Save me Winter Park; A Rocky Mountain Christmas

This time of year brings out the child in us all. So I suppose it is legitimate to admit that I cried my eyes out when I received my Christmas packages from my Grandma and my Dad.

My parents split before I could recall any part of their marital status. For me, this never meant a lack of love or joy over the holidays. In fact, this meant a year after year tradition that would mold me and fulfill me in many ways. I never questioned as a child why Santa came twice for me; my Grandmother made this happen. I never questioned if Mom was lonely on Christmas morning when she scraped together her Christmas savings to ensure we had an abundant tree to be shared by the two of us.

I have taken an incredible leap of faith this year that has deleted my annual salary by $17,000 and has also forced me to adjust the holiday traditions that I have clung to for 23 years. Every year Mom buys us an ornament that symbolizes the year we have just lived so that when we leave home we have a full Pine display of our childhood. I can’t begin to imagine one object that could describe this past year. Maybe a measuring stick for I  have grown in so many facets, but still have much more room to be a student.

Lesson one is to recall that this is not the first time that my traditions have been toyed with. I remember having to leave the room the first time I had to share my Christmas morning with Mom. I was so upset that I was losing her. Little did I know I would fall very much in love with this family that she was creating. Lesson two is to remember that I do not love or receive love any less by being distant. My Grandma Jasin taught me this as I enjoyed Christmas Eve most because our family seemed so large. Growing up I did not know blood relative from close family friend because she knitted us all together as one. I can only hope to hold a piece of this mentality this Christmas.

I am very lucky to have family and friends to miss over the Holidays. I am also not lacking one bit. To appease myself, I took a step outside at the sundown over my beloved mountains. There are twinkling Christmas lights tucked away in those mountains and every time I look out I know that I have made the right choice. I know that there is something incredible to be completed by me in this next chapter. I am ready for this journey.

I hope that I have lived thus far in a way that projects my adoration for my extended family, friends included of course. I hope that everyone this year has their very own horizon to look to for peace and balance. If you do not, I am more than happy to share my Rocky Mountain magic with anyone in need.

Peace. Love. Merriest Christmas.

 

This is my message to you, ooo ooo.

I watched the “Marley” (2012) documentary last night. I expected screen shots of Bob’s home country that I grew significantly in and learned to adore. I expected a celebration of the music that sprinkled my childhood with light heartedness. I expected an explanation of how marijuana can bring you closer to God. What I did not expect was a rush of emotion and contemplation for my generation.

Parts of this documentary made me nervous because it is always an eye opening experience when your idols show vulnerabilities. We experience this with musicians, politicians, religious figures…even yoga instructors. If you’re lucky, these vulnerabilities will only widen your heart a little bit more for these icons to shape our perspectives. I caught myself forming mental judgments. “What do you mean Bob wasn’t faithful to one woman? What is this Three Little Birds bullshit?” “What do you mean Bob didn’t go in for routine checks on his growing cancer?” “What do you mean Bob thought women that changed their appearance from anything other than their natural state were ugly?”

Bob quickly reminded me. It is not my definition of wealth in this life that matters. It was his own definition. I saw what Bob’s words did to Jamaica first hand during two mission trips I attended in 2004 and 2005. The second I stepped into this country, I was greeted with a “welcome home.” Welcome home indeed. When you step outside the lines of the white sand beaches and all inclusive hotels, you see a landscape of simplicity that Western definition would belittle. If poverty is defined as a lack of monetary wealth, a less than satisfactory education and employment market and few export goods then yes, Jamaica is an impoverished country. If poverty is defined as a lack of zest for life, laughter and the ability to create abundance…then Jamaica is one of the richest lands I have walked.

Amidst jumping obstacles, I have structured my life on how I can find this same air to my mind and heart. I have found it in yoga and sharing yoga. I have found it in music. Sometimes when you combine the two something spectacular happens.  When Angie and I first went through yoga teacher training, we looked at each other and said, “Wow. Yoga can cure the world.” There is something to be said about movement, but there is more to be said about message. Bob Marley reached the entire globe with a message of love. Today my heart searches for a revolutionary that we seem to have lost.

Yesterday there was a shooting in CT where 20 children’s lives were taken. I am overwhelmed by the alarmed voice of social media. Is this enough? Have we succumbed to the fact that making a statement on a digital realm is enough? Yes, I have seen beautiful things come from mass communication. But are we still brave enough to stand in front of a crowd, fearing gun shots and violence, and look humanity in the eye and say the answer is love? Not a million loves, but just One. Love.?

Of this I am still unsure, but if my plea for revolutionary love reaches you in any way…I encourage you to share it. Every day. Share it. 

"Rocky" is irony out here.

