Well, it has been a while since my hands touched a keyboard and I let the words fall out my head and onto a page. I have missed it. I honestly feel at home when I am writing, and I don’t know (how for the first time in many years) I had so much time between pages. I feel…. free when I write, free to speak my truth and share my emotions and I am completely liberated by that.
I’ll start by saying life has been so hard for the past few months, I felt like I was really being tested which resulted in me having no capacity to write and do something I love so much. To be honest, things have been tough for more than a few months. Quite frankly for the past few years the universe has granted me blessings and repeatedly kicked my ass. Kicked my ass to the point where I lost sight of who I was, my strength, my gifts and sense of direction in my life.
Globally we have endured a pandemic and it has rocked us all to the core for the past 18 months. I am sending love and light to everyone in lockdown and all over world, we will get through this together. But really, the universe was kicking my ass long before Covid-19 came along and missed things up.
For the past few years, I have been traveling, living and working abroad in a few countries but we will start our story in London. I always dreamt of moving abroad to work and help communities thrive. I manifested it and still can’t believe it came true. I got a job in London in 2019, and it was perfect because I loved a man who lived there, and we wanted to be together. It was a dream to be able to move to London and at the time I thought that was the best decision for me. So, I did, I moved to London. It was an experience like no other and it defiantly taught me a lot about myself, especially how much I hadn’t healed from.
During my time in London my relationship started to unravel and the parts I hadn’t healed from began to rear their ugly head, I loved hard but had been hurt harder and the wounds of my past started to show up in my present. In the beginning of the relationship, we shared a love I always wanted but as time passed things changed. Our lives had changed, one of us were experiencing hardship while the other was liberated, excited to be in a new place exploring new things but neither were communicating. I learned a valuable lesson that communication is key and even if I was a person who valued communication, not everyone does but I can say, a relationship without communication doesn’t work but we will get to that later.
While my relationship was on rocky ground, I found peace working with my mentor around London and its outskirts, where I met amazing young people living in youth accommodation and heard their stories of overcoming life’s challenges, which filled my soul and humbled me each day.
My experience in London reiterated a few things to me; 1. manifestation is real, 2. never lose sight of who you are, 3. never lose sight of your blessings, 4. be open to opportunities, 5. never let anyone make you feel unloved, unlovable and unwanted.
London was a culmination of facing hard truths, hard lessons, bliss, disappointment and having moments dreams are made of; a weird combination. I thought London was where I wanted to be, and I fought hard to be there, but knew how I was feeling deep down didn’t align with that. So, after trying hard to make London and a relationship work, I decided to take the ongoing discomfort of staying as a sign that it was time for me to go.
I have always been someone who intuitively knew when things were off, and London was defiantly off as much as I tried to deny it. Once I faced that truth, the shift began, I was ready for something else. I knew I didn’t want to head home to Melbourne just yet, but didn’t know where I wanted to be in the world. I wrecked my brain trying to think and plan but nothing felt right. So I decided stop trying to figure things out, to take a breath and be open to new opportunities and I finally closed the door on London.
In a way I felt like I had failed for some reason, but at the same time, I felt like I had won because I was finally doing what was best for me and things started to feel right. On my last day in London, I received a phone call from a woman in Vietnam who was a friend of one of my Mentors. My mentor had told her about me, about my passion for human rights and my experience in community development. This woman called me from Vietnam stating she was the CEO of a non for profit, looking for someone to take on this newly developed position in Ho Chi Minh City. We spoke for 20 minutes, and she offered me the job over the phone, and I accepted… and just like that another door opened.
After leaving London still in a relationship that was full of love and confusion, I came home to Melbourne for the job of a lifetime. I was home for 5 weeks navigating seeing my family, missing my partner and getting ready to leave again, this time on my own to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. I had never been there before, the first time I touched the soil of this beautiful country was when I exited the airport to a stranger holding a sign with my name on it. I landed in Vietnam knowing not one single soul and I was liberated and excited. I had cried the whole flight, missing my family in Australia.
By the time I got to my accomodation it was 12am and I was hungry. So I decided to take a stroll. It was so hot I was covered in sweat and in awe of where I was. I had made it to Vietnam, who would have thought. Things were so different the month before and here I am again in a country I had never been to, yet it felt like home. After eating I went to my hotel, wrote in my journal and went to sleep.
The next morning, I woke up still in awe of where I was. Feeling excited and empowered to embark on my first day in Vietnam. My eyes had just opened, and I saw my phone ringing, it was my brother. I answered and heard his voice was shaking. Straight away I knew in the pit of my stomach something bad had happened.
He told me his best friend and a close friend of our family had committed suicide. I was in shock. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe that someone we loved so much, that we saw just a week ago was gone. It broke me to my core that I wasn’t there for my brother who had lost his best friend and a brother to him. I immediately wanted to go home but couldn’t, I had just arrived in Vietnam, needed to start work in a few days and needed to find an apartment. I didn’t know anyone, had no one to talk to. I did not know what to do, I just wanted to talk to my brother and family.
My heart broke and to this day, I will never forget the feeling of being so helpless that I couldn’t be there for my brother and family and feeling so alone in a country so beautiful, with no one to cry to or talk to. So, I had to be there for me, cry when I needed to, be there for my brother and set myself up in a country where I knew no-one.
Vietnam got off to a hard and heartbreaking start and little did I know it would be a country that held the space in my life for a journey of nights full of tears, tests of my character and resilience, heartbreak, grief, healing, absolute devastation, overcoming, liberation, bliss, excitement, empowerment and the light at the end of the tunnel.
London came and went and one thing I learned is that if you don’t listen to your instincts you could miss an opportunity that could change your life. Pay attention to your gut, ask yourself the real hard hitting questions; if you are really happy and comfortable where you are. If you need a change, be open to receiving it, start creating opportunities for something different and let the universe do the rest.
xxxx B
