Gobble Gobble

Im home, In my head, in my heart, Im home.

The airplane landed in London and my heart sank. I saw cloudy sky’s with the threat of rain, rolling lush green hills and listened to the chaos of English accents as we all tried to get off the plane. I wanted to land in California. That’s where I always land when Im coming home from a vacation. I wanted to land in a place that I recognized as home. Sun, Americans, SFO, the taxi stand I knew, and my old apartment with Sugar and Sylvie waiting for me to get a snuggle and to be let out side onto the patio. I wanted to be home.....not London.

I have been in such a foreign land for the last 10 days and what truly seems like a month away. I wanted something, anything familiar, I wanted Divisidaro street, Hayes and Pierce, dogs and Alamo Square Park and my friends. I wanted to go home and call my girlfriends and go out for wine and dinner and tell them all about Turkey. But that is not my reality. Instead....I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, swallowed back my tears, grabbed my bags and remembered that change was good. This is what I wanted. I was ready to figure out how to get to the train station that brought me to the bus station that would bring me home to Tim and the beautiful village we lived in....even though my heart was still sinking and I could practically taste San Francisco, my old neighborhood and my friends in my mouth.

After 30 minutes of immigration interrogation, further reminding me this was not my country and adding to the sting of my homesickness, I finally got out of customs.

The romantic in me had fantasies of Tim waiting for me at the airport in London. He would be there, leaning against the wall with a big smile on his face. He would grab me and hold me and kiss me and welcome me home. I shut that vision out of my mind as I walked through customs thinking that there is no way he would be there. It’s 3 hours from home and a nightmare with traffic.

BUT...there he was. Standing there, just like in my day dream. He grabbed me, kissed me and held me and washed away all my feelings of homesickness and I remembered that my home has always been where my heart is. And it’s here with him and our journey together. Though don’t get me wrong. Since this paragraph is full of clichés that are making even me want to vomit...I did leave my heart in San Francisco as well and I do miss my friends and my life there so so much. Okay...enough of that (barfing in my mouth now).

And so Im home. After 10 days in Turkey. It was amazing. We went to Istanbul and saw everything we could in 3 days. The Blue Mosque, Aya Sofia, the largest standing bazar in the world, some nightlife, and ate great food. Istanbul is chaos. Thousands of people. Its like New York during Christmas. Streets jam packed with every kind of person. Women covered in all black with nothing showing but their eyes in the sweltering heat with their husbands wearing nothing but a t-shirt, some shorts and flip flops. Its strange to see the women with the outfit of generations that has not changed with the times and their men in modern day clothing. Watching the younger generation of women in tight jeans and tight shirts rebelling against tradition. People from all over the world muscling through the crowd while getting harassed every 5 seconds from a vendor wanting to see their goods or get you into their restaurant. Its amazing really. I thought being in England was old. Seeing things from the 12th century but then going to Turkey and walking through buildings that were built, by some miracle, in 526 AD and then walking through ruins that were created over 4000 years ago. You can feel the history there. In the people and as you walk through the buildings and ruins.

Then we headed to Cappadocia which is in the middle of Turkey. A volcano erupted there about 10,000 years ago leaving a land full of these “fairy chimneys” and caves where people used to live thousands of years ago and still live today. We stayed in a cave a couple of nights when we were there. It was a great change from Istanbul. Very quiet and still. The heat was even more intense and unforgiving. 100 degrees with not a cloud in the sky. The Turkish people are amazing. They are incredible hosts and want to invite you into their homes and tell you about their people and their history. We were invited to one mans house who lived in a cave and we drank wine with him and talked about life. We were invited to another home for a full moon barbecue and watched the moon dance over the fairy chimneys as Turkish men sang songs and played guitars and fed us food as we watched the moon create shadows over the chimneys.

From there we headed to Patara. A beautiful beach and also met amazing people and watched the sun set on the beach and the moon rise over the dunes. We were blessed enough to be there during the full moon and everyone celebrates it and drinks it in. I can’t describe the beauty we witnessed there. Im not a good writer that way but it was an amazing experience.

We then headed to Antalya for our last night and spent time in the part of Antalya called “Old Town” which seemed more like Prague than Turkey. Though Ive never been to Prague I imagine that is what it looked like.

