I finally went back to the United States and redeemed my life – and unexpectedly myself – from being cut in half and reluctantly abducted by 2020 COVID border closures.
For those of you who do not know my backstory, I was living in the USA for more than 5 years when I innocently returned to Australia in January 2020 to visit my mother, have a summer holiday and escape the Portland, Oregon, Winter gloom. Only to find that on the day I was to return, my flight was canceled, the Australian borders were closed, and I was unable to rebook! I was given a travel voucher and was told I might be able to travel in 6 months time.
This threw my life into instant chaos. My beloved Portland friends packed up my apartment and put my life into a storage locker. Someone adopted my cat, friends adopted my plants and I just trusted the flow of life to carry me through the next adventure, which I did with as much grace as possible.
After four and a half years of lockdowns, illness and long COVID, relocation, a new home, garden and my little dog Hugo, I finally got a chance to return to the USA this July. I found it to be one of the deepest healing experiences of my life which I had not foreseen at all. Or maybe I did not foresee the extent with which it was offered to me.
The entire trip was a joy from beginning to end. It was amazing to be embraced by my friends, community and people that I love dearly. We reconnected and spent time together as if no time had passed between us. We ate great food, we laughed, we shared great stories, we hung out in beautiful gardens and parks. We made music together and we rejoiced in the beauty of friendship and connection.
I am extremely grateful for the relationships that were built during those five years in the USA, and they remain treasures of my life.
When you have not been with people for a long time you sometimes wonder what it will be like to pick things up again, and I found that it was effortless. The big project of this trip was to unpack that storage locker which the storage company thought at one point in time had been severely flooded in an ice storm. I found that everything had survived intact.
A joyous group of friends and students joined me over a couple of days to help me sort through what I rediscovered. Under immense time pressure and faced with the expense of international shipping I decided to execute my former life. One of my students who helped me, Kimmie, used to be a professional declutterer. She told me she was amazed at my ability to so quickly make decisions around precious items.
We gave away the vast majority of everything I owned, to friends, to the community, to Goodwill, and the remainder to the rubbish dump. I did not have any time to be sentimental or emotional. I just had to make thousands of decisions in a day. It was pretty brutal and also incredibly liberating, and by the end I was left with 8 boxes, and one box of my own original artwork, which I shipped home to Australia.
I did go home that evening and have a bit of a cry – a beautiful healing cry because it was a relief of frozen elements of the experience of being sliced in half by a global pandemic, lockdowns and closed borders. Of being put in a place where I had to make brutal decisions on that day.
I let myself cry in bursts for an hour or two, then I felt complete and peaceful. Closure was coming. Closure on such a weird and strange experience that had stretched out over a space of years.
The day after I took my nine boxes to the UPS store to be shipped to the shipping company that would bring them to me in Australia, I celebrated with friends, and I began to have an experience of wholeness that I had not felt since 2020. It was deep. A rift inside me had healed and closed over, and thus bloomed the awareness of the stress and tension that had been held in my system.
I was so busy from 2020 responding to the things that life asked of me when I got stuck in Australia that there was no time to notice that stress. Now, looking back I cannot imagine how I built the school and business I am running now with that stress happening inside me.
Yet I did it with grit and perseverance, because the calling to serve was stronger than anything that was occurring within me.
I feel excited to see where I can create and collaborate with the Universe from a new place of wholeness and relief.
As a closing lesson in detachment, from this whole episode, was an email that I received from my shipping company this week, that the beloved UPS had lost the most precious box of everything that I was sending home. My original, soulful and irreplaceable artwork. A reminder that in the end, everything, including our deepest identity will ultimately be surrendered – no matter what type of box we try to ship it in!
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16 Comments
What a great story, it brought tears to my eyes. I felt identified somehow with the way I feel every time I go to Colombia to visit my family. I have to leave my family in the US to visit the Colombian family. I cry when I leave both places. That detachment part is hard to work on. Life is really full of lessons and always comes in the weirdest ways. Much love. Ana.
