When the crisis is over

How do you define yourself before, during and after a pandemic?

I can’t say that the common person was prepared or even thought about the possibility of one occurring. I bet lots of people who weren’t paying attention in school won't even remember that 1918 saw a pandemic. 1918 seems so long ago, over 100 years and so much has changed since then. The world had seen its first World War, and we had a second one, even more devastating.

Watch this episode to make sense of all of it

It seems like the more time goes by, man finds ways to be more belligerent and assert his power over others. Boasting this unrepentant superiority complex, we are not civilized at all. We consider ourselves to be the top of the food chain, but we treat others and the planet worse than any other species. We also suffer from selective memory as humanity as a whole obliterates much of the good it creates by harming others and nature. Nature that has given us so much bounty; nature, our savior, can also be our destroyer.

Why is COVID-19 happening? Why now? I am not talking about where it came from but referring to its existential cause. Could it be nature’s way of teaching us a lesson? Our karmic destiny? Will we change as a consequence? Will our leaders reassess priorities? It would certainly be the right time to do so.

There are many occasions I can be a positive person, but I fear, in this case, my skepticism is king. I fear that the powerful will, more than ever, want to hold on to it, and this carelessness about the future of the select few who could make drastic fundamental change will be guided by fear and the obsession with power, control and greed.

If this pandemic taught us anything positive thus far is that we are much more dependent on one another and that together we can really make a difference, even if our togetherness seems skewed and mostly done virtually. The commonality of love for others has propelled the essential workers to become superheroes and this planet may propel others to make changes, but is it strong enough or will others resume their selfish isolationist ways, where survival of the fittest is at the core of a species that cannot learn from catastrophe to save itself?

As we take our time to connect with our loved ones in different ways, I feel more than ever called to make some changes. I feel lots brewing in my brain, a cauldron of ideas spinning, and I have faith I am not the only one. Hope and love will always trump fear and hate.

Time, Gratitude and Daniela Ruah

Time is fleeting. It has been two months since any words made the page, except when my 19-year old cat had an emergency and we ended up making several trips to the vet.

As we (most of us, minus all the incredible essential workers tirelessly working during a pandemic) are all safe in our own homes, I reflect on how we all need connection, especially when our connections with others can only be made in words, calls and video communications.

For weeks, I have thought of the mental state of people and the psychological aftermath of COVID-19.

It’s at these times that the fear monster thrives and feeds off our worries, sucks our energy to the point of oblivion, making some of us apathetic, sad, anxious and desperate as if light could not permeate the avalanche of negative thoughts. We are bombarded by the daunting numbers and stories around the world. It's not easy.

Our minds are so powerful though. As fast as our spirit can feel dimmed, our thoughts can navigate us to more positive shores. We are the captains of our minds and we must accept the lack of control we have towards the virus itself. The extent of our control is in our actions of safety in quarantining, social distancing, washing our hands, using masks, and following other guidelines. We must focus on the things we can do and how we can wheel our actions to plant seeds of positivity.

The secret is focus. Focus on gratitude, on what we have and make an extra effort outward to connect with our loved ones virtually. When we focus on the love, the fear cannot penetrate. It will die, just as one day so will this virus.

Take the time that you have to be and to do, if so inclined. Remember to nurture yourself well: you have the chance to feed your body with beautiful foods, hydrate and rest. If sleep is not coming, try to quiet your mind with meditation, prayer, music and whatever else calms you. For me, it’s diffusing my essential oils, reiki and writing. Sometimes, I write just gibberish, other times, I do create something with words. Sow masks to donate, as I just saw on Instagram Portuguese-American actress Daniella Ruah do! I am a distant cousin of hers, according to my mother. Unfortunately, I do not have her sowing talent. Paint or draw if you love that. My friend Paula has the painting talent and her flowers on canvas are just spectacular. Exercise, move, get some fresh air, whether it’s opening a window or going outside responsibly. Make a call, connect, rearrange your closet or your house. Cook what you have always dreamed of.

