This past year has brought endless amounts of pain, tears, struggles, fights, growth, change, love, forgiveness, and healing. I look in the mirror and cannot believe that I am the same woman who looked back at me a year ago. I feel like my life has taken a complete 180 and has landed in this place that is so good, so rich, so challenging. I feel as though everything is finally making sense. All the brokenness, all the years of shame and guilt have brought me to this point. This place of beauty, of peace. I realize now that this, this present moment, is exactly where I am meant to be. That all those years of numbness, those years I spent trying to shy the anger and the fear away, has brought me to this point.
This past year has been one of the most difficult years yet for me. I have been challenged to go deeper, to figure myself out more. What do I love? What do I think? What do I believe? What makes me sad, happy, upset, joyful? To reconcile and forgive my past, to love my now and to look forward to the beautiful future I know I have. Ahh to live.
The last thing that Poppy said to me before he stopped speaking altogether has stuck with me throughout the years. For those of you who don't know, my dear, sweet, life-loving Grandfather, my Poppy, had Alzheimer's Disease. Most of the time he didn't know who any of us were, but always kept his lighthearted demeanor, quick to laugh, always smiling. I went to visit him for lunch one day and in a moment of clarity, he softly lifted my chin, looked straight into my eyes and said, "Beautiful".
It has been almost 10 years since he died, and I have been struggling to see that beauty my Poppy always saw in me. I would stare into my eyes, inspect my face, criticize by body, only to find flaw after flaw, imperfection after imperfection. Never once did I see that something that could draw a response out of a man who had lost all dignity, whose memory had disappeared. I looked for years, searching for that beauty that my Poppy saw. That pure beauty that was enough to bring a meaningful word to a man's lips who no longer knew how to string a sentence together. For years I wondered, what did he see?
And finally, after all these years of holding on to insecurity, of holding on to shame, to guilt, to unworthiness, I can see a glimpse of the beauty seen by eyes that knew a depth deeper than a memory.
Oh the freedom that self-forgiveness brings. And it is keeps going. This letting go. This allowing the beauty of who I was created to be, that woman who loves life, who loves people, to be free.
"I am bringing the breath of life to you and you will come to life!"
Monday, June 25, 2012
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Thanks Giving
For the past 8 years or so I have watched as my dad prays over the Thanksgiving meal. Tears well in his eyes as he blesses the food, giving thanks for another year and for the friends and family present. As the years pass by, we remember the ones who use to be with us, while we celebrate the love and the life we have with new friends and new additions to the family. The holidays are a bittersweet time.
I love Thanksgiving. I love that it's a day of eating (one of my favorite activities), a day of fellowship, a day of simply enjoying each other. But my favorite part is before we actually start eating the food that we spent hours preparing. I love the part where we gather in a circle and share what we are each thankful for that year. By the end of the sharing, no eye is ever dry.
This year I am thankful for my family. For their joy and compassion, for their kindness and generosity. I am thankful for my friends. For the laughter and the smiles, the fun and for sharing life together. I am thankful for my job. For the honor of helping those who are in so much need as they try to rebuild, reshape and renew their lives in the face of stigma and illness. I am thankful for Nate and for his unwavering loyalty, for his support and love, for his always gently pushing me to be the woman he knows I am meant to be.
There are so many reasons to give thanks. I am glad that we have a holiday that reminds us to pause and to reflect upon those people and things for which we are grateful. May the thanks giving continue in our day to day lives.
I love Thanksgiving. I love that it's a day of eating (one of my favorite activities), a day of fellowship, a day of simply enjoying each other. But my favorite part is before we actually start eating the food that we spent hours preparing. I love the part where we gather in a circle and share what we are each thankful for that year. By the end of the sharing, no eye is ever dry.
This year I am thankful for my family. For their joy and compassion, for their kindness and generosity. I am thankful for my friends. For the laughter and the smiles, the fun and for sharing life together. I am thankful for my job. For the honor of helping those who are in so much need as they try to rebuild, reshape and renew their lives in the face of stigma and illness. I am thankful for Nate and for his unwavering loyalty, for his support and love, for his always gently pushing me to be the woman he knows I am meant to be.
