“Girl, age 7, soccer ball” dangled somewhere from a local church’s Christmas giving tree.
Sprinting downstairs Christmas morning, I rushed to see if Santa came this year – he did! I gingerly checked the pieces of paper with kids’ names laid on top of a row of unwrapped gifts.
“Dominic, Mary, Martin, Joey, Eddie, Maria, Zack, and Greg” – but no Rosie.
Santa forgot me!
I ran upstairs, sat on the toilet, and started to cry until my oldest brother, Eddie, told me my name had fallen off of my gift. In his hands, he held…a soccer ball! Brand new, and just my size!
“Come in,” I said through soggy tears, and my brother walked in carrying the most beautiful gift possible – a soccer ball! Brand new, and just my size!
My face lit up as I jumped off the toilet lid.
“Wow, thanks!” I hollered as I ran outside to play with my ball in the cold, my heart warm from soaring with joy.
Last night at a school crosswalk volunteers appreciation party, the head of the giving tree at my daughter’s school announced a request for more gifts/contributions, sharing that one family had asked for “socks and underwear.”
Socks and underwear?! Oof. We never had it THAT bad.
Although I love the idea of donating in one’s own community, if you would like to contribute to the family at my daughter’s school that requested socks and underwear, let’s shower them with much more. (Link here.)
So if you walk past a giving tree at a post office or grocery store with “ornaments” requesting gifts for kids, and wonder if contributing really makes a difference, believe me – it does.
We have the power to make add magic to a kid’s holiday! The kind person who paid for my soccer ball sure did, and I’ll never forget it.
On 2/22/11, twelve years ago today, Tim proposed to me on a beautiful houseboat we spent many holidays pet-sitting in, offering me a glittery diamond ring as a symbol of his love and commitment.
Last week, on our way to live/train in Mexico for a month, someone stole it from me, as my carry-on had to be checked last-minute, and I hadn’t yet transferred it back to my hand after taking it off for strength training.
Even though I know things are just things, I still felt mad to have such special things (my engagement and wedding rings) stolen from me. And I couldn’t help but blame myself for leaving a tiny window of opportunity for it to happen.
“You don’t deserve nice things,” the little gremlin in my head told me.
When I arrived in Mexico and realized my rings were stolen, I felt stressed all day (and tired from an early morning flight and oddly cold) yet finally rallied and went on a training run late afternoon with my mind racing, only to get completely lost on new trails, finding myself at dusk surrounded by a dog chasing me to protect its territory, vultures eating animal parts, and truckfuls of guys heading to a party.
Fear filled my mind as I clutched my pepper spray, trying to navigate the ever-changing map on my phone, every terrifying runner story swirling through my head.
Finally, I saw a woman drive past, and I asked her, in my best Spanish, how to get to where I needed to go, before dark. She turned her car around, put out her cigarette for me, and drove me back. I tried to give her some money as a thank-you, but she wouldn’t accept it, simply telling me to not run by myself at night and to avoid that dirt road in particular because it was dangerous.
“Perros?” I said. “Borrachos.” She replied.
For the next week, I felt scared leaving our place. I ran only on treadmills and at a golf course. I looked up flights to go home, only to realize I have no real home right now, no comfort zone to go to…just a storage unit in Boulder (the downside to “adventure life” that nobody talks about).
“This is not how I retire.” I told myself while still in bed one day, wondering how I was going to get my run in.
So instead, I faced my fear. It was time to take action.
An OCR friend, Lauren Taska, who has lived in Cabo, reached out and hooked me up with her training partner here, a Kona athlete named Cibelle. Tim found a group for me to run with, and our AirBnB host’s father, Vicente, drove me through the trails he has run on hundreds of times, showing me the safest places to run. (He, too, preferred to avoid the section I had gotten lost and afraid on. I suppose every city has its safe and not-so-safe places to run.)
The community came together to help me out, and after a week of feeling afraid and wanting to leave Cabo, my mindset has shifted. I can get my training/job done by running with others or, if by myself, in an open, safe trail during the day. Phew!
