My Favorite Cosmic Joke
Yesterday was April Fool’s - everyone’s favorite least favorite holiday. Three years ago, on April 1, 2022, I passed my real estate exam in the middle of The Immersion at Wilderness Awareness School. In order to explain why this day was my favorite cosmic joke, let me rewind a few years.
Before 2020, I felt like a type-A, thoughtful, organized entrepreneur. Like most people in their mid-20s, I had a vague idea about what I wanted to do with my life, with many paths of possibility before me. I think I spent too much energy planning my life and gobbled up education wherever I could find it - about plants, nutrition, science, movement, psychology, embodiment, trauma, nature, medicine, and politics. So when 2020 became a shut-down year, I turned inward. My inner world got quiet (and anxious) as I realized if I didn’t find a pathway back to nature, along with our greater society, we were all doomed. You see, I’d been living like most Americans: I assumed my support systems would always be there, that I had to create my own faith in myself, and I felt generally disconnected. Over the years, unnamed symptoms of anxiety and depression crept in. The inner awakening (combined with the outer crumbling) of 2020 was too much - so I ran away.
I left Missouri a scared, broken, and dependent 28-year-old. Most of my worry was related to my lack of self-trust, belief in those around me or my society at large, and identity confusion. Over the years, I lost trust in my university, the media, institutional food programs, medical systems, the justice system, and churches. The more I learned about embodied trauma, sociology, anatomy, and spirituality, the less I trusted my own patterns, upbringing, and choices. In the summer of 2021, I attended a retreat that took me on wild new adventures in Western Washington. After hiking, games, canyoneering, swimming, sweating, and playing… I came to the day I jumped off a cliff. And that changed everything. It was most likely the moment after years of fear, shame, and guilt, I finally said “no more.” Something stayed on that rock when I jumped off that cliff, and over 60 feet of free fall into a pool of water below me. It was the first time, in a very long time, fear was behind me and no longer with me. If I could do that, I could act on the longings of my heart. What could be so scary about believing in myself?
Turns out, everything. Because I believed my marriage was in the shitter and I wanted a change. I also believed my future was waiting for me at Wilderness Awareness School, which I toured immediately after the retreat since I was in the area. I wanted to wait another year before joining the 9-month Immersion, but I saw a chance, and I took it. I signed up. I moved out of my house in Missouri two weeks later. And started the program two weeks after that.
Thus began the latest chapter of my life, one of transformation and faith. I have learned so much since taking that first leap of faith. Number one: faith leads to more faith.
Before this adventure, I did not believe in myself the way I do today. I didn’t know that the extreme lack of self-trust, esteem, confidence, and appreciation are vastly missing the mark for my full human potential. My mind knew the concept of self-love. My words spoke about “forgiving myself,” but I could not embody it. I hated myself, and that led to more self-hatred. I began to interpret my mistakes, real and perceived shames, as markers for my lack of self-worth, which lowered my self-esteem even more.
After almost two years apart, months of travels, trips, therapy, moving, and another year of waiting for our own home again, my marriage is better than ever. Literally the best it’s been in over ten years we’ve been together. Taking the leap of faith, changing my life, taught me to feel more at peace with my intuition. Those little voices, feelings, or gut reactions might actually be telling me a deep, forgotten truth about myself. My confidence was waiting for me this whole time - inside me all along. It’s almost funny how simple it is! To be present with what is. It’s incredibly challenging, confronting even, to acknowledge the scary truth within self-trust.
I took the same leap of faith in December of 2021, the first winter I was away from Missouri. I found the inspiration for real estate in the dark of Alaska, around the winter solstice. The pathway of home and connection were almost laid out before me like a red carpet. I came out of that darkness with a new seed of inspiration - to connect people back to their home, professionally! And of course, me being me, I don’t mean just their shelter. More than a roof, I am here to remind people that home is where they are. It’s their body, place, environment, community, and planet. It’s so simple… to be where we are.
So that’s why I say the universe played an April Fool’s joke on me three years ago. That day, I left the testing center, knowing I’d passed, shaking my head with a chuckle in disbelief, “What am I doing with my life?” I told myself. Well, three April Fool’s later, I am so damn proud I took that leap of faith. The real estate industry is new every day, always helping people, building the future, and ready for a spirited reconnection to our natural world. The industry itself, the people of this nation, and the future of America and perhaps the world rely on us to improve how we live on land. We need a more holistic approach to housing, with more community-supported rites of passage with an emphasis on connection to nature, each other, and regenerative food or land programs. So much is possible!
So, whether it’s a joke or a blessing, take them as they come. And keep laughing!