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Costa Rica, Magic

Contemplating the Stars

December 26, 2017

trees

Something amazing happened the other night, but before I tell you, I have to tell you the backstory.

We are exhausted. And if you know me, you know that I don’t use words like that easily.

Part of the reason we are tired is that we have moved into a house that isn’t quite finished. There are no movers in this part of Costa Rica (well, not that we found), and so moving meant my husband and I and the man who works for us hauling some of our stuff out of the rental house, loading up a flat bed truck with no top or sides that we rented from another guy (until he had to go to his other job), and then unpacking it at the other end, (luckily with help from the builders,) then back to our rental house to load up the car many more times.

You’d think when we don’t have any furniture, if would have been an easy move, but it wasn’t. There are still lots of things to do and we are using lawn chairs, so it feels a lot like camping in someone else’s house.

The other important piece of information is that we have no blinds or curtains yet. As the windows are so big, it requires us to have them made and that has been a bit further down the priorities list than other things. So it’s been early to bed and very early to rise for us.

I have been continuing my daily writing practice, and boring both myself and (I am sure) the Universe with my questions and my complaints. Mostly I think the problem was that I was feeling disconnected. We had done this amazing thing and we just couldn’t seem to feel the way we thought we were going to feel when we moved in. (I know that any of you who have built or moved house are smiling at our naivety. Even we know better.)

So the other night we went to sleep as usual. We were a bit sad because there was supposed to be an amazing meteor shower and – like every other night since we moved in – it was too cloudy to see anything. Just after 4, I was awakened by our bedroom light turning on all by itself.

Yes, turning on. By itself.

I lunged out of bed to turn it off and then lay there for a moment, trying to understand why it had come on in the first place. There wasn’t anyone in the room. My husband was murmuring a bit because he thought it had been me.

Then I saw it. We were completely surrounded by stars. Our bedroom has several enormous windows, so it felt like we were outside under the stars. And there, directly in front of me, shining through my bedroom window, was the brightest, clearest, biggest crescent moon I have ever seen. The way it sat in the sky made it look like an enormous smile.

moon
(This isn’t that moon, I didn’t stop to take a photo. This is one from a year ago.)

I was stunned by the wonder, and for just a moment felt that feeling of tiny insignificance combined with total connection and oneness that only really seeing the stars can bring.

But who turned on the light so that I would see it?

I turned my head to look out of the other window and saw a shooting star. In my sleep-muddled brain, I searched for a wish. This time felt sacred and special and I knew I had to make it a good one.

What I really wanted was to feel that connected to the Magic all of the time.

If the light hadn’t turned on, I would have missed it.

I whispered ‘thank-you’ into the darkness just after I made my wish. The moon smiled back. Another meteor fell, and I lay in the darkness feeling connected and awed and completely befuddled.

There are so many moments in our lives when something happens to surprise us or to pull us out of our heads and into the magic. How is it that we can have moments of such clear and profound connection and then go back to our questions and our worries and our wondering?

But we do. Until the next moment of incredible connection.

My wish for you as we go into the holidays and finish out the year is that you take a moment to remember your moments. Take a moment to remember when you felt connected to something bigger and try to move forward from that feeling as you go through your days.

And from here, this morning, I wish you more of those moments. I wish that your 2018 be filled with moments of wondrous and unexplainable connection.

I hope that you remember who you are.

And as always,
I wish you love.
I wish you peace.
I wish you magic.

With so much love,
meghan

 

 

 

 

 

 

Costa Rica, gratitude

Celebrating the scrambled eggs

April 3, 2015

“So, that happened.”Sas Petherick after our first retreat

 

IMG_0239Yesterday on a Spreecast chat with two gorgeous women, I described my mental state as ‘scrambled eggs.’ I’m up, I’m down. I have moments of total clarity about what we want to do, closely followed by moments of whatthehellarewedoing!? I’m distracted by my need to take in the incredible thriving, fragrant, bustling ecosystem I am currently smack-dab in the middle of, my need to be getting on with The Move, the need to do yoga, make money, do the laundry, and, and, and, oh, and rest.

Yes, rest is the thing I am supposed to be doing right now. That was the plan.

The two beautiful women shook their heads and reminded me of The Huge Thing we have just done. That was really helpful, because in some ways, I had forgotten. I have moved on to the next thing.

In fact, every day, in every way, we are all doing Huge Things. For some it is huge to just get out of bed. For others it is dealing with illness, dealing with overwhelm, dealing with comparison, with guilt, with parenting, with ageing, with loving or hating or moving or changing or staying or lying or telling the truth or just choosing love over and over and over again, no matter how hard it gets.

I firmly believe that there is no sliding scale of bigness on the stuff we do. It’s all huge, and it is all relative. This being human thing is hard work, no matter where you are and what you do. And we hardly ever pause long enough to see that. There are no mini dance parties to celebrate our victory, or champagne corks popped on a seemingly ordinary Thursday afternoon. We save the special bottle for a more special occasion. We don’t celebrate because we are too busy moving on to the next thing.

So after the conversation was over, I got really quiet and looked out at the jungle. And took my first really deep breath.

So that happened.

We did that.

And we’re doing this.

It’s all good, and my eggs feel a lot less scrambled – maybe closer to poached.

xo

 

 

 


 

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Costa Rica, Leap and the net will appear

New rule: when you see a pile of poo in the house, find out who did it.

March 30, 2015

be easy. take your time. you are coming home to yourself. – nayyirah waheed

 

showerWe have spent the last hour flipping between trying to find the ant colony in our bedroom wall and ‘encouraging’ a 7″ Wandering Gecko to go back outside. When I say we, I mostly mean not me. My assistance in the matter involved finding splattered poo on the floor, calling my husband to discuss what it was, seeing the gecko, screeching, and leaping back about five feet, scaring my husband so much that there was nearly more poo on the kitchen floor.

So far, so good.

When people talk about Costa Rica, they usually warn you about the roads or tell you how nice the people are. In the five days we’ve been here we’ve discovered that both of those things are true. What people don’t tell you is that you are now a very small part of a very large ecosystem. I came for the whales and the blue morpho butterflies, but my quality time is being spent with the birds and the bugs and the amphibians.

My husband – The Brit – keeps asking me if I am okay. The third question (after two about the screech and the pile of poo) he asked after he encouraged the gecko out was whether it had put me off of Costa Rica.

The thing about emigrating is that you have to re-learn everything. There is no more old normal. You enter this weird grey area between tourist and local that never entirely goes away, no matter how long you are there. When I moved to England for the first time, I at least spoke the language and had the right clothes. Here it is like stepping into a movie – with bugs – or a strange vacation that never ends. The learning curve is going to be pretty steep.

And so we are adjusting to our new normal. Our first new rule was always check under the toilet seat before you sit down. Other things we have learned already include: don’t leave a light on unless you want ‘company’, coffee tastes best when you are on the deck watching the rainforest come to life in the morning, the locals are as nice as people say they are, buy earplugs, and if you see a pile of poo – try to figure out who made it.

Eventually maybe meeting the neighbours will be so normal it won’t be accompanied my my screeching.

Maybe.