The crazy rollercoaster ride of 2020 has given us a lot to think about. Many of us have had to adjust our incomes, or, considering the uncertainty of the future, have been conservative with spending. Perhaps, as you forewent travel and reevaluated your lifestyle (no matter how modest or extravagant it previously was), you realized what you truly can live without.
In my personal life, I have just had to come to terms with renting our home. Maybe you are familiar with my story, but just to give a little recap - my husband Mark and I have been building a home in Nassau that he started back in 2008. He had just finished the initial concrete structure when the global financial crisis hit. The concrete shell sat for many years while he pursued work in the Out Islands, meeting me along the way.
Together over the years, we have chipped away at putting on a roof, installing windows and doors, framing, sheetrock, tiling and plastering. Small milestones were celebrated with friends – proudly showing off a newly finished office or tiled bathroom. We did much of the work ourselves because we enjoyed it, and because it’s a hell of an expensive place to build a house.
We have big dreams for the house, and we love it dearly. Over the years we have planted trees, watched them grow and nurtured them, and are now enjoying the fruits of our ongoing labor. We have a lush jungle filled with exotic palms and trees and plants bearing edibles – coconuts, breadfruit, soursop, sapodilla, avocado, peppers, and tomatoes. This home has our heart. Endless hours have been spent on the balcony overlooking the sweeping expanse of ocean and in the garden, as we relish in the ever-morphing dance of nature. “Look at how this one has grown” or “that one has flowers now.” Like proud parents we are.
Our first coconuts
As much as we wished to establish roots in Nassau, in mid-2019 Mark signed a contract as owner’s rep to oversee the construction of a large beach home in Harbour Island - a dream opportunity.
He commuted back and forth from Harbour Island to Nassau while I taught yoga, practiced energy healing, and focused on my writing in Nassau. My soul purpose was coming to fruition in early 2020. I was flying high. We even started hosting healing weekends at our home and it became a space for our soul tribe to gather.
And then lockdowns began. Although construction was permitted to continue, Mark had no way to travel inter-island and get to the jobsite. My yoga classes and energy healing client sessions ceased, and we knew, in order to survive, we had to make a break for Harbour Island.
For those of you that knew me when I lived in Harbour Island before, or perhaps have read my latest book, Escape to the Bahamas, I struggled with living in the small island community. Yet, I always said that I could live in Harbour Island comfortably in one particular house on the harbour that I had fallen in love with many years ago. Surrounded by native trees, with a small dock and sunset views, the house was private and secluded - a writer’s dream retreat. The previous renters were friends of ours and as fate would have it, they reached out to us when they were giving up their lease. We hummed and hawed about the decision. We weren’t 100% sure the job was going ahead, and the rent price was high for a part-time home, but in the end, decided to take the risk.
When domestic travel opened up for a small window in June/July 2020, we already had our bags packed. We foresaw more lockdowns on the radar (which eventually proved our intuitions correct), so we hopped on a boat with duffle bags, food, and dogs. I remember packing - carefully and thoughtfully considering what I might need for summer in Harbour Island. I even threw in a few sweatshirts and jeans, in case I was still there when the weather started to get cooler. I remember packing and thinking…I don’t know when…or if…I will be back here. And I still haven’t, nearly 6 months later.
And now we have made the difficult decision to rent our house to a nice man that Mark has known for many years. Our concerns for security have grown. As people in the capital feel even more strain from an economically devastating year, and as crime increases, it’s simply too risky to leave it empty. We aren’t moving back anytime soon with domestic travel restrictions still choking what was once an inter-dependent island nation. So, it’s a sensible decision, albeit an emotional one.
As I stayed in Harbour Island with our dogs over Christmas, Mark packed our things. My lack of control of the situation had me in a state of anguish and emotional torment. I found myself needlessly stressing about my possessions being within someone else’s lair. My bed with a new fluffy down comforter and overpriced pillows that I would melt into each night, my Grandma’s China set which was a wedding present to her and my Grandpa in 1941, my personalized Tervis Tumbler bearing the name of a sailboat that I arrived in the Bahamas and another with the logo of a cherished Out Island beach club that has long since vanished, coffee mugs that were my parents from the 1970’s, my antique lamp with a lampshade that falls off if you touch it wrong, my Buddha figurine from a market in Bangkok, my altar which continued to hold sacred space while I’ve been away. Things that were going to be part of a completed home one day.
But what most heavily weighed upon me was that I was giving up a place where I had planned to root my feet into the earth. I thought this was the place, but I found myself once again feeling lost.
I now realize the clutches that our idealization of “home” and our possessions have on us. We hoard, and our things become burdens and anchors. We examine the contents of our drawers, unable to throw or give any of it away for fear we might need it one day. The drawers continue to get more crowded, but we close them again and forget about them for now. We become paralyzed by these possessions. We have them, but we cannot face them. And so, they sit, until it’s time to relocate and we are forced to deal with them. And when we do, it opens its way to emotions that we’d rather not deal with - confusion about what to hold onto, anger for hoarding, nostalgia and sadness for days long gone.
There is a part of me that just wants to be surrounded by my things in the comforts of a home-scape. But if we don’t change our relationships to our possessions, where does that leave us?
Sit down with yourself and ask yourself a serious question: How much your possessions own you? How upset you get when something breaks? I broke my favorite coffee mug one time that said in whimsical font…“everything happens for a reason”. I didn’t get the irony until much later, after I finished pouting and stomping about my misfortune.
As I moved into the end of that unfathomably difficult year, I was faced with letting go of the fact that I was not there to pack my sentiments, and that this concept of home that I have dreamed so longingly about, may never come to realization. I have to remind myself that these possessions can be the key to our freedom and liberation, if we allow them to. When we let go of the belongings, the ideas, even the dreams, we realize that we don’t need them as much as we thought. Maybe everything you need is already right here in this moment.
When you come to this realization, what else changes? Do you really have to make as much money as you thought? If you can live in a modest house and put food on the table, instead of being tied to a mortgage for that house just outside of your budget, and the car just outside your budget, and the latest and greatest toys for your kids? If you don’t need those things, then how might your life change? Perhaps more time for family, perhaps a job that you truly love, or travel, or time to pursue passions that light your fire. Perhaps.
I am wishing you all the best for the new year. Although I don’t expect that crossing the threshold into 2021 will make things magically better again, I do have hope that we are shifting into a better era for humanity. To get there, we must face messy and uncomfortable shadows first, and be willing to let go of absolutely everything in order to find that freedom and solace we seek. Only then can the love and abundance spill in, making way for brighter days to come.