The Santorini Experience

Santorini deserves it’s own story.

Last year, a friend and I trained and competed in our first sprint triathlon! And we crushed it! From there, we caught the bug. We said, let’s travel internationally AND do a triathlon! Shortly thereafter I found the Santorini Experience, a duathlon of swimming and running along the rugged sea coast of Santorini. Not even a week after the tri we said, we’re going to Greece! The power of intention.

2022 dates hadn’t been released yet, and as time went on, and I started seriously saving for the house, I figured Greece was just a pipedream. One of the more beautiful things about getting older and more experienced is I no longer try to force things. Life flows and opportunities present themselves and the path of least resistance is the one I’ve learned to enjoy walking the most. I figured the house would be my big commitment and travel could come in the years following.

Turns out, just a few days after my time in LA in early July, they released the Santorini Experience 2022 dates, for late September. Fresh off the heals of my breakup, with over 100,000 Skymiles points from being grounded from the air for the 2+ years of Covid, I excitedly texted my friend they had dates. Should we go? Within a matter of hours, our flights were booked and we were registered for the swimming leg of the race, the run being a half marathon that neither of us were up to.

I was back in the pool at the rec center regularly, looking out over my shoulder as I turned each stroke in the water, thinking about looking out and seeing the blue of the Mediterranean as I swam. I increased my swim time little by little because the mile and a half was twice as long as our swim in the current-assisting ocean of Point Lookout. I was entirely preoccupied with home improvements and work up until we left. We packed our buoys, swim suits, goggles, swim caps, and had only the slightest bit of anxious anticipation of such a long swim in the flat waters of the Aegean Sea. We’d done the miraculous once before, we’d do it again.

We arrived in Santorini Friday afternoon and had our swim first thing Sunday morning. We ate fresh tzatziki and the biggest platters of fresh seafood I’d ever seen, relaxed and napped off our jetlag on the south shore beaches of Akrotiri under umbrellas, and watched the sunrise from our traditional Santorini cave house. While on a beach somewhere we received an email reminding us to bring our cardiologist note stating we were cleared for the swim. Surely I would have heard about this were it mandatory earlier than a day or two before the race. Plus, everything is so laid back here. Surely this suggestion is just that. Not to worry.

Sunday morning came and we drove to Fira to find the Old Port of Santorini where the boats were docked to take us to the little island off the coast to swim back to land our mile and a half water journey. We meandered through the tight little cobbled market streets of the cruise ship port in the early morning without much traffic and found the stairs to the Old Port. And then they kept going. And going. And then we could see the port waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay down at the bottom. Like, way down. And then we saw the cable car. We were nearly halfway down, the steps weren’t steep, they were just many, and this would just add to our story telling, like right now. But by the time we got to the bottom a solid 30 minutes later, both our legs were like jello. Not ideal going into the swim, but we made it!

We weaved through all the swimmers donning their orange swim caps, circled up with friends, full of eager excitement, and got to the registration tent. “Do you have your cardiologist note,” was one of the first things she asked. I said, “No, I just heard of this yesterday. I don’t have one.” “You can’t swim then,” she said. The boats were leaving at 9 and we begged and pleaded and nearly cried to the Director of the race and his team. “We came all the way from the US for this trip! This is why we’re here!” We were consistently met with, not the easy going laid back Santorini vibes we were becoming accustomed to, but bureaucratic, red-tape, albeit safety related red-tape, that I was becoming less and less convinced we were going to be able to talk our way around. They said, if you’d like to ride on the boat with us you can. I thought, okay, maybe if we can get on the boat, we’ll get out there and they’ll say, go for it. So we kept our clothes on over our swimsuits, but were the only two people on the boat with a completely different vibe than the other 50 swimmers who were amped up and full of adrenaline as the boat took us further and further off shore.

We got to the launch site and swimmers jumped from the sides of the boat into the water. And we stayed seated. With an ounce of hope left, I looked around to the faces we’d been pleading with, praying for them to come over to us, to feel the sadness radiating off us and make an offer, an offer that never came. The swimmers all lined up on the edge of the water, ready to jump in and swim, waving and smiling, taking photos, and then they blew the start horn. We didn’t move from our seats on the boat across from each other. I cried reluctant tears of deep disappointment and disbelief. We watched swimmers take off and make their trek back, while our boat eventually pulled out ahead of them and brought us, the first registered swimmers back to shore.

Defeated, sad, but both of us trusting that we don’t always know why things happen the way they do, trusting and searching for a reason we were spectators in what we had been dreaming of being participants in for over a year, we set out to at least take that god-damn cable car back up the mountain and go about our own Santorini experience. We literally only had the suits on our backs. We left all our belongings in the car anticipating we’d be swimming. So we thrashed with the cruise ship folks coming into port like cattle through line to the cable car. Surely, if all these people are expected to move through this little cable car expeditiously, it must be free of charge. We had found a fellow New Yorker, now North Carolinian, amongst the push and shove of the moving crowd, and were chatting with her and her southern gentleman, when we saw the sign, “$6.” We looked at each other with complete bewilderment. Like, come on. Can we catch a goddamn break. We turned to our newfound friends, after telling them our brief story of disappointment, and had to add, and we didn’t bring any money. Is there any way we could borrow $12 to get to the top and venmo you? Thanks to these kind folks, the comradery of being New Yorkers wherever you go, and the southern hospitality of this couple, we thoroughly enjoyed our short trip back to the top of the mountain.

