Waking in new places. (I’ve decided to stay in Mexico.)

 
There are rare moments in life that are transformative. One of those moments was the first time the aeroplane circled above Puerto Vallarta and my eyes filled with tears as the jungle below came closer and closer. Little did I know then, that 10 months later I would come back to live there. And then 6 months after that decide to stay even longer.
 
I’ve only decided to base myself here for longer recently, but it feels like the Universe has this planned all along. When I catch sight of ordinary little moments I am astounded by how beautiful my life is and how happy I am. I can honestly say I haven’t been this ecstatically overjoyed by everything in my life in years.
 
 

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November

 
I arrive in Puerto Vallarta and stay in a friend’s spare room for a few days while I acclimatise from the brisk Autumn winds in London to the sweltering heat and tropical rainstorms of the jungle. Four days later I find a 2 bedroom, 2.5 bathroom traditional Mexican casita right by some of the most spectacular beaches on the southern tip of town. The house is a hot mess of rubble, but I can see its potential. I ask for it be cleaned and painted and furnished but as soon as my property manager has my money I have to press him for every single thing he promised me. It’s exhausting as I learn what I later call “the Mexican way”. Full of assurances but slow and unreliable.
 
My heart is still healing. I learn more about love.
 
 

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December

 
Settled and finding my flow in my new beach-side home, I accept an invitation to San Miguel De Allende. After waking every few hours from excitement I roll out of bed at 6 am, step into the shower, wrap myself in a towel, squeeze a couple of limes into a tall glass of water, and sip on it while I dress and call an Uber. I have a long philosophical discussion with my driver about why I’m not married (I tell him because I’ve not met a man I can imagine spending my entire life with — he responds that I’ll change my mind and get married by the end of next year) who drops me off at the airport.
 
50 minutes later I’m in a desert, driving through an endless expanse of cacti, napping in between visual scenery that takes me away into a land of dreams. By noon I’m in the mountains in a town so picturesque my eyes cannot grow wide enough to take it all in. I spend 5 days in the most beautiful casa for which there are not enough words and pictures to express the breathtaking beauty that surrounds me and the incredible people I am fortunate enough to meet. Life feels so very kismet.
 
On my return, I catch the flu and end up in bed for 3 weeks. I learn to be still and surrender. 2018 ends. I learn this:
 

 
 

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January

 
2019 begins. Still weak but recovering, one morning I walk along the cobblestones towards town to take myself out for breakfast, and run into a friend of a friend along the way. She invites me to join her and some others. Over poached eggs and sweetbread, I connect with a woman who becomes my second best friend in this town, next to the tall, beautiful, blonde, Swedish soul-sister I met and remained fast friends with since my first visit. She’s Mexican-American and opens a whole different facet of this little corner of the Universe I live in, to me.
 
I find out who the owner of my house is and I forge a relationship with her. I report how deceitful her property manager is and she discovers he’s only been paying half the amount of my rent to her. She loves having me here, she says, and wants me to stay. I tell her my lease with this awful man ends in April. She asks me to stay longer and drops my rent to a number I dare not say, it’s too irresistible to refuse.
 
I’ve lived in Mexico 3 months now and in some ways, it feels like 3 years. I feel a sort of homecoming or arriving within myself, of getting to know this woman I have evolved into the past few years. I feel like I am building a new sense of “home” within myself and the extension of that is the new things that are coming out of me. I feel I’m am stepping into a way of serving the world that is more valuable and more unique than ever before. My creative fire is on — I am so excited about where things are headed — at the same time I am more patient than ever before and content with where I am.
 
Sprawled out on my bed journaling I write out my money aims for this year (a manifestation practice I teach) and remember a past version of myself who used to be terrified to think about money in the terms that I do now.  I have more money than ever now because my relationship with money has changed. I’m so excited to share and teach all of this and run the first series of my money course Affluent as well as invite an intimate circle of women to join me for Supported. My private mentoring is fully booked and the year is starting so well.
 
 

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February

 
My life seems to move in seasons. Times that I dive deep within and reflect on the observations I’ve made about being human. Times that require my absolute participation and presence. I’m in the latter season. It doesn’t mean I don’t have a lot of stories. I do. It just means I don’t have the space to share them with you in a way I might at other times. I enjoy that my life is woven in these internal/external seasons. It shows me I’m living as close to nature as I can.
 
I go to San Miguel De Allende for the second time. The sound of a few distant roosters welcomes me out of my slumber that first morning as I roll out of bed and stumbled barefoot onto the cold kitchen floor to peek at the sliver of pink sunrise through the glass door.
 
