Journey recap…to be continued

Would you believe it’s 12 months ago that I first arrived in Indonesia? In the midst of my breakdown, after a few months of being pretty depressed, I came to Bali for help on my journey of trying to recover. I’d had all the love and profound support from my awesome family and some dear friends. But I needed a little more.

The health and wellness retreat I came to was life changing. It helped me get my grief and Harley’s illness and death into a more spiritual and ironically, also a more grounded perspective. It also helped me to see that I was ok, and not completely broken. It was an intense week which brought up a myriad of emotions and more tears, but the counsellors, yogis, life coaches and naturopaths who facilitated the week, and my own new guru who ran the week (an inspiring young Australian woman who is incredibly down to earth and realistic and profoundly wise and empathetic) held my hand through the journey. From that week I found the courage to step away from my old life and its patterns that weren’t serving me well.

A second immersion in Bali, another intense full week dedicated to the ‘yoga and psychology of the chakras’, again tore me open and helped me dive deep into self analysis, introspection and to looking forward. I cried even more tears there from a well that I thought had to be dry but is in fact bottomless. I experienced again a despair and longing for Harley so deep I didn’t know how it was possible to go on. Surrounded by 24 yogis and counsellors from around the world, the week was about as deep and revealing and energetically moving as one could possibly imagine.

During that first 7 weeks in Bali I saw therapists and clairvoyants and charlatans and healers of many disciplines and quackery. I did more workshops on discovery and life and womanhood and grief. I was introduced to yoga and fell completely in love with some styles of it, a love affair I know will hold me in good stead for the rest of my life. I was introduced to the beauty of the Balinese Hindu religion and learnt about the art and grace of gratitude, mindfulness and living in the moment. I made new lifelong friends with inspiring and interesting people who shared a passion for life and for living well. All in a setting of jungle greens and waterfalls, temples and ceremonies, black sand surf beaches, a cosmopolitan population and absurdly healthy foods.

During this time also, my conscious awareness of psychic possibilities and spiritual connections awakened. Things happened that could never be scientifically explained, and that six months earlier I would never in a flying fit have believed. Some may think I became a fruit loop or that these events occurred in my mind only, but I know it to be otherwise. And because of this, what other people think about it no longer matters. I know Harley guided me, and watched over me, and communicated with me. My psychic medium in Australia had started that awakening, and it continued to multiply on my journey in Indonesia.

In my first week in Bali, during one particularly dark time during when I again thought I just couldn’t go on, Harley reached out to me in an amazing way. I had felt his presence before, but from that moment on, because of the beauty and the deep love that came with his message, I have felt supported and protected in the most profound way.

But whilst all this was set in a landscape of natural beauty and surrounded by the deep spirituality of the Balinese people, it was also marred by the constant noise of a million motorbikes. I so badly needed to escape to quiet.

A little island off the coast of Lombok was to be that escape, an island with no cars or motorbikes and very little development. Driving down the mountains away from Ubud to the eastern coast of Bali, I felt my heart slow down and my head still. I could see the ocean again and it spoke to me, as it always has. When the boat pulled up to the white sandy shore, I looked down into the turquoise water. It was so clear I could see the colourful fish from my seat on the boat.

Ten days earlier, on a potholed sidewalk in Ubud I’d fallen and mangled my foot (another incident which taught me to bloody well slow down – will I never learn???!!!). Surgery and a totally communication-less weekend alone in a Balinese hospital was another life changing moment. Now, on my arrival on beautiful Gili Meno island, I hobbled on my lame leg which still had stitches in its sole, and dragged my suitcase along the deep sandy path to my accommodation. I felt immediately at home. Within 48 hours I’d decided a week wasn’t long enough, and that I would have to come back.

I had planned for that first week to be time to keep to myself, to finally be alone, after the intensity of Bali. But inevitably as a solo tourist you find yourself talking to staff at the hotel, shopkeepers, locals, other travellers. The island was uber friendly.

On the second last night I met a local Hindu man of mixed blood (Balinese, Lombok, Flores & Sumba) with the most open smile I’d ever seen, sad eyes and a calmness of spirit that was soothing. We spent a few hours chatting, he played his guitar, and I sang. Would you believe it? I sang, unabashedly and willingly, to a strange man. It was an easy, peaceful evening. Another turning point.

But this put a huge question mark over my intentions to come back to Gili Meno. I didn’t want complications, certainly didn’t need them, and I most definitely didn’t want to get involved with a man. I wanted time to find my new direction in life – career wise – and had a little dream to open a healthy cafe on this little island. A relationship did not figure in this picture. And being a tiny weeny island, it would not be possible to avoid this man.

But again I believe Harley was guiding me, and in fact I believe he brought us together. We were to help one another.

So I decided to come back anyway, it felt like home to me, and come what may with the rest. Despite the incredible journey of healing I’d been travelling on since Harley died, and most especially in Bali, all journeys are a bit of a rollercoaster ride, and I was still prone at times to suicidal ideation and generally had a strong “what the hell” attitude. This feeling came and went, but was often profound enough that I hoped nature would help me out. I didn’t care if a strong current took me away and I drowned whilst snorkelling, or if lightning struck me in my tracks. It was only my own experience of the devastation and damage suicide causes to loved ones, and a surety in knowing that I couldn’t do that to my children nor Harley’s boys, that kept me going. But it was a reluctant and resigned approach that I often took to living.