In the meantime, I wish you all the best. If you shop online, make sure you leave the boxes outside and bring the contents to disinfect before allocating them. Stay safe and stay home, if you are not an essential worker. If you are an essential worker, I thank you for all that you do. My heart goes to the families of loved ones who have been affected by the pandemic. Remember, wherever you are, breathe. Do it again. Be grateful.

Are you crazy?

I heard that question a lot before I moved. I heard it from friends and family. If some of them had listened, they would have heard me talk over the years about how I would love to live near the beach and how I was sick and tired of shoveling snow.

When the snow fell during New England winters, especially when we would be hit by Nor’easters or some terrifying blizzard, I would be alone. My cats would not help me stock the house with wood. I kept the wood in the little shed in my front yard (the one with a red door I had painted a few years before), where I always would have to shovel a path to as the other main door was not near the driveway and the areas that would commonly get plowed or shoveled. I had to make sure there would be a path of access in case of, God forbid, loss of power. When you have low temperatures for months in a row, your oil bill skyrockets because your heating system is working hard to maintain your house warm, or at least to keep the heat in. Air circulation can be poor, as it is too cold to open a window and if you did, you might as well be throwing hundred-dollar bills out of it. I definitely do not miss those $600 bills every three weeks. Yes, the air gets stagnant and dry and your skin and lungs feel it deeply.

Unless you have lived it, you cannot judge how it feels or try to project on me some sort of notion that I should stay in the same place. On top of it all, I was going to be taken out of my Comfort Zone in the sense that I didn’t really know where I would ultimately end up.

Yes, it was scary to think that I would leave my network of friends and familiar surroundings. It was daunting to know that most likely what I could create as a home elsewhere would not be the same as my home of the last ten years. It was a huge risk, financially, emotionally, mentally and spiritually, to move over a thousand miles away, put my stuff in storage, drive down with a car full of stuff, my two cat babies and find a place to live with my partner of 2.5 years at the time when we had not lived together before then.

I found myself in a one-bedroom apartment on an island right on the beach thinking to myself: “if this doesn’t work with him, I will probably know pretty quickly.” They were close quarters and we were tired of being on hyperdrive mode moving from hotel room to hotel room in different cities every few days. It was stressful but it didn’t feel daunting. I knew this was the person for me, but there was always a sliver of a chance that we wouldn’t live well together. At this stage in our lives, people are settled in their own ways. The routines and the habits are established. But I had faith and I had hope.

After one week, I relished in the fact that even though we hated our full size bed in our rental (he’s almost 6’4 ft or 1.95 m) and I am not little either, I was living my dream of being near the beach and we were getting along better than I could have ever imagined. Even though I knew in my soul that we made a good team, the “what if” nagging possibility of a total bust was there. I knew then I had made the right choice, despite the sacrifice of leaving my loved ones and risking everything. Embarking into the Discomfort Zone, as my friend Pilar so eloquently puts it, and into the waters of the Learning Zone and landing on the Growth Zone where you live your dream.

There were still lots of challenges ahead: missing my loved ones was in store, we had to area hunt, house hunt and find a more permanent home, which we did six months later. I was looking forward to exploring.

We have now been in our home for 2.5 months, and we are steadily settling in. I still miss my friends, more than they could ever know. Now I have the opportunity to start over in a new place and I am looking forward to more discoveries. Not only of new places, people and experiences, but of myself.

Moving 1,300 miles with two cats

I sold my house of 10 years. The day before the closing, I put my two cats in their carriers into my old Honda Accord and with every crevice of the car full, I drove to Westerly, Rhode Island where my boyfriend lived.

The adventure began. I had medicated the two babies, Lucky and Rocky and I didn’t hear a peep the entire ride down, which took about an hour.

Two days in Westerly were traumatic enough for Rocky, the youngest at 13 years of age. Guilt washed over me like a typhoon as I felt I had ripped them from their home and everything they knew: their comfort, their territory, their corners, where it smelled familiar and where the daily routines had been ingrained for a whole decade. In contrast, after a few curious strolls around the house, Lucky plopped on the bed and slept, or looked outside the window at birds or the occasional car, and his change of scenery didn’t seem to faze him one bit.

