writing – Living Life Without Limits

My Polar Bear Swim 2018

January 11, 2018 Living Life Without Limits

My polar bear swims are always something really sacred to me. I don’t always complete it on the first of January but for me it is always the true beginning/start to my year. It started as something random that I thought I would try and has since then become a big tradition in my life. During my first polar swim I made a promise myself that as long as I was near water it would be my start to the year.

It is so much more than the rush of running into cold water as a shock into the new year (although that is a deep love of mine – shout out to my other adrenaline junkies). For me it is a physical representation of washing away all the old of the past year, letting go of it all, and moving forward fresh and renewed. It is as much a mental process as a physical one. From the moment I enter that water I vow to accept the past year for what it was and let it go and to move forward excited for what is to come.

Every year I choose a new location that is different than where I have gone before. Each location is special to me and has given me amazing memories. Every year it is a different experience and every year I am so grateful for the tradition. Some years I do it alone, other years I have some help. But regardless I always have a great time and come out of that water feeling refreshed and renewed.

Cold water and polar swims aren’t for everyone. Most people can’t stand cold water and the thought of a polar swim is “crazy”. But I’ve always been the one to chase after those experiences people call “crazy” because I know they are the ones that will be the most rewarding. I have been lucky in having a disposition for being able to withstand cold water conditions. Because of that and my love for water/the ocean I swim at any time of the year. It’s never a one time thing, you can catch me swimming at all times of the year. Just like hiking it is a way for me to reconnect with nature and myself.

I began documenting my polar swims ever since the beginning. The first year it was really just a simple photograph to show I had done it. But it evolved as I changed my direction within my photography. I started to take more self portraits which helped birth a new idea of having self portraits for every polar swim. This year I decided to experiment with video, a sister industry to the one I love so much. It is just me messing around with my camera but it is a new creative adventure for me to go on. My goal was to help others come with me on an experience that is so sacred to me. I had fun creating it and I enjoy sharing it with others. But for the coming years I think I will stick to self portraits instead.

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Never Apologize For Who You Are

November 5, 2017November 5, 2017 Living Life Without Limits

It took me getting away from the people and places I had grown up with to truly know who I am and to truly learn how to love myself. It was within exploring more of the globe that I came to know who I really was and came to know life with joy and passion and love that wasn’t ridiculed or judged or conditional. When I’ve had to return back to where I grew up I climb mountains and swim in oceans or lakes to find that same type of freedom from their never ending plight to conform me.

I’ve come to see we all play roles in each others lives. We each come into one another lives, whether short or long, whether doing good or bad to serve a purpose that affects our personal growth process. We are each teachers and we are each learners. You can never really control who you will be for someone else. Some people come into your life to teach you either with love or with hurt, or at times both. Other times you enter people’s lives to do the same.

I have been the teacher to many and I have been taught by many. There are times when I’ve had to play the role of “bad guy” to others (especially in my younger years) and I’ve had others play that role for me. Most of my life was learning lessons the hard way through hard love, hurt, loss and trauma. It wasn’t until recent years that I’ve been given the gifts of learning lessons through love and kindness and compassion and I learned to give my wisdom in the same way.

It was my first experience with learning a lesson through the caring of someone else that I began to understand the roles we play. At the time I said something that was beyond what I consciously knew or understood. I told a person that despite our disagreement and odd timing in each others lives that something in my soul was telling me not to lose them. I said that just like that same gut instinct that told me to move half way across the world alone, it was telling me that they were suppose to be something big in my life or I was meant to be something big to them. I told them that I didn’t understand how but I knew that either I was suppose to teach them something or they were suppose to teach me something or we would both learn from each other but no matter what it was it was important. And in the end I was right – they became one of the most influential people in my life.

Since then I’ve become better at being able to tell the role I will play in other’s lives. I can have people reach out to me and I can tell I am meant to be the teacher. There are other times I can think to myself “I am meant to learn a lot here” and I make sure to listen as much as possible. And there are times that still surprise me. But there is a kind of relationship or bond where you both benefit from one another. It is the best kind of combination you can hope for.