Yesterday I was speaking to one of my new managers and friend and she mentioned how every now and then she looks to the horizon and sees the mountain line and stops to think, “Wow. How am I so lucky?” She was raised here, went to school in California, and returned to her beloved Rockies. When she told me this, I couldn’t help but fill with warmth. As I write this, I’m looking out my back window at a perfect complimentary color schemed sky and my very own mountainscape.

I still don’t know what called me here. All I know is when I look at that horizon, right now is all I need. This is what yoga is teaching me and this is what I will strive for the remainder of my time here. Life isn’t perfect, and it may never be. But the beauty certainly outweighs the tortures. How can we find our mountainscapes everywhere, everyday? Some of my friends wake up to someone they love and find it. Some see downtown St. Paul lit up and romantic in winter and find it. Some let the tide hit their toes and find it. I don’t need these mountains to answer my questions. I need them to let the questions go.

 

Thanks for the inspiration Brooke and Matt.

Should we retort our grand design?

Four years ago as the wheels rolled beneath me on my move to Miami, I felt a growing cloud of anxiety and grief as if I knew that we were driving head first into a hurricane…and quite literally we were. Thus far in my life, any decision I have made with too much weight for another person has ended in destruction. That doesn’t mean I’ve chosen to be selfish or celibate, but that I have reached a point that I question the blueprint of this life and encourage you to question as well.

This move out west feels organic and full of purpose. As the recreational director of my youth, I am now placed in a life that promises only the basics to survival; shelter, income and friendship. Although I’m leaving a piece of my trust and smile with a select few in Minnesota, I’m walking into the light and designing every day in the manner that I see fit. We can make this choice.

So, what is our grand design and how much can we control? In only 25 years of experience, I’ve most commonly realized (or concocted) a reason for the way things turned out. I suppose my suggestion then is…if we are going to concoct a reason for the way things turned out anyways, why not take full advantage of the situation you’re in today? I don’t know why we meet intriguing people two days before we leave the state. I don’t know why we lose loved ones or why some people choose to leave. I don’t know why society tells us to stay in a miserable job to support a lifestyle that the individual has not defined themselves. What I do know, is that we have a life to live today anyways. Despite your foundation, your grand design or even your desires for the way you want your life to be—try just living it today. It just might turn out exactly the way it’s supposed to.
 

I met this happy bartender in Puerto Vallerta, Mexico back when my dreams were to live barefoot in the sand. After his divorce, he took off and opened this tiny bar just inches from the beach. I thought him terrific.

Confessions from the Walk-in Closet

I suppose there is some Freudian reason as to why I have put off cleaning out the basement closet so long. I imagined the daunting task of transporting the hundreds of Vogue magazines I had kept would be painful, but I didn’t realize that all of my secrets from ages 12-18 were sitting here under a pile of fabric and notebooks. As I sift through my adolescence in the form of misspelled notes and frayed photos I can’t help but ask myself (excuse my Bradshaw plagiarism)…what do I do with this massive pile of compact discs? How do I relieve myself of this post traumatic episode that these ghosts of ex-boyfriends past is causing? And…why did I have an open relationship in Junior High? So, you’re saying the commitment phobia has been around for a while?

 

This must be the reason females have “boyfriend box” flame parties. Can someone please escort me to the nearest bonfire before something really goes wrong? I have just spent hours rehashing the fact that my first “real” boyfriend in Junior High was madly in love with my charismatic personality while the other 7^th grade felines (including my best friend) chased after him like all the other lions had gone off to war. I think I won out in the end and at least managed to not play the body surrender game that damaged the souls of my peers. He’s married now and she’s pretty wonderful so he must have overcame my “dangling the mouse in front of the hungry cat” open relationship philosophy.

High school came next and this phase stings like my heart turned into an iron clad transformer that threatens to morph back to a junk yard at the appropriate phrase. Journals. Receipts for guitars. Dirty, long haired pictures.  Real love. Real love almost lost. More Journals. Cards from friends and family. Notes telling me I’m beyond my years and I deserve so much. Journals confessing I want only one thing. I remember sitting in my car in the high school parking lot senior year on a Friday once class got out. I was heading to the hospital to spend the night. There is no such thing as a curfew when your boyfriend is in the intensive care unit. I watched everyone jumping into their vehicles, off to parties and laughing. I couldn’t remember laughing. My life changed that day. I vowed to survive until he could have a real Friday night. I’ve been surviving ever since.

Freshman year of college soon followed. I found someone that was fascinated with me again. Once he told me he wanted to marry me. I told him to stop the car and I got out. His notes are the sweetest, most confidence boosting words I have ever received. I trampled him because I didn’t think it was possible to love once you had been hollowed out. I hope his cut wasn’t as deep.