There are so many reasons to give thanks. I am glad that we have a holiday that reminds us to pause and to reflect upon those people and things for which we are grateful. May the thanks giving continue in our day to day lives.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
A World Within My World
So two things. First, Nate bought me a guitar for my birthday, so I am checking off #14 on my bucket list as I struggle to learn how to play. Go me! Second, I started my new job and my world has been flipped upside down! Seriously. I am amazed at how sheltered I am from a subculture that exists within my own little bubble of the OC. It's crazy to have been born and raised in a predominately homogeneous culture: white, wealthy, college educated, church-going, OC-bubble living, and then thrown into a job where I am now a minority, where my language is hardly spoken, and where I am totally out of my comfort zone. The timing is oddly coincidental as lately I have been really pressing forward in discovering myself and really taking the time to figure out who I am, what I like, and how I feel about things. It's a strange and uncomfortable place to be if I am completely honest. Like, how did I go 28 years without even knowing this subculture existed? And would it have really made that much difference in who I am if I was aware of it before this week? I don't know.
On a lighter note, I have been attending a lot of weddings lately. No matter how many I go to, I am always humbled by the vows. I think that vowing your love to someone is one of the most beautiful thing we can do as humans. I love watching the groom as he sees his bride walk towards him down the aisle. I love seeing the moms cry (tears of joy or sadness?). I love the children who are dragging their feet as they bear the rings or throw the flowers with bribes of candy and toys within their reach. I love watching the first dance; the moment when the bride and groom can finally relax and enjoy their day. So off we go tomorrow to watch another beautiful wedding. This time we get to be a part of the ceremony as we stand in support and love of the couple.
Another day of love and celebration, of tears and laughter, of dancing and eating! Cheers to Stacey and Phil! =)
On a lighter note, I have been attending a lot of weddings lately. No matter how many I go to, I am always humbled by the vows. I think that vowing your love to someone is one of the most beautiful thing we can do as humans. I love watching the groom as he sees his bride walk towards him down the aisle. I love seeing the moms cry (tears of joy or sadness?). I love the children who are dragging their feet as they bear the rings or throw the flowers with bribes of candy and toys within their reach. I love watching the first dance; the moment when the bride and groom can finally relax and enjoy their day. So off we go tomorrow to watch another beautiful wedding. This time we get to be a part of the ceremony as we stand in support and love of the couple.
Another day of love and celebration, of tears and laughter, of dancing and eating! Cheers to Stacey and Phil! =)
Friday, September 16, 2011
Changing
It's so easy to fall back into the rhythm of mundane life. Wake up, work, exercise, eat dinner, go to bed. Repeat. It's easy to forget about the people around you, to make them as routine as each day. To go months without seeing a good friend, or days without really having a good conversation. But what is life without those friendships, without laughter, without spontaneity? Do we live to work or work to live? How do we break free of this repetitive cycle of sameness? How do we really live life? I have been so challenged by these questions these past few weeks, because for me, it's so much easier to live life on repeat. But I have realized that life on repeat is meaningless. That life with no challenges is boring. That life without love, without deep relationships, is not life at all. And so I will try to break free from this rhythm and start walking to another beat. A beat that is off and strange, that is foreign to my normal. A beat that makes me feel uncomfortable, a beat that challenges me to really live.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Being Home
It's been a month now since I returned home from my time in Peru and I can't believe how much things have changed. It seems that this time in my life is a time full of transitions and sorrow, of excitement and disappointment, a time for self-improvement.
To say that I have been overwhelmed would be an understatement. In the past month I have moved homes, moved jobs, and have been working through the painful process of facing the reality of relationships. I have been challenged in every area of my life. Most days I can say that I feel like I am becoming a better, more independent, stronger woman. That's most days. Those days also exist where I feel like I can't go on, that everything is too much, that I am not as strong as I thought I was. And yet, I take a deep breath and move forward. One step at a time.
