WAKING UP IN THE JUNGLE
A Menopausal Mother Goes Wild in Search of Inner Peace
Hi. I'm Audrey Obremski.
I’ve always been a seeker. My theory is that you can spot a seeker from a very young age. If your child can swing or rock indefinitely, enjoys making herself dizzy, and often prefers spacing out to hands-on, productive activities, you’ve got yourself a kid whose primary goal, if left to follow her heart, is to discover the meaning of life. Until quite recently, contemporary Western society has encouraged productivity over any kind of spiritual quest unless it took place on a Sunday morning in church or you had a degree in the arts or philosophy to validate meandering off to that dimension beyond our understanding. I truly believe the world is currently in such a mess to show us that the time has come to stop all of this frantic doing and allow the sweet stillness of our souls to calm us down and make things right.
Sometimes when I wake up in the morning I’m still surprised to see where my spiritual quest has taken me. The urge to move to the middle of nowhere in the Nicoya Peninsula of Costa Rica struck so loud and clear I have never questioned it. I have quite often wondered about it, but I have never once regretted it.
In 2008, overcome with an insatiable desire to be outside all the time, I sold my home on Nantucket Island, grabbed my husband, waved goodbye to three out of four daughters (one came with us), and set out to build a new house on 120 wild acres of tropical dry forest on an isolated stretch of coastline in Costa Rica.
The challenges I've encountered living a very rough hour and a quarter from a paved road, ATM, gas station, bank, or pharmacy have all served to help me find my soul. Now that I've found it, I'm ready to ditch my aversion to technology and share what I've learned from my adventure.
If you'd like to get a better idea of where I live, click here. The yellow star is Javilla. Above Javilla you can see a Y formed by trees growing along the riverbank. My house is a little past the point where the right arm of the Y meets the trees again after running through the pasture. Google Maps made a mistake about the name of the beach. It isn't Playa Javilla, it's Playa San Miguel. Mistakes are a way of life in these parts. Our favorite word since moving here is "whatever." We use it a lot.
For the record, just because I've found my soul doesn't mean I no longer say or do stupid things. Realizing I could be both enlightened and imperfect at the same time was one of the most liberating moments of my life. After all, I'm only human. And so are you. So let's celebrate this moment being flawed humans together:)