And after spending time with good friends in town from both Seattle and Colorado, my nervous system is coming down from high-alertness. (At one point, I jumped at the sight of a garbage bag; my heart goes out to people who have experienced real trauma rather than just my perceived experience, like people in the military, and people who have had someone sexually/physically assault them.)
One of my favorite ways to experience a new place is by running in it – I’ve run through parts of Brazil, Ecuador, England, Ireland, Spain, Greece, Canada, Thailand, Costa Rica, the UAE, many parts of Mexico, and nearly half of the United States.
I’ve meant only wonderful and helpful people on my runs, including every time I’ve run in Mexico. Bad things can happen anywhere, however, so these are my top tips for running in a new place:
1) Research where to run (the trails I ran on were generally recommended as good, safe trails, I just needed to research the my exact trail plan better). Apps like MapMyRun and TrailForks can help.
2) Run with others when possible. This is not always easy to do, with varying paces and schedule, so when you can’t find others to run with…
3) Run with pepper spray. A law enforcement office told me “Sabre Red” is the best.
4) Take a self-defense class. I took one back in college, but I’m do for another.
5) Don’t run at night or even late afternoon, in case dusk falls quicker than anticipated.
6) Run without headphones on. I sometimes still listen to music, but I do it without headphones on. Bonus: people on the trail can hear me/my music coming.
I’m grateful that I feel safe again (not something to take for granted), I’m hopeful Aeromexico Airlines will reimburse my stolen rings, (though either way, I still have the love they symbolize – which is what really matters, of course), and I look forward to a chance to enjoy the food, beaches, and warm weather of Mexico, grateful for the mindset tools and community support I needed to shift this trip experience from a bad one to a good one.
As we say in our family when things don’t go right the first time, “Let’s try again.”
After living in Costa Rica for a month, we are on our way to live in Mexico for a month…
We’ve been asked how we do it, and I’m happy to share.
We have remote jobs, a kid who’s not in school yet, and no mortgage, so that’s huge. Also, we are willing to live with a lot of uncertainty and discomfort in order to have these experiences.
Our standard for quality food and for safety in lodging is high, for instance, but other than that, we are willing to live in small, inexpensive places with ants and outdated furniture (with everything that we DO own stuffed into a storage unit) while navigating communication in another language.
(Truth be told, if I had a beautiful home I worked hard to buy, remodel, decorate, and build a community around, I likely wouldn’t want to leave it very often, and especially not for a slightly rundown rental with a toad living under the bottom patio step, but since I don’t right now, it that makes traveling easier.)
We are willing to walk a couple miles a day and/or ride a clunky used bike with a chain that falls off, in order to get around.
The beach shots on social media look glamorous, of course, and an evening near the ocean IS priceless. We are also, however, using toilets that cannot flush toilet paper and wearing the same few outfits over and over. (So…not so glamorous.)
Living abroad is not a life we planned, and it’s not what we’ll do forever, but after Tim had cancer seven years ago, we look at our time on Earth a bit differently, with the mindset of filling our days to the brim, “making every day as good as possible,” as the pura vida philosophy of Costa Rica encourages, and that, for us three, includes travel experiences.
Not owning a home right now means we’ll be renting all winter anyway, so we figure why not rent in a warm, new place, if we can? (If you rent a place in Latin America for a month, you generally get a large enough discount on Air BnB that the nightly rate falls below the rental cost in a city like Seattle or Boulder, without the year-long lease commitment.)
Traveling to new countries, taking in mother nature’s beauty with wonder, while attempting to connect with people from different cultures – curious what we can learn from them – while knowing we have incredible friends/family back home that we miss and are reminded when away to never to take for granted? Not to mention boxes of clothing and toys in our storage unit that feel like Christmas to open when we return?
It’s not a lifestyle that works for everyone, of course, with most people having various job, financial, and family obligations that make living abroad unfeasible and/or undesirable, but for us right now, in this season of our lives, most days it feels like we are living the best of both worlds, and I feel completely grateful for it.
It’s totally worth a couple cucarachas in our kitchen.