Life is a strange thing, isn't it? The things that I thought were a curse turned out to be a blessing, and the things that I thought were going so smoothly have become rough. Nothing is going as planned. None of it has been easy. And yet we must persist.
So what's next? I wish I knew. For now, I just take it one day at a time, one foot in front of the other as I hold on to my friends and family for support.
On the brighter side, I must say it is nice to be home. It is nice to have the comforts of my own bed, to be able to drink tap water, and to throw TP in the toilet. Oh the luxuries!
To say that I have been overwhelmed would be an understatement. In the past month I have moved homes, moved jobs, and have been working through the painful process of facing the reality of relationships. I have been challenged in every area of my life. Most days I can say that I feel like I am becoming a better, more independent, stronger woman. That's most days. Those days also exist where I feel like I can't go on, that everything is too much, that I am not as strong as I thought I was. And yet, I take a deep breath and move forward. One step at a time.
Life is a strange thing, isn't it? The things that I thought were a curse turned out to be a blessing, and the things that I thought were going so smoothly have become rough. Nothing is going as planned. None of it has been easy. And yet we must persist.
So what's next? I wish I knew. For now, I just take it one day at a time, one foot in front of the other as I hold on to my friends and family for support.
On the brighter side, I must say it is nice to be home. It is nice to have the comforts of my own bed, to be able to drink tap water, and to throw TP in the toilet. Oh the luxuries!
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Pampas and Iquitos
Let me preface this with, it was not our intention to spend the night in the jungle with a tour guide and his machete.
Having said that, we survived our impromptu jungle adventure and returned safely to Lima with only a few dozen mosquito bites to show for.
My friend/former coworker, Sophia (the Dr. Tran from the great Cambodia escape...) and I spent the first part of her week in Lima listening in on meetings, going to Pampas of San Juan, drinking Starbucks, shopping, and listening to Cuban music at a local bar. We, without much thought, decided that a trip to the jungle was exactly what we needed to break up the week. We also wanted to see what kind of work was being done in Iquitos and used that as our excuse to spend 2 days in the jungle.
Before I start recounting the jungle tour, allow me to quickly explain Pampas. Pampas de San Juan is a shanty town of about 57,000 people. They settled in the outskirts of Lima after being driven out of the highlands by the terrorists years ago. Because there were so many of them, the Peruvian government allowed them to resettle and thus the community of Pampas began. Pampas is divided into 4 sections and each section becomes increasingly poorer as you go further up the hill. Some homes are surprisingly nice while others are hardly standing. Dogs are running wild everywhere, water is shared in communal wells where each family is assigned a time to retrieve their water, and garbage is scattered along all the streets. It's a very interesting community and because of the close proximity of the houses and thus the families living in the houses, the epidemiology of disease is mapped in various studies. So, we started working on a TB project where we are going to place skin tests on about 400 people to determine if the rates of TB infection have decreased over the past 15 years. Pampas is where I spent the remainder of my time in Lima.
Ok, back to the jungle. So, Sophia and I showed up in Iquitos on a Wednesday morning. We made our way to a very disappointing hotel (dirty, small, and expensive) and decided right away that we wanted to go on a single day jungle tour. By 10 am we had canceled our Iquitos hotel room and were getting on a "speed boat" to a jungle lodge 2 hours away (by boat) from Iquitos for an overnight jungle adventure.
We arrived at the jungle lodge, which was actually much nicer than our hotel room in Iquitos, and started our adventure with lunch and a walk through the jungle. With rubber boots and our guide Danny (equipped with a machete), we stared our walk through the dense jungle. Danny painted our faces with red stripes from a seed then created plant crowns to ward off mosquitoes (which didn't keep the mosquitoes away, but did make us look ridiculous). We swung from vines, trudged through muddy rivers, saw monkeys, birds and huge spiders.