It’s the people with whom you mutually teach and learn together, with respect and unconditional love, that become your tribe. They are the people where you each add value to one another’s lives, where you each meet with a respect for one another, where you walk away from any conversation and experience with them feeling better within life. These are the people who you feel eternally grateful for no matter how long or short they’re in your life. They are the people you know (even if you drift apart) you will always wish them the very best in life. I’ve been blessed to have had a handful of these people and if you find people like this know that they are your tribe. Mutual respect, understanding, and unconditional love are rare. Make sure you tell these people what they mean to you and fight to keep them in your life.

That being said, sometimes these people aren’t meant to stay for a long time but are meant to make a huge impact. It will be painful to lose such a meaningful connection in your life but the loss doesn’t change how important it was and it doesn’t change the lessons you learned or the impact you made along the way. We want these connections to last a life time but sometimes your lives don’t land on the same page, not because of anything bad, but because living your best lives takes you to different places. It is important to recognize that and to let them go when you know it’s time. It is important to thinking of them with happiness but not with nostalgia.

I wanted to talk about how special those people are because more often than most there will be people that come into your life who say they love and care for you, who say they support you, but who in turn judge you, who hold things against you, and who tell you that you’re too much of something. I’ve come to realize those aren’t the right people for you and shouldn’t be given time or space in your life. A lot of the people I grew up with were these people. Constantly hiding their manipulation, judgements, and ridicule behind the statements “I care about you”, “I love you”, “I want the best for you” when really all they wanted was for me to conform to who they wanted me to be.

When I started to practice self love and rip these people’s grasps from my mind and liquidate their space from my life I learned the valuable lesson; anyone who doesn’t accept you for who you are doesn’t deserve space in your life (and certainly not your mind). Really anyone who tells you to change who you are isn’t worth your time. If you grow up with these people from a young age it’s even harder to realize that the actions behind their words aren’t caring at all. It is important to differentiate the people in your life who say they want the best for you when really they only want what is best and easiest for them. Even if these people are kind to your face it’s important to understand that if they tell you that you need to change that isn’t “caring” that is in fact the opposite.

I realized a long time ago to not allow people into my life who don’t accept me entirely for who I am. I spent years ridding myself of these people. But sometimes it is the people we are most comfortable with or the people from our past that can slip through our perceived “true friend” gate. Recently I spent two days feeling the worst I have about myself in an extremely long time. I was taken aback as to where it came from because I am proud of who I am even if I am working on myself and constantly wanting to grow and evolve. Because it was so unlike me, after a few days I realized that a person from my past manipulated me and gaslighted me into believing the worst of myself due to unhealed hurt I caused them from the past.

My growth and inner work was strong enough that I was capable of knowing something wasn’t right and realizing my thoughts weren’t my own, my thoughts were manipulated there by someone who resents me while telling me they love and care for me. I have such a strong sense of self that I knew that how I felt about myself in those moments didn’t place right. I took time for self reflection and came back knowing that I am not sorry for a second about who I am, knowing that I am a good person and shouldn’t be held to who I was in the past who was a lonely depressed traumatized girl looking for love and belonging. The experience was a good reminder for me of something I live by and something I whole heartedly tell others to live by – never apologize for who you are.

Thank goodness I have my tribe and those people reminded me that how this person viewed me was far from the truth. They made it easy for me to snap out of someone else’s manipulation and walk away from it. I encourage you to find your tribe in a world that is so ready to judge (if you haven’t already) and to look at and understand that your roles in people’s lives will be different, just as they will be to you, but your past does not define you. Who you are today, in this moment, this is who you are. And every day you get to make the choice of the type of people you keep in your life, of what you do with your days, the kind of life you want to lead, and how you want to see yourself. So everyday I hope that you choose to keep people in your life who love and accept you unconditionally, I hope you fill your days with what brings you joy, I hope you choose kindness and compassion, and I hope that you choose to love yourself. And remember at the end of the day never apologize for who you are.

