The Shark & the Sunshine
If, ten years ago, you would have told my younger self that I was going to befriend giraffes in South Africa, sit in solidarity with women in the slums of India and study Spanish full-time in the streets of Guatemala, I would have laughed in your face. It wasn’t until I woke up on my 30th birthday in a rustic hotel room in the Yukon to find out I was pregnant that I realized I had a story to tell.
This story isn't meant for those hoping to stay in their comfort zone. It's the tale of a woman who couldn't stand conformity, who stood up to injustice and who found her voice through facing the demons of her past. It's about the lessons gained by learning to stand in the fire. And it's about the realization that in life, there is often no way out but through. You might as well have a hell of a time living it. And you better have your own back.
All my life I've heard, "That's another chapter in your book!" There are people who look for the stories and people who the stories find.The truth is I love this world so big and so hard and I had to freeze time to remember the characters, the stories and the poetry of living my 20's
a l i v e. This memoir is a recounting of my years as I traipsed around four continents thinking I had something to teach others. Really, it was all of them who taught me.
My Story
AUTHOR’S NOTE
My love for the world is endless. I see beauty on beauty on beauty. I stop to examine the pine cones in spring, unfolding into the world. I take luxurious walks in the rain to feel the drops touch my face. I see sunrises as the most powerful art we have in the world and tear up at dawn as the sun comes up over the hills. The crescendo of beauty before us every morning and no one looking out the window! I lay down on the snow in the winter when the first snow falls, letting it catch on my eyelashes, on my nose, on my tongue. I am most at home in the woods with Mama Birch twinkling beside me laughing a quiet chuckle with the breeze.
I turn my face to the sun when it’s warm and close my eyes to feel how utterly and truly alive we are. My heart is the ocean for the people I love and there are so damn many. I want to eat up my family and friends, shrink them down and put them in my pocket. I want to nurture all whom I meet, these moments of connection, this intricate web that I’ve weaved over this earth. I want to run at a breakneck speed towards the woods to create a life of awe and wonder, running towards my one wild and precious life, away from the constraints of society. I want to breathe deeply and explore madly my own backyard and the world over.
In this book I tell you about my family and friends. I want to ensure they know how they have all been the perfect teachers for me. I also tell you a lot about my travels. Names have been changed where possible to protect privacy.
I have sat in the fields with campesino farmers in El Salvador, learning about the way the ‘three sisters’ grow together in perfect co-creation. I have eaten sticky candy and savoured warm chai in dusty mud huts with the colorful, resilient women of India and Nepal. I have faced wildebeest with their wagging tails and snorting mouths in the bankenvelds of Africa and bled from the thorns that save themselves from a giraffe’s long tongue. I have discovered that there is no place for inner peace in India except within oneself; a land alive with moving meditation and a rainbow of smells, colours and sounds. I’ve floated on the bluest-green water in Guatemala in hot springs so hot you could cook a chicken. I have almost been left for dead at a party in Zimbabwe and woke up in a small shack, in love with the local guide. I found out I was pregnant on the morning of my 30th birthday after a 20 hour journey north. It was that solo camping trip to the Yukon, on land with roaming buffalo so beautiful, cold and silent, that gave me the answers I sought. I have quit jobs and left cities that I love for but a whisper of the next step. I have always followed my heart. I have been lost. I have been found. I found a giant home within myself. I will forever advocate for the wild place that lives inside us because that is our sovereignty and the point of why we are here on this little strange and magical home called earth.
To find our wildness. To remember it. To free it and free others in the process.
Today, as you read this story, know that it intertwines with the story you hold like the landscapes that flow from mountain to river. We all empty into the ocean and paint the sky blue with our intricate connectedness.
But we each have a story to tell. This is my story.
Now let’s start at the beginning...
