The Return

For the past month, I’ve heard one particular question often:

“Why the heck are you going to Alaska?”

My favorite response was “I told my brother I’d take him anywhere in the world for his birthday. He picked freaking Alaska!”

But then I set foot in the savage, stunning, completely breathtaking beauty of Alaska and now I can’t thank Matthew enough for picking this wonderful state. I got to go whale watching, ride a four hour train through White Pass in Skagway, past sprawling jagged mountains bathed in snow and waterfalls dancing across all of them, close and far. So many waterfalls! Beautiful conifer and broad leafed trees, jade green and bright yellow. Snow everywhere and yet we enjoyed 80-degree F weather.

View My Alaska Photo Album here on Facebook!

I can tell you right now one of the best parts of this trip was being reunited with my travel partner and best friend, Rachel Rofe! Now that she lives quite a ways south of me, it’s hard for us to hang out as much as we’d like. But this cruise was a blast.

One day our entire ship coursed up Endicott Arm, through ice fields and fiords toward a massive glacier. Most will enjoy this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity nestled in heavy jackets, mittens, hats, and scarves, bracing themselves against a torrid wind and icy air.

But for us, we sunned ourselves in tank tops and bathing suits. 90-degrees that day. Clear blue skies.

I got a lot out of this trip. More than I could have hoped or imagined.

• It somehow reignited my creativity. I’m writing about 10 pages a day of my noir fantasy novel and wrote my first poem in 12 years
• I was the only single, young woman on the boat. Let’s just say it was nice being popular!
• My taste for adventure returned and I have planned a solo trip for the entire month of August. I’ll go up the coast from Los Angeles all the way into Canada, then cross over the Rockies into Calgary and down through Montana, Utah, and my beloved Arizona.

And the strangest thing of all…

My bag got lost on the way back and never turned up at the airport. That bag had over $3,000 of my most prized possessions, including my $600 blender (for my raw food smoothies), several $100+ necklaces that I prize as my “Goddess Necklaces”, several healing stones I found along the banks of the Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau that had the most soothing, cooling energy I’ve ever felt, personal affects that have been gifted to me or that I’ve gifted myself that hold many memories, and so much more.

Somehow I wasn’t mad. But I was bummed. Some of you who are my friends on Facebook consoled me and told me that perhaps I was letting go of things I no longer need. I pushed that idea away. These were mainly new, and very sacred belongings.

Then last night I was listening to one of my favorite songs, “Citizen of the Planet” by Alanis Morrissette. She says, “So I pack my things. Nothing precious. All things sacred.”

I realized that at a higher level all that is material is precious. What makes it sacred is ourselves. The meaning we bestow on it.

I recently posted on my company blog about my recent weight release challenges after the fibroids (I’d just gotten back into shape before they hit, and then the trauma to my body caused me to hold weight for several months as I healed). I talked about how we have to let go. And focus on other things.

Last night I had this spontaneous episode where suddenly everything lifted. I can’t explain it and don’t think I need to. But I knew, beyond a doubt, that I was free. I’ve arrived. That unknown place I’ve been fighting toward my whole life… I’m finally here. A lot of it has to do with my novel and with the immense success my companies are now experiencing. We’re in flow. We’re having fun and we’re doing what we love.

But it’s also about release and letting go and I realized that what I had to let go of was all this evidence to help me validate that I was who I wanted to be. Everything in that bag was a physical statement I could use to label myself: I am healthy. I am a raw foodist. I am spiritual. I can feel energy and sense the essence of natural things. I am divine feminine.

These were all labels I desperately clung to in the past. In the not so distant past.

But I am free of them now. I simply am all these things, without the need to make them evident. I AM SELF EVIDENT!

And thank you to everyone who could so easily see what I had refused to know: that I do not miss my bag full of all those precious gifts. I have myself. And that’s pretty much the point.

This post was really just for me to share a deep part of myself. I apologize if it wasn’t entertaining reading!

Much Love,

Jaime

Oh and I’ll leave you with the poem I wrote as we floated through the ice fields of Endicott Arm. Disclaimer: I am not a poet! So don’t expect much!

“The Return”

Savage with Grace
I plunge my roots deep into the terrain,
hoping for the fortitude of ice
and the noble ambivalence of fir and limestone.

I settle for some flicker of knowing…

Some empty grace I hope to recognize
one day,
with the eyes to see it
and the soul to know it…

As already my expression and always my source.

I had never left
though somehow
being here feels like coming
home.