A YEAR IN A SUITCASE PART 4

Setting out for an adventure! One year living out of a suitcase! Scared shitless! Getting rid of everything I own that didn’t fit into a 22” suitcase and backpack….why… because I was mad at God. I had done everything He’d asked… as He so eloquently pointed out… things He didn’t ask… and this was the thanks I got…. A crashed life? Fine… take it all… have it all… fuck you!~ (Being Real for the first time in my life! And then… because I wasn’t happy.

Life as I previous knew it had changed… and somehow I knew if I was going to survive… I had to change too…. And in order to change… I had to go out and find different ways of living.

So after the end of a thirty-year marriage and bankrupt business I decided to get rid of everything that didn’t fit into a 22” suitcase and backpack, including my car!

You may be asking why in the world would you do that? Well, I was out of options! The church’s answer to my current situation was, “You just need to do, give and pray more… You’ll be fine!” I’d been doing that and it wasn’t working!

Then the solution from Western Medicine was… “You need pills!! Hormones, anti-depressants, and sleeping pills…. In effect… we’ll put you out for this next learning cycle of your life. “Uh, no thanks! You did that for my mom and sister and their both dead!”

By the grace of God, I knew that something had to change and had realized that something had to be me.

I began to understand that everything changes. I had come from an ultra conservative background where I believed that as long as everything remained the same, “I was doing it right!”

But through this experience I realized that absolutely nothing stays the same. All we have to do is look around us and see that nature is a great mirror to witness first hand that in fact… everything changes. We can see this easily in the four seasons or the monthly waxing and waning of the moon. I began to embrace change instead of resisting it and learned to appreciate what Plato meant when he said, “You cannot step into the same river twice.”  

In my latest book, A Year in a Suitcase, one can easily see that when one has the courage to make changes in their life….magic happens! Read all about possibilities… A Year in a Suitcase is still on sale! Two books for $30, plus shipping. 

See you next year!!! 

A YEAR IN A SUITCASE PART 3

It was black outside and there was no one on the freeway that I noticed. But then, I wasn’t noticing anything. I could have been in a different state or on another planet for that matter! My brain was in a fog!

Earlier in the day, I had received a phone call from my daughter. She and one of my son’s had left our home in Northern Cal to attend college in Southern Cal a few weeks previously and she had called to ask me what to do. She was used to me having all the answers and fixing things. The doctor’s were recommending that my son have emergency stomach surgery. But for the first time in my life, I couldn’t fix this. I had no answers! In fact, I had driven past the airport ½ hr before I realized where I was or where I was going.

Life wasn’t turning out at all as I had expected. In fact, I was having many little and not so little earthquakes that were shaking my life. And each time a tremor appeared… I did my best to shore up the wall that was starting to crash. I thought that was my job…. To be sure that nothing changed and no one felt any pain. They were happening so frequently that I even got smart with God saying, “Is this it…. Is this as good as you can do….. Bring it on!” I was completely confident that whatever God could deal out, I could fix! It became my full time job… putting out fires that I blamed God for.

It was that very night that I had a self-defining moment. When I came back to reality, I noticed the tears streaming down my face, and I cried out loud “Uncle! I give up! You win! I can’t fix this! I don’t know what’s best for my son and I don’t know how to pay for it! In fact, I don’t know anything anymore!”

Eventually, I could see that all God was trying to do through these little shakes ups in my life was to help me let go…. Free me from the prison I had created for myself… the impossible job of running the Universe! And that night I began to experience the freedom of what Letting Go felt like.

A Year in a Suitcase is still on sale: 2 for $30 

It's not too late to get them in the mail before Christmas! And I'll even wrap and ship them as gifts! Just let me know when you order. 

A YEAR IN A SUITCASE PART 2

I remember having a vision of the time I had saved a young girl in the Colorado River from drowning. I was very pregnant with our third child, when I ran into the water and of course the first thing that she did was grab my neck. Still to this day, I clearly remember thinking, "We're both not going to drown here!" And I dove down and grabbed her ankles and pushed her towards the shore.

That's how I felt about my marriage. I felt like I way dying, if not literally, certainly emotionally. It was like in the movie, Shall We Dance? How could I not be happy? How could I want more? How ungrateful could a person be? I had husband who was true and didn't gamble or drink. How ungrateful could a person be?

Then, he gave me a gift. It's how I see it now. Of course, this is ten years after the fact. He had a stroke. I absolutely would not have had the courage to leave had it not been a matter of life and death for me!  "We're both not going to drown here!" I remember thinking.

Long story short: I sold my car so I could get rent money for six months and my youngest son and I moved out. Of course, as you may imagine, I was a total basket case. I couldn't stop crying and I even told my son to call from school as we'd probably have to move back, even though I paid for the entire six months rent in advance. 

Then, my dear priest friend called, and asked, "Did you ever think that you're giving someone an opportunity to grow… rather than you've deserted them? 

To this day, he doesn't remember saying it and I'm confident that it came from a  higher source. Another self-defing moment was discovering that it's not my job to be sure that everyone feels no pain. My job is to live MY life!

My latest book, A Year in a Suitcase is on sale this month 2 for $30. Buy one for a gift and I'll even wrap and ship it for you! 

A YEAR IN A SUITCASE PART 1

In the Dale Carnegie course that I'm taking, our first assignment was to talk for two minutes about a self-defining moment. At the ripe old age of 62, I had many to choose from, and realized a handful were what led to my adventure of A Year in a Suitcase. So this month, I'm going to talk each week about one of those self-defining moments and hopefully get ourselves motivated for some kind of adventure in our lives come January.

I looked up and there I was…standing in front of the luggage store at the Denver airport, still in shock from my visit with my dad. While leaving his home, the Hospice Chaplin walked in... and that is how I found out that my father was dying! Feelings of anger, betrayal, abandonment filled my being. 

Why the luggage store? At the time, I had no idea why, but somehow I knew that I would need a new suitcase. I also knew that I had no money. I had no business buying anything! "I have a credit card", I began to scheme. Well, it really wasn't mine. It was one that my dad gave me after my recent divorce and bankruptcy… for emergencies. This was an emergency… wasn't it? A new suitcase? While I would be paying him back, I also knew that using it would come with a litany of questions that I would have to answer. But somehow I didn't care. I confidently walked in and asked the clerk what size of suitcase would one need to carry-on an international flight. "Twenty-two inch," came the reply. I plunked down the credit card, added a purse to the order and transferred my clothes from my little ratty bag. I proudly walked out rolling my new black, no frills, TravelPro, twenty-two inch bag, $400 poorer. 

It wasn't long before I began to panic. "What the hell had I done? Being the queen of taking things back, I knew that this could not be returned and I had no idea how I was going to pay for it! But as soon as I got home, I opened  my emails and there was a note from The Universe. This is what it read, no kidding! Hey Pati, You know how to get more money? Spend it! (Which is opposite of what I had been taught!) I began to understand what keeping the energy flowing was all about. And not to block the flow of energy just because I couldn't understand how things could possibly work out. 

This is the suitcase that I have to this day and its the suitcase that took me on a four-year adventure. In my latest book, you can read about the first year. A Year in a Suitcase. They're on sale on my website 2 for $30, buy one for yourself and one for a gift!