The rest of our time was spent in good conversation, dolphin watching, piranha catching, jungle village exploring, and sunrise and bird watching. Yes, there are dolphins in the Amazon River (pink and gray ones!). We went piranha fishing and Danny caught a piranha which we ate it for breakfast (it was delicious!). We woke up at 5:30 am, got in a boat with holes in it, in which Danny and the boat driver had to constantly scoop water out to keep from sinking, and watched the sunrise over the Amazon River. We saw sloths, monkeys, iguanas, tarantulas, and every bird alive in the jungle (turns out Danny is an avid bird watcher and insisted on pointing out, naming and imitating their calls).
Somehow we made it back to Iquitos, had our little meeting with Sophia's old friend who is working in Iquitos, and made it back to Lima by 10 pm. I must admit that the jungle adventure was one of the highlights of my Peru trip. It was beautiful. However, on a side note, in speaking with Sophia's friend, we found out that under the beauty of the jungle is a major drug and sex trafficking industry. The jungle is an ideal spot for drug trafficking due to the inability to detect boats covered by the rain forest. But thankfully (in a way), because of the drug trafficking, the sex trafficking has decreased. The sex trafficking started out as something called "child gifting". The jungle people would "gift" children to other villages if the child's mother was unable to care for the baby. Usually this worked very well and the children were brought up in loving homes. But somewhere between the mother and the village receiving the baby, people began taking the children and trafficking them for sex. It's disgusting and something that should never happen to a child, but according to Sophia's friend (who has lived in Iquitos for 10 years), if you try to interfere with the sex industry, you not only risk your own life but also the lives of those around you.
This has been constantly on my mind since I heard about it and I can't seem to think of a solution or a way to put a stop to the trafficking of children. It's hidden under "child gifting" which in theory is good, and yet there are children being trafficked. But where do we draw the line? Do we risk our lives and the lives of our families and friends to save these children? Do we just ignore it? How do we bring justice to Iquitos?
Thanks again for all your support. Nate joined me in Lima two weeks ago and we are slowly winding down our trip to Cusco and Machu Picchu. Will write more about Cusco, Machu Picchu and the 100th anniversary celebration soon! Thanks for reading!
Having said that, we survived our impromptu jungle adventure and returned safely to Lima with only a few dozen mosquito bites to show for.
My friend/former coworker, Sophia (the Dr. Tran from the great Cambodia escape...) and I spent the first part of her week in Lima listening in on meetings, going to Pampas of San Juan, drinking Starbucks, shopping, and listening to Cuban music at a local bar. We, without much thought, decided that a trip to the jungle was exactly what we needed to break up the week. We also wanted to see what kind of work was being done in Iquitos and used that as our excuse to spend 2 days in the jungle.
Before I start recounting the jungle tour, allow me to quickly explain Pampas. Pampas de San Juan is a shanty town of about 57,000 people. They settled in the outskirts of Lima after being driven out of the highlands by the terrorists years ago. Because there were so many of them, the Peruvian government allowed them to resettle and thus the community of Pampas began. Pampas is divided into 4 sections and each section becomes increasingly poorer as you go further up the hill. Some homes are surprisingly nice while others are hardly standing. Dogs are running wild everywhere, water is shared in communal wells where each family is assigned a time to retrieve their water, and garbage is scattered along all the streets. It's a very interesting community and because of the close proximity of the houses and thus the families living in the houses, the epidemiology of disease is mapped in various studies. So, we started working on a TB project where we are going to place skin tests on about 400 people to determine if the rates of TB infection have decreased over the past 15 years. Pampas is where I spent the remainder of my time in Lima.
Ok, back to the jungle. So, Sophia and I showed up in Iquitos on a Wednesday morning. We made our way to a very disappointing hotel (dirty, small, and expensive) and decided right away that we wanted to go on a single day jungle tour. By 10 am we had canceled our Iquitos hotel room and were getting on a "speed boat" to a jungle lodge 2 hours away (by boat) from Iquitos for an overnight jungle adventure.