Rocky, on the other hand, found any corner to hide in, behaved aggressively and transformed into this feral creature I didn’t recognize, as he hissed, growled like a panther and scratched the living daylights out of our skin. He had passed on his anxiety and fear onto me a couple months back every time I had to remove him during an open house when car rides and strange houses were involved.

Lucky

The vet had sold me two things: one was kitty Prozac and the other was a pheromone spray to put around the carrier or space 15 minutes prior to their presence. He told me I should start the pill two weeks before leaving, but after two days, I had stopped, because these boys were not themselves. They were shadows of their normal selves and I only resumed drugging their food two days before departure. We left Rhode Island on May 3^rd, and these guys were nearly comatose. I almost thought that the spray was more effective without side effects for them, just a lingering unpleasant smell that was still faintly present in my car, three weeks later.

Rocky

Our first stop was right off the highway in a place I had never heard of, Emporia, Virginia, then two days in Myrtle Beach, SC, a place I had always wondered about, but will no longer, as I found it to be too commercial for my taste even though we did find the best tasting Thai sweetened iced tea on the planet somewhere in town. Then two days in Saint Augustine, Florida which were very pleasant, and finally we spent an entire week at a La Quinta in Fort Pierce, FL right off the highway, where the ample room didn’t do much for Rocky’s unhappiness. He kept sleeping in the smallest of carriers, and it didn’t matter if we were in the room or not, it seemed he didn’t leave his cage.

Lucky at La Quinta

While at La Quinta, we would leave them in the room, and we would venture off looking at places to rent. It wasn’t easy to find a place that would be willing to do short term rentals, accepting of cats, but after what seemed  million phone calls, we lucked out and found a 1 bedroom 1 bath condo on a gated community right on Hutchinson Island, a miserly 3-minute walk from the beach, one of the reasons we were relocating.

Rocky at La Quinta

After lugging the contents of our cars into the 2^nd floor unit, we couldn’t believe we were steps from the ocean – we could even see a little bit from our screened narrow balcony. I opened the oversized glass sliders, and the cats immediately ventured outside. The sound of the birds, the hot breeze and the scent of the sea provided a cocktail of hope for us and the curious cat kids. Deep down, I knew we were going to be alright.

Do you ever feel in limbo?

The limbo state that occasionally happens in our lives can really rock our foundation (our root chakra). Our roots are shaken.  When this happens, it can be due to a plethora of reasons. There is fear of something not being provided for. It could be something your physical body needs, such as sleep, food or shelter.

In my case, it’s shelter. I am very lucky I have always been able to provide a roof over my head, but I am in transition at this precise moment. My house is for sale. I have had a few offers that didn’t pan out and now another one underway.

All my friends who have sold a house have told me that it’s one of the most stressful experiences you can have, and they are right. It is daunting to always been cleaning every two seconds. My hair has to be kept in a pony tail (when my autoimmune thyroiditis is out of whack, my hair falls more than the average amount), so I am not picking up behind me after my every step. I have to keep all surfaces clear of everything and every time there is a showing, I have to lock up my two fur babies in their carriers and leave them in the office for about an hour. I have timed an hour, because people show up ahead of time and sometimes they are late. I am never there, as the realtors come in when the house is empty of humans.

When I have open houses, which has happened almost every Saturday, I actually have to remove the cats. They are indoor pets and everything relating to a car is scary to them. Because this is happening in winter time, I can’t leave them in the car with the windows open, even if I have to go into the grocery store. So, some of my friends have welcomed me in, and even sometimes with pets of their own, we have to strategize on how to put these two in a separate closed room, oblivious to their own pets. After all, pets are highly sensitive and very territorial.

So, my poor honeys have to stay in strange surroundings and go on these outside adventures from time to time. Luckily, we have not had any accidents. I would be mortified if that ever happened.

Now I am packing more boxes, which tells me I still have a lot of stuff and I have donated a ton more. My accountant asked me how many bags I had donated: 5 or 10? I laugh. There were a few months last year when my car would be packed with bags every week, sometimes suitcases, and it is tough to put a value amount to things you have parted with.

