Universe, Surprise Me!!!
How I Approached the Trip The Colombia Collection, Part A
This year began with an intention: to love and accept myself from every angle. Not just the parts of me that are beautiful, creative, good, positive, but the ones I’d rather not look at too closely. The places where I see myself as ugly, or bad, or wrong. The shame and guilt that live underneath whatever I’ve done or left undone. All of it. I wanted to accept everything I carry, not just the parts that are easy to love.
It’s been a marvelous year because of that intention. Not always easy, but quite amazing, when I let myself see it through those eyes instead of the old ones.
So the trip to Colombia grew out of that same ground. I’d already been holding the idea of going back, to Cali especially, a place I hadn’t returned to in years, sometime around the middle of the year. It had stayed as an idea, loosely held, like many times before, until an invitation made it real: a chance to celebrate 40 years since graduating with my class at Colegio Bolívar, the group I shared sixth through ninth grade with. That invitation is what turned “someday” into a commitment I had to follow through on.
Saying yes wasn’t simple. As an entrepreneur, my income moves in waves. Sometimes it moves in an abundant way, sometimes not, and this was a real gamble against that rhythm. But I’d already said yes, and that meant everything underneath it had to shift too. I had to almost completely let go and trust. Something I’ve been learning to do more often now.
I would be gone for several weeks. Away from clients, away from work. I had to leave my son, who is autistic and lives with severe OCD, to manage the house, this time with less support than usual, since my daughter had just started school and was stretched thin herself. I had to be okay leaving the country while all of that was true. Financially, everything still needed to be covered. It was a lot of letting go, all at once.
A couple of weeks before I left, I had a real conversation with the Creator, with my higher self, with my guides. And somewhere in that conversation, I understood something simple and enormous at the same time: I REALLY, REALLY had no control over how things came to me. The only thing I could actually do was respond,… with my actions, and with my feelings…. I relaxed!!!!
And then the most beautiful thing began happening. I didn’t just watch the trip unfold from a distance. I felt it, ease where I expected strain, trust where I expected to be gripping the wheel. And I can say honestly that I received immediate answers to everything I’d felt and thought before I left. The trip met me with beauty, generosity, warmth, and abundance expressed in so many different ways and from every angle I could have looked from. It filled my heart in a way I wasn’t fully prepared for.
I won’t list the specific ways that showed up. That’s not really the point, and naming them turns this into a story about what I got instead of a story about what happened when I let go. What I want to be clear about is simpler than any of that: how we approach things is how the universe responds. I let go of constriction, and what met me was abundance (gifts, spaces, conversations, connection, beauty, kindness, etc).