Our Santorini adventures only went up from there. We swam at hidden beaches, hiked some of the best hiking arguably in the world, saw constant breathtaking blue-water views matched by the iconic blue domed churches that make Santorini famous, and enjoyed enough americanos, frappes, and spanakopita, to last a lifetime (or at least until we make the trip back). Quiggs and I were the perfect travel companions. There’s something about vacation and travel that just puts everything in perspective. You put everything down and are just in the moment, wherever in the world you are. At least that’s how I vacation. I felt lightyears beyond where I had felt even a few months earlier. I wondered what I had done to be so blessed. And I reveled in each and every second of Santorini, but our last night, was by and far, the most magical. Our last day really.

We sailed to the other islands around Santorini, had lunch brought to us in lounge-chairs on the beach, saved a man from Florida that was drowning (if that’s not ironic I don’t know what is), and danced the Macarena as it played over the boat’s speakers with a woman from South Africa who got me to dance by saying to some of our Scottish friends, when will you ever be here again? Live it up! I’m a sucker for a good group dance and thought, damn if she’s not right!

Our night ended in the magical Ia, the best spot to watch the sunset in Santorini, packed with most of the folks on the island that time of day to catch the sun’s daily departure. We were a bit scattered, searching for a restaurant with a view and were met with, sorry, we have reservations. We were running against the clock and stumbled down some steps to our next hopeful dinner destination. It had the best view and maybe 10 tables. I knew it was a long-shot, but sauntered over to the host with a look in my eye like, I already know the answer to this question but if there’s a way, “Do you have a table for 2?” He looked at us, a bit bemused, with a look in his eye like, we both already know I really don’t, and said, “There’s a minimum of $45 euros per person,” to which we said, that’s not a problem, and were escorted to a two-top with glee.

We ordered lobster and octopus and seltzers as far as the day is long. And our host was our waiter, and was handsome. I listened as several of the women, straight and on their honeymoon with their wives alike, hit on and praised him and his service. We caught each other’s eyes every time he walked by the table. He was attentive, gracious, funny, and did I mention handsome? As our meal winded down, my dear friend said, you better not let this opportunity go. I talk a lot of shit but at the end of the day, I like a man to make the first move. It’s not old-fashioned, it’s out of experience that if I make the first move, they end up letting me make all of them and I’m not about that life no more. So Quiggs came to my rescue and said as the check came, “When do you get done with work? I think you two should get a drink.” Muh girl. The rest, well the rest is the end of this four-part story.

While he spoke enough English for us to talk and get to know one another a bit on our boutique hotel room’s patio pool-side, there’s another language that’s universal that we’d been speaking since the minute we met that we were becoming more and more fluent in as the moments passed. I asked him, “Do you drive a car?” “Motorbike,” he said. “Would you take me for a ride?” “Where do you want to go?” “Anywhere,” I said. “You’ll want to put on something warmer.”

I threw a light hoodie over my dress, and threw my leg over the back of his bike and my arms around his waist and we took off around the bends and curves of the streets of Fira, out to the coast. As I got more comfortable on the bike and the back of this handsome man, I leaned back and looked up. Every star in the sky was shining down on us. I took a deep breath in, and while we sped across this island I had come to fall in love with, with no helmets and no fear, I thought, God, if it’s my time to go, you can happily take me. He went faster and I tightened the grip of my legs around his and he offered a hand to my thigh. I’ve got you, it said.

And that, my friends, is the story of how Sara got her groove back. Here’s to hope, heartache, and the scenic journey back again. Nothing is ever happening to us, but for us. Like one of my favorite bands, Dawes says, “things happen, that’s all they ever do.”

Thanks for being on this ride with me, and here’s to 40!

Hey Macarena, ay!

39th year of life: Part III

Part III. Let’s. Fucking. Go.

When I started reflecting on the last year, I didn’t realize I had so much to say. While Parts I and II put it all in context, this part, well this is my favorite part. The good stuff. Who doesn’t love the good stuff. But it’s really only by reflecting on that dark and lost space I was in earlier this year, that makes being where I am today truly a gift, but more so, a testimony to the power of the Universe to guide us, even through the darkness, to the exact place we’re meant to be. If you believe in that sort of thing. I 100% do.

This Part III is several days later because I had to take a break from writing to help raise $4.6 million dollars for communities impact by disaster, here in the US and abroad. That job I was just starting to navigate earlier this year has turned into a place I am incredibly humbled and honored to be a part of. So I worked a 16 hour day last week, on our biggest day of the year, and then took three full days to recover and feel human again. We took pictures in the golden hour sunlight on a 6th floor rooftop terrace overlooking the Hudson River, rubbed elbows and broke bread with millionaires of Manhattan, and laughed and supported each other every step of the way. “Do you need anything,” echoed between us as we moved in unison throughout the night. I realize more and more with each passing day how truly blessed I am to be a part of Team Rubicon and the veterans and civilians alike that serve in the harrowing places we’re called.

So, I got home from LA in early July, in contract for a half-a-million dollar house in Long Island, which is on the most affordable end in this market, and immediately went to work at the restaurant to stack away as much as I could. July and August were a blur of straight up hustle. Working, packing, moving in waves, harassing my lender about closing, expecting and planning to close a few weeks before I actually closed, spending a week in Albany at the lovely and always welcoming Serrell Farms in the space between needing to leave my Long Beach studio and actually moving into my new home in East Patchogue. What a gift that week was. Swimming in the Hudson far north of where I was last week, where the water’s clear and clean and nourishing in the late-August heat. Even Willa got in and she’s not a swimmer with that thick fur.

