notes on stability from june
a travel diary of sorts & some raw thoughts
life been pretty sweet lately. some challenges for sure but nothing that has rocked the boat so hard that i was thrown off balance. and for this, i’m really grateful. grateful to life, grateful to the people around me and really grateful to myself - because i’ve recognized as i age, my life is becoming more and more stable, something i’ve never really known. even typing it feels like “oooo don’t speak too soon now”. but i will speak it. this stability is being reflected both in my inner world and my outer - by the choices i’m making, behaviors i’m shifting and the manifestation of that in the things i cannot control. even though i’m moving houses, locations, sometimes countries almost every month these days, there’s still some stediness in the aspects of my environment that i can say i’ve both worked hard for and surrendered to that have allowed for this sense of solidity to ensue.
you know when there just seems to be a bit of a theme to life. sometimes it’s for a year, a season, a month, a menstrual phase, time spent in a certain environment, a day even. i think there’s been many pretty clear examples this month of this balancing - increased stability - work/surrender rhythm and that could be in part due to my awareness of it and attention to it, but nonetheless it has been present. here’s a bit of what it’s looked like.
it’s somehow happened that every time v and i have switched locations since the beginning of the year (that’s been about 8 times), it’s either been the first couple days of the month or the start of my menstrual cycle. which yes, that means i’ve done most traveling this year while bleeding and that has been…interestinggggg, but nevertheless. the most recent switch was on the last day of may from San Sebastian Rio Hondo in the state of Oaxaca all the way over to San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas state. the journey actually wasn’t too bad and we stopped in oaxaca city for a few days to break up the travel.
here’s where the first waves came that prompted this theme of stability. i get EXTREMELY car sick and somehow have found myself consistently traveling through mountains all over the world full of windy roads in tiny packed vans or wonky buses. the two really don’t mix well and there’s usually a lil dash of hot weather without AC on said trips. since arriving to mexico 5 months ago my body’s resistance to this challenge has weakened. i’m not sure if it’s because of age or if the long periods of only riding motorbikes and not being in vehicles while living in south east asia has caused the intensity (or another third mystery thing). bottom line, i get super sick and getting sick in a small space makes me very anxious and the whole situation just throws off my nervous system, my digestive system, all the systems. thankfully, i managed to glide through the journey from san sebastian to oaxaca city with only minor discomfort and a short rebalancing time. the theme being found less in the stabilizing my inner ear and eye connection and more so in being able to recover without too much strain.
another thing in this life that i know requires significant intention and awareness is being in a city. i can become easily overstimulated by the sounds, sights, energies and pace of cities and city life, but i think there is something really invigorating about visiting from time to time. specifically this time we had come from 2 months in a town with a population of about 2,000 people deep in the mountains and arriving in the city was both exciting and overwhelming as we realized we hadn’t been around more than maybe 30 people at a time this whole 2 months (and that only happened twice), other than our own cooking we had only ate at one restaurant (which was a woman in the village’s home that she served a few dishes out of) and we had pretty much just wore the same dirty clothes to hike and do ranch work. this pattern isn’t a new one as we would do something similar once or twice a year when we lived in the mountain villages of thailand and would journey for a few days to Chiang Mai. so i’ve had some practice for sure and the thing that usually makes it rough is less about the adjusting but more about the residual effects i feel after leaving the city. this time however, i was able to notice things as they were happening, send the signals to my brain/body, even verbalize them most of the time to my partner and then there was basically no reverb. once we left the city i felt so filled up and able to ground down into the new location without having layers of build up and tension in my nervous system. i was able to really appreciate all the things the city brought like museums full of art, music on the street, amazing food and just heightened opportunity for interaction in general. it can be easy to demonize cities, i definitely did at some point - they separate us from the rest of the ecosystem, structural things make them very bad for the earth and her inhabitants, greed and power thrive there - the list goes on. but, a shift in perspective goes a long way and i think it was a big part of why i wasn’t knocked off my feet by these few days in the city - not to mention oaxaca city is really a lovely place. i still ain’t EVER tryna live in a city, but knowing i can enjoy the bits that are beautiful and still remain grounded is something that is new and is softening me.
the next leg of the journey was about 5 days into the month. we headed from oaxaca city to san cristobal. this is a 10 hour, overnight bus ride and the day leading up to boarding the bus i was extremely uneasy as the last overnight bus we took here in Mexico was a nightmare. not because of the driver or the bus or anything like that, i was just the most car sick i’ve ever been in my life for some reason and it genuinely traumatized me. i don’t think i was right for a week after. nonetheless i acquired all of the necessary tools for the trip, gave myself so many pep talks and received so many from my loving partner and i made it through the journey with only a few mild blips. we got to the house we had rented outside of the town, i planted my feet on the earth, was greeted by a big ol rain, went to bed in the coziest lil loft and woke up the next morning feeling so excited to be in a new place. i still had to be gentle with myself for the remainder of that first day after disembarking the bus but it was nothing compared to the effect the last time had on both my body and my mind (and my spirit too honestly sheesh). and the frustration i had after the bus of horror trip when i wasn’t able to just snap back into myself led me down a prolonged road of imbalanced, anxious, depressed moods and behaviors that i simply was not trying to let remain a habit.
the first few days of being in san cristobal were so lovely. v and i were excited to be in a new part of mexico we’ve yet to explore, in a new house with a beautiful garden filed with flowers, fruit trees, herbs, chickens, ducks, cats and a very lovely dog named Luna. the space also had a yoga shala as the owner of the house was a devout practitioner and it was literally the thing i looked forward too the most throughout the day. since being in mexico, i’ve had to journey through adapting some sort of rhythm when it comes to my yoga practice, meditation, ritual and just routines in general, as the environment and the layout of my day can really change quite drastically from place to place. so arriving here where there was a designated space to just roll around and flail my body (did lots of that in there lol), dance and sing and play instruments or just be silent, gave me an instant sense of both peace and motivation to dig deeper into some things i had been wanting to give attention to for some time.
