On Fear

"wow you are going to __(insert country here)! All by yourself? Aren't you scared? I could never do that".
These are common reactions when I tell someone about a trip. "No" I respond, almost puzzled as to what I should be afraid of. If I want to there, I will go there. I do not feel fear before I  get there.

But now I am here. The beginning of a trip is always terrifying. The lonely night when you arrive in a new country, maybe don't speak the language, maybe don't have the currency figured out. The night when you cannot just pick up the phone and connect to loved ones. The nighttime when you hear unusual sounds of animals outside, murmuring of strangers all around you. In the night when you are exhausted but cannot sleep. When you toss and turn and think about how much easier it would be just to be home in your own bed right now. Those moments there is a deep form of fear. It is when you have to face uncertainty. It is when you have to trust forces beyond your control, forces "out there" that decide if and when you will "be ok". It is when you have to trust yourself and your own decisions that brought you here to this uncomfortable bed in a foreign land. Am I scared in these moments? Without a doubt. Do I begin to question myself and my galavanting self wandering around the planet alone? Of course. Do I wish I could just scurry back home with my tail between my legs to a place that is familiar and comfortable? Sometimes. When it is 1am and my dreams are strange from malaria medication, when it is 4am and my stomach is gurgling from some new food I ate, those are the moments that I, too, wonder, "can I do this?". The beginning is always hard and scary. These are often the moments that melt away once I am off on an adventure, taking in the thrills of the ride, these are the moments I forget as I'm buying tickets and packing bags for a new journey. But it is an essential part. In fact, if I didn't have these moments of being utterly terrified and filled with doubt and a not so secret longing to head right back to the airport and go home, then I probably would be concerned. I suppose some say that I am courageous, for doing these trips. But all I am doing is facing fear. Maybe your fear is right there with you in your familiar bed and comfortable room. Maybe your fear is always riding on your coattails wherever you go and its only when I'm out of place and lost that I turn around and notice it. Would it be easier not to? Yes, almost always. But then how would you grow. how would you know what you can and "couldn't do". Have you even tried? Have you boarded the plane and sat there in the dark in an unknown place and wondered why you came here? Have you sat there and felt the alloted time of the trip stretch out into an immensity ahead of you?
would you do it again?

yes.

Shamanism

I spent the weekend doing a training with the Jaguar Path. Its a program which blends yoga and shamanism and I think its such a perfect blend of what I want to do. What always astounds me about these weekend long retreats is how powerful they are. The power comes from being with a group of people that validate and are representations of these amazing ways of looking at humanity and life through energies and positivity and peace. Its hard to specify the exact qualities in a "spiritual" community. Call it hippie, call it new age, call it yogis, shamans, etc. its the same group of people that are waking up to these truths. Even a lot of religious people may be grasping onto the fundamentals beliefs which span across almost any spiritual belief system, just with different names and prophets. But beyond the community which is just warm and non judgemental and overall feels safe, is the healing itself. I find that mental health is a treatment is a symptom reducer is a fix, but its not necessarily meant to be, a true cure. The difference in the body language and emotional state before and after a healing like the chakra illumination was remarkable. Undeniable, intangible but clearly evident. Changes in the voice in the aspect the affect the attributes of the person were remarkable. The combination of these two elements, the comaraderie and the healing, the togetherness, the exchange from being the healer to the recipient of healing, the entire process is just astounding in how curative it is. I went into the weekend rather angry and stressed, feeling resentful and a bit out of control. After the cleansing and the communicating and the connecting and overall the validation and reminder of these truths and information which make so much inherent sense to me, I feel relaxed, excited, invigorated, inspired. That is the kind of healing which I want to bring all over the world. Namaste, Thank you.

"You want to be a writer? Great! Call yourself a writer when people ask you what you do. Put it as your occupation on Facebook. There. Now you're a writer." 

So I've been settling into my parents house, unpacking and redecorating my childhood bedroom. I've had a lot to reflect on since the past year taught me many life lessons. I had some of the hardest as well as the greatest months. Some ideas which come to mind are:

I'm really glad I moved out there. I'm glad my parents let me make that leap of faith. Moving from Connecticut to Oregon to be with a guy who had already broken my heart once and would be away for months at a time with his military job, and not even be living in the same place when he was around, now seems like a ludicrous concept. Hindsight is 20/20 as they say, and I am surely not the same person who made that decision just 12 months ago. It is important however that I did it. That I fell on my face, got betrayed and became depressed. Why, you might ask? Because now I know that I can follow my heart on a decision, have everything go wrong, and still pick myself up, get out of the situation and end up ok. That is a huge strength that has developed inside me to know that I can try, and fail, and pick up the pieces and try to figure out the next puzzle. 

I have all of these eloquent profound ideas which I emphatically discuss with friends and sometimes strangers, yet the process of manifesting them on paper still proves to elude me. 

