Finding My Wild.
“I am trying to strip myself down to my barest essentials so that I can figure out where I begin and where the woman the world told me to begins. I’m going back to the starting line. I want to unlearn all the stuff that made me sick and angry. I don’t want to come to the end of my life and discover that I never even knew myself.”
– Glennon Doyle, Love Warrior
I am lounging poolside with a delicious margarita, on the rooftop deck of The Multnomah Athletic Club. I am reading Glennon Doyle’s book, Love Warrior. Tears roll savagely down my cheeks. I am weeks away from moving myself and my 4-year-old adopted son, to Costa Rica. My son, Tey, has recently “recovered” (or so we hope) from an auto immune encephalitis that has had him (and therefore, I) in and out of in-patient hospital stays at Doernbecher Children’s Hospital, for the last year and a half. We are moving from this beautiful and affluent life in Portland, Oregon, to the Cloud Forest Community of Monteverde Costa Rica because (or so I then thought) I know in my heart that Tey’s little brain will heal better in the rainforests of Costa Rica than it will in the US school system. And so, we will go.
I have no idea in this moment that the journey ahead of us, the one that started as “a year abroad” and has since turned into a potential life-time home, would be as much about my own personal healing and discovery, as it would be about his. I have no idea why these tears are so unapologetically rolling down my face (in a place where this is not exactly the thing that one does), but I allow them to. And with these tears as the first sip of water, a seed is planted. I am 32 years old. My life is full and happy and beautiful and more than I ever dreamed it could be. And still, as I take a generous sip of my margarita, it occurs to me what I am about to do. Stripped down to my barest essentials, I am about to meet myself, for the very first time.
And so I go. And so I do. And so I have. A million times over, and over, and over again. I find my wild.
The concept of finding my wild is born out of this journey and it began in me in these quiet moments where I felt brave enough to strip it all away. When I chose to break the mold and move Tey and I to Costa Rica, my life became a thing that I was actively choosing. It was only when I took myself out of the pre-writes and well-grooved roads that were so deeply a part of the family and life I was born into., that I could really meet the woman I was. And the truth is, in meeting myself outside of these story lines, it only confirmed how much I love about my Portland life, adore my family (both birth and chosen), and am grateful for (most of) what I have in my native land.
Anyone from Portland, and who knows The Multnomah Athletic Club, can appreciate the irony of this life-altering epiphany coming from it’s rooftop, and landing me in the life I have today. I have now been living full-time in Costa Rica for nearly six years, and have chosen to continue paying monthly dues to this same athletic club (in Portland, Oregon), every month since. I choose to maintain this connection, because it feels true to me, and a part of the world that I come from. I need to know that I can return to it as often as I choose, for me to be able to branch out from it as unrestrainedly as I have. My born-into home has given me the strength and safety to branch out and discover my truest life, and there is nothing I wouldn’t do to keep the doors wide open taking me back into it, whenever my heart should lead me back home.
And so, at this point in the game, the meeting of myself at my starting line has not at all looked like a rejection of the life that I was born into, but more of a careful and intentional selection of the things that serve me from where I came from, and a gradual (or very clear and hard-drawn line) distancing from those that do not. Figuring out the difference has taken the work of filling up hundreds (literally, hundreds) of empty journals from cover to cover. And piece by piece, I have sorted it out.
The decision to step outside of my “natural environment” has reminded me how powerful it is when I am physically outside of the world and culture I was born into.
Here, I am able to see myself and the woman inside of me so much more clearly, because she comes with so much less pre-text. I am able to hear her voice and recognize her wisdom, in the quiet of my own knowing. And when I do, it is so much more clear what she is telling me to do, and how free I am to do just that. And so (with increasing I do.
Moving to Costa Rica has resulted in me coming face to face with the woman I was made to be, and feeling so much more distance between her and the woman the world (my beautiful world) tells me to be. I have found the freedom to question everything and take few things as given, because everything is already an “alternative” to the cookie-cutter life that I loved from before.