With all the stuff leaving the house, the disruption of constant cleaning and the house not feeling my own, I wonder where I will be once it sells. I can’t really make any moving or renting plans until I have a date for that. In essence, this suspended state of limbo leaves one with the roots shaken. The big question mark at the end of the tunnel is where will I be?

I have found some destressing mechanisms: Reiki, which has been my life saver for over a decade, essential oils (the ones I use here) and meditation. This last one is the toughest one for me. Time is a factor. The life of the nomad continues, as I camp in my own home.

The Birth of a Writer

I can pinpoint the start of my writing “career” when I was 9 years old. I am not sure if it started in Portuguese, French or English, but I started writing stories when my age only had one digit, and it is hard to believe how fast time flies.

First, I used a pen and paper. There were lots of scratches and rewrites. Then came the typewriter, the computer ancestor, and I trust that many of you reading this never had to use this writing dinosaur, and I am not talking about the electric ones either. I am talking about the ones with ribbons and rollers, where one would get so aggravated because the sheet of paper you rolled into it did not line up straight. You’d have to remove it and all start over. If you made a mistake typing the wrong letter – the metal with the letter engraved would loudly snap onto paper through an ink cloth ribbon, there was no way to delete it or use an eraser without poking a hole onto the paper. Whiteout could be used, but it would still be messy, and you knew exactly where it was as it topographically jumped off the page like a tiny plateau pinpointing your mistake.

Eventually, I wrote on a desktop computer. The printers back then were not as sophisticated, and neither were the computer fonts. You didn’t have the plethora of choices you have now, and when the paper came out, the light ink was very electronic-looking, and you had perforated vertical edges that you had to tear away. Can you imagine? It seems of another century now. And it was.

Historically-speaking, I used a pen or pencil and a paper, whether it was a notebook or not, it didn’t really matter. I had no intent on what to do with my stories. I just had them in my head, and they needed to be birthed.

Academically, I attended a French Lycée and during the 80’s and 90’s, the curricula or the teachers never focused on creative writing, so I always deemed what I was doing as fun, as a secret past time I did at home, when I wasn’t drowning in hours of homework or reading or immersed in some physical educational out-of-a-school activity. I never heard of the term “creative writing” until I got to the United States when I was eighteen.

I entered a Liberal Arts school like a fish out of water, first time alone in my life, in another country and speaking English with a British accent, the English I had learned in French school. Soon enough, I started to become self-conscious about my accent and I tried to mimic the American accent I heard all around me. In hindsight, I wish I had stuck with it, as I learned much later that Americans love accents. An accent can sound exotic, intellectual and mysterious. Evidently, I had missed that memo, so terrified about being noticed.

When I saw Creative Writing being offered as a college course, I signed up. It took me over two years to decide that it should have been my major all along, but I missed the deadline by two weeks, when I could have double-majored. It’s my own fault. I didn’t have the self-confidence I have now. I had seen myself as not good enough throughout – perhaps a mindset stemming from my younger years, plus I told myself that due to the fact that English was my third language, I could never be as good as a native speaker. I know now how misguided that was.

So, I wrote quite a bit during my college years: poetry, plays, essays, short stories. Influenced by others who told me I could never make money with writing, I started my master’s degree in marketing communications two weeks after graduating from my bachelor’s, and I set aside my writing calling.

I was still writing papers, but I had abandoned creative writing, labeling it a thing of the past.

Fast forward to age almost 29 when I was already married and working. My cousin decided to give me a 4-day writer’s workshop on Martha’s Vineyard for my birthday. I told her that it would be a waste of money, because I hadn’t written in years, but maybe it was the artist in her who still saw a glimmer of the writer in me and insisted on it.

