It was all so perfect.
It made sense. We
opened ourselves to the universe, sold everything we owned, and took a giant leap
of faith. That leap led us to Hawaii.
Hawaii brought us permaculture.
Permaculture brought us hope for the planet’s future and work we could
pursue that felt aligned with our life’s purpose.
Without a steady supply of money and with no direction
other than a vague and distant dream of one day owning a piece of property, we
somehow managed to get ourselves to Africa to secure Permaculture Design
certificates. We somehow managed to team
up with friends who agreed to buy a stunning piece of property in western Colorado
on which we could work, exchanging sweat equity for an eventual share of
ownership of the land.
It felt as if we were being rewarded for having the
courage to follow a dream. All of our
needs were met just as we needed them, and the farm that we found was so
unbelievably perfect, so unbelievably gorgeous, that my belief in one’s power
to manifest was proving to be a very real and very powerful phenomenon.
Our first meeting with Mike and Traci (our partners who
bought the land) was productive and hopeful.
We agreed that we all wanted meditation and open communication to be the
cornerstone upon which our farm was built.
We expressed our individual needs and fears, and what unique visions we
were bringing to the table. Everything
seemed possible. Something much bigger
than the four of us, wanted to come through and in our mindful dialogue, we
discussed the many ways we could parent the birth of the vision in a
compassionate, patient, and realistic way.
That was a year ago.
In the past year, Josh and I have put our noses down and worked hard to
dig ourselves out of debt. Though we are
far from debt free, we knocked out 80% of our credit card debt and this simple
act gave us enough financial breathing room to think about honestly pursuing
the farm and retreat center fully.
When summer came, we planned on cutting back our hours at
our jobs so that we could start spending time in Paonia and building
relationships on the other side of the hill.
Paonia is a four and a half hour drive from Boulder, so the commute was
a bit grueling. However, the beauty of
the drive, combined with the sense of overwhelming relaxation that came over us
every time we got to the farm, made it all so very worth it.
We began touring local farms and talking with farmers
about the needs of the community. Paonia
is already a large farming town, so we didn’t want to come in and step on any
toes. We wanted to figure out a way to
fill a niche so that our arrival would seem like an asset to the community,
rather than a competition. Our neighbor
Caren, was a Godsend. She arranged
meetings with other people in the valley who were trying to make it work over
there, and we all put our heads together about how we could support the valley
and make a living for ourselves in the process.
Friends began visiting the farm. The farmer from Hawaii came to do a
consultation and gave us some direction about where to start. Our friends who are deeply involved in meditation
training came to talk about the possibility of retreats. Things were happening. A palpable momentum was building. When spring came, I quit my job. I knew it was a bit reckless at the time, but
I also knew that things were never going to fully get going if we weren’t
physically on the farm. So I took
another leap of faith and was rewarded with a plethora of odd jobs that
included teaching yoga at kids camps, babysitting, landscaping, and the
like. By cutting my apron strings and
trusting the universe again, it seemed like things were coming to me all in perfect
time. Josh and I began slowly moving
things up to the farm. Every trip we’d
pack the van full of belongings. We
found new tenants to rent our home in Boulder and planned to make a full move
in August.
We had done some minor work on the farm, installing
garden beds. We had a whole list of
projects to begin before the onset of winter, and were eager to get up there
full time to begin. We began setting up
a non-profit branch for the farm, we created a website, we got business cards
and business account. Still unclear of
the details of how it would all unfold, we just trusted, and kept working and
moving, and working and moving. Josh
kept his job in Boulder which provided us with enough steady income to make the
move.
And then, it happened.
A menstrual cycle on hiatus led us to get a pregnancy
test late on June 27. I’ve taken plenty
of these in my day, so it seemed like a routine check. I chalked up my missing period to my recent
vegetarianism, and my sore boobs to a rigorous yoga practice. Nowhere in my little brain did it register
that there could possibly be a human being coming into being inside my
body. Just a week prior, my mother had
intuitively called me out of the blue to tell me that “The Universe” told her I
was going to be having a baby soon.
Given that my mother never uses the phrase “the universe” I found her
phone call odd, but I did not suspect that the baby she was feeling, was
already gestating.
I went to bed that night, and for some reason decided to
summon ‘The Goddess’. I can’t tell you
which goddess, or why I had chosen to address the feminine representation of
the Divine, but I literally in my head said, “Alright Goddess, if I’m pregnant,
I feel like I should know, right? Am I
pregnant?”
