There’s a normalization in Western Society that we’re meant to live in misery. That inevitable shit just happens and we must take it and suffer. Until we what? Die? What if I told you that shit that keeps happening, could change your trajectory. That shit…could be a good thing (I know, it’s crazy). That shit could teach you something (seriously). Maybe you could let the shit evolve you (I’ll get to the ‘How’). Imagine that shit as more of a shift. Because shit does happen, but so do shifts. Shifts happen. And you should let them.
Here’s my shit. The normalization of misery I speak of dawned on me mid 2020 when my partner Travis and I were living in Zanzibar. We had been living in Asia for the last two years and both consider ourselves to be ex-pats. We both work in tourism, he a newly certified scuba instructor and I, a yoga teacher. So combine that with world closures and a pandemic sweeping the globe, we too were like the vast majority, jobless and scared. On top of it, the world WAS our home and our livelihoods relied on international travel. The “new normal” for us not only meant unemployment, but an entire shift to our foundation.
We first arrived to the white sandy East coast of Zanzibar to a small town called Paje at the start of August 2020. (Zanzibar is an island in Tanzania, and it is incredible, google it.) When we first drove up to the city “center”, imagine a traffic circle with 4 small shops, an ATM, and a walk-in closet sized pharmacy. There was not a soul in sight. No shops were open, no humans or cars on the streets, the only speck of life were cows wandering about.
We began driving down dirt roads searching for our hotel, passing bunker-style cement homes, piles of tires, and stray cats. Our taxi driver stopped to ask for directions from a local beach boy selling coconuts and weed. In super slow island time he kindly directed us to our hotel, but including all the small talk a 3 minute process took closer to 30 minutes. Our first experience of Zanzibar’s ‘island time’, or “pole-pole” which means ‘slow-slow’ in Swahili. True Zanzibar style. Now imagine this scene, “pole pole”, but with everything, for a span of 5 straight months. Getting any work done, or even trying to get any work done in Zanzibar, felt a lot like swimming upstream. Not impossible, but damn near it. A perpetual time warp.
Adjusting to the minimal level of human contact in my day to day life and professional life have been the epicenter of my shit. I have always been a go-getter, a trier, a do-er. Astrologically speaking, I am 75% queen bitch energy. I like to be in charge and I love having people me around me, like, all the time. I love human beings and the dance of energy exchange. I fall into teaching roles quite naturally, so when I first began teaching yoga I felt like Cinderella with the glass slipper. “Ah, finally something that fits!” I took to it and ran, finding my voice as a teacher. I have always known I wanted to organize and host yoga retreats as a juvenile high school party thrower turned event manager in San Francisco. Combining my life experience of gathering people together, good times consisting of music, laughter, deep chats, and yoga, was an obvious ‘duh’.
I spoke with a business coach and she urged me to avoid taking my work online and instead said she saw me thriving hosting intimate in-person yoga retreats, creating safe spaces, and community. She was right and I was sick of waiting for the “perfect time”. The time was now. Zanzibar seemed promising as I had landed two teaching jobs after arriving quite easily and there was a small but steady flow of students. I got it all organized and I even hired a graphic designer. Spent countless hours on the theme, itinerary, venues, and classes. I posted the retreat on an online platform and waited for the bookings. A month passed and not so much as a single inquiry. I was so close to my dreams coming true, I tried to stay positive, but deep down I knew, that just like everything 2020, it wasn’t going to end as I had imagined.
Meanwhile, Travis and I invited our other partners to come live with us in Zanzibar. We practice ENM (ethical non-monogamy) and threw ourselves head fucking first into the fire, thinking “what could go wrong?!” Well, as you could imagine, a lot went wrong. A lot of the time it felt like a reality television show. Drama, high stress emotions, drunken fights, and debaucherous escapades. Being new to Polyamory
the practice of engaging in multiple romantic relationships, with the consent of all the people involved.
really is as wild as it sounds and warranted a docu-series on Netflix. There is an abundance of love, so much so that you’re constantly beaming with adoration and desire. There is also a juggling act of emotions, jealousy, splitting time, and unwanted hierarchies. The arguing and confrontation of feelings was a daily occurrence. If it wasn’t Travis and I fighting, it was Travis and Emily, or Kyle and I, or Emily and I. Which lead to a spinning web of never ending conversations. It was really hard work. In the moment, the work felt endlessly tiresome and impossible. My ego and dark side possessed me in countless arguments. I had to confront myself, my inability to grapple with my anger, and the realization that being the loudest or bossiest in the room wasn’t always a gift, but sometimes - often times - a burden, and immensely lonely.
I wanted it all to work so bad. We tried and fought our way through some of the most intense and emotional conversations I have ever had in my life. I didn’t want to quit, I wanted to prove the everyone how ‘cool’ I was. How ‘strong’ I was. How ‘fearless’ I was. I tried and I tried to practice what I preached, to love, to forgive, to be kind, to move forward. When at end of the day, I was a monster who could not get past her jealousy and deeply ingrained expectations of monogamy. The feelings could be compared to laying in a driveway and having a car run over your heart in drive and then reverse, drive, and reverse, drive and reverse.
I was suffering. I was confused. Society had told me so many times that relationships were hard work. Society told me that nothing was perfect and feelings of confusion in love were normal. I had seen the movies, heard the love songs. So why did the suffering hurt so bad? I was in love, but it wasn’t enough. The shit. Fuck. I remember waking up one morning and going into the kitchen where Kyle was making coffee. I sat down, looked at him, and I swear he could read my mind, “Kyle…” I said, “My heart hurts.” He knew. “You just want to be friends?” My heart was racing as as the words spilled from my lips. There I was, knee deep in shit, but I knew that regardless I had to take a step forward. That lingering in the shit wasn’t doing me or anyone around me good, it was just causing more pain. Taking that first step is so terrifying, not knowing if you’re just going to faceplant and suffocate or actually trudge on through. It’s so terrifying that most of the time we linger, we stay from fear of the “what-if”. But I had to try, I had to see what was waiting on the other side. For that shift.
