Sometimes it all doesn’t feel real. I am laying on the ground in my living room next to the fire writing a thank you card to the officers at jail along with letters stuffed with word-search puzzles to some of the girls still in there. Yet at the same time I’m packing for Hawaii. Bikinis and dresses splayed out along the floor, loading books, magazines and movies to my iPad Mini for the plane ride.
This sure is a blessed life when you can spend 3 months in jail and as of yesterday I’ve been out for one solid week and I’ve already gone to yoga 3 times, hiked twice, and now packing for vacation…and a week ago I was laying on a cold bunk praying for the time to fly by.
Well it’s a week and my life already feels like this new chapter far far away from the last one. I can’t wait to be in the warm weather exploring the Big Island of Hawaii.
Yesterday I was fortunate enough to meet Melissa Arnot, a 31-year-old mountaineering beauty who has summited Everest 5 times and summited Rainier over 100 times! Isn’t that amazing?! She had a presentation about her journey and how she grew up with hippie parents that said she shouldn’t go to college and that with the money she’d owe after college, she would be spending the equivalent of a life where she could ski every single day for the rest of her life and even probably fit in a hotel once a week and everything:) as long as she “didn’t work for the man” they felt she could succeed. She went against their idea and went to college. After college she started hiking and fell in love….followed her parents idea and lived out of her truck….then she hiked Rainier…then she became a guide, and now, well, she’s an absolute inspiration!!!! I was completely moved and at the same time itching for a life like that.
The 3 months away, the hiking, her presentation, everything keeps shouting quiet symbolic messages at me. I spent a few hours cleaning everything and getting rid of half my clothes and when I was away I told my parents to get rid of my bed and bed frame because it’s a huge, overly heavy queen size bed that is too big for me. Old Tiare was consumed by “junk”. I needed new outfits and shoes every week and my bed took up half my room.
Now that I’m here, all of this is just “stuff”. Now I basically know exactly what I need because I’ve basically been living out of a locker as well as the trunk of my car.
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Let’s flash forward to today:) remember how I started that blog on the floor in my living room in Washington? Well I fell asleep and forgot to upload be post to my blog. I’m in Hawaii right now! Yesterday was a long day of traveling because we had to stop in Oahu which was a 6-hour flight and then we had a 3 hour layover before finally heading over to the Big Island. My uncles property is amazing here. We’re staying at his house for a couple days and then staying in a house on the beach! Last night after dinner my brother Ian and I took a couple flashlights and roamed his huge back yard that resembles something more like a jungle. We found chameleons, geckos, and tiny frogs. I can’t wait to explore, I’m waiting for the for the sun to rise so I can get outside for a run. I can’t wait to share the places I go to this week!:) I’ll try to blog more often. I’m still amazed that one week ago my life was so different…
