Maybe you're meant to change...
This photo was taken a few weeks ago here on Lake Atitlán. Dain and I were sunburnt and glowing from a day of ideas for our adobe house and regenerative farm project ... which is CRAZY because if you would have met me ten years ago - farming was not on my list of to-do's.
I had ZERO interest in it!!!
Dain was even farther from that possibility - grinding away in the start-up world, suffering from insomnia, and obsessing about finance.
So how did this unexpected pivot into a lifestyle we never wanted manage to put these massive smiles on our faces?!
Truth is, we’ve had some really challenging times. In 2019, we rid ourselves of our material possessions and began a backpacking trip across 8 countries.
We wanted to start on online magazine and document grassroots humanitarian projects all over the world.
We were inspired to show people countless ways to serve our planet.
And then March 2020 arrived. We were in Vietnam, onboarding for a 3-month volunteer mission, when the world shut down.
Every fear I’d ever had about my personal safety came rushing to the surface. Dain and I argued about what to do with our lives – we had numerous ruptures in our emotional connection and nearly went separate ways.
My hopes, dreams, and worldviews were crushed. I’d always felt like I was living in a revolutionary time in which we, the people, were going to lead a massive cultural shift in the way we live, work, and relate to our ecosystem...
And then the pandemic sent us all to the corners of our homes, the anxiety alone taking our breath away, prohibited from fresh air, restricted from nature, forbidden to see the smiles of our neighbors, forced to allow our loved ones to die behind closed doors with no one to hold their hands as they made their departure from everyone they ever knew.
I believe not a single person experienced the crisis without having some form of trauma … and by trauma … I am referring to dramatic change that occurs within our brains when we are unable to fight or flee ourselves to safety in the face of impending doom.
During all of that stress and trauma, Dain and I had a lot of low points. It’s easy to love each other when things are going well. But when everyone, everywhere, all at once enters a survival response, things get messy.
Fortunately, I am accustomed to messy. The generations that came before me didn’t have it easy, and I’ve inherited a great deal of enduringness. A faith that no matter how hard it is right now, I’m going to learn something that I’d never get to learn otherwise.
AND THAT’S ALMOST ALWAYS A LESSON ABOUT MY OWN BLIND SPOTS, AND WHERE I CAN EVOLVE.
Fortunately, Dain is also a growth-focused person who’s committed to shedding parts of himself that he’s outgrown.
So, we transformed. As individuals.
And that transformation took root in our relationship … scorching what came before, and catapulting us into our unfamiliar life of today – the life that our former selves NEVER even considered.
But guess what? It’s farrrrr more aligned with who we are at the core.
To meet us, you might wonder how we make any sense as a couple. On the surface, we couldn’t be more different in our personal expression and operating systems. He’s quiet. Won’t tell you unless you ask. Likes being behind the scenes, building foundations, clearing the path, strategizing the way forward.
I am loquacious. I need outward expression or my soul deadens. I’m a Mercurial being, communication is my nature, and the Aquarian in me needs to fantasize about what humanity can heal “if only all of us who care SO much, and have untapped gifts, all connected with each other and organized and collaborated…”
Dain meets me in my dream state and his talent for details energizes us into a collective force that we simply could not be if operating individualistically.
And I know there is a lot of talk out there about “you gotta be OK on your own before you’re any good in a relationship.”
But let me just remind you, ALL OF NATURE requires relationship.
Just like the soil of the ground CRAVES the carbon from the atmosphere ... and how allowing that relationship would reverse our climate crisis and regenerate this earth with abundant food and health. (Email me for more info on this)
In fact, the most essential relationship for ALL OF US is the one we have with Earth. And it is that CORE value that has put these massive smile on our faces.
When you begin conspiring and cooperating with Earth, you reclaim a life force that you didn’t know was missing. The emptiness and lostness and confusion and depression … they begin to shift into tremendous satisfaction.
It has been said that it doesn’t actually take very much to make the deepest part of us very happy.
But to actually LIVE THAT is an unexpected reality that my former self could have never planned for.
So … if you are amid a radical life change right now. Or if you’re craving one.
Go spend some time outside breathing that fresh air that we’re allowed to breathe again. Look upon the trees, and notice them ALLOWING their colors to change, PREPARING themselves to let go.
And notice … what inside of you longs to follow their lead?