Returning home to Australia confirmed to me that I couldn’t cope there. I could not walk along my beach in Kingscliff without crying, I couldn’t be in my home without memories and visions, and being around familiar haunts was just too painful. So I returned to Gili Meno. Be it an escape, or a new adventure and chapter in my life, who knows, and who cares really. I was at a crossroads and I chose the new path away from triggers.

During the next month in Gili Meno I spent time with Made and we got along incredibly well. Made is the sweetest man I’ve ever known, and he has a strong calming effect on me. Life here is slow paced, very different, sometimes illogical, but mostly peaceful. It is what I needed, and need.

So I have embarked on a journey of life, love and even a little BnB “project” in a new country, and a non-English speaking, developing country at that. An atheist with a newfound belief in the afterlife coming into a developing country where the culture is inseparable from its strong religions. A broken grieving woman falling into (or being guided into) a relationship with a man who also has a history of struggle and sadness. A man who is profoundly good for me and to me. And who respects that I am grieving for a man I loved more than love.

Recipes for disaster? Who knows. Time will tell, but strength and courage will lead. Awareness and honesty will support. And to a certain extent, I will continue to go with the flow.

I remember once an awful long time ago, when I was in hospital just after Hope was born. A girlfriend from my university course visited me and as we looked down at tiny little Hope, my friend asked me if I was happy. I’m sure it was a flippant and happy question. But I remember it took me by surprise, and that I was taken aback. Pity I didn’t realise the significance of that reaction back then. I was 24, three years into my relationship with John, I had become clucky and I’d just delivered my first beautiful perfect (albeit very premmie) little baby. But I have always been honest and straight, and I could not bring myself to answer her question with a yes. I remember distinctly thinking, no, I’m not happy because I am in a relationship that makes me unhappy, I’m a mess. Instead, I answered her with a little shake of my head and another question: “What is happiness anyway, really?”. We discussed briefly how happiness is elusive, fluctuating and, mostly, relative. But how when one goes to sleep at night crying, one probably isn’t happy, no matter how much we try to convince ourselves that things will get better.

Almost twenty years later I finally found the courage to admit to myself and the world that in fact I was more unhappy than happy, and had been so for way too many years, and after trying my darnedest for all those years to make it work for the kids’ sake and for the institution that was my marriage’s sake, I walked away from that damaging relationship.

A year later, when I was recovering from the mess of separation, divorce and the legal battle over property settlement, I was really loving being on my own and just starting to enjoy my independence, when the most amazing man on the planet came into my life, out from left field. A man of such joy and love and humour and energy and intelligence and inspiration and depth and connection. By far the best three years of my life, well at least the first 18 months anyway, were sheer bliss and the deepest love and connection, before the cracks started appearing in Harley’s life.

His death nearly killed me. Every cell in my body wanted to follow him. I could never ever love like that again, nor ever find a man as beautiful. Nor ever find happiness again. But you know, despite having my heart smashed into smithereens, and wanting nothing more than to end my days so that I could join him in the next realm, life is full of contradictions and ironies; strangely, I never felt that I wouldn’t love again.

And right now I feel blessed. Blessed that another good man has come into my life. I never asked for the moon and the stars, although I know I have been the luckiest girl in the world to have had that for a little while. All I ever wanted was an honest man to share my life and be good to me. Needless to say it’s early days, but, in Made, I have found this. Another unexpected love.

And I have found it in a place where I never have to jam my feet into wretched boots again. I loved snorkelling in Fiji many years ago, on Julian Rocks and the reefs in my beloved Byron Bay, and in the Red Sea in Egypt not long ago. In the waters off Gili Meno and Lombok I can pursue that love every day if I want to. It has become my form of meditation, in a quiet underwater world of colour.

Indonesia is a land of contrasts. Extreme poverty and yet immense gratitude. Deep religion and widespread corruption. Profound natural beauty and appalling environmental degradation. It’s people are naturally fatalistic but share a deep love of life and protect the sanctity of life.

Here I share a little in Made’s extensive family’s traditions and ceremonies, I learn about the innocent love the local Muslims have for their prophet and their mostly uncomplicated lives, in a world far removed from, but tainted as well by the threat of terrorism.

Here I live every day wearing my favourite clothes (sarongs and togs) and eat my all-time favourite foods (Indonesian and tropical fruits – especially copious servings of papaya!). Here I am surrounded by the two animals that have been my favourite since I was a girl (cats and horses), and I finally finally have made the time to explore my love of writing, a love I have held in my heart since I was a teenybopper. I hope to one day write something of note. Sometimes I think I was always coming here.

I am healing but I still grieve. I know I always will. I am learning to incorporate that grief into my life, and not let it bring me down too often, or too much. I miss my friends and family, and find I am a tad addicted to messenger to stay connected to them. I have only recently started missing my choirs, and harmonies. Not sure what to do about that yet. And recently I’ve rediscovered my desire to help those less fortunate, refugees, animals, or one day perhaps those who have been touched by the crippling effects of suicide. I’m not strong enough yet for that. Money is a dilemma, but I am also finally finding some courage to think of ways to address that.

Mostly what I am doing is finally living the words I often encouraged my beautiful man to follow. He loved the words and put them into a song but, tragically, never managed to follow them. For me, for now, I say thank you to all my friends, family and other amazing people I’ve met along the way, and to Indonesia, for enabling me to “live simply, and love fully”.