I reluctantly went to Nancy Slonim Aronie’s Writing from the Heart workshop in Chilmark, MA, feeling a heaviness, a fluff-less batter of shame, guilt and inadequacy. However, it didn’t take that many minutes into the first day of the workshop for me to realize, it didn’t matter that I had silenced the writer in me years earlier. The words flowed on the paper, as if I had never stopped writing. Poetry, prose, non-fiction and fiction poured out of me, like a freed dam. I didn’t know what to do with it.

After four days of intense writing, Nancy validated me as a writer, and when she autographed her book for me, she added the words “You ARE a writer!” I could have cried in that moment. It’s as if she was recognizing the gift in me and giving me permission to carry on, to continue creating. I told her I didn’t really know how to fit it into my life. She urged me to create a writing group upon returning back home.

My first published collection available here

I posted some flyers at the town library, and pretty soon, the Nomad Writers came to life. I was told that it would be unlikely that a writer’s group would meet more than once or twice a month. I stuck to my guns, because I wanted to be writing once a week. We would meet on Monday nights at 6. There was much turnover for a time, and I slowly figured out how to structure the group, so it would become a safe sacred space, where creative writing was the focal point and where people wouldn’t be permitted to disrespect or put down another person’s writing. It had to be a place where constructive feedback would be given and where writers would feel free to create, evolve and soar. Several people didn’t think it would be possible, but once there was a core group that was committed to show up every single Monday at 6, the Nomads became solid. We respected one another’s work, and the only thing that ended up happening was location changes, thus the name Nomad Writers. For the past 15 years, we have been faithfully meeting. We are a closed group and have been at the same library for a while now, and all of us are published. We have also collectively created two anthologies over the years. We have lost Nomads to cancer or moves. But we remain strong and we keep creating. I know that Monday nights are a special time for creative writing, and thus I am honoring my past 9-year old self who would write stories in an 8^th floor apartment in Lisbon, Portugal.

Perfect blend to feel joyful while writing and maybe getting my English accent back.

What I learned from Cuz Wendy and Marie Kondo

Part 2

Open houses on Saturdays and showings during the week and sometimes on Sundays, that was my life. My schedule was dictated by the showings. I had to literally work and schedule things around this huge endeavor.

Several people have told me that selling a house is one of the most stressful and biggest things one can undertake. I mentally paused. Indeed, our home is our safe haven. It’s literally our foundation, where about half our lives is spent, as our beds cocoon us every night and let our bodies recover from the day. 

If we were trees, our home is equivalent to the roots. Home is linked to the root chakra: where we feel safe and provided for, where our bodily needs are met - eating, sleeping, loving. Home should be a place of security, comfort and familiarity, where we nest, grow and live. It’s the floor beneath our feet, holding the bed when we are sick and sometimes our final resting place. They say home is where the heart is, and that is literally where your heart is half of the time.

When I was talking to my cousin Wendy, who coincidentally is going to be listing her house soon, she commented how this house had been good to me and asked me if I had thanked my house. I was silent for a few seconds, thinking about this. I did Reiki on my house to clear the energies. I anointed the air by diffusing pure essential oils (these are the ones I use). I cleaned, vacuumed, dusted every surface. I painted it, I improved it, I fixed it. I had poured much love into this house, but no, I had not actually thanked “her.” The word for house in Portuguese is feminine, so I am calling my house “her.”

I had to thank her. So, I did. I thanked her for being my home. I had found her in disarray almost 10 years before. I had given her quite a makeover, with many improvements over the years, and I acknowledged that more still needed to be done. I told her that the next people who live here would hopefully continue that task, and that she would be the haven that she had been to me for another family. It felt good to thank her and it reminded me of Marie Kondo, when she helps people tidy up their house on Netflix, the first thing she does is “feel” the spirit of the home. She kneels, closes her eyes, and mentally and spiritually connects with the house, greeting it and offering her respect for it. In a way, even though I did not kneel when I thanked my house, I was connecting mentally and spiritually with it, and thanking “her.”

It was not under my control when the right buyer would come along or when I would be moving. Our plan was to explore a new area and start a new chapter elsewhere, but first things first. Just like Julie said, there is a step for everything in this process, and my other half said: “Patience, dear.” If only I could muster some of that! I had to: my life depended on it.