I returned to Long Beach with two days to close and stayed at a friend’s place right next to the three girls I’d fallen in love with over the course of my relationship. I spent my last night in Long Beach walking Willa around the block with them and their beautiful Mother, who I also came to fall in love with. We still laugh with wonder that these are the lasting relationships of love that came out of that romantic rollercoaster.

Then I closed on my house. For folks who don’t speak real estate like I didn’t before this, closing is when the fat lady sings. It aint over, until it’s over, and it aint over, til you close. I sat at the war table with lawyers and agents and lenders, oh my, and signed my little signature away for a solid hour. It was the first moment I was grateful to be doing it alone because I couldn’t imagine the extra time it would take for two people to sign it all! And then Willa and I went to the house.

That day I ripped up carpet, moved what once filled a studio apartment into a three bedroom home, and could not sleep that night I was so filled with absolute awe. It still feels surreal to me sometimes to be sitting in this gorgeous space. To decorate and demo, to paint and scrub, to pull weeds and bushes and plant what I hope to watch grow over the years to come. Like I said in my letter to the sellers, I didn’t think homeownership would be in the cards for me. The fact that I’m here, complete testimony to the power of the Universe, intention, hard work, and a great realtor!

Moving into my home on August 30th was a workout! I was dripping with sweat but couldn’t stop moving. After several hours, I got a late afternoon text. “I’m at the beach house if you want to come.” I couldn’t think of anything better. I closed, moved into my home, and got to swim in Hamptons Bay with one of my closest friends, taking in the beauty of Long Island I hadn’t come to really appreciate until then. The water was like glass, the sun was setting, and I truly understood #Long Island Pride for the first time.

And then came Greece.

39th year of life (Part II)

They say it takes weeks for antidepressants to work, but I felt their effect immediately. Whether it was psychosomatic or not didn’t concern me. They buoyed me back to the surface of the water in which I had been silently drowning without struggle. I had always been leery of antidepressants. Surely I’ve had situational depression but never clinical. Or, what do I have to be depressed about? An attitude of gratitude should fix that. A dear friend put it blankly – you can’t pray your way out of a chemical imbalance.

I felt a twinge of feelings again. They had become foreign after feeling simply flat for months on end. I was delighted to have energy to do more than just exist. During this time I was making monthly trips to Syracuse to spend precious time with my parents after my Mom’s diagnosis. I was still a little lost at sea navigating my new job in quite a large organization, and my love was coming back to Long Island with the longest stretch of health and sobriety he had seen in some time. But I could navigate it all with refreshed resolve.

Summer arrived full throttle in Long Beach and the sun and warmth brought with it an ease that promised easier days ahead. I had been casually house-hunting and visiting properties but with interest rates steeply climbing, I knew my window to purchase was quickly closing. While Long Beach had my heart, I was ready to expand my space beyond the four-concrete walls of my studio basement apartment. With renewed hope for the future and ours collectively, my love made an offer that would change the trajectory of my life. He wanted to match my home savings with his severance package to make putting an actual offer on a home possible. I would not be sitting at this pedestal kitchen table in my adorable pink chairs looking out my bay window over my backyard with the blue birds and the azalea bushes had it not been for this loving offer. I had hoped my love would be sitting across from me, sharing the French press coffee and the quiet of the morning, feeling like retired folk together watching the birds in the morning. But God had other plans. Plans that I’ve come to fully trust in wholeheartedly.

I found the house, made an offer on the spot, that was accepted the next day. The home inspection was the day after that. We sat together on the back deck talking about the financials and how perfect the 3-bedroom ranch was for us and his three daughters who we I hoped would come to call it another home too. It was 4th of July weekend. The paperwork for contract was being drawn up and we had the most glorious weekend together. We lounged about his parents’ sprawling estate in Wading River, swam in the pool, relaxed in the hot tub, I read and rocked in chairs on the back deck. We spent the 4th on the beach in the Hamptons, taking in The Good Life. We’d been through so much together. It felt like we were finally stepping into a new chapter. I headed back to Long Beach that Monday morning eager and excited to sign!

At this time, I was also flying back to LA for some face-time with my new colleagues. I flew out Sunday afternoon, and before dawn Monday morning, my hopes and dreams for what this next chapter would look like crumbled. My love had disappeared. My number had been blocked.

I laid on the floor of my LAX Hilton hotel room, sobbing, at 5am. I could not believe this was happening again. While I was 3,000 miles away no less. The good news is that this moment, this one right here, on that hotel floor, was the second moment that has changed my life drastically this year. This one right here.

I eventually picked myself up off the floor, drank coffee, showered, put on my professional happy face, and went to headquarters to spend the day with 100 colleagues. In between meetings I would obsessively call, again and again, to no avail. Then I received the contract for the house in my email. That day. That morning. Did I even want the house if we weren’t going to fill it with what I was hoping to be my own beautiful blended family? Could I afford it on my own? What about all the remodels and updates we had planned on with his knowledge, tools, and labor. I knew I could afford it on my own. I wouldn’t have proceeded if I couldn’t, going into this joint-venture with someone with several months of sobriety and a lifetime history of relapse. Maybe I should just look at a one-bedroom condo in Long Beach.

The intention I had set with a group of sisters earlier in the year was expansion. Expanding goodness. Expanding my space. Expanding myself and my spirituality. Be careful what you intend for. I knew rather quickly, from the middle of my gut, that I would choose expansion. That I was meant to move forward and walk the rest of the way to home ownership on my own. I signed and was in contract by the end of the day.

