This blog was written by my auntie. THANK YOU for taking the time to contribute to my project. I won't write an extensive introduction, since her entry is lengthy - here is her advice and experience as she entered into this phase of life.
Let me begin with saying what an honor it
is to be asked to be a guest blogger on this site. I have known Holly since her
birth and she has always held a special place in my heart. I took the first
photos of her with the family when she came home from the hospital and I still
can visualize clearly each of those special moments in our lives and the looks
of love and awe on the faces of one and all as they beheld and held her for the
first time. The tears in dad’s eyes, and the happiness and excitement in all of
us that you were now a part of our lives.
Our twenties I believe are about finding
out who we really are. It is usually in our twenties that we leave home and
experience life through our choices rather than our parents’ choices for us.
This is a time when typically over partying and other self-abuses will occur
until we find our limits for ourselves. In other words, we learn self-discipline.
Not necessarily a bad thing, for with it comes exploring our personal interests
separate from those of our family of origin. We gravitate toward people who
share our habits and directions.
For me this is what it looked like. I left
college and went to work as an internal auditor, which is basically an accountant within a
company. After a few years of 9 to 5, 7
days a week, I realized that this, to me, was not real life. It was a form of slavery. Beautiful sunny days and here I was in
stockings, high heels, and uncomfortable clothes, stuck in an office, doing the
same old thing every freaking day. I was great in my job, but they were not
promoting women. There were women who had been doing their work for many years
brilliantly, but they were going nowhere. The company would bring in younger
males, with no special IQ and have them trained by the most talented older
women workers and then promote the males, over them. We called it a glass ceiling. I thought,” got to
go”. I’m not going to live my life here when there is so much more to be doing
in the world. Also, I could not get
my head around the thought that I was indoors on beautiful days. It just didn’t
sit well with me. So I agreed with a
friend to pack up and move to New Orleans.
I had a list of places I wanted to travel to at the time and N.O. was
one of the places on the list.
I’ve
always had the belief that the world held such big and diverse places, with so
many interesting places, so that, I never believed that we were meant to be
born, grow up, live and die in the same place on the planet. To me that is
totally irrational thinking. Life is just too short and important and
wonderful. So I bought a new/used car,
packed my things and we drove, together, in two separate cars to N.O. On the
way we met some guys who told us that “ in life you have to do your time and if
you do it right you can retire early and enjoy life”. They had gone to work,
worked hard, for a period of time, made big money, ( I don’t remember how) and
had bought a pizza parlour(their dream). I don’t remember which state, we were
in or anything else about them. It stuck in my mind about working hard to
achieve what you want and then you can take it easy. My car had overheated on a Sunday afternoon
as we were driving south, somewhere in the mountains of, maybe, South Carolina,
in the middle of nowhere. These guys
came along, took us for food and drinks, fixed my car and off we went to N.O. I
still love a Volkswagen to this day because with a bit of ingenuity they are
always so easy to repair. But I digress. I was 23 at the time. When we got to
N.O., I worked as a roustabout on an oil rig, in the Gulf of Mexico, where I
was one of only two women on the rig. We lived on the rig for a week at a time
and worked 12hrs on and had twelve hours off, 7 days a week. The work was hard but energizing - good and
liberating. I used to walk around the rig singing” I am woman hear me roar… “to
myself. I started off making $664.00 per week and within 2 months I was making
$708.00 per week. I used to get off work at the end of my 7 day stint, and the
beginning of my 7 days off, catch the helicopter, back to land, drive, 2 to 3
hours home, pack a bag, take a plane to Philadelphia, and spend the week there
with my boyfriend and still have more money in my pocket then if I had worked a
week in the3 office in Philly. I had had
a taste of alternative living, and it was good.
Needless to say this started me on other
adventures. Eventually I moved home to Philly again where I worked again with
people helping them take failing business and turn them around to profit. Jumping
ahead, at 27 I moved to California, another place on my list, and I thought I
was home. Life seems to grow up around you when you are in the right place at
the right time on the planet. I landed
in Venice Beach with some of my favorite cousins from Philly who had relocated
a few years prior, with their mother. I
reunited with my cousins, and went to Santa Barbara to visit a friend from
Philly who had moved there a year prior.
