Dear Peggy, Nicola, Raj, Sally, Gary and Nancy, Ricardo, Rafa, Guilherme and Tony,
I´m sorry I’m missing this re-union with you. Somehow I feel very linked to all you for life, and seeing you in my last trips has been part of their highlights.
In my phone, I have an App with a to-do lists and one of them is called “Bring the mountain with you”. It includes the new 13 points I have re-assigned to my loyal soldier; a few of them were the “new projects” I shared with you. So, I would like to report them back to you.
Some of these, have been done: “Build a garden in my new house and make sure I take care for”. It’s a very small garden, it took many months and troubles to build, but it’s finally there and I’m very proud of it.
A few other logistic tasks have taken me to a different family dynamic and quality of life: we have hired someone to cook (who is fantastic!), I have rested more and I try not to work afterhours, I have started decorating and being more at home.
A few others have taken me to re-arrange my life emotionally, also an improvement. Have friends again for dinner, have new friends and spend time with them, go back to old friends, have a monthly lunch with my dad.
He pays, as long as he buys me a poetry book. It seemed difficult for him at the beginning. But what I wanted from him in this process has started to happen: he remembered the Neruda, Garcia Lorca and others poems which he liked in his youth years and is giving them again to me, which was the whole purpose. The relationships with my sister and brother are better; still less with my Mom, but becoming smoother. And we have started to talk (a first, first step) to what is going to happen in the future.
I haven’t gone much dancing, but I have made a tradition of dancing with my little daughter once a month. She chooses the song (she is now into downloading and exploring music in ITunes). We talk and we have more fun together; I let her go, but I still owe her there. I still have to re-learn how to have more fun, take things more lightly and give and take more love. The big emotional tasks: I do need more practice, and they are hard to put on a “to-do” list.
In terms of writing and bringing back emotional creativity, I decided to open a blog. It’s almost ready and would love to share it with you, once it’s ready with contents. Much of what I plan to put there are photos I’ve taken over the years and a selection of small short (and hopefully good) writings that were hidden somewhere (but not lost). I am also planning to take a course on digital photo, which I discovered to enjoy a lot!
I’m not with you because I’m currently traveling to the Senior Fellows meeting in Nepal. I’m really looking forward to it. It’s been already two years since I heard my Petra “calling/vision”, a friend renamed it referring to the vision that threw St. Paul from his horse. I laughed, of course. It’s been two years, since I decided a new beginning, listening to my heart. It helped me let go (although it’s always difficult), expecting a brighter future, less frustration and also to develop a greater potential and vision. A year ago, at the same Senior Fellows meeting, a new call came (this time, from someone else!) making me rethink about leaving the comfortable place that I had built myself, about who I was and what I wanted to do in the future. Thinking about cycles, they all have been very good and encouraging decisions.
It has been a rough road, as beginnings are always are. But I have enjoyed both the creative moment of starting something out of nothing. I have reassured that I am an entrepreneur, that my passions lie in social development and in envisioning and bringing people together to transform social reality. It is still very familiar –now probably, more explicit—that idea that I have to prove, myself and others, these greater visions can become reality.
I can now say that it has been an amazing journey, more internal than anything else.
Today, in the “little Montana break” I build every week coming at dawn to walk at the Viveros de Coyoacan (a small Arboretum in my neighborhood), I feel grateful. I reaffirmed to the North my leadership and strength; to the West, I promised to let go and close down cycles in good ways; to the South, I commit myself as a mother, a wife, a house-maker and my feminine leadership; and to the East –where the Venus “star” is almost hiding and the sun was raising, painting the clouds in pink and orange– I thank for new beginnings. And then I touch the earth, to remind me that I’m alive and present.
I will be with you in heart, and you will be with me in Nepal, in mind and soul. Thank you Synergos, thank you Peggy. Thank you Senior Fellows and Montana fellows, for accompanying me in this journey.