Dearest Ana,
Thank you for tender and beautiful sharing of your own story and journey with loving and letting go, moving between homes and places where you love and adore people. It takes some mastery and yet complexity for the heart to find its fluidity in this process. And that life makes it so that all our treasures of heart are in more than one place.
From my heart to yours, sending tender love and gratitude and admiration!
Big love,
Myree
Thank you so much for sharing.
The beloved box may still arrive
but I know there’s no need for it too.
I’m touched to read your story, a friend recommended your work in lockdown,
Thank you for being a soulful uplifting presence
Much love
Dear Thea,
So sweet to connect here and I am glad for your friend who placed in flow together during lockdown, what a wild tiem that was. Thank you for your kind words, I am glad this has been inspiring and nourishing in someway for you and that you took the precious time to share that. My heart says thank you!
Big love,
Myree
Such a beautiful and lovely story Myree! Thank you for sharing:)
Dearest Sara,
Thank you for your words of encouragement and love! And so lovely to connect here!
Big love,
Myree
Wow! Thanks for sharing this Myree. I knew some of it but this fuller account completes the picture and it inspires and encourages me. I am so sorry about your art work being lost but am touched by your framing of that event too. Big love xxxx
Dear Sandra,
Thank you for your loving message and words of support, I am taking them into my heart as sweet treasures! I quietly hope the artworks get to bring someone else joy, somewhere out there in the big wide world!
Big love,
Myree
What a story and so sorry about the box loss. Ugh. But thrilled you got to see it for a moment before its surrender. ❤️❤️❤️
Thank you dearest Katherine, it was a moment of delight, which I will treasure in my heart, my own soulful creative and colourful beauty shining back in a tiny hello before disappearing into the forever yonder. Thank you for your love!
Myree, what a wonderful story! I. Just sad that I couldn’t help or meet you while here. I see a beach picture, and it looks like the Oregon coast. I live in Lincoln City, OR. I know this feeling. I have a 10×10 storage I left in Montana before Covid and my move to Oregon. I will go back next month and bring things back to Oregon that I value. This posting will help me release baggage and things I no longer have to drag around. Colette
Dearest Colette,
Ahhh – one who knows the weight and hidden wonders of a far away storage locker! May this offering give you inspo when faced with a million inner and outer questions about what to keep or surrender. I write this to you sitting in a beautiful, light blue Irish sweater I took back, with no regret, from the enormous give away pile. One of the few things to return from there. I have worn it constantly since arriving home. Somethings are always treasures and many items already belong to others.
Good luck on your adventure there!
Big love,
Myree
Myree,
Thank you for your openness and expressing the vulnerability that comes with this light-full sharing. I have a deep sentimental side and feel the gravity of your message. Gravity…an earthly thing :). Impermanence helps us check our relationship to our light. I keep immaturely clasping to physical things also. Is it okay to be so lightfully busy giving in this world that we one day find ourselves late for our funeral?
Much Love,
Michael Mc Cann
Dearest Micael, thank you for this lovely and spirited reflection that made me smile and laugh. Being lightfully busy giving sounds like a beautiful way of dancing through one’s heartfelt service. Honouring all you do on your own sacred path!
Big love,
Myree
Yes I often try to imagine what it would be like as you die to surrender your deepest identity as you merge into the universe – the ultimate detachment. I assume it remains in one way but in another way it is gone. I kinda like to practice detaching and watching myself as the witness. It is liberating – as our society encourages us to be very firmly attached. What a journey Myree. You are not afraid to jump into the void – impressive and looking forward to new chapter.
Thank you for your kind words and cheering onwards dearest Douglas! I love the way you share about your evolving practice of detachment and the freedom you find there. This I sense is one of your gifts! And brings joy too! And creates wild freedom!
I am feeling your love shining through your words. Thank you!
Big love,
Myree x