We arrived at the jungle lodge, which was actually much nicer than our hotel room in Iquitos, and started our adventure with lunch and a walk through the jungle. With rubber boots and our guide Danny (equipped with a machete), we stared our walk through the dense jungle. Danny painted our faces with red stripes from a seed then created plant crowns to ward off mosquitoes (which didn't keep the mosquitoes away, but did make us look ridiculous). We swung from vines, trudged through muddy rivers, saw monkeys, birds and huge spiders.
The rest of our time was spent in good conversation, dolphin watching, piranha catching, jungle village exploring, and sunrise and bird watching. Yes, there are dolphins in the Amazon River (pink and gray ones!). We went piranha fishing and Danny caught a piranha which we ate it for breakfast (it was delicious!). We woke up at 5:30 am, got in a boat with holes in it, in which Danny and the boat driver had to constantly scoop water out to keep from sinking, and watched the sunrise over the Amazon River. We saw sloths, monkeys, iguanas, tarantulas, and every bird alive in the jungle (turns out Danny is an avid bird watcher and insisted on pointing out, naming and imitating their calls).
Somehow we made it back to Iquitos, had our little meeting with Sophia's old friend who is working in Iquitos, and made it back to Lima by 10 pm. I must admit that the jungle adventure was one of the highlights of my Peru trip. It was beautiful. However, on a side note, in speaking with Sophia's friend, we found out that under the beauty of the jungle is a major drug and sex trafficking industry. The jungle is an ideal spot for drug trafficking due to the inability to detect boats covered by the rain forest. But thankfully (in a way), because of the drug trafficking, the sex trafficking has decreased. The sex trafficking started out as something called "child gifting". The jungle people would "gift" children to other villages if the child's mother was unable to care for the baby. Usually this worked very well and the children were brought up in loving homes. But somewhere between the mother and the village receiving the baby, people began taking the children and trafficking them for sex. It's disgusting and something that should never happen to a child, but according to Sophia's friend (who has lived in Iquitos for 10 years), if you try to interfere with the sex industry, you not only risk your own life but also the lives of those around you.
This has been constantly on my mind since I heard about it and I can't seem to think of a solution or a way to put a stop to the trafficking of children. It's hidden under "child gifting" which in theory is good, and yet there are children being trafficked. But where do we draw the line? Do we risk our lives and the lives of our families and friends to save these children? Do we just ignore it? How do we bring justice to Iquitos?
Thanks again for all your support. Nate joined me in Lima two weeks ago and we are slowly winding down our trip to Cusco and Machu Picchu. Will write more about Cusco, Machu Picchu and the 100th anniversary celebration soon! Thanks for reading!
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Sand, Discos and Friends
Hola mis amigos!
Since last time, I have fallen even more in love with Peru! I am now a combi expert and I think I have tried just about all the traditional Peruvian food! I frequent the outdoor market, eating two course meals for 5 soles (about 2 dollars), drinking surtidos (mixed fruit juices), and eating every interesting looking fruit and vegetable in sight! If only I could speak Spanish better, I think I would be like the locals!
My personal life has been a bet hectic lately, super emotional, with a lot of confusion and little clarity. Without going into detail (because who actually wants to hear a sob story?!), I think this minor (or major) bump in my life has put things into perspective. I think that it's good to have a little jolt that makes you realize what is important in life, what relationships are worth pursuing, and what kind of life I would really like to live. I guess what it comes down to is that, like most people, I just want a life full of love and laughter. A life that doesn't take things so seriously but enjoys the simple moments, a life in community with others, a life serving those in need, and a life full of joy.
With that said, I must admit that I have embracing the beauty that Peru has to offer. Last weekend I went to Huacachina, a desert oasis about 5 hours south of Lima. The actual oasis is murky, green, and smells a bit like sewage, but the sand dunes surrounding the oasis are amazing! It felt like I was in Egypt or somewhere, definitely not Peru! I took a dune buggy for a 2 hour excursion around the sand dunes. It was both frightening and exhilarating! I felt like a child, screaming and laughing (mostly at the older Japanese couple in front of me who were giggling like school girls)! The driver stopped 4 times, handed us each a snowboard, and one by one we laid on our bellies, with our arms tucked under us and our feet in the air, and were pushed down huge slopes of sand. It was terrifying! About halfway down each slope, I thought, wow, one bad bump and I might actually die! Luckily there were only a few minor injuries and a lot of sand in the face.
