Pixie in Paradise

Because of a conversation with a dear friend living in Costa Rica, I had an epiphany this evening. She’s from London, England, but said that she feels very connected to Costa Rica and loves living there, as did I. She also said that it feels as though she’s lived many different lifetimes while there. I understand what she’s trying to say: if you allow it, the potential for personal growth and internal deep dive happens in continuous waves. Just like waves it can take you down for a bit or be a gentle nudge, usually in the direction you  need to go.

My friend is a yoga teacher, writer, beach bum, and cat lover, with calming energy and the brightest light shining from within. We have a lot in common. After all, remove the calming energy part and redefine “shining light” how you wish, and that list could be about me.

Her bright light made my lightbulb go off as I’ve spent hours, even days, trying to articulate what living in Central America – and specifically Costa Rica – did for, and to, me. A lot of changes and shifts and communing with nature and spirit and god happens there. In my opinion, it’s just something about the environment and the magic that it holds. There’s no way to fully be able to articulate what that means if you haven’t actually gone through this yourself, but as always, I’m going to try.

Remember, I’ve only been back in the US three months and in that time I’ve overcome the culture shock of returning to my home country. Yes, in my case that was a thing. I’ve had to adjust to a vastly different climate and secure a new job after being unemployed for ten months. And I’ve also decided on my next adventure: moving permanently – for now – back to the Caribbean. Same region, different country. All of this in less than three months. Technically, all of  that happened between the beginning of April and the middle of May, so, 45 days. No wonder I’m confused and tired!

Everyone in the US seemed to agree on the fact that I came back “changed,” three months ago, and it was unanimous that I came back a different but better version of myself. However, one of my very close friends apparently didn’t know what to do with me. I know this because as we’ve grown closer again in the last couple of months, we talked a little about my journey abroad. She confessed that she wasn’t sure she was going to be able to “handle me” the way I had arrived back in the US. 

I didn’t ask her to expand on that as I was just trying to wrap my head around that statement. It truly felt so inflammatory but also maybe she was just speaking her truth. Either way it made me feel all the things I didn’t want to: mad, sad, frustrated, disappointed (in her) and very confused. I mean, she’s one of my ride-or-die friends. Literally one of my people that if I called her to pick me up and bring a shovel, she’d do it and only ask who we were burying after we were on our way to the destination. And it seemed like she was telling me that she would no longer love me unconditionally because I returned differently. This was hard because it wasn’t the first person I potentially lost because of the journey I was called to go on. There were a few other people that couldn’t stay connected with me for whatever their reasoning was, because I was far away in Central America. Some of the reasons they had – in my opinion – were superficial, unjustified or downright stupid. Now that I’ve had time to process her words, I came to a couple of conclusions and have been able to move past it. 

The first conclusion I have drawn is that even though we do seem to have wildly different lifestyles, there’s obviously something strong that has bonded  us together for more than 15 years of friendship. Most likely this one will stick around until the very end. The second conclusion is that despite our superficial differences we are still very much alike in a lot of ways, for better or worse. Therefore, she may very well have reacted to my changed reappearance as I would towards her, if the roles had been reversed. She, I, or anyone else was probably ill-prepared for a different pixie showing up back in the desert. I’m sort of (almost) middle-aged, after all. People are notoriously set in their ways by then so maybe nobody expected significant changes. Now you know as well as I do that I’m not your run-of-the-mill “normal,” “average,” middle-aged human, (she says with love and light).

My beautiful English friend living in Costa Rica helped me connect the dots with regard to the immense change that happened for me as well as herself with her ongoing journey there. And what she said made me think back to something I’ve written about before. 

Today’s conversation made me think about the glorious Madre Tierra (Mother Earth) in that part of the world. Remember, I was as far north as the Yucatán on this journey, and as far south as northern Panamá, before moving from Belize to Costa Rica and settling. There was something in the energy and vibration of Costa Rica, specifically, that captivated me and this friend, too. From our conversation, I gathered it has allowed her to grow and expand and heal like it did with me at what feels like an extremely accelerated rate. 

The truth is, I learned more about myself and about life in the year I lived in Central America than the previous 47 years. I did not see birth and fortunately for once I saw no death either, but a lot of “life stuff,” – the sandwich fixin’s in the middle – got a really good scrutiny. And we aren’t even close to being near the finish line! That’s what’s so wild. With as much growth and evolution and change that happened while living abroad, it made me realize there’s equally that much, and more, that still needs to be sorted out.

I came to the conclusion that there are specific factors in that part of the world that allow the transformation to happen so damn fast. It has to do with Madre Tierra, the land, the weather, elements and its creatures. While nature is indeed all around us no matter where we live, let’s say for the sake of argument (and I currently argue that I’m correct here), that it is so fucking in-your-face in Central America. There’s just something so incredibly moving to me about watching sloths slowly and purposefully stretch from one tree branch to another, or watching monkeys in the trees above you. Hearing their roaring noise is still the favorite sound I’ve ever heard. The little poisonous frogs, lizards, colorful birds and so many hundreds of other species that originate there are just, well like I said, in-your-face. They’re not all friendly either, so while contending with some fairly crazy and sometimes dangerous, life-threatening weather there’s also dangerous, life-threatening creatures. Cute, but deadly. It all seems to be on a much larger scale there than many other places on the planet. Everything is accelerated, amped up, rapidly growing and in vivid, living color.

For my sweet English friend and I, the Costa Rican experience is wildly less tame than where we grew up – her in London, and I in rural Wisconsin. And, the energy is vastly different than we were accustomed to. I think that is part of what allowed us to dig deep and start to grow. After all, most living things thrive when they feel rooted, grounded below, in order to thrive high above. 

I did this there. Life was hard in these third world – on average – rated countries, for sure, but I was never happier in any other time in my life. I felt so incredibly rooted and connected to the land there whether I was walking in the jungle or next to the ocean on the beach. Quite frankly, I felt grounded walking down any given street for that matter. Life was just different. It felt different and allowed for some rapid, really beautiful, healing and expansion. Grow, baby, grow.