When he resurfaced the next morning and returned to his parents house to sleep, as if he’d been working a 24-hour shift and was just coming home, no big deal, I decided to get off the merry-go-round. I made a pact with myself, right then and there, that I would never again be on that hotel floor. That regardless of the love and bond I feel with this man, no matter the vision I have for our future, I would choose me. I would choose self-preservation. After all I had already been through and come out the other side on, I would not be reduced to ruble again by this dance.

I spent my last night in LA walking along the beach, exploring cute shops, and took myself out to a delicious Italian dinner. I walked by a church sign that said, “If you’re looking for a sign from God, this is it.” This is it.

39th year of life (Part I)

This 39th year of life has been a doozy.

Let’s start at the end. I’m typing from my dinning room table, in my dinning room, in my first-home. That I purchased. By myself. Big up to the other ladies out here making big moves solo. I feel badass and beholden to no one. To say it’s given me confidence would be an understatement.

But let’s start at the beginning to really put this into context.

Last year I celebrated with girlfriends in the woods the weekend before my birthday, and took myself shopping for new clothes. It was 38. No biggie. I feel the same way about 39, except surviving this last year of life truly deserves its own celebration. I was feeling free and light, excited for what was to come. And what was to come, the day following my birthday, was coming home to find my beloved friend’s beloved dog lifeless, on my floor mat, behind the door as I pushed it open coming home from work late at night.

I rushed to the emergency vet with the sweet little pup frozen still in my lap, praying and crying and trying to stay on the road. The team of veterinarians worked diligently for the better part of an hour and when they said there was nothing else to be done, I completely lost it. Having to call my dear, sweet friend and break the horrendous news to her while she was overseas was equally heart-wrenching.

The replaying of scenes and noises throughout the night, the questioning how and what could have happened, and the self-blame, didn’t stop for weeks. My light and free high was swallowed whole by the trauma of it all.

My friend was entirely lovely, concerned about me, and grateful her sweet dog was under my care when he needed such help, but the sadness stayed beyond her graciousness.

To close out the year, I decided to make that holiday visit to my ex, sad and lonely the day after Christmas, only to find him too, on the brink of death. Deep in the throes of active addition, the cause of our breakup, and all the breakups after the breakup, I found him in a drug-induced psychosis, talking in different voices to himself and even leaving notes around his apartment from the various voices in his head. I would spend the next month essentially keeping a watch over him, taking him for psych evals, talking with crisis unit social workers. I even called a church asking about exorcism, I shit you not.

As this man I loved, who was so sick, lost his 20+ year career and pensioned-job, I began a new one. To the day. I watched tears roll from his eyes as I overhead the decision that was made to separate him from a job that he loved and was good at, that he’d put his entire life into building, and was planning on retiring handsomely from. On the same exact Monday in January, I stepped into a new position, the one I’m in currently, the one that’s afforded me this home. It wasn’t lost on me that day that while I loved this man dearly, our lives were going in complete opposite directions. But I’d stand by my man and hold him up. Surely that will save the day, love. John Lennon said so.

Yet love is no match for addiction. As I watched my beloved leave for the third time for rehab in six months, I was resolved to let go this time. I had given it my all and failed. He left, and I was heartbroken anew, and navigating the seas of a new role within a new organization remotely. I didn’t have much familiar ground to tread on, but even more would crumble leading to a complete and utter freefall.

My Mom had not been feeling well for the better part of a year, having lost her voice because of gerd, or chronic acid reflux. She was starting to feel better but her voice still wouldn’t return. To repair her vocal cords, she was sent from gastro to an ear, nose, and throat specialist, who discovered that her voice box was being crushed by a tumor in her lungs. My sister called to tell me. They wouldn’t say the word cancer for the longest time, but I can still hear my Dad, shaky voice, “it’s everywhere.”

From this point in late January until late April, I was a zombie. I cried, and I cried, and when I was done crying, I would cry even more. I mean, I have gone through sad times before, but I always got to the other side of the tears, and this, this was just a seemingly never-ending sea of sadness and grief. I wouldn’t shower. I barely ate. I was being ushered into the existential crisis that awaits all of us with the potential or actual loss of a parent, the only people in our lives who have been with us since day one. We don’t know a world in which our parents don’t exist. Not to mention that my Mother has lived a life of service, taking care of everyone, busting her ass, putting up with bullshit at home and at work, and this was how it was all going to end. I couldn’t bear the finality of her never getting her golden years to enjoy being a Grandma and put her feet up and rest for once.

I just didn’t care anymore. About anything. I didn’t have the energy to. When I went to work, I wasn’t really there. My dear friends and coworkers who knew me and loved me at the restaurant could tell I was lost deep behind the sadness, but I couldn’t find my way back. Close friends offered suggestions I declined left and right. I barely had enough energy to show up for the bare minimum, I simply, truly, could not do any more than that. I refused to put any more on myself. I was content being able to do just that. I called out sick from my new job and slept all day. I needed it, I told myself. Just a day of rest. The next morning I woke up, and I could have done it all over again. I knew I needed help.

I made a telehealth appointment that day with my primary and began antidepressants. That hesitant decision has turned out to be one of the best decisions of my life, and opened the door to the transformation the last 6 months of my 39th year would bring.

A Gaggle of Sisters in the Sand

It’s been so long since I’ve written, it feels as if I’ve lost my voice, which is exactly the imperative to write.

I watched the sun rise over the inter-coastal this morning. Spectacular yet mundane, routine, for the sun that is. I just happened to be there to witness it. And as I sat there alone, in the quiet of the birds flying over and the water gently lapping, I missed the morning murmurs of the three little girls I shared this sunrise with a year ago.

