The Changes We Make and the Changes We Ride

Lila and I had left the house barely two hours before. Things were as “normal” as they usually are, which is now that I think about it, a bit of a new normal.

When we returned, a massive shift had taken place.

But back to this new normal.


When I first walked onto this land, two years ago, it was wild. Two families lived there, all the way in the back of what could, with a bit of imagination, be called a dirt road. No one had electricity or water. Why I thought this would be the perfect place to build my home, I am not sure.

Although, who am I kidding? Of course, I know. I wanted WILD. I wanted NEW, I wanted A-LITTLE-CRAZY. And I was in love with this immense nature. The jungle on all sides of this big field where I was standing, the horses and the cows and the bulls roaming free, the FREEDOM of it all.

That’s why.

So I did it, I said yes, I somehow made a little house appear in the middle of this jungly field, and ten months later, I remember thinking that it might have been a huge mistake. Bugs everywhere and pretty much just me and my girls. A friend stayed the first night with me, the hurricane arrived the second night, and then… there we were.

At first, I was scared to drive home at night. After a late dinner in the village, I remember reciting to myself “The rivers are not any deeper at night. The rivers are not any deeper at night.” They were not and I made it home just fine, crossing three of them.

Driving home in the dark became routine.

Then someone told me about the jaguars that live nearby and until I got schooled on the fact that they rarely attack humans, I would make a bunch of noise walking to my palette-wooden gate from the car after dark.

Pretty soon, I stopped doing that and just walked in.

A few months later, I decided to save my car’s suspension and buy a quad. When it arrived I wasn’t sure how to drive it. Once I learned, I declared that for sure I would never drive it home at night.

Within weeks I was high on driving it through the country roads under the full moon and the endless stars. I remember feeling as though my soul was singing.

Then the bugs.

I had a humble understanding that I had moved onto their territory and as such would do my best to be a good guest. I walked around the lizards and the spiders and tried to sleep while flying cockroaches zoomed around my room.

But the scorpions freaked me out and at first I squished them with a shoe as fast as I could. Then a friend mentioned that I COULD just pick them up with a piece of paper and a glass and relocate them outside of my house, “thanking them for having shown themselves to me.”

Next scorpions and each one ever since that’s what I do. As I release each one I always say out loud “Please tell your friends!”

We adapt. We change. Even the bugs have adapted and I haven’t seen a flying cockroach in months.

The more time passed, the more I have fallen in love with living here. I am aware of the fragile illusion that is my home, all comfy with pretty colors, and soft cushions - in the middle of nowhere. I am aware that if I were to leave for more than a couple of weeks, the jungle would start to take over.

I have sat around campfires right outside my little gate, I have spent mornings nude, cutting my banana leaves, I have marveled as the sky turned pink at dawn, loved greeting the enormous mango tree from my bedroom window. I have ADORED living on this edge of crazy and also so very normal.


And, it has slowly changed.

A couple of families moved in when electricity became officially available to them. More plots of land were sold. Makeshift dirt streets were cleared - and almost immediately taken over by plants. It is noisier, messier, and also in a way, a little sweeter.

Each year at the end of the rainy season my house has been surrounded by such tall grasses that you can not see it all until you get to it. It’s fun, like being inside a living fort.

Then once in a while, the man who owns the rest of the land comes by with a prospective buyer and asks me to show them my house. Somehow to him, I have become the example of “what can be done” and I have some thoughts about this - although they are for another time.

I answer questions about water, electricity, about Internet, and more. Often, I never see these people again.

But yes, slowly, In the last few months, I have noticed a new normal. Not quite as wild as when I first arrived. Not completely this sense of “here I am alone in the middle of nature.”
Then, two days ago.

Lila and coming back for the beach and finding the whole area in front of our house, the one where the huge tall grasses grow, burnt down, and about to be enclosed. Three whole lots. Big enough for a small Walmart.

It’s as if a pink eraser had shown up and erased several layers of the Essence of Wildness.

There are more lots to enclose, I have no doubt. I have no idea - nor control - over what will get built or when in front of us. Behind us. To the side of us.

I remind myself that this might mean that we will get water, electricity, and maybe even a sense of community. I trust, I really do.

And also, I grieve.

I grieve what I knew all along would end.
I grieve what I know I have a big part in losing.

I sit with the changes, the ones that came, the new ones, and the ones that will come.

I know that should I miss the wildness I could sell my home and create another one. I know that also, just as when gears shift in a car, getting to the next one often feels good. I am open to Gifts, always.

And more than anything, I am grateful. Grateful to Life for having invited me, and guided me to live the last two years, years that I could never ever ever have imagined living. Until I did.

This has been a time that has revolutionized my insides, my way of being, and has forever put a chip inside of me that says “I can do this.”

I know myself - and love myself - so much more than I ever did.

So here’s to changes. The ones we make and the ones we ride. The ones we open up to immediately, and the ones we resist. The ones that reassure us and the ones that scare us. The ones that shape us - and I am pretty sure they all do - and the ones that tell us: “See? Here you are. Welcome.”

Today I invite you to be gentle with yourself as you dance with Life’s changes. Whether you are sputtering, doubting, and stepping on your own toes or you are swaying like a tall poplar tree in the breeze, flowing and allowing, I celebrate you and I hope that you will find the place to celebrate and love yourself also.

We’ve got this.