That’s when the notes end because I learned to speak aloud and I learned to let things go. I met someone that lived in the moment and he was the Fluoxetine to my day. Today the answers are still unclear and they are not found on tiny folded sections of college ruled paper. Today the best you can do is open up some space in your transforming heart to see what comes next. Do not seek what comes next, but be the most courageous and honorable version of all the lessons of those that came before today. Let the rest flutter away like Vogues in the wind…that you can find piled at the end of my driveway.

Go West, Girl.

Some of us are lucky enough to have the same best friends for our entire life. Some of us are lucky enough to meet the person that we are destined to laugh with for the rest of our lives early on. For me, I have been lucky enough to stitch together a blanket of love and friendships larger than I anticipated with my first needle and thread.

 As we age and collect memories from new people and places, we must become one with the fact that our best friends must continue to find new best friends and our outdated lovers must love again. I’m realizing this more and more as I near my departure to Colorado. On my drive in to work, I look around and wonder what this life would have been like had Minnesota not been the first place that I moved on and became an adolescent. The first lunch room I entered without knowing a soul. The stage of my first real kiss. The place that my brother was born. The place my sister soon followed. The place I fell in love for the first time. The place I almost lost my first love and had to grow up really fast. The place I thought I fell in love hundreds of times after that. The place that I turned 18. The place that I cried every day for two years. The place that I left home. The place where I read books, napped in libraries and took lecture notes. The place my GPA slowly declined over 4 years, and was worth every point. The place I met someone new that brightened every corner of my life. The party that I looked around and realized my friends were my family. The place I fought with and learned that my real family is solid gold. The place I learned to love winter…with some help. The place that many people I adore call home. The place I am terrified to leave. The place that has made me and held me and will always make up my roots. The place a part of me will miss every day I am away.

It’s time to keep stitching away. It’s time to free up some space in this heart and mind and let others do the same. If you are reading this, I wish for you to expand more than you were ever able to do with yesterday. Carry on from the place that is your home, but let your home be mobile.

P.S. Don't worry Mom; We also left the cigarettes in college.

In observation of the female mind...love vs. temporary insanity.

In the past two years I have been victim to temporary insanity five times.

It was one theatrical performance after another. Sometimes it lasted a day, a week a month. I'm not ashamed of my overactive brain chemicals as long as I can write about them with dignity later on. No, I'm not talking about lust...I'm talking about the temporary insanity we allow ourselves to indulge after a heart pounding adventure with a member of attraction.

 Our hearts break for a reason. And suddenly one glance at the right, or maybe even the wrong person, and the minefield that was once your heart suddenly becomes full again. And no matter how old you are or where you are in your life, you should still have midnight conversations and exhilarating thoughts shared by a dock or fire or summer night environment of your choice. Don't give up on the thought that one day they will still be out there and most definitely do not give up on the thought that one person is not meant to complete you. Should I say that again? One person is not meant to complete you.

There are a million other pieces of you that are meant to live and survive without another person. And the people that I’ve seen truly, confidently make it in this world are those that have not compromised those pieces that make them solely themselves, but that compliment each other.

"Single" doesn’t mean you have to wander around this world on “E,” stopping at the pump every now and then for another human being to refill you with confidence.

Don’t get me wrong; I truly believe that finding the mate that deepens your soul is one of the biggest riches you can find in this life, but I never intend on clipping my wings. This isn’t a feminist rant about how women need to maintain independence in their lives. I fully intend on finding a partner that chooses not to clip their wings either. If that partner continues to fly South for the winter, then I will grow to be ok with that. Migration will be fully supported in our household.

We need to stop analyzing so much. Sometimes you are kissed only because someone wanted to kiss you. That doesn't mean you are supposed to hop in the front seat and take off to Key West together to live in a new shade of tan. Oh, but wouldn't it be wonderful if it was. ;)

Three peas in a very unnatural pod.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about childhood, and specifically my own siblings whom I’ve witnessed since birth. Chelsea as a child was an odd little thing. I was an overly social butterfly, I took mental escapes to my room where I would cover the floor with paintings, and Mom had the summers off so naturally I was constantly working on my career to become a Jamaican. My parents cut the ties of matrimony before I had a memory of their attempt at normalcy as a couple. As a result, while playing “house” with my friends who gave themselves titles as mom with baby; I was the single, gypsy that dealt with the inner turmoil of possibly wanting a child of her own but couldn’t risk the potential writer’s block.

