Summer, a year mark, staying on…

 Summer has come and gone without much noise. It went by fast. Before you know it, we had been here a year. I have had countless moments when I wanted to write, share the process, the journey, the pictures, and didn't. I figured it wasn't September 21st yet, I still had time… and then all of a sudden, Fall was here, and we were well into our second year, full steam ahead, with no time to write.

Tonight, after a good few months of bliss and ease and feeling more grounded here, I'm being hit with an unexpected bout of homesickness for all things LA. And it's usually in those moments that it feels good to write. It's cathartic. It's my therapy, since I don't have that anymore here.

If I go back to my last post, that was 6 months ago. Geesh! That seems like a lifetime ago! Well, we entered into summer with the visit of a dear neighbor, which was very refreshing and very encouraging. I love getting visitors from LA, because it gives me a reality check. They come here, into our tiny one bedroom apartment (yes, one bedroom, you read that right), located in a mansion of a house with a garden worthy of the Huntington Gardens, and they see all we do, and the way we live, and they feel happy for us. And excited. And they see all that we do have, when we sometimes forget and see only what we have lost. It is always super helpful to have someone who knew you well in your old environment, come and see you in the new one and marvel at this new place you moved to. This summer, we had the joy and the delight of experiencing that three times. Over a long weekend with our LA neighbor Dana, over two and a half weeks with our dear friends Lorraine and Addie, and  for a few days with our best and oldest (as in, we go way back!) LA friends Ron and Debbie.
I have loved taking all of them around and showing them my beautiful country. The vineyard area we live close to is a Unesco site and is absolutely breathtaking. The Alps are magnificent, so diverse, and majestic, and so close to us, it is a pride to take people there.
With Lorraine, though the weather wasn't so great, we did a lot of local things, enjoyed the lake, went hiking, fishing, barbecued, partied, drank wine, jaccuzied and just had a fabulous time. I feel so blessed that she would have come all the way here to visit us with her daughter!

At the end of the summer, Michael started a new job in Geneva as a teacher in an international school. He now commutes by train to Geneva and spends an average of 3 hours a day on the way to work and back. He uses this time to work on his photography on the laptop. It's not the dream job, but it beats pulling weeds in the rain, like he did for a whole year. I am so grateful to him for the sacrifices he made during that year. It was tough. He dreamed of LA every day. He was a nobody. He lost his pride, his identity, all of that so we could be happy. I am very relieved that he found a job that's more down his alley, and so proud of him for chasing his dreams and becoming an independent professional photographer on the side. Speaking of which, he has photographed 4 weddings this past year, and with the exception of one, I accompanied him and we worked together on those. We had such a blast! With each one we are becoming better. We are now in the midst of shooting family portraits and again are having a fantastic time. If you haven't done so yet, you should check out his work at www.michaelthompson.photodeck.com
The kids started a new school year with new teachers. They are happy and thriving. Kahleo started Capoeira classes, which is a brazilian combat dance, and he loves it. He is still mostly a nature boy who can tell you anything you need to know about any animal, their habitat, diet and lifestyle. He is becoming a real bookworm and reads, reads, reads for hours on end when he is done running around in nature.  Kaelan started music classes and is constantly singing or reciting the poems he is learning at school. I call him our tweety bird. He is also begging to start soccer, so the dreaded soccer mom job I have been able to avoid for years is soon coming my way.
Both of them have best friends and great teachers, and we know we made the right decision when we look at their lives and how they are unfolding right now.

As for me, I continue to practice EFT with couples, supervise practitioners who are learning the model, and hold couples weekends. We just hosted our second Hold Me Tight workshop with Michael, which was another great success. It's really a joy to work together in each other's domain of expertise.
I was asked to teach in YWAM again this Fall but declined. I have been saying yes to everything that is coming my way and started feeling like it was too much.
I also graduated from the Institue of Integrative Nutrition and see a few clients for health coaching. I haven't had as much time as I would have liked to, to develop a program and some workshops, but I am keeping that in my back pocket for the near future.

So that's the update on all our doings.
About our being and our feelings… Entering into our second year has made a big difference for me. Things feel familiar. I see the end of summer and I know what is coming. After a very rainy summer, we were blessed to have a beautiful sunny fall, with luxuriant colors and warm days, stunning sunsets, grape harvest festival and all, all these things I remembered from last year but that were even better this year because of the weather, and because it had an air of familiarity this time around. And that felt good. That felt grounding. I feel more rooted. I can look forward to what is coming next, to the leaves falling, the rain coming, the ski days and the fondue and raclettes, well deserved after a day in the cold. Reading books with candles lit, music playing in the background. Those days when you just stay home and cocoon, or you watch a movie. And then comes spring, with the explosion of flowers and perfumes. And summer with its long days and paddle boarding on the lake and bbq with friends. I love seasons! I didn't realize how much I had missed them, and I think they make the year feel more colorful.
So I look back and I feel grateful, so grateful, that we took this risk to loose everything, just to see if this was for us. And that we had the courage to say that yes, it was, even though we didn't have all our ducks in a row (and still don't), and didn't feel completely at home here. I am so thankful to my parents for their generosity and hospitality. Without them, we could have never done this. Never. I am thankful to my God for leading us, for nudging us gently, and for providing us with amazing friends and community, for allowing our dreams to take shape, little by little. We had a dream, when we came here, to open a retreat center, where we would do couples weekends, art, gardening, and a whole lot of other things. We don't have the retreat center yet, but we are doing couples workshops, we are doing art (photography), we have a garden, and we occasionally open our house up for people who need a break from their circumstances. All of that has felt VERY fulfilling, and we know there is more coming. In the mean time, we plug at it, diligently, trying to listen and follow.

At Xmas, we are coming to LA to pick up all our stuff. I dread it. I dread going back, literally, and feeling split again. I dread feeling myself in LA. I feel like I have just started really feeling myself here. And I am one to assimilate. It's as if I don't really tolerate the tension well. I'm all in, or not. It was the same in LA, though it took me longer. But I completely assimilated. English is still my first choice of language. The one I feel most comfortable in. But I also feel that it might be clarifying to go through that step, and we can't avoid it. The end of a chapter, and the continuation of a new one.