We make rooibos tea and get dressed and rush out the door for the school run to drop her daughter off in time. Minutes later, in the back of a green and yellow cab on the way to some hot springs, I gaze sleepily out the window watching the desert landscape scattered with cacti roll past me until we land at some ancient Aztec thermal waters.
 
Peeling my jeans and sweater off down to my bikini, skin pricking in the cold morning air, we tiptoe inside a tiled tunnel that opens up to the steaming pool below. Standing under the pounding hot water pouring out of some rocks — I cut the cords of past loves and release all my subconscious burdens in a simple ritual — and ask for more love, more money, more health and more beauty.
 
This place feels like magic — I wonder for a split-second if someone put some psychedelics in my tea — but I recognize this natural high. It comes to me only when I find myself in those special places. We linger for a while, moving between hot pools in silent communion with spirit and nature and lounge about on the sunbeds until the breeze picks up and it’s time to move on.
 
Along a dusty road that smells like lavender and soil, we walk until we meet the Uber to take us back to town where we glide up onto a rooftop for spicy, hot chai and stop to take photos in the brightly lit stairwell. After another school run and lunch in a rainforest tucked away within a narrow alley-way-building-turned-cafe I climb my way up the cobbled streets to the AirBnB that I currently call home.
 
I type a few emails to clients and write an article revealing a little white lie I recently told a graceful lady sitting beside me at a massage parlour this week. In hindsight, I wish I had told that women the true story. So here it is now.
 
A close friend comes to stay with me. We lose ourselves in a dream made up of tropical adventures to every corner surrounding my little fishing-village-town, deep conversations, vulnerability, laughter, and awkward sexual tension that finally gets resolved as we navigate the delicate space between being friends and lovers. I cry when he leaves, half-heartbroken half-relieved.
 

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March

 
I dedicate this month to the most epic level of self-love and self-care I have ever given myself. I write about what that looks like.
 
This is the first time in my life I have lived alone in a space that feels like mine. Before, I always felt like a guest in someone else’s home or dream. Now, for the first time in my life, I am spending long expanses of time entirely alone. There’s an intimacy developing, a sovereignty, a discovery of how the light falls in my soul and illuminates corners of my self.
 
There’s a new benchmark here now. My entire life is rising up to meet it.
 
I decide to stay in Mexico.
 
 

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April

 
I delete Facebook and Instagram off my phone for 10 days.
 
I start running.
 
I go to Las Vegas for a wedding and a visa run.
 
I make the most money I have ever made in my life this month.
 
I lay on my sofa typing these words with an adorable kitten curled up between my arms, face nuzzling one arm, paw wrapped around the other. I’ve named him Danger Zone but more often I call him Danger-baby, baby, monster, monkey, my little angel and sweet baby angel.
 
The kitten was a cosmic accident. Some woman on a community Facebook page said that he’d been rescued off the street by someone, she had adopted him and then discovered that she’s allergic to cats. Would someone take him while she found him a permanent home?
 
I don’t know what overcame me that day. I had no thought of wanting a cat. I simply followed my instinct and told her I could help out until she found him a permanent place. No more than 2 months, I said.
 
But then… He simply wants to be around me, following me from room to room as I go about my life. Touching at least one part of his body against mine at all times. He tenderly reaches his little paws to my face to kiss me. Guarding my dreams for me when I sleep. I’m in love. He softens and broadens my heart in ways I never knew.
 

 

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May

 
The concept that — you can’t see what’s right in front of you until you’re ready for it — has never made such crystal clear sense to me until now.
 
I purchase a washing machine. Second hand from a man who repairs appliances on the street in town. It’s the first household appliances I have ever bought on my own.
 
The washing machine came out of necessity. Recently, my drug-dealing, embezzling, ex-property manager helped himself to (stole) the washing machine that came with the property. Apparently, he’s unhappy that I decided to discontinue my relationship with him after he stopped paying the owner of my little Spanish casita the last 3 months of my rent. Nor has he repaid my bond at the end of our lease agreement. So he thought he’d get what he could. Since then we’ve changed all the locks — he still had a set of keys which is how he got in — and I’ve replaced the washing machine.
 
Puerto Vallarta is holding me in ways no other place ever has before. I don’t know how long I’ll stay… but the washing machine and the cat are showing me I’ve planted my roots deeper here than anywhere before.
 
Next: I’m off to London for 3 weeks. I already can’t wait to come home to Danger. And the next round of Supported circles is gathering together. Spending time with these women is one of my favourite things to do.