Borders, Walls & Soul Keys Part 1

January 11, 2019 - Barstow, CA to Flagstaff, AZ
This post is from the Gypsy Mama Travels series and is part of the co-created Dance, Community & Social Connection Research Project.

The morning took on a causal, non-hurried pace as I go about getting ready for the day.  Part of a commitment to myself in this new chapter of my life is to re-instate my morning workout routine.

This morning I start with a little interval run on the treadmill.  I cannot even remember the last time I stepped onto one of those thangs.  Let's just say there were a couple of close calls during the running intervals :-0!  I follow this up with some Yoga by Adriene (my new fav YouTube channel), hit the showers, pack up and head out for coffee and breakfast - in a mood that surprises even me after the near disaster of last night.

Grant it, I have been working hard these past 10 years to learn how to allow my emotions to be what they are in the moment - instead of using them to build walls of impenetrable defenses; and been working even harder these past 2-3 years to not let my emotions have full reign past the point of usefulness - so as to not take me out of the game altogether.  So, I give myself a pat on the back, taking a moment to breathe in the fact that, "Yes, change is totally possible."  Well done Gypsy Mama, well done.

As I am sitting at the coffee shop enjoying my dark, milky roast and journaling my innermost thoughts, I notice this adorable red-haired toddler in a green dress.  She looks like she is right out of Ireland - which brings a smile to my face, because I am Irish by descent, and deeply fond of the land and culture.  She is sitting in front of her mother on the table, and the 3 of us make eye contact, smile warmly and speak for a moment.

Shortly after, a scene between these two and a friend of theirs remind me of yet another core thread in my life:
the passion I have for teaching body language to
help others understand how to move out of the #MeToo age
and into safe connection.
(Do not fret!   I will be sharing what happened in this scene soon enough to help us all understand why our "no's" can be difficult to access...and how we can shift that into really safe connection :-)!)

With the deep, deep resurrection this morning has given me, I feel a new wind underneath my sails as I venture back to my adult "bike-pulling-wagon" vehicle to set out for the border of California and Arizona.   Today, I will be leaving Cali, my home state for the past 19.5 years to the date - give or take a day or two.

*************************************************
Late June 1999 - San Antonio, TX

The dust and grime of the boxes fill my nostrils and cover my hands as I sit in the garage outside my home where I have lived with my Aunt, Uncle and their 3 kids on my breaks from Purdue.  It is early morning - because that is about the only time you can handle being in a garage in South Texas this time of year.

My life, up until the past 3 years, had been anything but normal, safe and stable.  Prior to moving in with my family in the Winter of 1996, after having a sort of breakdown that I made me realize I WAS NOT ABLE to handle college life at that point - I had what many, myself included, called a "soap opera" life.  Some of this soap opera life included, but not limited to:

• losing my mother by age 9
• living in as many homes as I was in years, if not more
• not knowing I was experiencing emotional abuse from my guardian mother, which resulted in many bouts of SAD (seasonal affective disorder) and then some
• losing my father, a man I had never really known or had a relationship with, to Pancreatic cancer in 1996

All-in-all, looking back on my life now that I had finished college with honors and landed a job in Cali - I felt I was doing really, really, really well.  I had accepted Jesus back in May of 1996 as my Lord and Savior - and while my life wasn't magically what I had always dreamt it would be - I claimed whole-heartedly that since I was a "new creation in Christ, the old had gone and the new had come."  I had what a lot of people would have called guts or endurance or resilience.  I called it "sticktuitiveness" - yes a word I had made up in high school to define myself.

So as I sit here, sorting thru the few boxes that represent my childhood, attempting to widdle them down to just one cedar-filled chest to take with me to California in about 2 weeks time - I am delighted to find a self-colored folder of a Unicorn housing my 2nd-grade papers.  I smile at the memory of coloring this folder all those years ago, which must have been 1985-86.  The smells of my home with my mom come back over me instantly, and the warmth of my life with her in Kansas make sme feel at peace.  I open the folder and start skimming through its contents.

• A project on a country your family descended from.  For me - this was Ireland, of course!
• A recipe for Irish Soda Bread - yummy, can almost taste it now
• Some miscellaneous math tests (my favorite subject at that age)
  AND...
• A paper on a dream I have: One of which is to move to California to live as an adult.

Wait, what???

I don't even remember writing this paper, but here it is.  In my own somewhat sloppy, somewhat nice handwriting.  At the ripe old age of 7, I already had dreams of moving to Cali.

As I stare at this paper, caught between the veils of the past and present, worlds collide ...and I am stunned, dazed and confused.

At 22 years of age, I KNEW I had had this dream of living in California, but thought it was from watching 90210 and falling in love with (no, not Dillan!) the weather, the water, and the healthy lifestyle.  That is why when Sears offered me a job and a choice of where in America I wanted to land - I jumped on the chance to FINALLY move to California...without ever stepping foot west of Russell, KS at that point.

Eventually, the daze wears off and a huge smile crosses my face.  Pieces of my early life start to insert themselves into my life now. I am so excited that I get to live out a dream.

Up until that point, I had no idea, none at all of where or how that idea had gotten seeded in my life.  But finding this paper, I find myself feeling into my dreams a bit deeper and realize that yes, it had always just been there, this dream of Cali.  All the sudden this dream was just this deep inner knowing. I just knew that I would someday live in California, and knew I always knew it.

Now consciously realizing this "knowing", I wonder what Soul Keys I would find there.

To Be Continued...