unfortunately, that peace and motivation was pulverized into a dust not long after arriving when i caught a very bad case of food poisoning/bacterial infection. i wrote a bit about my feelings during that time in my last post so i won’t go into much detail here, but it was rough. i’ve visited handfuls of countries that people tell you to “be careful not to get sick” in and i’ve always rolled my eyes and been smooth sailing. except for this one time in loas when i was 21 backpacking alone and thought it might be the end for me after a tainted curry landed me in the hospital - i’ve been otherwise fine and done a good job to keep my gut happy. if anything over the last month has turned me upside down, it was this. after a couple days i thought i had made it out but it came in waves and it was about a week before my body had defeated it and another few days before i could navigate the world again. all my gratitude to a local herb growing in the garden called chilchahua that the locals use for such problems as getting a digestive infection can be common in this area due to compromised and unhealthy water sources. while i was in it, i was so stressed about what recovery would look like. this was a “can’t even really drink water, what is a circadian rhythm, fever dreams and none of my clothes fit me now” kind of sick, and thinking about how i would reintegrate and get back to my flow after just arriving in a place i didn’t know felt really intimidating. i also had a friend coming to visit in a couple weeks and i felt nervous that i would be scattered and unable to be present with her after i had looked forward to seeing her for quite some time.
even though my energy was very low, i managed, most of the time, to remind myself of some basic truths and keep my self talk neutral while i rested and recovered. i also had many times when i cried a lot and thought in spirals but i came out on the other side being shocked that for what felt like the first time, i was able to find a truly balanced route of being gentle with myself, accepting and snapping myself out of the sick body thoughts that i can usually so easily carry with me after being ill. i got back to my routines, my responsibilities, my relationships, my life and it was like i hadn’t really even left. there was much less of the sick time and the not sick time bleeding into each other messily and more of a transition. i kept telling my partner “i can’t believe i feel like myself again already”. because always in the past i would feel like i lost some part of myself when i was sick or depressed or grieving or whatever that i had to wrangle back in, but this time the roots stayed firm through the storm and the leaves started sprouting back not long after the skies cleared. i spent the rest of the month a lil sleepier and slower than usual but otherwise in good spirits.
towards the end of the month my friend made it to san cristobal and we had a cute lil time sharing a house, bopping around the city, riding horses and going for walks in the forest for a couple weeks together. we had seen each other exactly a year prior and it’s a newer friendship meaning there’s an array of new feelings both exciting and uncomfortable to navigate as the relationship deepens. it’s a beautiful thing and i was really proud of both of our abilities to show up for ourselves and each other in the ways that can truly build a friendship outside of just shared interests and surface level conversation. the experience and her presence opened a window for me to address not only the relationship wounded parts of myself but also the silly, cheerful child in me and the loving, intelligent woman in me that are all on a journey to forming meaningful, intentional relationships not based in fear or habit but rather awareness.
when i was young i remember my mom always telling me “you can’t be around your cousins/friends for too much time without ya’ll getting on each other’s nerves and arguing”. she said this sometimes in annoyance but sometimes it was more of a comforting statement in the sense that it would all calm down soon after we took some space and we would, without even meaning to, forgive each other and go back to playing as normal once a short time had passed.
this set a tone for me that in my young adult years and even not so long ago, i would feel defeated if everything wasn’t on the positive side when spending extended amounts of time with someone. that my social ability was in some way broken and unrepairable and that the only outcome would be “getting on each other’s nerves”. when in reality, extended time together just opens doors for deepening bonds, conscious communication and moving past one’s own rigidity. it’s an opportunity to open yourself up to the beautiful worlds existing inside other people’s existence, to lay your patterns down in search of a shared rhythm that can create a dance you could never know without the challenge of shared time, space and thoughts.
living with my partner consistently for the last few years has been the deepest lesson in that but also just my experiences traveling alone and staying with strangers, going on roadtrips with my friends - anything that means me not having time and space entirely to myself (as i spent many years in this way) could pose a really big challenge for me in the past that would make me both upset with myself and the other people involved and now it feels almost revitalizing to overcome. i spent a long time thinking i was socially incompetent and would never be able to “work well with others” or be in community and while these fears ingrained in me from childhood, neurodivergency and lived experience are far from solved, i have come to accept them as not truths. as not my identity. as something i am very capable of moving through with those whom i love and who love me. (more about adult friendships/relationships another time)
so, i want to close by addressing that several times while i was writing this it popped into my mind that it may sounds like i’ve got it all figured out. i assure you…i do not. far from it. never will. but i want to do a better job of appreciating the times when things are going smooth, when life feels calm, when hard work or resisting the urge to do hard work pays off. this month it was apparent that behavior changes had ensued, that skin had been shed, that there was some ease in my steps. and while i revel in this current sense of stability, i know that there will come a time again soon, like there have been many times before, when things will be the opposite of that. the goal isn’t to live only in the moments of light or strive for a life without darkness, but rather to be able to have a safe home within myself, this earth and my loved ones to come to in neutrality, in balance. i’d be lying if i told you i don’t want this rhythm to stay. i don’t want to cling to it but rather nurture it so that it’s not as hard to find when i need it. last year was full of instability in many ways and the year ahead looks like there’s more and more security on the horizon. my commitment however, is to do what i can here in the present to be the bridge between the two.