One year down
celebrating the wildest 12 month ride of my life
Happy I meant to send this on Friday but Lenny didn’t nap then I procrastinated on Monday so Tuesday it is to YOU!
Diving right in. Last Friday marked ONE YEAR of us moving from Costa Rica to New York and wowwww how is any of that even real?
Up until now, trying to put any coherent sentences together about moving internationally with a 7-week old and a 3.5 year old; or trying to describe somewhat accurately what it was like spending the entirety of my second pregnancy in a remote beach town in a foreign country; or explaining the nuances within the immensely daunting challenge of choosing where to spend this next chapter of life when priorities and lifestyle preferences differed from my husband; or what it was like to take the lead on making a gigantic leap of faith decision for our entire family; or just having enough time to even reflect on any of this… felt impossible to do.
Even now, as I write all of these words, my thoughts about the past two years feel incomplete and scattered. I’m already anticipating this post feeling disappointing, stressful, confusing and frankly — kind of depressing, which, if we’re being honest, is a very real reflection of how the majority of my year living in Costa Rica felt for me. I would say I’m experiencing 10% confusion, 20% shame and 70% relief writing about my experience living abroad. I also have a math disability so who knows if that’s even really all that accurate.
But here’s what I know to be true: I have zero regrets about any of the decisions I made with Sam over the last two+ years when we uprooted from what would arguably be a very stable, very practical life in DC to enter into a metaphorical and literal jungle of confrontations and evolutions around what the concepts of home really mean to us.
What a blessing it is to be able to take a risk, try something new, struggle through, learn, recalibrate and alter our journeys in this life. If I could go back to Jesse of two years ago, before moving to Costa Rica and eventually New York, I would tell her: Going lighter with those highlights was a mistake. And also breathe. This is going to be even harder than you anticipated, and also, so much more rewarding than your wildest dreams. Oh and those pregnancy tests you brought from the states strictly for emergency purposes? Surprise! It’s an emergency!
I used to subscribe to the everything happens for a reason school of thought. As comforting of an idea that may be, it also now feels problematic to me. I refuse to believe that trauma, unthinkable grief, and terror have a moral purpose and predestined obligatory curriculum for us. There are some things that happen that are in fact, inexplicably horrendous and should not have happened, and trying to find the silver lining feels like a lie we are fed as a way to swallow our sadness. But at the same time, I firmly believe we have the agency and creative processing to give whatever meaning we choose to the things that happen in our lives. Some of my best emotional work, I think, is my optimistic flipping of shitty pancakes.
For instance —
As I look back on getting pregnant day one of us living in Nosara, I’m choosing to see my pregnancy as a reflection of my body knowing something my brain did not yet compute. My body felt safe, excited, healthy, and in a state of acceptance of whatever was coming my way. And even though I was absolutely rocked by pregnancy in Costa Rica, I know deep in my uterus/soul that going through my pregnancy in the way I did strengthened my commitment to Sam, Wes, Lenny, and myself tenfold. We allllll survived something big together that year.
Speaking of… for those who don’t know, there were zero hospitals within two hours of where we lived in Nosara, so I flew (yes, flew) for every.single.one.of.my.OB.appointments to the capital, San Jose. And because of the way our schedules unfolded in Nosara, for almost all of those appointments it was just me and Lenny bobbing around inside of me, taking an early morning tuktuk to a 10-person plane, flying for 40 rocky minutes, then making my way from the airport to my doctor’s private office in San Jose. Was it an insane way to spend my second pregnancy? Objectively, yes. But at the same time, I look back at those times with such an appreciation and celebration for what I was capable of doing. When there is no alternative, we really do adapt. And even though I would not necessarily recommend getting pregnant while living abroad in a remote surf town where even though you studied Spanish throughout college, you’re proficient at best, if you do find yourself in similar circumstances, you too will also adjust accordingly. Being forced to stretch our capacities makes space for more life to be lived every single time.
Some of you may wonder, so how does one go from deciding to move from DC to Costa Rica, get pregnant in Costa Rica, have a baby in Costa Rica, and then decide things weren’t exciting enough and move your entire family to Brooklyn? The irony is, I don’t think Brooklyn would’ve been in the realm of possibilities without all of the chapters outside of New York we had lived leading up to it.
Let me try to explain.
I’ve never been someone to settle down easily. My friend Patrick recently reflected back to me, “You seem to be on a quest for… belonging?” Even though I found that offensive, it’s because it’s painfully true and so classic ugh. While I wholeheartedly reject the tragic mulatto stereotype, there is something that feels painfully isolating and at times, I guess a little tragic, as a mixed person, and a particular, rare flavor when you’re Black and White and Jewish, and especially during this failing United States social experiment that only other mixed people with similar backgrounds can really grasp. And even then, our experiences vary so much, that there’s not a whole lot to really hold onto for support. And even though we all (the mixed people of the world? workshopping how to refer to our community) grasp that feeling, it manifests in so many different ways for all of us, that there is so much nuance that makes it difficult to fully feel into any of this. My mixedness is not everything and at the same time it is so much of what makes me who I am. At my core, I know that there is, of course, more to me than how I am incompletely perceived, and yet, as someone who floats through multiple identity spaces at any given moment, my environment is very impactful on how I experience myself. Or something like that.
I think if you are firmly rooted in who you are, and connected to your body, living in Nosara is a great place to connect with oneself. There is no doubt that living by the ocean is healing for the mind, body and soul, and I think that people who do their best there (aka my husband) turned to the ocean as a life mentor. Unfortunately, I am not as trusting of the ocean as my husband, and therefore, I was never able to relax in the same ways he did. I’m also not as trusting of any place where white people in harem pants refer to themselves as “healer” and “sister.” Grifters exist everywhere, of course, but I do think that the jungle attracts a particular brand of snakes that will suck you dry right before they suggest you consider polyamory instead of therapy and relentlessly try to convince you to buy a million dollar property in their eco village community in the mountains.