Just as I asked the question, an unexplainable feeling of
warmth and expansion flooded my body. It
was a completely visceral and instant response, and I guess you could say that
at that moment, I knew. I jumped up from
bed, my heart pounding and my face flushed with panic, and I peed on the stick.
Josh was almost asleep in the other room when the faint
appearance of a second line came into view.
My hands were shaking. Was that
really a second line? I couldn’t
tell. I got Josh out of bed, and he
studied the stick with me. He too,
thought the line was too faint to be discernible, but I could see that even the
slightest detection of the line had him visibly shaken. So I did the logical thing and took another
one.
This time, the second line appeared and seemed to be a
bit darker. Still in a state of denial, we
rushed at 2:00 am to the nearest Walmart and found a digital pregnancy
test. I needed something verifiable; Pregnant
or Not Pregnant----none of this line business.
So when ‘Pregnant’ came across the digital screen, I could not deny it
anymore.
Those first twenty four hours were terrifying. We had not been actively trying to have a
child. We had been a bit careless,
knowing that if it did happen, we had a farm and a lifestyle that we were
creating that would be quite suitable for raising a child. For some reason, I thought that it would take
us a long time to get pregnant and so to have it happen so instantaneously was
a shock and was completely disorienting.
It was also a bit scary not knowing how far along I was, considering my
period had been on a very long hiatus.
Based on the last day of the missed period, my pregnancy at that point
was dated at 13 weeks.
That didn’t feel right to me, so we arranged for an
ultrasound to date the pregnancy. Before
we went for the ultrasound, I checked my calendar and old journal entries for
clues as to when we could have conceived, and based on my very scientific dating system, I calculated our conception on June
8----which was a new moon that we spent sleeping out under the stars on our
farm. My body was very healthy and my
mind was very calm so it is no wonder a little spirit found a womb entry that
day. Of course when you are not trying
and are present and peaceful do these unexpected little miracles make their way
into our lives.
The ultrasound confirmed my findings and dated my
pregnancy at 5 weeks, which was very very early. Too early to announce according to the
naysayers, but it was killing us to not share the news. It was such a weighty piece of information to
process. As the days went on however,
our initial fear and terror faded into genuine excitement and a feeling of
blessing. Of course this was happening now.
The farm was beginning, the baby would come in the spring with all the
lambs and cows and chickens and our pastoral family life would launch with the
addition of a new and beautiful soul.
We started sharing the news. We told our close friends and waited until we
had an actual ultrasound picture to deliver the news to our parents. I had to trick my family into a Skype session
by telling them we got a new puppy that was black and grey with spots that we
named Lentil (‘cause that’s about how big the baby was). When I asked them if they were ready to meet
Lentil and then showed them the ultrasound picture, well, let’s just say that
was one of the best moments of my life.
To be able to give back to your parents something genuinely joyful, and
to watch them tear up and shriek and become embodiments of happiness before
your eyes is a sacred and wonderful thing.
My mom said that she’d been praying for this, and given that they’ve had
their share of bad news as of late, the news came as a welcomed and beautiful
surprise.
Josh’s mom on the other hand, thought our baby was a
tumor and was deeply confused and concerned about the ultrasound picture with
which we were presenting her. It took her
some time to process, but when she finally realized that neither of us had
cancer and that the dog wasn’t pregnant, she too became excited. Good stuff.
That was the honeymoon week. We finished packing up our house in Boulder
and spent the fourth of July in Paonia with friends. We got the house set up there, hung pictures
on the walls, filled our cabinets with teas and spices, and I started
envisioning a nursery in the back bedroom.
We met with a midwife who does gift midwifery (i.e., sliding scale
midwifery) and we talked about home birth and she started our first appointment
together. Walking around the farm that
day, everything felt right with the world.
Good friends, good food, beautiful place, beautiful husband, beautiful
baby.
That weekend I called Mike and Traci to tell them about
the pregnancy. They offered their
congratulations. Shortly after we left
the farm that weekend to return to Boulder for work, they went up to the farm
to stay for a few days. I spoke with Traci
on the phone and asked about the possibility of a home birth there. We talked about all the changes that were
happening and everything seemed great.
Everything seemed really really
great.
The following Sunday I woke up to a frantic call from
Josh. He said that Mike had sent a scary
email from a lawyer and that I needed to check it out and figure out what it
was about. I opened the email and sure
enough there was a letter from Mike with a lawyer CC at the bottom. The lawyer explicitly stated that we were
never given permission to use pictures of the farm or of Mike and Traci and
that all pictures needed to be taken down immediately. I was completely confused. Especially since Mike had told me after
reading our website that he wept because it was so great, and he had helped us
write his bio. So I knew that the letter
was a lie and I thought we had been a victim of some sort of spam scare
thing. I called Mike to get some
clarification and what transpired over the telephone still shocks me to this
day.
