The cool morning air greets me as I boil water for my morning tea and step out onto the patio to greet the day.  The coolness of the morning will soon be replaced by the scorching heat of the Caribbean sun.  It’s Friday, but it’s the same day as yesterday, and the same as the day before that.  Every day really is the same here.  The rooster crows, the sun rises, the first call for “Hay Pan,” greets my ears, the dog next door barks and the cat crosses the top of my patio looking slick and sleek on his way to find some mischief for the morning time. 

Often upon waking I find myself restless. My cultural conditioning of needing to go somewhere or do something screams at me that I’m being lazy and useless.   In order to tame the beast, it has become my practice to spend my mornings in solitude for the most part, writing, practicing yoga, meditating, or sometimes just listening to the sounds of the village around me with no particular “doing.”  It is foreign to me to do nothing.   I notice my mind wants to find fault with this quiet slow start to my day.  My conditioning is that I “should” be doing more, I “should” be working harder, I “should” get to work and do something.  I’ve spent a better part of the 47 years of my life operating in a program of “shoulds,” and here I am working to undo all of them and discover what it means to just simply live without an agenda or an overbearing neurosis to go go go. 

I would be a liar if I said it was easy for me.  Many days I find myself in an inner dialogue with my present situation and my cultural indoctrination as an American.  Many days I feel like a loser:  a run away who just couldn’t cut it in her own culture.  Somedays I just feel straight up guilty for leaving my friends and family, ashamed that I just didn’t have what it took to make it.  Ashamed that I continually have rejected my own cultural norms, really since I was 15.   Often I question my sanity and wonder if this path I’m on will end in drama and heartbreak and more failure. 

I would also be a liar to say that I have any desire to return to my former life.  Perhaps it’s a stage I’m going through and in time, I’ll snap out of it, but when I think about going back, I cringe inside.  My dream is very much in motion here, and it is far from an easy thing to have the reserves and staying power to keep moving through all of the doubts, fears, and sometimes isolation that this coming and going creates.   

For 8 years, I have had a vision.  Everything I am doing now is in service to that one vision, even though in moments it feels worlds away.  Bringing a dream to life is a process, a day to day unfolding, and it requires total commitment and service to that vision.  There is nothing else I would rather be doing right now, and no place else I would rather be.  The truth is when I let go of all of my “shoulds” and stay in the present moment of what is, I am 100% fulfilled and content in what I am doing.  I am not blind in any of it, not in the love, not in the illusion of it being utopia or all bubblegum and rainbows.  I am a woman on a mission working  in alignment with a vision that won’t let me go.

I have worked for every penny of what I have, and have had very little support or financial help along my path.  Unlike many other women I know here, I don’t have a wealthy ex husband that I have tapped into for financial support, nor a sugar daddy, nor a papa who supports or helps in any way.  I am 100% independent, and working on a shoestring budget to do the best I can without killing myself.   I am grateful for the small community of people who have from time to time donated to my gofundme’s along this journey or who have supported in other ways that aren’t monetary.  I am grateful for those who love me from a distance and who I know would offer me sanctuary if I needed it in a hard time.  I know it probably all looks crazy from a distance, but every piece of this is an orchestration of a vision and I’ve learned to let the process unfold and trust in it. 

So on the days that I am challenged, questioning my sanity, or feelinglow, I write, reflect, recenter and remember that there are no coincidences in the unfolding of my life.  There are forces at work I can not know about, connections and relationships that are still coming, as others fade.  There are love and passions that are yet to be discovered and depths that have yet to be explored.  I remember that a few years ago this was all just a fantasy, a dream that I didn’t know if I would ever be able or capable of creating. 

In short, on the days where I am challenged: I remember that the only thing I need to do is let go, and trust the process and magic will unfold.