I had only planned to visit as I was traveling up the coast to San
Francisco, but I stayed. Like I said life grew up around me. I got asked to do a job sitting behind a
counter at the best Health food supermarket in Santa Barbara, at the time, named
“Follow Your Heart”. It sat on the Supplement
isle, with best of everything available at the time and people would come and
ask questions about everything from the best hair shampoo for eczema suffers,
the first food to feed babies to what herbs and foods were useful for curing
cancer, or aides, or body building, or detoxing mercury….. Herbs and food as medicine had been two of my
hobbies, since my late teens. Now I was actually using my knowledge and studying
more, and surrounded by people whose goal in life was to be as healthy,
fulfilled, and in harmony in life as possible. To top it off I was going out at
night on my bike to the spa or dancing to live music, available everywhere. I had found my niche! And I was truly showing
who I was in the world and being appreciated for it. I believe that is what the twenties are all
about. Finding yourself, and who you
are, and what you believe and what really matters to you.
From 28 to thirty one is said to be in
their Saturn return. It is, I believe a time when the chickens come home to
roost and we are tested to see if ones beliefs about themself are true, and if
our beliefs in life actually will hold water.
For some this is a trying time, especially
if they have gotten off their life path and are basically living someone else’s
ideas or ideals for them.
Well I can honestly say for me a great
change occurred. It wasn’t till I turned 30 that I figured that I had
accomplished everything major that I had wanted to do up to that time,
choreographing a big dance performance, building a great network of supportive,
smart, healthy living, people around me. We were dreaming and going out and
achieving the things that we wanted to do in our lives. I was also at my healthiest and fittest in my
life. I was actually more healthy, and beautiful because of that, at thirty
than I had been at twenty. I thought I
was ready to have a great child and add them to my great life. Up till that
point having a child had not been on my agenda.
My boyfriend at the time was not
interested, so I told him that I was moving out, which I did. I packed up, went
home for the summer to say goodbye to my family, because I had decided that I
wanted to move to a tropical island to raise my child, and I figured that I
could do my work anywhere in the world.
Life is strange and wonderful. That was the
summer that you were four Holly and I got to take care of you, while your
parents worked. We had a blast, long
walks, and hikes, and picnics at Valley Green, and other parts of Fairmount
Park. Big shopping adventures and
playground fun. It felt good to be
around my family and be myself. I think that it can be a real challenge to find
yourself when you are around your family all the time. I find that people,
friends included are not always so supportive in letting us grow, change and
evolve into who we really are. They often want to believe that we are the same,
so that they do not have to look at themselves and their life and where they
have not evolved, and need to grow. Every day alive is an opportunity, a new
start. What we do with it is up to us. It can be the beginning of you walking
your truth or it can be just another day of the same old stuff. I think that
people begin to age when they stop trying new things and exploring their
interests, and expressing their hearts truth. But that’s me.
To make a long story short; I had those
amazing children at 33 and 37. I moved to the big, South Pacific, tropical
island of Australia, where I have lived for the last 20 years. My daughter, Indigo, took off for London, in
May, at the age of twenty and says that the world is too big a place and she
never wants to come back to Australia to live. What can I say? The apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree,
but it does roll away. She says that if I want to see her come to London.
Sequoya, my youngest finishes school next October, and then I’m out of here and
planning my next move, possably, island hopping from Greece to Turkey.
I think your thirty’s are a new beginning.
It is where we find our place in the world. If 28 to 30, your Saturn return,
was trying and difficult, then it is a time for adjustment and getting back to
your life’s goals and pleasures. Outcomes become very important and essential
in your thirties. Pleasing others and trying to get them to love you a certain
way goes out the window and we realize that we are the great lovers in our
lives and as we get it right for ourselves, giving ourselves what we truly want
and saying yes to what we love in our lives and having the same compassion for
ourselves that we do for others, we inadvertently teach people how to love us
and let go of those who do not love us to make room for those who do, to come
into our world.
You realize that others will always have
their own opinion, but in your life, your viewpoint and what you do about it is
all that truly matters.
With Love,
Aunt Tanya
Byron Bay, Australia
I'm inspired! I have always felt that I was wasting my life away by sitting in an office doing a 9-5. Mainly because I know that the 9-5 is not taking me where I want to go. You have given me confirmation that someone that moves about and explores the world is not unstable but someone that has courage to do something out of the ordinary.
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