There was nothing aggressive in my tone when I
called. It was a simple inquiry into
this lawyer letter, and for whatever reason my inquiry sent him into a
diabolical rage. He admitted that he did
send the email and that he and Traci had always been upset about the
website. When I brought up that he had
helped us write it, he dismissed me and said that I needed to take it down
immediately because it was a liability.
I agreed to take it down, but then I brought up our first meeting and
our “communication style” and how a letter from a lawyer was a bit harsh and
different than the heart to hearts we had agreed upon. He brought up the first meeting and said that
things change, and that he didn’t know if he even wanted to plant trees or do
permaculture, that this baby was changing everything, that this whole process
has been me doing what I want to do on his farm, that he didn’t know if he was
even ready for josh and I to be up there (also strange, considering he offered
to let us rent up there from them). I
started to cry. I didn’t know where this
was coming from. This is the same man
who sat with my family at the farm and prayed with us that that farm be
successful and peaceful and here he was, treating me like a parasite that had
invaded HIS land that I found and that WE all had agreed to create something together there. Through my sobs, I managed to squeak “well,
it sounds like you don’t even want us at the farm,” at which point he hung up
on me, and I haven’t heard from him since.
I spent the next two hours hyperventilating and trying
not to spontaneously miscarry my baby. I
heaved over the toilet, assumed every hair pulling, writhing embodiment of
suffering a human being can muster and sunk into what seemed like an endless
despair. I called my friend Christina,
and she thankfully talked me back into my breath. Without further conversation, I knew this was
the end of the farm. The red flags that
sprung in my belly with every biting whiplash from Mike were too strong to
ignore, and I realized that morning that this was an unsafe partnership. We had no legal holdings in the land. We would never assume the ownership we so
desperately wanted, and we would be subject to these whims whenever they
decided to arise. For a new mother, I intuitively
knew that this was not a relationship nor an environment that I wanted to raise
my child in----regardless of how beautiful the land itself was.
Josh was working that day, and despite wanting to spare
him the news during his shift, I wandered into the Kitchen, sat at a table by
myself and sobbed the whole story to him.
He took it like Josh always does----I watched him step back from his
emotional response and play the role of comforting husband whilst juggling ten
other tables. Love that guy. Waiting for him to finish his shift that day
felt like an eternity. I went to the
Shambala center to meditate and try to clear my head. The girls had already moved into our place in
Boulder so we had been staying on the couch and I didn’t really have a sacred
space or a quiet place to grieve. I didn’t
meditate, I cried. The tears came like a
monsoon, as I watched my dream of a farm and raising a baby in an edible Eden
crumble before me; the painful trappings of my attachments.
Later that day, I received a voicemail from Traci. She had heard of Mike’s rampage through Mike
and I think wanted to do some damage control.
She wanted to arrange a meeting with just the two of us. I was heading up to Vail the next day to
teach a kid’s yoga camp, so I agreed to meet her the following day. Josh finally finished work, and he and I sat
in a crowded restaurant and tried to talk through our next move.
Based on everything that had transpired that morning,
Josh agreed that we needed to get out of the situation. By choosing to leave, we felt we could at
least maintain some of our dignity, and as hard as it was to walk away from
such a perfect property, we knew it would never be an ideal nor an equal
partnership. We agreed that I would hear
everything Traci was going to say the following night. Perhaps she would offer an olive branch,
perhaps this little conflict would bring about a structural change that would
make it worth staying. We didn’t feel
like that’s how it was going to go, but we wanted to remain open.
When I met Traci for dinner, she was deeply apologetic
for Mike’s behavior. She agreed that it
was completely out of line and reasoned that this was his personality, that it
was always going to be his personality, and that it was our choice if we wanted
to continue. She was by no means kicking
us out. She said she never saw the farm
without us on it, and proceeded to get down to the legal business and the whole
lawyer letter thing. I listened and
responded to her questions, waiting hopefully for the olive branch.
At one point in the conversation she admitted, “This is
hard for me to say,” and then proceeded to say that her and Michael wanted us
to find a different place to live. They
said that the baby’s arrival changed things and that their conscience wouldn’t
allow them to kick us out if they needed to, should they need the house at some
point, and that children change the dynamic and they didn’t want the baby in
their space when they visited the farm.
