Lights!

Montezuma, Costa Rica

OM NAMAH SHIVAYA

I spent four long months in the jungle of Costa Rica attempting to force my heart to heal from a significant relationship ending and move onwards with my life. I worked in the kitchen preparing meals for yogis in training while I tried my hardest not to let the seemingly never ending tears drop onto their plates. Apologies for the extra salt.

My “old self” the one who could cook with her eyes closed, take orders and perform without messing up seemed to have gone MIA and I had become so insecure, frail and pathetic I did not recognize myself in the mirror. I turned away trying not to face her, myself, and kept swallowing my pride over and over again taking each hit as it came. Every day I had the thought “Well, it can’t possibly get any worse!” but to my dismay it most definitely could. It was probably not the best decision to hurl myself into a new country in hopes of starting anew, an amateurs attempt at a quantum leap of healing. It simply doesn’t work like that. You can’t always anticipate your own cure, as much as I hate to confess it.

While I did not “fix” or “find” myself on this trip, I was divinely connected to a group of beings I can only describe as my soul family. It is wild to me how it does seem that the Universe swoops up particular energies just to plop them into one place and time together, to show them things they would not have seen otherwise. These humans, these beautiful humans returned me to myself in so many ways, when I think of each of them my heart beats with a drumming of such sincere gratitude I forget my aches and pains and hope feels tangible. We worked together, cried, laughed, chanted, danced, screamed, filleted ourselves to the spirit of the Jungle. They reminded me of my resilience, my humor, my work ethic, my uniqueness, my voice, my inherent worth. I began to see the smallest of sprouting of myself re-emerging from its self made winter. It was not the biblical sized miracle I had planned in my Capricorn mind as I so nobly severed chords of my hometown while boarding the plane from LAX, but it was exactly what was supposed to happen. It was indeed exactly where I needed to be. Far away having my own mental breakdown in my own way, it was an epic and momentous part of my story. Like a brutal hot and long day of laying brick for the foundation of my healing it was so worthwhile and necessary, and maybe the most gratifying to look back on.

There was a phrase we would say as we saw the first trickle of yogis heading our way for each meal to initiate the line up of plating and serving. The first of us to see would shout “Lights"!” and our eager eyes flashed while our hands would begin to move at kitchen speed. So now, even with each of us scattered about the world in new lands and adventures, I can feel them with me, when I see a trickle of something coming my way that beckons my spirit to keep grabbing ahold of life, I can hear them calling “lights!!” at the ready, supporting me through every step. Never alone, our Selva Kula with me forever.