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Drink Up As Much Life As You Can

September 6, 2017September 6, 2017 Living Life Without Limits

As nomads we are pros at the statement “if you love something let it go, if it’s meant for you it will come back to you”. We can’t ask someone to stay when we know we wouldn’t want to be asked either. It’s the truest form of unconditional caring when you allow someone to go after their dreams even if it means you’re left behind, even if it means the end of a good thing.

I learned a really important lesson in my early twenties that has been a crucial part to understanding and coping with life. It was the simple statement of “this too shall pass”. And of course that helps to get through the tough times but I didn’t learn it in that way. I learned it in the positive way of making the most out of your days and enjoying the ride because nothing will last forever. But our memories are a collection of our lifetime, so we should create the best ones we can by really making the most out of life.

I’ve come to learn that even if you know something will end eventually that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take it full force and make the most out of it. If we take the opportunities life gives us and make the damn most out of them there is no room for regret.

I’m still trying to master the art of letting go. But I do know that a key factor to being able to let go is to have lived it to the fullest so much that when it ends you can feel happy about it versus destroyed. You will feel grateful for the experience and the memories, sad to say goodbye, but you will know that you still have happiness ahead of you. Of course you will feel sad over the ending of something but not so much that it will destroy you, hold you back, or stop you from living in the present.

Some of my best memories and the best people in my life came from moments I knew wouldn’t last but I made the most out of it regardless (isn’t that the essence of what travelling is?). I’ve been more graceful at letting go of some people and places, others took me a long time to learn how to move forward because of their depth of meaning to me and the way they changed my life.

I think there will always be places and people I’ll be willing to welcome with open arms for all my life because of how deeply I’ve cared for them and they’ve cared for me. They are the people and places that I view highly, that have given me the best memories, and have changed me in the most positive ways.

Life has an interesting way of working itself out. I know this well. And because of it I have faith that sometimes what seems like an ending is only temporary and even if it isn’t, as cliché as it sounds, every ending is a new beginning. But you can’t hold on to that hoping and waiting. You’ve got to move on, you’ve got to live your life, and if those amazing things come full circle it’s an amazing experience. If they don’t you’ll most likely have made new amazing experiences and will continue to regardless.

Moving forward in the present is something which, if mastered, can free you from attachment and possession. It is easy to look at the past as better than it was and because of that, when our life’s aren’t to our satisfaction, we fall down the dark well of nostalgia. Nostalgia can be a friend or it can be a foe. It is when we get lost in wishing our life isn’t what it was that we lose ourselves in that well of despair. But if we are grateful for where we are (even if it may not be where we want to be), and look at the past with gratitude for helping to grow us, we then have a positive nostalgia.

We can also get trapped in the daunting fear of what is to come. The “should’s”, the “what if’s”, the list of all possible things that could go wrong in the future, so much so that it stops us from following our dreams or things that could make us happy. And when we get trapped by those mind games with ourselves, we lose sight of what is in front of us. And ironically, what is in front of us is what will determine our future. Our moments, our memories, our days, right here and right now, what we fill them with will determine the outcome of our lives.

I invite you to live in the present moment and know that your time is the most precious thing you have. We are given moments, we aren’t given more time. How you spend your minutes is how you spend your life. So you better make the damn most of it. You better honor how precious your time is and only offer it to those who also honor your presence in their life.

I hope you use your days to go after your dreams, to follow your joy. I hope that you get the blessing to meet people, or places, or situations that make you want more time or to make time stand still because you wish you could continue making those memories forever.

I hope that your time is filled with people and things that make you laugh, that keep you smiling, and help you to feel grateful for the life that you lead. Make sure you make the most of these moments, make the most out of your days and drink up as much of life as you can.