plenty of people thinking it. I am finally tired of making room for these people in my head, when none of them have actually asked to be there, and none were consciously invited in.

I was recently at a dinner where a woman was lamenting her son-in-law following his dream of being a musician. He builds houses, but hasn’t been able to find much work in the recession, so he took advantage of the situation and has started putting his energy into his music. He’s no small-time player, either: he’s been touring the country, opening for Bon Jovi and other well-known bands. With investments and other sources of income, he is still providing for his family financially. The problem is, however, that while he’s touring, his wife is working a full-time job and raising their three children at home. Although he is aware of how hard this is on her, the fact of the matter is that he’s not there.

When I first heard this story, I wanted to take his side. The courage to get up and follow your dream is hard to gather, and I found myself angry at his wife (and mother-in-law) for not understanding. Then I thought about how hard it has to be for her to still be married but essentially raising the children by herself. I have decided that I don’t need to pick sides in this situation, because there is no right answer: both people have their reasons, and both are right. Fortunately, I don’t even know them, and even if I did, it’s not my problem to fix.

I am lucky enough not to have this problem. I have many, many dreams, but one big one: to write a book about the life I have led over the past four years: all its trials and tribulations and what I have learned. Although I feel a need to write this to process it for myself, I also hope that what I have to say might somehow help others in similar situations.

I do not have to worry about taking care of my family while I strive for my goal; I do not have to worry about the selfishness of making a decision that might negatively affect those around me. Although my friends may miss me when I disappear for months or years at a time, none of them need me to feed them while I’m gone, and none of them rely on me alone for emotional support.

I have often wondered at the way my life has turned out up to this point. In my low moments, I have wondered why I’m so unlovable, so unable to make a commitment that, when seemingly everyone else is in a relationship, I am alone. Often I have wondered why I can't settle into the lives that other people have, even when a part of me knows that I don't necessarily want that kind of existence; that I am not capable of enjoying it. Instead of worrying about this, I am making a decision to accept that it happened for a reason: so that I would have the time, space and freedom to create what I need to create.

So, in rewriting my inner dialogue to better accept this plan, here are the things I have accomplished this last year, on my very unique and adventurous journey:

I finished and published a second cookbook! Savoring Leavenworth introduced me to many amazing people, some fantastic food, and has taught me even more about publishing, marketing and the satisfaction of creating a product that people enjoy.

I am infinitely healthier than I was at this time last year, when I couldn’t eat anything, and was trying to recover from four different stomach problems. I have learned what my body does and doesn’t want to eat, and when I listen to it (which is happening much more often than previously) I live an amazing and active life.

I spent the summer at an yoga retreat center in British Columbia, and learned a lot about myself…a lot more than I expected I would learn, for that matter. Not only did I gather courage to show parts of myself that I used to hide, I also learned a ton of new and delicious vegan and vegetarian recipes, and many alternatives to wheat. 

I have made many friends that I share great conversations, experiences and laughs with in Wenatchee and Leavenworth and beyond.

I have learned how to say no when it will be better for me, and yes when it makes my heart sing.

Related to the last one, I have learned that almost any problem can be solved with solid, healthy communication, where I state what I want instead of wondering why the people around me can’t read my mind.

I have learned the power of positive thinking, of reaching out to the people who can support me in times of crisis, and that burying my feelings and emotions in a dark hole just means that they start to rot and stink and eventually must be dug up and allowed to air out.

Most of all, I have learned what unconditional love looks like, and that I have to love myself unconditionally, despite all the fears and doubts I have, in order to step forward with confidence and pursue my dreams.

So there you have it, invisible audience. I am going to continue on my merry way of living the adventurous life I have to live, and I thank you for your support. I wish you the best of luck on your own journey, and please know that I support it, whatever it is, whether I say it out loud or not.

Love and adventure kisses

Morgan

I Used To Be Funny

NOTE: This blog was first posted on Haley Whitehall's website on March 3 when I was her guest blogger. I am reposting instead of writing something new because I have an awful cold and can think of nothing to say that does not involve whining and moaning.

Long ago, when I first went abroad, I would write hilarious emails home. Even before that, I wrote fairly funny top ten lists over whatever it was that came to mind. It seemed like no matter what I was doing, there was a comical way to look at it and I couldn’t wait to get to a computer to type out my long (overblown) email about Montezuma’s Revenge, children skidding sideways down long ski slopes into lines of people waiting for the chairlift, sheep-turd-tasting cheese or smelly persons.
In fact, I have a whole book of these stories. It’s called Confessions of a Travel Addict. It’s nearly 200 pages of funny stories about traveling abroad, and although I recognize the work as my own, I have come to the realization lately that I probably couldn’t write it again because I don’t write funny things anymore.
If it’s going to be funny now, it’s a one-line status update that has about 15 people chortling, versus emails to 50+ persons that I’d like to believe read and enjoyed them.
So, what’s changed, you ask? Well, me, obviously.
When I first revealed to one of my friends that I had written a book about my traveling, she asked, “So does it have stuff about, you know, how you felt, your emotions, the things you were going through and how you grew as a person?”
I don’t think I laughed at her, but I thought at the time that it was a stupid thing to say. Who on earth would be interested in how I felt about things? Merrily I tripped along, continuing to write funny stories with no meat to them, no context, no person behind this shadow that traipsed all over the place having mishap after mishap.
Now, I realize that there is a time and place for everything. I realize that I may be hard on myself here, but the truth was that nearly everyone who has read my book has said, “Well, there’s not really much about you, you know? Since I know you I feel like I’m taking a trip with you, but if I didn’t know you I would feel like I was missing a very essential piece of the story.”
They’re right. The book lacks substance. And suddenly, that substance is all I can come up with to blog about. Suddenly, even my funny posts don’t seem as funny. All of a sudden, I want to talk about myself in serious terms.
It may seem small to someone on the outside, but this shift seems like a monstrous chasm that has opened up in front of me. I don’t see myself as some sort of bubbly, exuberant bouncy ball ricocheting off walls and screaming “WEEEE!” until everyone wants to shoot me, but neither do I see myself as a depressive lump of coal sitting in the corner, sucking the light out of anything that comes near like a black hole. I feel both these things often – if I’m lucky, I feel these and a whole range of emotions every day – but what I feel more is the change that has come over me in regards of what I want to share. I’m no longer as interested in simply giving the funny story of what happened to the stupid gringa while skimming over how I cried when it happened. A part of me is more than a little alarmed by this. It’s no longer a game to see how loud a person will laugh; now I’m tapping something deeper and sharing because I feel like a have to, and this is what bubbles to the surface, needing to be shared.
I think one of the strangest things about this shift is that I don’t feel afraid or excited about it – I simply recognize that something has changed. I look at it objectively, like a thing that I’ve just found in my house, and I study it, knowing it has a use but not yet knowing what it is. I’d like to think that this means that I’m finally maturing to the point where I don’t feel like I have to mask my emotions and can say how I really feel, but somehow that seems very, um, mature of me, and I can’t quite believe it. So for now, I’m just going to roll with it, and hope that maybe one day I’ll get to the point where I can be funny again and meaningful, too.

Love and not so funny kisses
Morgan