I had some amazing adventures there and some even more amazing awakenings. We ended up getting food poisoning on day 4. Which you would think was a curse but ended up being a blessing. It forced us to slow down and it gave me a couple of experiences I was not planning on. The day I got food poisoning I had a temperature of about 105. I was alone. Lauren went on a tour and I decided to stay at the hotel and get a massage, hoping that would make me feel better. Whatever that woman did to me it kicked in my illness. I was freezing. It was 100 degrees outside and I laid under the hot sun, covered in blankets and went in and out of conscious. Intuitively I truly thought if I feel asleep I would go into some sort of fever induced coma so I struggled to stay alert. I had visions of myself as Tim Robbins in Jacob's Ladder. That part where his fever was so high and they threw him into that bath of ice cubes and he was hallucinating. It’s exactly what happened to me but I was in the heat with blankets :) I had been reading The Valkyries by Paulo Coelho and in the book he and his wife were traveling through the Mojave Desert seeking to see their angels. So that was in my subconscious when I was in my near death experience (yes, Im being dramatic :) But I was hallucinating. And I saw my angels. Two of them. One was clear, like water but I could make out all of her features. She was there floating on one side of me whispering in my ear as the other one, who was all white and gold with long blond hair and a white and golden dress with huge wings with feathers like swans floating on the other side of me. They were telling me that I could not go back to Apple (which Im taking to not go back to Advertising or to the corporate world). To continue on my journey. That all the experiences in my life were preparing me for my next life and I was to become an angel like them. That I had to write about my experiences and find my courage and my strength and remember who I was. Who all women were. That we are all amazing, intuitive creatures that are so powerful and so beautiful and that we have all forgotten who we are. That we are Goddesses and that we must walk this planet knowing this. I came to from my haze and every day after that something happened to me to confirm what they were saying. More than anything I had this amazing experience and it is giving me the courage to stick to this path I have chosen. Not take a 6 month break and then dive back into my old life. But life this one and stay open and do what feeds my soul and my heart. There are a few quotes from The Valkyries that I want to share that are great reminders for me to listen to my soul, to my heart and not allow my fear of financial insecurity or my fear of truly speaking from my heart real me back into being checked out and running back to my old life, the only one I know, and to continue on this journey of new experiences and live my life in a way I have never lived it before.

“Remember that you are a manifestation of the absolute, and to do those things in your lives that are worth the effort. Only those who do that will understand the great transformations that are yet to be seen.”

“Seek out the love of others. Even with fear of rejection, or severe glances, or of the harshness of heart, do not permit yourself to give up the quest for love.”

“We are responsible for everything that happens in this world. We are the warriors of the light. With the strength of our love and our will, we can change our destiny , as well as the destiny of many others.”

AND ONE MORE - and my favorite because I forget that I do not have to be perfect to live a full connected spiritual life. I don’t need to go around preaching it or telling others about it or be 100% clean with no faults. I always thought for me to deserve a connection to the universe I had to get up and do yoga for 2 hours everyday, be sober, not smoke and pray every day. Granted, I do need to quit the smoking but I dont have to walk around like Gandhi to have a soulful life. And I don’t need to stop being me either. Or stop having fun. I just need to speak from my heart, believe my experiences are real, believe my intuition and the messages from the universe and from angels and whoever else wants to throw out some words of wisdom to me and stop discounting it as imagination, or that Im crazy (well...I might be but its better than being normal anyway :)

“if what we want to do 1st is heal ourselves so that we can heal others or go in-search of our dreams we will never reach paradise. If on the other hand we accept all that is wrong about us - believe that we are deserving of a happy life then immense love will enter.”

So...no...I have not lost my mind. I just got to wake up again. It took quitting my job, being in loads of fear, challenging myself and this new life I have created, and having food poisoning in Turkey (and a huge fear of ending up in some Turkish hospital in the middle of nowhere Turkey) to knock me upside the head and remind me to live fearlessly. To speak from my heart and my truth no matter what and to move forward. Not go back. To write it all down and to believe that we are all truly amazing creatures. All of us.

My brother is gagging right now :) He just sent me an email saying: “Hilary, I love you but you have a chick blog, no really...tell me how you REALLY feel” I laughed my ass off. This is a total chick blog. Probably to chick for even some of the chicks reading this ;) But whatever. This blog is my practice to voice myself fearlessly. Maybe it will help me to write that book that I have been threatening to write for years now.