2020: A Year in Review
Let’s go back to January 1st, 2020. Ahhh, the metaphorical “calm before the storm”, before this shake up of a year that has been 2020.
I was being driven to the Ft. Lauderdale airport my by 93 year-old grandfather (who may or may not be my idol—see photos below), to fly direct back into Oslo, Norway—my home and place of work for the preceding four months. Leaving my grandparents, who are both absolutely slaying, in their 90s always makes me nervous. Is this going to be the last time?
Rewind to the two days prior, when I said “see ya later” to my younger brother, Griffin, as he headed home to Oregon, and then to New Years Eve, when I said goodbye to my younger sister, Talia, through tears and sadness for not living closer, but also with a great sense of appreciation for having the siblings that I am so blessed to have.
I found my seat on the plane and found tears coming to my eyes as I was buckling up and getting settled.
What am I doing? I asked myself.
I have found amazing friends in Norway, an apartment with roommates that feel like home, I love my job, despite it not looking exactly as I had envisioned, and I am fortunate to get to experience novelty on a daily basis living in a place in which I was not raised.
A lingering sadness prevailed for the duration of the flight. I simply surrendered in this moment, tossed this one up to the universe, and asked for a sign.
Is this where I am supposed to be in this moment, or has this chapter reached its conclusion?
My first full day back in Oslo, it was as though whoever or whatever power or force it is that gives the signs, wanted to make damn sure that I wouldn’t miss them. I was “lucky” enough to receive about eight signs in one day that perhaps it was time for my Scandinavian adventure to wind down.
March rolls around and the moment to step on a plane and dive head first into the next adventure arrives. I made a jump for love, for the love. I packed up what I had with me in Norway, flew to Barcelona just days before the world shut down, before borders dropped, before most of our lives as we knew them changed.
Fortunately, this love of mine has the most incredible family—French family, if I may add. And fortunately, the long weekend that we packed for to go visit them in Andorra turned into a three and a half month stint in the Pyrenees. Confined. Together. In a three-bedroom apartment, able to leave only to go to the grocery or to walk the dog. This family accepted me, embraced me, taught me, and loved me as if I was their own, with no questions asked. For that, I am eternally grateful, as three and a half months in a three bedroom apartment with someone else’s family could have gone very differently. I wish that I could say it was all croissants and French wine, but this would not be the truth. There were ups, there were downs, and everything in between. I saw sides of myself that I did not like, nor think this love of mine, let alone his family, would ever see. I found myself far away from the person I knew myself to be, and I did not like it one bit. But I did my best to find purpose in days of feeling like I had none. I took care of my physical body and the physical space around me with the hopes that deeply rooted belief that eventually the care I took of the physical would transfer into the mental, emotional, and spiritual.
And through it all, this amazing family, who never signed up to have be during this extremely trying time, loved me through it all.
In this time, I found a French polyglot sister I never knew I was missing, I found a wise, altruistic, truth-telling, and courageous maman Française, and un papa who frankly, has the same humor as my own dad, and this, too, certainly helped me to feel more at home. Not to mention the most loving, adorable, and spoiled Yorkie named Simba, with whom I obviously fell madly in love.
We cooked together, we ate every single meal together (yes, every. single. one.), we played countless games of Tarot, we watched movies, we made it work. And this is also where, after two months of sitting together in this apartment doing the best we can, the idea to look for jobs in Singapore came to fruition.
I have to admit, it was not my idea. I had gotten the story into my head that in this moment I had to be closer to family, yet here I was toying with the idea of moving to the other side of the world for a job with the very person who might just be the love of my life. Back and forth with this idea, I sat down at a laptop (that was leant to me by my papa français, because, you know, having planned to come for a mere weekend, I really didn’t think to pack very much at all, let alone my own laptop—but I digress!), and began researching chiropractic offices in Singapore, the recognition of chiropractic in Singapore, and what I would need to do in order to work there.
We sat, we looked, we researched, we made spreadsheets, we sent CVs, we waited. Despite all of this, I knew from the moment that my mouse scrolled across the name that there was truly only one office in Singapore that felt like it would be a fit for me, that felt congruent, that would propel into the next phase of my career and life with excitement, with vigor, and in a state of alignment with who I want to show up as in this world.