I had spent so much of my time and energy over the last 5 months focusing on other people and trying to mend relationships that were failing, trying to make everyone happy, trying to be invincible, that I abandoned myself. I had left myself behind. MY needs, MY heart, MY desires, MY mental health. Trying to remain nonchalant and positive when my insides had been flipped inside out and feelings of low-self worth told me I wasn’t good enough and was never going to succeed. The vulnerability in sharing all of this takes me right back to those moments of pain and I wouldn’t wish those feelings on my worst enemy.
The experience of loss, failure, and heartbreak had me at my lowest and it was constantly affecting Travis and I’s relationship. On one of our last weeks in Zanzibar, we sat on the roof and talked deeply about our life paths, desires, hopes, and dreams. I laid it all out there and so did he. After countless hours, we both had confessed that this period of time, although we had tried, and tried HARD, had been one of the hardest for each of us personally and we were going to have to make a shift, quick.
Staying there meant wading in a trance of unworthiness and unhappiness.
Going, meant one of us would have to make a sacrifice of our immediate wants: Travis to sail to Tahiti and beyond, and I to settle down and find some roots, build a community, and eventually create my very own yoga space.
This was it, the real shift. The choice. The time to learn.
Adrian Rich says:
“An honorable human relationship
That is one in which two people have the right to use the word love
Is a process of deepening the trues they can tell each other
It is important to do this because it breaks down human self dilution and isolation”
Being true to one another is really difficult. In any relationship. Family, friend, and especially romantic. Lies and hiding to avoid hard conversation are mechanisms we all use as temporary protection, armor to keep us safe in the moment. We’ve done this since the dawn of time, even animals lie to each other by changing their skin color or even sex to trick their prey into approaching them or attract a mate. The challenging edge of truth telling is when we we think we’re going to show something of ourselves that will make us look bad. We are so afraid of looking bad that often times we just simply lie or hold it all inside, afraid that the truth will leave us alone and empty.
Love unfolding and deeper truth telling go hand in hand. So when I realized sitting next to Travis on the plane back to America for the holidays that I wasn’t ready to commit to a big leap from Zanzibar to Tahiti as he was hoping, my truth telling with him had to evolve, or my isolation would deepen. And so the words fell from my mouth 30,000 feet in the air - my truth, my scary ugly truth about my fears and concerns, my wants and needs. Expressing myself this fully and exposing my heart this deeply wasn’t something I was used to doing for the last 5 months. I knew I couldn’t hide my feelings any longer. Sitting in misery wasn’t for me and I damn sure wouldn’t stand for it again.
I saw compassion in his eyes and felt the love between us more real than ever. The truer I became, the stronger I felt in myself, in us. My phone in my hand as a safety blanket buzzed (in-flight WiFi is wild!). An email popped up on my notifications, and all I could read was the first line. My jaw dropped - it was an email invite to come teach yoga in Costa Rica!
Holy shit, the sign I had been waiting for. The shift.
Our social conditioning tells us that vulnerability is wrong. That we must hide our emotions and harbor our ugly feelings, that misery is inevitable and inescapable. But the power of “being real” with ourselves and staying truthful extends beyond our physical limits. Our trues align us with The Truth, and then signs and good omens show up to guide us, sometimes immediately!
When I used the time in Zanzibar to shoot for the stars and try to host my first yoga retreat, I crashed and burned. I was trying to do it all. To be a good partner. To be the best yoga teacher. To host weekly dinner parties at our home to keep an ounce of normalcy in everyone’s lives. Scheduling coffee with one boyfriend, an afternoon swim with the other, jumping on the scooter to teach yoga twice a day, a,nd still be home in time to cook dinner and post on social media so my retreat would gain visibility.
Tara Brach, my favorite PhD Buddhist meditation teacher and spiritual guru says,
“Our job is to create a climate for realness. Both receiving and sharing.”
It takes real courage to live outside of the walls of what society deems “normal”, it takes courage to be vulnerable, it takes courage to be real. On my quest to Costa Rica, this all came to light so vividly. During the past year of my life, as impossibly difficult and exhausting as it was, I experienced shifts within me beyond my comprehension. Learning that no one is going to look out for me as well as I can look out for myself. No one is going to love me if I don’t love me too. And most importantly, I damn sure can’t show up in relationships or as a spiritual teacher if I am not first and foremost taking some time with myself, the most sacred relationship I have.
It is vital to reassess things when everything in your life feels out of balance.
You do not have to stay in relationships that aren’t filling you to the brim with ecstasy. You most certainly do not have to stay in any situation that is full of shit and brings you nothing but shit feelings. But you also do not have to change it all right now and fix everything right this very second. Good things take time.
The universe does this fun thing where it shows you signs that you’re on the right path. Like a perfectly timed email. Like meeting your dream date in the coffeeshop bathroom after you’ve spilled your drink on their shoe. Like having your car break down in front of a field of four-leaf clovers. Good omens, signs, and synchronicity, whatever woowoo name you want to give them, are real. And when you flip the internal dialogue from, “I am the victim and everything is shit,” to “Everything is working for me, this is just a shift,” that’s where the real magic lies. That’s when you accept that something much bigger and wiser than you is on your side.
And that misery is not your only option.
Shift happens. Let it.