In Part I (From Mexico to Chiang Mai) I shared the first phase of my soul’s epic journey. I had walked out on my faith, my home, my marriage, and being a doctor’s wife. I had walked out on my whole world, but I gained my soul. The scales balanced.
After returning from South East Asia, piece by piece, and leap by leap, I began crafting a new life. I was where the Earth and seascape made my soul visible and living in a seaside village in New England. Cape Ann mirrored the geography of my soul. I knew the “where” of my soul’s unfolding.
But what was I meant to do and with whom?
Getting a job for employment’s sake felt like prostitution. But if I didn’t start earing my own way in life, I just might be doing that. At some point paying the rent ceases to be a philosophical inquiry.
“The soul has reasons that reason knows not of” which means sometimes our soul sends us a wild invitation in the guise of a lucky break. In my case two.
A room for rent in an old Victorian boarding house came available in the tiny seaside village of Magnolia. And while some might gasp at reducing one’s seaside home to a single room, it was a vast improvement over the backpack I lived out of while in South East Asia.
Life threw me a trapeze and I leapt at the chance, though it only had a half bath and access to a communal shower on the third floor. A year later a second-floor suite became available; complete with a fireplace, a third story turret bedroom, and a full bath with an antique clawfoot tub.
My second wild invitation from soul – my next lucky break – came when a local nonprofit needed a fitness instructor for an after school at-risk youth program. I was a nationally certified personal trainer and aerobics instructor. I interviewed. I got the job. At $12.00 an hour. Life threw me a trapeze and I leapt at the chance.
When you are climbing a mountain, the next foothold is enough.
In less than three years I was the youngest director ever in the agency, had created an alternative high school for at-risk youth (with a two-year waiting list), and earned my M.Ed.
I was well on my way to the top.
But of what?
I was feeling the deep rumble of soul hunger again. A holy howl was rushing up through my windpipe. My intentionally crafted and hard-won new life wasn’t enough. Something more was stirring up a storm I couldn’t ignore. I had to give voice to it or choke.
One afternoon I was sitting at a café writing when a loud French accent swept through the room. I couldn’t help but overhear her sensual sounding expose about how the Earth is calling forth women warriors in Joan of Arc’s name.
I looked up in shock and turned my head. I stammered, “Excuse me, I know this might sound odd, but I have recently completed an M.Ed. program in sustainability and women’s cosmology, and I couldn’t agree more. I think we need to talk.”
She handed me her business card as she left and said she’d be back in three months after a trip to India. I glanced at her card as she walked away. “Sustainable Cape Ann, Executive Director.”
Three months and one conversation later she offered me a job as the Chief Operations Officer of Sustainable Cape Ann. The next trapeze had appeared. I reached and caught it. Everything seemed divinely ordained; except there was no health care or dental insurance. In fact, no funding past the current year. No job security or plan.
All I knew – in that split second – was that my wild soul had sent me an invitation in the guise of a third lucky break. And I leapt. For no other reason than my soul had reasons I knew not of. But I had learned to trust her with my life.