I sent an email that expressed the resonance I felt in the message and mission of the office, and was ecstatic to hear back and have an interview the following week. This went great, it felt like flow, everything was perfect, except for the fact that it was half way across the world from family.
Along the same timeline, a temporary opportunity in Denver, the very city to which my sister had just moved, came across my radar. Once back in Barcelona (with my at one point “beloved” material things) at the end of June, I pursued, had a talk, and between the two opportunities, the need to be closer to family, to catch my breath, to be “comfortable” overruled and I decided that for the moment, Denver would be better.
However, something bigger had other plans. Denver fell through, and I spent July in what a friend told me could be referred to as a bardo.
A bardo: the space between, lasting anywhere from the pause that comes between sentences, to an entire lifetime if we allow it to be that. A moment that can be extremely uncomfortable, yet one which can reap unfathomable benefits if we are to surrender to the feeling of being utterly lost. At some point it has to come to an end, right?
Mine did. Forever grateful to this love of mine, he gave me a USB with a day’s worth of Joe Dispenza material. He told me to watch it, do the meditations, take it all in. He would talk to me when I had gotten through it all. Naturally, ego didn’t like that one very much, but ego also knew that if I were to follow this instruction, it would get much quieter. The very thing that I needed in the depths of who I am, and who I was to become.
I sat, I took notes, I interacted, I meditated, I cried, I got clear.
Despite this call to be closer to family, I knew that the very thing that I needed was to step into the unknown, to offer up my trust into this divine plan that I may not be able to see yet, and surrender to what could be if I choose to do just that.
Well, I thought to myself, I think the best thing I could do for myself in this moment is do the very thing that contradicted everything I felt on that flight back to Norway on the first of the year.
I need to go to Singapore.
I sat with it. It scared me, yet the very thought of taking the leap brought every single one of my cells into a vibratory resonance with everything that could be if I let go of the known, leapt not the unknown, and took this chance on the other side of the world.
I was ready to call back the office that I had told “later” to, but wanted to make sure that the contract of the very person that I was venturing with was locked in and secure.
Waiting for this moment, the excitement grew bigger. The call grew louder.
I checked my phone on a Monday evening after having left my phone at the house all day, only to see a message from the very owner of the office with which I was waiting to call back. The message let me know that the borders were back open in Singapore, and she wanted to know if I had any friends who may be interested in coming to work there, given that I was heading back to the US for this next chunk of time.
It was a much needed synchronicity.
What was not anticipated, however, was for this love of mine to have his contract fall through, only to receive his own synchronistic offer elsewhere in western Europe. While this news and realization absolutely devastated me, he kept my best interest at heart and still urged me to pursue this opportunity that was and is truly everything I am looking for in this next chapter. This hurt deeply, but I knew that he was correct in this.
After several weeks, I headed back to the US for the first time since New Years Day. I was so fortunate to get to spend weeks with family, and several more impromptu weeks with friends scattered throughout the West Coast and the beautiful island of Maui.
I am thankful beyond words to my family, both by blood and by quarantine, who have supported me in this wild decision to move to Singapore during a global pandemic. To the friends who have given me time on FaceTime and phone calls, and who have housed me in these last several weeks in what may be the most epic sendoff of all time. There are not enough words in the English and French languages combined to express my gratitude and deep appreciation for you.
So here I am, sitting at the Capri Hotel in Singapore, with Spotify’s Radar France playlist on in the background, entering day two of a 14-day quarantine that I must undergo before I can officially venture out into this new and beautiful and exciting place that will be home for the foreseeable future.
Far from family old and new, far from friends, far from comfort of familiarity.
And it is all okay.
Here I am sitting in a place, looking out my hotel window at one of the world’s greenest urban cities, knowing that it is almost the opposite of everything my educated mind thought I needed on New Years Day 2020.
In this time of literally zero in person social interaction, I feel great appreciation for this mandated quiet time before I blast off again in this beautiful and intriguing city that I can call my new home.
