Arrival

Tsafiki

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Miguel, my driver.

I knew it would be a long trip but it was more frustrating and exhausting than I imagined. The Iberia flight left late to Madrid where I missed my connection to Guayaquil, Ecuador. We landed close to midnight and trying to find an Iberia help desk through the maze that is the Madrid airport was a quest. I was the last person to get to the desk before they closed. They told me they had no flights to Guayaquil the following day. I insisted they needed to find a flight and after ‘politely’ insisting, they found an Avianca flight the next morning at 8am that got into Guayaquil at 2:35pm local time. I slept on the airport floor because it made no sense to search for a hotel. After landing I was met by my driver Miguel and he filled the four hour drive with conversation and news that I found very helpful.

I’m staying at Tsafiki with my friend, the owner, Lori Nobles. It’s been at least six years since we’ve seen each other and it feels like yesterday. I’ll be here for a few days while I arrange to have Pablo, my right hand man, arrive to help me evict the people who are on my land (hired by my ex-brother in law who has been sabotaging the sale of my property) and move onto the property.

For those who are/were concerned, it turns out that the people on my property are family of a man who works for Lori. Not only that, but somehow they learned I was arriving and would be asking them to leave. That gave me great comfort on one hand, knowing that the worst case scenario I had envisioned was now unlikely. I don’t know how my ex brother in law found them or what their arrangement is but it won’t matter since they will leave voluntarily.

Now for the Soul Stuff

I’m aware of what it means for me to return to the place where The Shaman’s Wife began and all that the story contained. Once I had a good night’s sleep I felt the shift in the energy that is in the land here on the coast of Ecuador. And that shift was in me too.

This is what I wrote the day after I arrived after spending time on the beach and swimming in waters I did not think I would return to.

When you write your story there is a subtle belief that once you hit that last keystroke, it’s over. The End.

I thought that was the case when I published The Shaman’s Wife. I was wrong.

You see, there were unresolved issues that haunted me at night in my dreams, sometimes when I was out for a walk, or when a photo appeared reminding me of my past life. Occasionally, I would receive a phone call that brought me back into the conflict between the person I had been, the life I had in Ecuador, and my life here in Portugal. I kept ignoring it, to be honest, passing it off to my Ecuadorian attorney or to lapsed email messages.

But dark shadows persist in our unconscious and eventually they surface demanding to be addressed.

And so it is today, as I prepare to return to a land that forged who I am today in the fires of shamanism, in the struggle of bringing life onto fallow soil, and in the lost dream of what might have been.

I will end today’s update with a video I took on my beach walk this morning. 🔉 My thoughts on nature, the ocean and my relationship to it all. Until next time…thank you for your support.

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