But I don’t think I need to do a deep dive, at least right now, and maybe ever, into all the issues I had with Nosara. Truthfully, my feelings changed daily, everything felt up and down, and my experience was highly correlated to where I was at in my pregnancy. Nosara is one town in one of the most biodiverse places in the world, and I also don’t feel that well equipped to dissect the ins and outs of a place I lived for one year. But what I do feel confident in, is my willingness to take leaps of faith. I’ve been leaping hard since I was nineteen, when I decided to transfer from NYU to Wesleyan my junior year of college, which I still think was a really big deal for a lost nineteen year old barely adult woman to do. Transferring to Wesleyan single-handedly changed the trajectory of my life, and it’s wild to think of a scenario where I stayed miserable at NYU just because filling out transfer applications was a pain in the ass and embarrassing to admit defeat. I lept hard for Sam at twenty, which was the biggest leap for both of us, to commit to anything before our frontal lobes had fully developed. I’m so happy we’re both impulsive frogs.
Sam and I lept big in our jobs, grinding hard in our early twenties, pretending like we were adults who had any business making life altering decisions. Going from teaching kindergarten to becoming a psychologist was the leap that keeps on leaping. Choosing a career path where I am constantly in my feelings and holding space for others in their feelings comes highly naturally to me and feels like it’s not always the best for my mental health. But I also have a deep knowing that I’m meant to be doing this work in some way or another. It’s forced me to confront so much of myself and now that we’ve opened pandora’s box there’s no going back!
The decision to move from Nosara to Brooklyn didn’t strike me like lightning, it trickled into my consciousness like a persistent leak. Over my tenure in DC as a young adult, I would frequently say, “there’s NO WAY I could ever live in Brooklyn.” But what I think I was actually saying was, “I’m terrified to admit that I want to live here, that I’m jealous of everyone who gets to call this place home. Let me pretend I hate it, so I’m not disappointed that I don’t get to be a part of it.” Anticipating we won’t belong somewhere is common place for mixed people. Hating on Brooklyn was protective, and also, just dumb. It’s fine to not want to live somewhere, but at a certain point, when you’re exerting so much energy judging a place, hating a place, complaining about a place, and thinking about how much you don’t like the place, one has to stop and ask the question, “Wait, am I actually maybe obsessed with this place?” I don’t know, just a thought.
Through both of my early adulthood stints with New York I think I was begging New York to tell me who I was. When I moved back to New York shortly after graduating from Wesleyan, I thought that proximity to the city would ultimately get me closer to who I was supposed to be. While that’s a cute idea, it’s an absolute fantasy. New York is not my friend, but New York is my mirror. And Brooklyn, in particular, holds up a past, present, and future vision of my subconscious desires, fears, and every feeling in between.
I realized very quickly during my time in Costa Rica, that in my heart of hearts, I am a city girl. I don’t need to live in the belly of the beast. In fact, that’s actually really overwhelming to me. But I need to be close to the action. My pulse beats with and from energy, and the energy in a place like New York is absolutely electric. It just is. Even if it’s going haywire, which it often is, it’s undeniably A L I V E. I also do believe that for a mixed family, New York, and more specifically Brooklyn, is our mecca. Is it problematic at times? Of course. Are many of the stereotypes about Brooklyn interracial couples true? Guilty. But there is a full spectrum of expression—cultural, ethnic, racial and beyond—in Brooklyn that is undeniable. The coolest people here are also the weirdest. They’re the ones who don’t ascribe to binary anything, and have no problem being in your face about it. And I LOVE that commitment to celebration of eccentricities. Of freak flags. Of full spectrumness. Wes walked out of the house in a Buzz Lightyear costume yesterday, just because, and a man on the street yelled, “To infinity and beyond my brother!”
I also want to spotlight Sam’s willingness to trust me on trying out Brooklyn for our family. He is the first one to admit that he was not adamant on coming here, at all. And while I joke that Nosara is the other woman in his life, I really do think he was on some real grown man shit letting me passionately but very much blindly steer us next to the Gowanus canal.
This first year of Brooklyn living was not easy, but it was also not as hard as I anticipated. I think that’s because we’re in alignment here. At least for the time being. If we’ve learned anything from the past two+ years, it’s that we really can’t plan too far ahead. And that’s okay. But what I do know, is I’m not having any urges to flee our life here. I’m not feeling unsettled in a way that feels unsafe. And every single day I leave our apartment, even if I’m just walking to the corner to get a cup of coffee, I feel inspired. My nervous system is somehow… regulated? I know it doesn’t really make sense on paper, but it makes sense in my body. We have so many people, new and old, rooted here, and so many who pass through, and the buzz of activity is energizing for all of us. Lenny’s favorite activity these days is crawling up the two flights of stairs to our apartment. Wes loves zooming around on his scooter to various playgrounds, waving hi to all of our neighbors and friends we run into on the street. Sam is hustling hard, while still able to prioritize great food and great company, and oh yeah, training for the New York Marathon in November. And I’m in a process of returning back to myself. I’m reconnecting with people who represent all aspects of myself, many of whom are now moms as well, and it feels so comforting to be navigating this New York psychedelic parenting trip together. I’m opening up my therapy practice to clients in New York this fall, and I’m working on a creative project that I’m really excited to share more about soon. We are in a constant state of motion here, and that’s just how we roll.
I’m only a year in, but I feel like a part of me has lived in New York many lifetimes before. Like some specks of my spirit have always haunted a rent stabilized apartment in Brooklyn, whispering, then shouting for me to come home already.
Love,
Jesse
I have CHILLS reading this!!!!!