At the time, I would have told you, sharing it with them the first morning was an outing. Peeking into their room while the whole house slept and whispering, “I’m going to watch the sunrise,” as they jolted into action from stillness as only young children seem to do, eager to do and see and play another day. We found flip flops, or left them behind, and crept down to the water in unison, expectant, excited.

I sat and drank my coffee and watched them play and share their morning thoughts with each other, a gaggle of sisters in the sand. One pointed out the changing colors of the sky and we shared which ones we liked most. They dipped their toes or more into the shoreline and we lingered in that moment together. I captured pictures of them in their pajamas with the sun rising behind them, arms wrapped around each other.

The next morning, and the one after that, I realized I had created a routine. I didn’t need to pop my head into their room. The door was ajar and whispers of “sunrise?” caught me on my way past, and they came along and we followed the same routine. I remember thinking one of those mornings, it would be nice to sit and enjoy my coffee and sunrise alone. Alone. My default status for most of my life prior.

Now the grass is always greener, and I know more than one of my dearest friends with children are thinking how glorious a little alone time would be, but as I sit here, a year later, with exactly that, more than anything, I wish I had those little painted toes in the sand and gaggle of sisters to share in this sun rise, in this day.

While I’m in the warmth of Florida, I can’t help but think of the words from Alaska, “Happiness is only real when shared.”

Team Building 2019

Here I am waking up on the second and final day of Team Building 2019. I absolutely love the people I work with. I feel like we’ve been at summer camp for two weeks and I’m sad to go home and not be with them all day. Who gets to say that about their coworkers? Not everyone.

And the families. I’ve met so many people I’ve only known on paper or video before this weekend. The Cureton family who slays in basketball and has adorable teenage twin boys, whose Mom Evie was telling me how nervous she was for Luke to be around this many people, and how good it was for him to be with other veterans who thought the military was going to be the rest of their lives. Hugo Gonzales and his adorable little wife Annie, with their three girls, two of them twins. He gave a great speech last night about being mortgage-free AND debt-free thanks to NAPFA, the financial advisor service that comes with each home we gift. He is also blind from his service and made free throw and corn hole shots, which was absolutely awesome to witness. My sweet Nelson’s. They’ll always hold a special place in my heart being the first family I ever met. And sweet little Eva. Jennifer made the meanest half-court, one-arm throw basket we’d all ever seen. It was my favorite moment from yesterday. She jumped right into Nathan’s lap while everyone surrounded them.

Gabriel Gonzales has a constant smile on his face and is always waving and happy to see you, Joel Tavera moves about the room with ease and confidence, and while some of the new families look unsure some of the time, I’ve definitely seen moments of joy, happiness, and togetherness from Shemeka McNair and Natasha De Alanacar and their children. Being a Gold Star wife here may be hard, seeing all these families together. I met and was able to congratulate Kirstie Ennis on her climbing Everest and her Tillman Award.

I’ve been going to bed with a bursting, gushing full heart, in awe I get to be a part of this, that this is where God brought me. I am beyond grateful to be a part of this experience, that I get to meet and know these phenomenally strong, resilient people. They have prosthetics, wheelchairs, service dogs, walking sticks, and constant smiles, laughter, and pride. It truly puts life in perspective.

I look at them sometimes, Gabriel or Joel, and I think about who they were before they were injured, what they looked like, if they carried themselves the same way. And for a moment I get sad. To be looking at all they sacrificed, I could speculate for country but I think everyone serves for their own reasons. They’ve given their sight, their limbs, their legs, their hearing, their skin, their brains, their faces, their independence to move about in the world all on their own. Men who used to lead teams or units, squadrons of men, now relying on their wife, their growing children, their parents, to really move anywhere. It’s humbling. I know it wasn’t always that way and still isn’t sometimes. And maybe there’s something about being surrounded by your comrades, by not only being with other veterans, but other men, shooting baskets, putting golf balls, with one arm, in wheelchairs, that brings out that ease and grace they each exhibit. I am in constant awe.

And do you know what else I see? They’re alive. They’re alive and they almost weren’t, and the loved ones and wives and children who are most grateful for that alone. They’re alive and a part of their families. They’re Dad. They’re here and they’re smiling and joyful.

What do you have to be grateful, smiling, and joyful for today and everyday.

An Ode to a Decade

My Dearest Albany,

Where do I begin? Thank you. That’s a great place. Thank you for taking me in, 26 years old, lost, scared, desperately seeking more. Thank you University at Albany Women’s Studies Department for accepting me into your ranks, for giving me a platform to explore feminisms, liberations, and rebellion in all their hopeful glories. Thank you Billy DeLap, and moreso, Mr. and Mrs. DeLap, for owning a home in the Capital Region and giving us a bulls-eye for where we might start a life. A life together that would in fact never come to fruition, yet planted a seed in Albany for each of our lives nonetheless.

I’m leaving my beloved Albany, and in reflecting in all this city and how the last nine years have shaped my being, my story, and my soul, I can’t help but start at the beginning. And a Jameson-soaked, alcoholic beginning it was. I was a 26 year old graduate student playing beer pong at parties with 21 year olds. I was a girlfriend scorned, wrecking havoc through the life of the one I loved, the only way I knew. Fighting and doubling down on my efforts to make. life. work. To become the woman I wanted to be. And waking up groggy, hungover, and adding just a dash more of embarrassment and shame to the pile my drinking had been building up the previous 10 years.

