I’ve been reading lots of Martha Beck recently in preparation for starting her Wayfinder Coaching Certification program a week from tomorrow. I’ve just finished “Finding Your Own North Star” and am presently in “Steering by Starlight” before jumping into “Finding Your Way in a Wild New World.”
It’s in reading Beck and learning about her own journey that I’m reconsidering my own and finding through lines that had been hidden from me previously. It’s in reading her own synthesis of her life that I’ve begun to see my own hidden North Stars propelling me inevitably to this point, this place, this next chapter of my being and moving in the world. Just because one may have bounced around from thing to thing, from focus to focus doesn’t mean there hasn’t been an inner hand guiding the pathway and connecting the dots this whole time and that goes for me too even after all those years of feeling somewhat lost and rudderless. Perhaps I had a rudder and map and path from the very beginning. Just because I couldn’t see it doesn’t mean it wasn’t there.
I can say my journey started from before I had even left home. Always curious about the new people and guests walking through my parents front door, staying in my room or my brother’s room temporarily displacing us to couches or sleeping bags bringing with them suitcases and stories from places far way. Such wondrous people from all over the country and the world and I was always curious to know them, learn about them, make a connection with a new person and feel connected to something new and different than my own little life. I’ve always loved it and admired the adventurers among us and I was blessed with an adventurous mother who always lead the way to model what exploration, learning and connection could do to make this life richer and more wondrous.
So when it was my turn, of course, I raised my hand and took up the adventurer’s Standard at fifteen and spent six months in Paraguay. With me I took my first journal and I basically goofed off, day dreamed, spoke Spanish and sat in the corner of a local coffee shop and wrote every day all day long from February to August, 1993.
I’ve been a writer my whole life, but since I never talked about it, and no one ever asked me and it just came so naturally to write, I never even had the chance to realize I was a writer. I was just being me and doing what I needed to do to breathe and that meant writing. I loved it. And I loved the page more than anything and I loved how me and the page had an understanding the world would never comprehend. At the time I just thought I was killing time and warding off loneliness, but now I can see my inner North Star lighting my way to becoming the me I was meant to be.
By the time I left Paraguay I just knew everything was possible. I put myself in a challenging place with little to no skills and I managed to get to the other side knowing something about myself and the world and believing I could do six months anywhere in any circumstance and be just fine. The hero’s journey wasn’t anywhere in the brochure, but that was pretty much what I lived and I did it like a boss. Coaching level: unlocked. Sixteen years old.
And I kept writing through the hardship of re-entry. Living the intense reality of having lived something no one else would understand, missing my weird Paraguayan village and being out of sync with the Southern Californian world to which I returned. I barely survived those final years of Mission Viejo before setting out into the world again for university. Who cares if I’d ever visited my future school? I’d make it work and it would be awesome. And it was.
I turned 21 in Granada, Spain drinking beers at El Mirador San Nicolas after sundown gazing across at the magnificence of the Alhambra Palace with my study abroad friends in awe of how awesome life can be. You know what spending a year in Spanish beauty is like? It’s the best. Another year abroad and me and my notebook went everywhere together. I was a student of Spanish History and language that year, but really I was working out this crazy thing called life just me and my blank page whenever I had the chance. This time I got back and I was cool with no one understanding. I had learned it’s OK that people don’t get. I found some kindred spirits who did and that was cool, I loved the people in my life who didn’t get it and that was cool too. No one needs to live by my requirements, no one needs to bend to earn worthiness. Coaching level; unlocked.
My school didn’t have a program for Spain and I was hellbent on going so I found a school that did and, dear reader, I have no idea how I pulled it off, but I did, transferred to Arizona State for one year so I could go with their program to GRanada and there I was. Then I transferred back. It was awesome. My North Star (who I know to be God and His spirit working in me) just walked me from place to place unconcerned for what it looked like or how it landed, I just did it. And my North Star (God) has been walking me here, to this place, this whole time. I made a decision, I was committed to that decision, it was crazy, so what, did it anyway. Coaching level: unlocked.
It wasn’t until I was 30 years old that I considered writing something that someone would actually read or hear and by that time my writing showed up as songwriting. I finally found the thing that had been there that whole time but even then it probably took me 3 or 4 years of writing constantly before I ever dared use the term ‘songwriter’ to describe myself. It’s only now that I can clearly see that what I was doing for all those years in silent coffee shop corners and pre-dawn kitchen tables with me and my pen and my paper was the same as what i was doing in three verses and a chorus (and a bridge if I was feeling lucky)- I was working out what this thing called life was and trying to make sense of myself inside the story. I also arrived at the place where I could allow myself to simply be myself without trying to become something for someone and earn approval. To make peace with who you are created to be and then just do that. It can take a lot of unlearning and a lot of letting go of old templates and expectations, but it has us showing up so much better for the people in our lives. Selt acceptance. Unlocked (it’s a work in progress- people who read this blog no I am not pretending to have it all easy in this category, but I’m commited to allowing it to change me for the better).
That was 15 years ago. For fifteen years I’ve been singing the pages and performing the pages and sharing the pages with whoever might need them all in the hope of better understanding, of bearing the Adventurer’s Standard, of active living from one day to the next.
About five years ago I found coaching work and it brought blurry images into focus. Leah, my Life coach, taught me skills to wrestle with this living in a good way, with more love, less judgment, more North Star knowing and now I’m here.
Me and Martha Beck.
Did you know she lives just across the river from me? My new home is right near New Hope and isn’t that a good name for someone like me? I imagine myself asking her if she’d ever want to get coffee. I imagine telling her my story and saying, “I see it now! I see how God was shaping me and teaching me and guiding me all the way to here!” I imagine our shared delight in how delightful this place can be. I imagine we exchange warm smiles and wish the other well and we return to own paths no matter how disconnected they may look from an outsider’s perspective.
AS a writer, I don’t know if I could ever invent a story. I’m too deeply interested and connected to the real one to ever want to imagine something of fiction. I don’t know why arriving at clarity can take so long for some us, but when it appears, one would be wise to see it and not return to previous blurred vision again.
I’ve been coaching myself for all these years just me and the page becoming aware of my movements, my thoughts and ideas and allowing the walls to fall down that fool me into thinking the page can’t handle all the different parts of me both light and dark. It can. I know it can.
And the notion that I can keep following the through line is a pleasure and something that has me breathing easy. I’m not really starting anything new, I’m continuing what I started back when I was a kid. Isn’t that a nice thought? I think it is. Have you taken a moment to consider what inevitability you’ve unconsciously cooperated with to become who you are? Can you see the goodness that was hinting at you and shining a light toward your safe passage even when you didn’t know it? I wonder what you’d find has always been there. I wonder what would happen if you cooperated with it more now that it’s clear. I wonder that for you. I wonder that for myself. I wish you very well, my friend.