I have also been salsa dancing as often as possible. I was lucky in Huacachina where there were plenty of gay men eager to teach a gringa how to dance salsa. I was tossed from gay man to gay man, each outdoing the other in moving their hips, in dipping, and fancy footwork. Turns out I LOVE Salsa dancing!
I feel like I finally am making friends with the people at the hospital. While the language barrier is still very present, I feel like I am at least understanding them better and am able to laugh with them when they joke. Today we celebrated Father's Day and our friend Danni's birthday. We got very little work done because like any day of celebration, we spent the morning preparing! It's so funny when they sing Happy Birthday because they start out singing in English all slow and boring and then start clapping and singing lively in Spanish. It's fantastic!
Tomorrow my friend Dr. Tran comes to Peru! I am so excited to have a friend to share the city with! First thing on our agenda: Salsa dancing of course!! Nate is coming in a week and then we are off to Cuzco and maybe Arequipas...so much fun ahead!
Thanks for all of your support and love. I miss you all very much and can't wait to be with you again state side! Besitos!
Since last time, I have fallen even more in love with Peru! I am now a combi expert and I think I have tried just about all the traditional Peruvian food! I frequent the outdoor market, eating two course meals for 5 soles (about 2 dollars), drinking surtidos (mixed fruit juices), and eating every interesting looking fruit and vegetable in sight! If only I could speak Spanish better, I think I would be like the locals!
My personal life has been a bet hectic lately, super emotional, with a lot of confusion and little clarity. Without going into detail (because who actually wants to hear a sob story?!), I think this minor (or major) bump in my life has put things into perspective. I think that it's good to have a little jolt that makes you realize what is important in life, what relationships are worth pursuing, and what kind of life I would really like to live. I guess what it comes down to is that, like most people, I just want a life full of love and laughter. A life that doesn't take things so seriously but enjoys the simple moments, a life in community with others, a life serving those in need, and a life full of joy.
With that said, I must admit that I have embracing the beauty that Peru has to offer. Last weekend I went to Huacachina, a desert oasis about 5 hours south of Lima. The actual oasis is murky, green, and smells a bit like sewage, but the sand dunes surrounding the oasis are amazing! It felt like I was in Egypt or somewhere, definitely not Peru! I took a dune buggy for a 2 hour excursion around the sand dunes. It was both frightening and exhilarating! I felt like a child, screaming and laughing (mostly at the older Japanese couple in front of me who were giggling like school girls)! The driver stopped 4 times, handed us each a snowboard, and one by one we laid on our bellies, with our arms tucked under us and our feet in the air, and were pushed down huge slopes of sand. It was terrifying! About halfway down each slope, I thought, wow, one bad bump and I might actually die! Luckily there were only a few minor injuries and a lot of sand in the face.
I have also been salsa dancing as often as possible. I was lucky in Huacachina where there were plenty of gay men eager to teach a gringa how to dance salsa. I was tossed from gay man to gay man, each outdoing the other in moving their hips, in dipping, and fancy footwork. Turns out I LOVE Salsa dancing!
I feel like I finally am making friends with the people at the hospital. While the language barrier is still very present, I feel like I am at least understanding them better and am able to laugh with them when they joke. Today we celebrated Father's Day and our friend Danni's birthday. We got very little work done because like any day of celebration, we spent the morning preparing! It's so funny when they sing Happy Birthday because they start out singing in English all slow and boring and then start clapping and singing lively in Spanish. It's fantastic!
Tomorrow my friend Dr. Tran comes to Peru! I am so excited to have a friend to share the city with! First thing on our agenda: Salsa dancing of course!! Nate is coming in a week and then we are off to Cuzco and maybe Arequipas...so much fun ahead!
Thanks for all of your support and love. I miss you all very much and can't wait to be with you again state side! Besitos!
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