And then the Universe stepped in. I was brought to a place where I was open-minded enough to explore and experiment. I was desperate to change enough that I was willing to see, if I stopped drinking, if my life would change. If I could actually become the woman I wanted to be. A woman of dignity, integrity, character, passion, and worth. Turns out I was always worthy, I just needed convincing. And let me be clear, stopping drinking was a choice like giving someone with a gun to your head your wallet would be a choice. I was brought to a place of incomprehensible pain. And that pain was the best gift Albany’s given me. With that gift, I stopped drinking. (Side note, if you’re in this pain, I’m always here to talk).

I leaned into and crowd surfed in a recovery community in Albany that held me afloat when my arms were exhausted from all the flailing. I was taught and learned slowly how to treat myself and the ones I love with respect and care. I was taught and learned how to show. up. How to get out of my own way. How to take my pain, fear, confusion, and name it as such, instead of drown it out temporarily. I became that woman. You, Albany, shaped me into that woman. And I am forever indebted and grateful for to you for that. And while I’m indebted and grateful, I still must leave.

You see, before I landed on the Hudson River’s shores, and before I put down the Blue Moon, I was a nomad, never staying any one place too long. Oswego to Boston, Boston to Brooklyn, Brooklyn to Syracuse, Syracuse to Washington, DC, DC to Syracuse, Syracuse to Albany. And in my time back in New York State, I’ve fallen in love and gained a mature appreciation for all this beautiful state offers. When visiting Big Sur this summer, I couldn’t help but brag and boast, if you think this is beautiful, come to the Adirondacks. The small towns of Upstate New York are some of my favorite. And the shores of Long Island, the streets of New York City, and our proximity to bucolic Vermont, are the things I’ve come to love about my state, and feel like home. I, however, belong to no one place. I belong to the vastness of the Universe, and find solace and community where ever I go.

While I’ve absolutely grown putting roots down in the Capital Region, building beautiful friendships, and letting go of beautiful friendships, it’s time for this explorer to begin a new adventure. One that starts with watching the sun rise over the Atlantic from a surf board. One filled with the abundance and the grace, the limitlessness, that the ocean presents. I’ve always loved the ocean and felt peaceful and at one with all of the world at her shores. I’ve even visited 6 of the 7 seas in her quest. And while I’ve dreamed of beach houses, an old idea that that life is not for me, persisted. “You have to be rich,” “You’ll get sick of it,” and “Where would you even go,” all really boil down to “You’re not worthy of what you want.”

I have a full life today, I am the kind of woman today, who is both active and present in the world, and takes the time to regularly explore these old ideas that build the structure of my spiritual dwelling. And you know what, that old shanty roof of the beach is not for me, just had a to go. So I demo’d that shit. And as is spiritual law, as soon as I took the sledge hammer to that old limiting belief about myself and what is possible in my life, the Universe stepped in and laid down a clear path, straight to her shores. (Shout out here to Lindsey Sauve for pointing out the old roof and putting the sledge hammer properly in my hands.) In 15 days, my new home will be at the beach. Long Beach, New York, to be specific. Two blocks from the beach. That’s the magic of letting go, stepping off the cliff, and soaring in the wind.

While I came here a 26 year old lost and deeply unconscious soul, I am leaving her a 35 year old woman, who knows who she is, good and bad. The last 9 years of my life have transformed me in a way I never would have guessed when I was filling out the application for grad school. And isn’t that the beauty of it? I’ve always loved John Lennon’s, “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.” Albany had plans for me beyond higher education, had plans for me well beyond my two years of my master’s program. I’m leaving here 7 years sober, with countless friends I call family, with relationships that will change, and falter, and shift, but will remain because our bond is real. I am leaving here, a completely different person than when I arrived. I am leaving here, the woman I came here to be and then some.

Thank you to those who know and have learned this explorer’s soul, who have watched me go out and start anew time and time again. And thank you to those who have challenged my heart’s calling. While fear of wanting even more than the beautiful life and woman Albany’s given me has kept me here, my big, wild, free heart calls for more. And it’s gotten me too far to stop listening now.

I love you and always will, Albany.

Love Sirens

Fred Folks.  Never have I hated myself so.  Trauma bonds.  Breakups.  Overdoses.  The fears and uncertainty as an entrepreneur.  These things bonded me to a man.  Who, time and time again, would abandon me, just when my dependence had fully formed.  My own dependence on a rescuer luring me in, again, and again, and again.  How good it feels to be on the other side of that year.  From Ryan’s overdose and arrival in Albany in early June of 2015, to my divinely-timed and fully-supported final goodbye to this person and the insanity the following July, it was as if I was in my very first relationship as an emotionally insecure teenager all over again.  At moments, I could see how unhealthy my choices were, but the compulsion to go back proved stronger than the pain of the still open wounds of the most recent round.  Like sirens, the newest iteration of the relationship calling out as the way to safe harbor, all I’ve ever longed for my entire life.  Only to crash upon the rocks and give another painful chunk of myself, being left with less and less each time.

It was that July that I had learned the final lesson in my senior year of this course and the Universe ushered me into graduation.  In February I thought it couldn’t get any worse.  A freshly minted pack of Marlboro 27s in hand, 8:30 on a ripe Saturday morning, and the strongest urges for both homicide and suicide as I’ve felt in my five years of sobriety, God stepped in and revealed the devastating depths this behavior, these old, old choices, would bring me to.  And has always been the case for me, as God reveals a painful truth, she also sends in angels to help carry those at their weakest and most lost.  I woke up to twelve missed calls from my roommate, as I simply escaped out of the house the night before to do my shameful dirty work.  The phone rang again as I sat there in my moment of utter rage and despair.  And I answered.  I survived because I answered.  And I spoke.  Truth.  I waved my hands wildly in the depths of the ocean thrashing me between its waves.  I made the universal choking sign.  Help.  Help.  Help.  Turned out even though that was my bottom, I needed to go back to the knife one or two more times before making the final surrender to evacuate and evict.