The uncertainty and openness of everything can, at times, exhaust me. It has elicited many more tears (in many more delicious margaritas) all along the way. And, because this is the hard that brings me to my own attention and asks me to question everything I once assumed, I know it is the right kind of hard for me. Few (if any) things are scripted out, or assumed of me here. And so everything is about what I actually want to do. It all has to come from within. I must choose it all.
Out of and along this journey, the idea of my One Wild Life was born. It was born within me and for me, initially. And then at some point along the way, it became clear that it was one of the things I wanted to share with this world. I had ONE WILD LIFE, I was finding it and had battled my way through this process to get to it and be within it, and now it really felt like mine. So what did I want to do with it? I wanted (more than any other thing) to help other women, all across the world, to do the same damn thing.
But what did this actually mean?
As usual, in a time of need, I turn to the dictionary. My love affair with words has far out-lasted any with the many Latin-lovers I have held along the way, so I trust it to keep me safe. Looking to words to help me understand the parts of me that come from the deeper places has been a thing I have done before I even knew what a Latin-lover was. I have since learned a lot about Latin men, and grown closer than ever to my love of the dictionary all along the way (hello, sexy first date convo!)
One. Wild. Life.
(As defined)
ONE: Being or amounting to a single unit or individual.
WILD: Very unusual, often in a way that is attractive or exciting, undomesticated, untamed.
LIFE: The period of time between birth and death, the experience or state of being alive.
Within these words, I would define the next great adventure of my lifetime. I wanted to help take women from a templated life-plan from which they felt disconnected, to a place of ownership and excitement about all that their One Wild Life could be. It was, after all, what I had just done with mine, and I knew first-hand how real it could be. In my work as a licensed clinical therapist, it was all I wanted to do. I started to feel the passion flame rise within me whenever I was talking about these ideas with my current clients, and watched their wheels start to spin.
ONE (single unit & individual), WILD (attractive, exciting, untamed) LIFE (an experience, of actually being alive).
THAT. I want women everywhere, to experience just that.
The period of time between the starting line and the finish line, is what we each have to live. I am a marathon runner, and so I know very well the difference between these two little lines. They hold everything on race day, and yet all that happens in their confines depends on that which has happened for so many months in the unwitnessed dig-deep dedication from within, leading up to this day.
The greatest race of my life has been the decision to move to a foreign country as a single mom with my adopted kid. In doing so, I knew I had to go back to the starting line and figure out who I wanted to be at the finish, which would mean meeting myself in the hot lonely and suffocating stillness, time and time again. I would need to dig in, and question everything. The race itself has been sun and surf and giggle and sunset and Latin-lover, palm tree lined (helps), but this has not defined it. What has is that I now do not question what I did that night on the rooftop with my margarita. I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt that when I am at the finish line, I will know just exactly who I am.
The transformative potential of placing ourselves outside of our native (often not so wild) environments is one of the foundational values of One Wild Life Design, and specifically The SUYO Experience. When we are in these set-apart places, the unusual, attractive and exciting is just so much easier to see. It’s closer to us in a place set apart from our templates, and so in such a short amount of time, we see what we need to see. We dig deep and fill up with sun and surf and giggles and margaritas and from this place, we just might find our way into who we really are.
I found my wild, by bravely stepping out and stripping back, and the starting line next found me.
I have designed all of my Life Design Coaching Packages, One Wild Weekend Virtual Retreats, and SUYO Experiences in Costa Rica out of all that I have learned along the way. I have condensed what has taken place in 6 years abroad into these 3 power-packed and life-changing experiences. I truly hope you will take the leap.
The journey is drenched in equal parts love, understanding, grit and grace. Whether we will get to work together one on one, spend an unbelievable full week in tropical Costa Rica or experience a virtual getaway from your own home.
Your starting line is closer than you think.
