A Fated Fall

I moved to Montana full time one year ago this month. It feels like a lifetime ago that I left the hussel and bussel of the beltway for the peace and serenity of the mountains. My journey from east to west began 3 years ago. I was in full time school, working full time, preparing my daughter to begin kindergarten and basically paying for a babysitter and my rent to survive. My body and mind and nervous system were wrecked. My schedule required me to be up for 24 hours straight twice a week with my work, school, and childcare. Something had to give and the universe told me it was time to take a break. Perhaps a out of state travel contract where I could just focus on working and regaining some sense of equillibrium. A nervous system reset. I called it my post divorce “eat pray love Mecca.”

I’ll never forget the phone call to my recruiter. “I need out of this nursing home.” I had been working at the worst nursing home in the state of Maryland for 6 months because to put it plainly it paid the most and I was a broke ass single mom living paycheck to paycheck. I remember thinking to myself those mornings I would complete my 12 hour night shift at 7 am. “This experience is changing me. If I had any other choice, I’d be gone.”

And the experience did change me. It showed me the amount of pain I could endure. I injured a shoulder lifting a patient I never should have been left alone to lift. My body that I had nourished and loved with deep compassion all of those years in yoga, was yet again enduring more trauma it would have to heal from.

“Anicca. Impermenance.” I would tell myself. “This is the greatest chapter of my memoir.” Oh the stories we will weave to justify the way we punish ourselves.

My supervisor and coicidentally my roomate on the weekends was a former stripper/alcoholic nurse who blamed herself for her husbands death. Living with her was living hell. Working with her was almost just as bad. She thrived on putting me down and attempting to steal my power. The way abusive people who are deep in their suffering, unwilling to fully feel to heal often do. They numb. They cope. They pass their pain to others.

I remember thinking… I have been in the wellness world of life coaching and yoga communities for years. Surrounded by warm loving uplifting humans. I don’t know how to handle this behavior other than…