I needed a couple more women to feel less than and better than at the same time, to tear down physically and spiritually in the name of good old fashioned female competition for men’s attention, affection, and security.  What woman can say she hasn’t engaged in this ancient hunger game?  I needed a couple more hits of that dopamine high that only make-up sex with someone incredibly emotionally dangerous can provide.  I needed to believe the same lies one, more, time.

“I love you, more than anyone.”

“I’m ready to be the man you deserve.”

“I was scared.”  And the best one,

“This time will be different.”

I’m here to report from the self-imposed finish line, the final time was the same exact as the first time.  Sorry to ruin the ending.

So while February was the beginning of the end, July was the beginning of the beginning.  A fresh commitment to six months of singledom, bringing home wild flowers from the farmers market every week, and a humble, exhausted, desperate plea to the Universe to guide the way, led me home.  I practiced, through tears and boredom, how to be my own company.  How to reach upwards to the Gods and Goddess, and within, to the Gods and Goddess, to find that eternal unconditional love and acceptance, care and nurturance, affection and security, I had been so desperately seeking from without my whole life.  I cried.  A lot.  I practiced yoga.  I meditated.  As the ocean continued to bring me closer and closer to shore, I continued to seek out other boats out on the water with me and those safe in harbor to guide the way home.  I spoke truth, but to a more selective team of advisers and trusted confidants.  You see, the thing about an authentic life, is that not everyone gets it.  Even people who love you dearly.

We all subscribe to our own rule book, none of which are real or shared, but some more commonly accepted as fact than others.  Be a hard worker.  Be self-sufficient.  Be in a monogamous relationship.  Strive for a marriage and kids one day.  To buy a house.  Be on the PTA.  If you’re a woman, be an incredibly active stay-at-home Mom, or keep your career AND be an incredibly active stay-at-home Mom, because women CAN have it all.  Do.  Do.  Do.  Shop.  Keep up.  Keep up.  Keep up.  Don’t.  Have.  A.  Feeling.  Don’t get sick.  If you do, pretend you’re not.  Everyone else and all you’re doing is reality and your body is secondary and to be ignored when it gets in the way.  None of this is for me.

As I continue to charter new emotional and spiritual landscapes, all I know is gratitude for where I’ve been.  And immense gratitude for the women who have come before me on their own authentic paths, and hope to inspire those still lured by the sirens, to seek safe harbor instead of the thrill of small deaths.

Enduring Freedom

Happy Memorial Day?  Does that make sense?  Happy “let’s celebrate all the lives lost in American Wars?”  What would “let’s celebrate all the lives lost in all the wars” feel like and be called?  Maybe that, like the name for parents who have lost a child, is just too awful to put into words.

My brother was lost in Operation Enduring Freedom.  I remember writing letters to this operation.  Enduring.  Freedom.  I also wrote many letters to friends to Operation Iraqi Freedom.  Thankfully Kyle never saw Iraq, as far as I know, but Afghanistan was enough.  Two tours of enduring freedom were enough to take my brother’s heart and soul.  I think one was enough.  Two made sure the job was done.

Here are the things I was I could say to my brother as I memorialize him today.

I miss you.  So much.  There was a scene in a movie just the other day where a teenage brother hugs his sister, and for the first time in a while, thinking of you and your hugs brought tears to my eyes.  I miss your hugs.

I miss how much you loved Kati and I.  As a single brother with two sisters, we had a fierce protector.  And by fierce I mean full-fledged sizing up, interrogating, and running interference on any man who crossed our paths when he was present.  First a bee-line, then a firm hand shake with that just crazy-enough-face with direct and a little too close eye contact, followed immediately by the first word – “I’m a Marine.  Ever drag your friend’s dead body across a desert?  I have.”  And he’d stop there.  And just stare.  And gauge just what kind of man had approached us, or any of our friends, as this crazy-faced interrogation extended to include anyone we loved.

As soon as this civilian either walked away casually with usually nothing to say but maybe a sincere and shifted-viewed thank you, or we mouthed behind Kyle, “it was nice to meet you, you should go,” Kyle’d go into the bar and buy shots for everyone.  This wasn’t as morose as it may sound reflecting back, or maybe it was and the shots quelled that, but that is one of my favorite memories of my brother.  With his childhood friends, as an adult, protective, generous, hilarious.  Me with my best friends.  The feeling of family and loyalty amongst us.  Late nights.  Laughter.  This is how I remember my brother.  Today and everyday.

I love you Ky.

I’m sorry it’s Memorial Day.

Family Ties – Part II

The day before my 22nd birthday, my mother’s sister took her own life.

I say this as if I spent my 22nd birthday grieving this loss, but in all honesty, I didn’t.  How do you grieve for someone you’ve never met?  Never spoken to?  And to be honest, barely knew existed?  That’s not to say I didn’t feel this loss, it just wasn’t what I think most would assume a young woman would feel for losing her Aunt.  It did, however, make me look at my own Mother’s sadness a little bit closer, and revealed to me that there was indeed something in our family that was deeply sad, and a little bit dangerous.  As I made my way west from Mitchell, South Dakota, and eventually south through Wyoming and Utah, heading to meet my Aunt Robyn’s only daughter, I found myself enter some extremely uncomfortable and new emotional territory on the trip.  With a little help, I would later come to identify it as profound sadness.