So she politely asked us to find a place in town from which we could
work the farm. At this point, I stopped
her and told her we were done. Having to
leave the house was the last straw. There
was clearly never going to be ownership in the property, and if anything Mike
would do everything he passive aggressively could to make our habitation there
formidable, unable it seems, to speak to us like human beings and assert his
change of heart.
We had what felt like a very productive and rational
conversation. We listened to each other,
and I walked away feeling a remote sense of calm at having made a
decision. But after I left her, the
notion that they wanted us to leave the house because of the baby began to gnaw
at me. At our first meeting, Josh and I
had asked permission to have children on the property and it was granted. Mike and Traci had offered to let us live in
that house for a very cheap rent in exchange for being caretakers of the
property---and we had budgeted (and I had quit my job) under that
assumption. We had literally just
finished unpacking our last box. We were
now officially homeless, without enough money for a deposit on a new place, and
their request for us to leave the house felt like a deep and harsh
betrayal.
Traci continued to check up on me via text, but when she
texted to tell me that Mike said he would help us move, a devil unleashed in my
veins. My grief was transformed into a
blind rage. I was so insulted that I had
received no apology about the awful phone call, and the fact that he would have
the gall to “help” us swiftly exit his farm was too much for me to
stomach. I responded curtly, told her we
didn’t need their help, that we would be gone soon, and to stay out of our
lives.
That is where it was left. No word from Mike. A final text from Traci saying she will
always love me.
The past two weeks have felt like being dragged behind an
unstoppable train, our bodies and spirits crushing against every hard
surface. The joy we found in this
pregnancy has taken a back seat to survival instincts of fear and
uncertainty. Not only do we not have a
place to live, but it feels as if our dream----the one we were so very close to
realizing, has slid to the far background of our priorities.
A glimmer of hope came when an India job we had turned
down to pursue the farm, got back in touch with us four days after everything
happened to reoffer us the job. They
wanted us to lead a trip to India, which would have given us $6000 and the
experience of a lifetime. They were open
to working with the pregnancy, but they wanted feedback from doctors. After having three different doctors
completely shoot down a second trimester trip to a third world country, we
watched another dream of ours wither and fall away. Dream after dream, aborted.
Navigating the hormones of a new pregnancy------the
persistent nausea, the tiredness, the emotional instability, the needing to be touched but having no
desire to be touched, the feeling that my body is no longer my own, that I am
experiencing something my husband will never physiologically understand………….
the swift uprooting, the moving all of our things again,
the disorientation, the sting of betrayal, the abrupt thrashing of our concept
of trust, the destruction of a belief, the lost aching, the heartbeat of a
child you see on an ultrasound screen and the fear that you won’t be able to
give it the life it deserves, the shock, the middle of the night heart
wrenching cries to any god or goddess you hope is listening, the bottom, the blind reaching, the stillness that
escapes you when you try to sit, the bitter anger that you know is poison that
you continually choose to swallow, twisted thoughts of revenge, wishing the
same pain befalls those who have given it to you, trying to mine for compassion
in the giant pit of your shortcomings, the
almost inaudible voice that is whispering to be patient---that this is all
necessary for your evolution---that this is part of the plan and that your plan
was never really real at all, the assurance of those who love you that it will
get better and the chasm that exists between their prayers and your pain, the
blade of experience cutting you so lovingly and deeply to try to keep you from
repeating these created sufferings again,
the burning, the transmutation of fire, the movement between acceptance and
resistance of what is, the immobilizing possibilities, the loss of direction,
removal from future orientation and brutal positioning in presence, the breath,
the breath, the breath, the deep deep breath, the exhale, the cessation of the
tears, the pause in the eye of the storm,
the fetus’s heart beating,
the fetus’s heart beating,
the other life inside of you,
the one that speaks warrior,
the one that dreams phoenix,
the one who moves like bird wings inside an egg
waiting for it all to crack
waiting for the right conditions
to take its first breath
Well, I just sobbed my way through that. I needed to get all of that out. Not writing has felt like its own sort of
poison and so many of you have inquired about what is going on. Now you know.
I know there are lessons here. I know these things happen for a reason. I know that we are supported. If there is one thing that has been made
abundantly clear through all of this, it is that we are surrounded by family
and friends that love us unconditionally and have gone out of their way to
offer places to stay, money, an ear, hugs, moving help, and hope. What a blessing to be surrounded by loving people.
In the face of everything, the feeling
of being loved and supported is a saving grace, and we are so grateful and
lucky to have that. We love you too.