Need to remind myself of this

Your time is limited, don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living the result of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinion drown your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition, they somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
-- Steve Jobs

Internal Changes

I embarked on this journey to leave everything I knew behind. I had lost some of myself in academia and in a relationship and I chose to follow the voice inside that coaxes me onto planes towards unknown lands. I can hardly believe I'm halfway through, there were times where it felt like this was not even a trip or a journey but just an on going state and way of life. Now that the end is in sight however, I am starting to feel further pressure on me to fill that big pile of empty space and potential ahead of me.
Another thing I have noticed is that people whom I meet up with along the way, people I hold dear to me in a home life context, are showing me different colors while in the midst of traveling. Perhaps it is my colors that are changing, perhaps I am a know-it-all when it comes to traveling, or judgmental, or just too independent to bother with buddies on the road. Or maybe its seeing these people in a different environment, one which is filled with challenges and unknowns, and perhaps its their safety net behaviors which are irking me. Maybe I have low patience and high expectations for those around me, forgetting all of the subtle knowledge I have acquired through travel experiences.

On music

I stopped listening to music about 2 years ago. It was strange, I was very heartbroken and listened to the same 2 soulful r&b artists, india arie and anthony hamilton if you must know, beautiful singers, and then when i stopped being heartbroken I basically just left off of music. I think to an extent it was because the songs then reminded me of a painful time which I wanted to forget. And I didnt find new artists that I liked. but i just gave up pretty quickly on looking. When I do hear it I appreciate it. and think to myself oh i should really listen to music more. but then i just dont. I gave my ipod away. you walk down the street or sit on the subway and nearly everyones got headphones in. I just listen to the world now. It doesnt really cross my mind to listen to music on my own. I think its also somehow connected to how deeply passionate I am. I really wear my heart on my sleeve. and I think sometimes music just brings it out too much. I was in a taxi and there was a Spanish love song playing and it was just so overwhelmingly beautiful I burst into tears. its exhausting.

An email to a friend at 4am about passion

anything having to do with animals or the earth instantly touches some deep part of my soul. interesting that i ended up going with humans as my focus. my first passions as a child were animals and the environment.  i used to be obsessed with turning out the lights. running around after my parents turning the lights off as soon as they walked out of the room. i wish i could know myself as a kid. kind of vain but i feel like i was kinda gypped (sp?). cuz kids are just such open passionate entitities. i think if someones sad they should think about what made them happy as a kid. it probably still will. 

clouds are incredible. earth is so goddamn amazing it makes my blood curdle to think of the audacity of humans to destroy it for ourselves. it blows my mind that humans lived on earth for thousands of years but the amount of destruction and damage we have caused in the past 200 years is irreversible and tragic. did you know 95% of the Redwoods have been destroyed? sinful.

sometimes its exhausting being so damn passionate. do you ever just wana give up and study brand marketing for luxury purses? lol ok thats pushing it but ya know do u ever just want a normal regular job instead of fighting the MAN (interesting gender reference-see I can't turn it off!) to help people? especially when its so goddamn unrewarding in any material sense. like your job now your bust your butt and its for an incredible cause but im sure that stipend doesnt do much for your wallet. sometimes i just want to walk into a finance bank and i dono do some type of protest. paint myself with fake blood and bruises and say im the person they stepped on to do what they do. i dono. itd be an interesting statement. just to do Something that gets someone goddamn attention from that world. but yea, maybe getting arrested for a public statement like that, maybe get a newspaper article or at least a youtube clip of doing something extreme. sometimes i hate coloring within the lines, wait who am I kidding, I always hate coloring within the lines. i just want to shake shit up. theres so much passion balled up inside me and it just emanates waves of intense emotion. like i just believe so hard in the cause we are dedicated to, of helping people in need, that i just dont get how anyone can Not have it so i think i should share it forcibly sometimes. 

sometimes i get so frustrated at how our field is so like, intangible and immeasurable ya know? (public health/social work/helping the needy) like sometimes I just feel stupid and like im not good at anything real. we were at the casino and my friend was explaining a game to me and i dono my brain just does Not get some things like that. i love that im dedicated to women but sometimes it just feels so i dono stereotypical like oh of course ur a woman so ur gona care about women. ya know? sometimes i would like to be like, oh your a woman but your fkn amazing at math and thats so badass and impressive. instead i barely got through high school math. and moneywise too like we went to this fancy schmancy restaurant and it was so delicious and beautiful and my friends who are doctors or lawyers or businesspeople can sit there and know that someday theyll be able to live a lifestyle like that. in fkn social work ill be lucky to make ends meet. but yea, some people can go and makes good money at the casino. what skills do i possibly have to make money informally? stripping is about it. thatd be an ironic profession for a feminist. but its true ya know, be a cocktail waitress or something would make probably more money than a community health therapist, but id only get the job if i wear a minidress with cleavage. which is fine i mean use what u got theres no shame in that if u got it flaunt it but its so frustrating sometimes. i studied my ass off to Not have to do that. my field is so undefined and i love that im pioneering it myself i know i wouldnt stand for any more conveyor belt of a profession but, its just exhausting sometimes. i wish i could be the baller one taking everyone to dinner. 

Sometimes my passion overwhelms people. I don't even notice but somehow I keep ending up on a tirade about social justice or oppression in some capacity. I like to make people think and push people out of their comfort zones but sometimes i dont know how I end up talking about sexual abuse when I really just want to enjoy eating my empanada. and after awhile it alienates people. they start to tread carefully around me, like they cant crack a joke or something because ill probably go on a rant about why its disrespectful to some group or another. i would like to learn how to turn it off better.