 

Day Four

I woke up to rain outside my America’s Value Inn motel room (I assure you, this place had minimal “value”), and thought about eating left over Pizza Hut and decided against it.  I had a long day ahead of me.  “Let’s start off with some good choices,” I thought.  The day before I decided to take Montana off the table, so I felt less rushed, and enjoyed a more leisurely day of driving and actually seeing what I was passing, instead of rushing forward at 80 mph.  I stopped at the Atka Lakota Museum halfway to the Badlands and was reunited with the detailed knowledge of just how much stealing, lying, and mass, calculated murder were inflicted on indigenous peoples by our early government.  I vaguely remembered learning this stuff in 7th or 8th grade and became grateful in the museum for the part of the memory that offloads the facts of history that make it hard to live in the world.  More so, I reconnected with the worship and reverence for Mother Earth, the Moon, the buffalo, and family.  I learned about the eight-pointed Morning Star, which separates the darkness of the night from the light of the new day, that was the most common symbol on Indian quilts. The space was quiet and still and captured in time a way of life that was simple, pure, and filled with rituals of humility and gratitude to the elements and natural world around us.  It was a beautiful break to the heavy rain and then snow that would greet me as I kept moving west.

       

 

I arrived to the Badlands mid-afternoon.  In the middle of a snow storm.  This, was not how I pictured it.  Snow was in the forecast for the next day too, so I made a decision, or submitted to one I suppose, there in the cafe at Wall Drugs, eating the most ginormous big mac style double decker bison burger (so big the family that sat down next to me made a comment about it), that I was meant to see the Badlands in the snow.  And how breathtaking it was.  I’m not even going to try to put into words the experience of driving for 6 hours through the Great Plains, and what it feels like to come upon the Badlands.  Just go.  This ones on you.

I only made it another hour past the Badlands to Cedar Rapids, STILL South Dakota!  The snow had gotten so bad that I just couldn’t keep driving in the dark.  As I hauled my bags into Howard Johnson around 5 that day, I started to feel how BIG this country actually is.  Here I thought I’d just zip through it, state by state in hours, seeing all the sights along the way.  As I sat in my hotel room and stared out the window at the pretty and peaceful snow falling, I felt incredibly lonely for the first time on the trip.  I was on the other side of the country from everyone and everything I know, wondering how I’d gotten there, and realizing the gravity of what I had done.  The gravity, really, of what it would take to undo, or get back.  I went for a solo swim in the heated pool and soaked my stiff bones in the hottub and opted for Cheetos and a double decker Little Debbie oatmeal creme pie, my Mom’s favorite, out of the vending machine instead of venturing out in the snow.  And I let go of someone.  Somewhere between the swim and the Cheetos, I came face-to-face with my worthiness.  And where vulnerability and worthiness meet, is where the true self cracks open.

Day Five

Wyoming.  Go f*ck yourself.

I felt like I was trapped in the documentary Gasland.  As I ventured out of South Dakota finally and into Wyoming, I was grateful for the progress, but felt a looming darkness and eerie quiet settle over the scene.  Wyoming is the least populated state in the contiguous U.S., second only to Alaska, and has the highest suicide rate in the country.  A friend sent me a little fact sheet with all this info as I drove through the desolate state.  “I can see why,” I thought.  I cut through the northeast corner of Wyoming via county route roads, for most of which I was the only car on the road.  I would go through 30 minute intervals of no service, and was struck by fear of what would be my fate if anything happened to me out there.  Who would find me?  Where would they take me?  And what kind of help would be available.  I had plenty of food and a blanket so those gave my fears some comfort (about as much comfort as that Value Inn had value).  But all in all, for the entire 8 hours of driving through Wyoming, I was completely seized by fear.  When I finally got to 80, the major highway in far southern Wyoming that would take me into Utah, while I felt some relief of at least being surrounded by other cars again, and having gas stations and stops at least a bit more frequently, that’s when the snow really started coming.  Aaaaand here come the tears.

I had close friends checking on me pretty much daily while I was out on the road, and one friend happened to text as I was sobbing at the wheel, driving through a snow storm, in Wyoming, feeling completely and utterly lost in the world and disoriented to my place in it.  I quite literally felt dizzy.  I responded, “Can you call.”  And he did.  I don’t think this friend could have anticipated what a mess I would be on the other side of the line.  I just sobbed.  He was the first person I’d talked to all day.  All the feelings and fears came flooding out.  “Why do I think I’m so tough?  Why do I think I don’t need anybody?  I need people!”  Just looking back on the map of Wyoming makes my stomach turn a bit.  While he had some loving things to say, I don’t think he knew quite what to do.  But I felt at least a little relief for finding words for all the feelings that were pooling that day.  And I was still crying when we got off the phone.  Another friend checked the weather report for me as I drove.  The storm would clear in another hour or so once I got pass the next major town he said.  While that wasn’t the case, hanging on to the idea that it would be helped each passing moment.  And then my phone died.

                                                                              *    *    *

I wonder how my Aunt Robyn felt.  As a young girl.  On her wedding day.  In the days and months leading up to her death.  I bet she felt alone.  I bet she felt a shade of how I felt that day in Wyoming.  The world stretched out before her, with no one and nobody for as far as the eye could see.  She looks just like my cousin Kaenin in this picture in her Navy uniform.  I can see a hint of it here, just the slightest bit.

 

But when I think back on her, I like to remember her like this.