It has been a crazy summer. I spent the better part of June, July and August actively looking for a new place- a house- where I could stay for a while, that would feel like more than just a temporary place to land. It was very frustrating. I thought maybe something was wrong with me that I was having so much trouble finding anything that I felt would work. I hadn't felt this stuck in many years. I wanted to be in love with it- not just have it be workable, doable, functional. I had a fabulous apartment in Newport that I really did love. The down side of it was that it was on the 3rd floor of a Victorian house and I was so high up that I discovered within a couple of months that I was literally feeling like I was "up in the air" all the time. I made a list of all the things that were important to me hoping that would give a little more strength to my intention.
Here is what I wrote:
A house where I can live and do my sound healing work
A large yard
Surroundings that help me to feel connected to the outdoors
3 bedrooms so I have a guest room and a treatment room
Fireplace or wood stove
Living room area large enough to host groups for classes, workshops and meditation
Fabulous kitchen
No more than $2000 a month (which would only be doable if I could work there as well.)

And I was finding NOTHING! I couldn't believe the shoddy places they were showing me for between $1700- $2000 a month... Dirty, one which clearly had termites, not enough space, in need of paint, flooring needing to be refinished, etc., etc. I looked at everything- houses, condos, apartments. I went as far as the Berkshires. Nothing, nothing, nothing... I was ready to land, to get my sound healing equipment up from Florida and immerse myself in my work. Nothing.

I was in a funk- something I don't even really know about it. Typically I might get in a bad mood for an hour if my blood sugar gets low but that's about the extent of it. The end of July came around and it was time to think about going to Jai Uttal's kirtan camp in California. I had paid for it in January and now I didn't want to go. I emailed Jai's wife Nubia and told her I was feeling too ungrounded and up in the air and I needed to find a place to live. My sister Miranda called me that week asking when I was coming to CA as I was going to visit her also and I told her I had cancelled. I said it was too much money- I still needed to pay airfare, lodging, and a car rental- and I needed to find a place to live. She said, "Are you crazy?! You have to go- I have never seen you so happy and excited about anything as when you went to kirtan camp the last time. Plus it's a tax write-off for you so don't worry about the money. You just have to go."

Well, when my older sister tells me something I take it seriously and she was adamant so I said I would think about it. After I got off the phone I thought, "Well, nothing is actually happening here except that I'm spending hours on the computer and driving around looking at places and I'm not finding a thing. And I'm going crazy and I'm miserable... Maybe this will help free up some energy and I'll find something when I get back."

So off I went to Harbin Hot Springs, CA for a wonderful week of joyful kirtan. That is its own story for a different post. Suffice to say I came back in a much better frame of mind. I felt hopeful and excited. The next 3 weeks went by and I was still spending hours on the computer looking at the same old stuff from here to North Carolina, driving out to Middletown, Portsmouth and Wickford, another trip up to the Berkshires and still no luck but I was in a better mood.

Blissed-out Bhaktas- 2014 Summer Kirtan Camp with Jai Uttal, Nubia Texeira and Daniel Paul

I have to throw in there at this point that there was one house in Tiverton, a log house, that kept showing up on the internet which I kept ignoring. It was a little more than I wanted to spend, although it was in the range I was considering. It had 4 bedrooms- a little bigger than what I felt I needed. It was log and I have always wanted to live in a log house. It had a big deck and a koi pond and actually looked pretty great but I kept thinking, "No... Tiverton- don't know anyone out there. Log, but it's probably not as nice as it looks. The bedrooms look small. It's probably just a winter rental" etc., etc. I had a whole lot of reasons not to bother looking at it.

Noelle, "Ming Ming" and Patience

So September rolled around and I went off to Minneapolis for my granddaughter's 5th birthday. I had a wonderful 5 days and then came back home and sat back down at the computer to look at more places. Still in a good mood, thank God, and feeling like if I had to stay in my apartment for the winter I could live with that. But I really wanted to get my sound healing equipment up here from Florida. It had been too long. I was missing my sound table and missing my work. So I sat back down at the computer and picked up my seemingly fruitless search where I had left off.

I had one more trip planned- Salt Lake City in mid-October for my son Ben's 35th birthday. He is in his 5th year working on his PhD at the University of Utah and I had never been out there. But 3 days after I got back from MN my sister Miranda, an advanced craniosacral therapist, called me from the Bahamas and said there was a dolphin-assisted intensive therapy program beginning in just two days and some of their clients had to cancel so they were offering it on the cheap just to fill it. She said I should really seize the opportunity and fly down to the Bahamas the next day and take the program. I had the same thought as I'd had a few weeks earlier re: California. No way, I need to stay here and find a place to live. Plus it would be crazy expensive to fly to the Bahamas with less than 24 hour notice!

Nonetheless I gave it some thought- 5 hours a day of craniosacral therapy with one therapy session each day for 4 days with dolphins assisting and two more sessions with two advanced therapists during the day. As Miranda said, I could get the equivalent of a years worth of therapy over the course of the 4-day intensive. I thought about it and thought, Well, maybe I have more stuff to clear around finding a place to land and this could help me. Clearly there were more obstacles on some level that escaped me. Apparently it was meant to be because I found an unreasonably reasonable flight! That cinched the deal for me and I decided to go.

The next day I flew to the Bahamas. The program started the day after I arrived. I set as an intention to clear whatever blocks, release whatever I needed to release, to help me find a place to live. The program was amazing, a lot of openings and awarenesses- nothing earth-shattering- quite a bit of physical release and some emotional stuff, nothing that I could pinpoint in terms of any specific blocks but it was all good. At the end I had an extra day with Miranda which, as Spirit would have it, turned out to be the one year anniversary of our mother's passing. We had both been there with Mum when she died and shared something very profound at that time, so it was quite wonderful and synchronistic that we unexpectedly were together that day.

I came home the next day and there I went- back to the computer! And there was that log house in Tiverton again. This time, instead of blowing it off, I thought "Well, I've looked at everything else- I might as well check it out- and then I can eliminate it!" So I called the realtor, saw the house the next day and felt that I could easily fall in love with it. And not only that, that it would be a perfect place for me to live and work! The day after that I drove out to Tiverton one more time to look at it with my friend Lark and made the decision that yes, this was the house for me.

So here I am, in this fabulous house in Tiverton, RI- and all I can say is that I am seriously deliriously happy! Actually there is quite a bit more to say than that but I will save it for another, hopefully shorter, blogpost now that I have gotten enough stuff put away in the house to feel like I can sit down at the computer and resume writing again. Suffice to say in closing that I got everything on my list and more- some things I wouldn't have even thought of on my own- like a nice deep whirlpool jetted tub in my bathroom. Happy landings!