Oh how things changed the second my baby brother came into this world. I went from cutting the hair off my Barbies and asking Grandma why the Ken doll only had a concerning bump in his crotch to absolutely melting over this little boy that was only a sliver of me. Ethan is the absolute definition of cool. I tried to train him by telling him never to cut his hair, to stand on every surface that signifies a board and to play hockey, by all means, play hockey. That kid comes alive on the ice and brushes off dramatic apocalypse as if the world was his for just today. He’s my cup of coffee on a rainy day and one day he’ll thank me for how naturally unruffled he is ;)

Now, Ethan may have taken a Thor sized hammer to the caging that I built around my heart when I decided at 12 years old that I was not to be shared or reproduced…but then this new thing, this stunning, spitfire, overly animated thing entered my world. Her name is Jolee Anna. My sister was by far the most beautiful thing I had ever seen the day she was born. I didn’t know perfect existed, but she was perfect. Her whole life she has ran up to hug me every time she has seen me cry. She moves with a grace I have never been able to master and she is the perfect combo of way too girly for my blood and get your hands dirty peculiar. 11 years later she will still drop anything she’s doing when I walk in the door to give me a Lambeau leap of a hug. I cannot take any credit for this one because little girls are alien to me; however I’ve been given a best friend greater than I could have painted up when I was young and visionary.

I hope that throughout the lives of my pea pod siblings, we will continue to see things we have never imagined seeing. We will hold each other when we break down and we will always promote the path to individual happiness no matter what risk or absurdity. My little clocks…what advice would you give to the tiny souls in your life?...are you doing this yourself?

Life of Postcards.

Mom always said I would threaten to run away and all I needed was a little bit of Chelsea time and I'd be back to normal. That's comical, because now I threaten not to run away and I still just need a little bit of Chelsea time to come back to Earth.

My suggestion for you, my lovely readers, is to find your Chelsea time. Those tiny factors of life that touch base right with that pounding vessel sitting in your chest. For me it's a chat in the sun with Angie, it's sharing a lyric with Jenn, it's paint and scenery and really amazing little, old towns. Just like Angie and Jenn, for me it's seeing the ocean at least once a year otherwise we start to fray at the edges. What makes you tick, little clocks, and how can you find this in your life every single day?

I was offered my first full time job while I was sitting on a deck in Montpellier, France. I had negative $50,000 to my name and an instant twang of anxiety for a life I didn't want in St. Paul. What did I do you might ask? I went to the most Southern point of France, duh. Keep ticking lovers!

The Garbage Disposal

Before I go too far into my decision to leave corporate America, I'd like to first state that my biggest accomplishment while managing a $130 Million dollar business was my ability to do so in 5" stilettos. I have always been a seeker of opportunities to wear sky high heels, but I had this terrible moment of disarray one day sitting at my cube where I had to kick those fuckers off.

There are a lot of pros to working in corporate America. I was able to support myself. I was on track to buying all the toys I wanted (however concerning my choices were...boat, boards, rag top SUVs). I walked around with my head high surrounded by some of the smartest people I had ever met. I adore some of the friends I made while working for Target Corp; the other half threw half of their sense to live down the garbage disposal that is an 8-5 job when they decided six figures beat out the need for chasing their dreams...or going barefoot! Put on your life vests baby, you're going to be swimming for a while.

I'm not bitter; corporate America makes a part of this world go round. It's fun, rewarding and challenging. It's just...so is climbing mountains in Vail, paddleboarding in Roatan and managing a yoga studio. I met a boy that came to life in the mountains; I can't think of a day he hasn't lived his life. I met a girl in Roatan that left the states to instruct scuba (she rarely wears shoes). I'm surrounded by yoga instructors that gave up professional opportunities to inspire people to health and joy every single day. I used to know a 12 year old girl that listened to Bob Marley with her bronzed mama while planning her extravagant escape to the champagne shore. So,  maybe I'm still planning and mama hung up the whole tanning thing...but this week, I throw in the towel and wear stillettos on special occasions only.

Wanderlust. Lovelust. Writerlust.

I used to premier my thoughts on folded pieces of paper and ratty notebooks that I would find stashed away in closets and purses; left to find years later as I sat barefoot on the floor. These internal notes quickly turned into an 18 year olds' cry for release on forms of social media that strip the youth of today of any mystery. I've always been a writer. I always will be a writer; I just haven't found the right topic to mass produce and resonate with curious readers. I'm far too curious myself. This blog is my knees shaking, heart beating seat in confessional where I decide what should be shared and what is best for the powers that be to know in solitude. Just as my writing has wandered, so has my heart and mind. I have spent 25 years wishing to be somewhere else. Here you can follow my pursuit of the perfect latitude. Here you can sit back in a deck in Montpellier, lose your breath on top of a mountain or sit solo on the coast. This is La Bougeotte de Chelsea; the Wanderlust of yours truly.