It took a good, swift kick in the ass for me to change my life.
More specifically, it took being rammed by a cow on a small side street just off the beach at sunset in India to do the trick to show me the way.
Life looked great on the outside. I had started a travel blog with my then partner and became a digital nomad. I opted for a sort of glamorous homelessness, working and living in hotels, hostels and housesits around the world.
Hustling your own start-up is never easy, but the added challenges of third-world dial-up internet, unpredictable accommodation options, constant scarfing down of local breads, booze and pastries (hey, it was part of the job, no?) and the balance of exploring all day and running the business all night took a toll on my health and wellness.
At 30, I felt old and tired. I had skin issues, my joints were inflamed, my bones felt creaky and I felt like I didn't have the emotional energy reserves to bring my business to the next level even though I had all the passion and ideas to get it there.
The truth is, I had been feeling sorry for myself. I was eating Poor Me soup over-seasoned with self-pity. I had every opportunity in the world open to me, and I wasn’t taking advantage of it at all.
Then, things got a lot worse.
Behind me, two cows (because it’s India, and there are always cows) were aggressively sparring on the street. Looking for a quick escape, one cow compared my slow pace and slight size to the hundreds of motorcycles, cars and tuk tuks and decided I was the easiest obstacle to clear as an escape route up the street.
To move me, he rammed his horns in the back of my hamstrings, lifting me up into the air and tossing me to the side of the road at the entrance of a colorful textile shop.
Before I knew what had happened, I felt the same rush in my belly as when you drive over a small hill in a road that you didn’t quite know was coming. I flew up and then smacked down onto the pavement on my right hip. From the amount of searing pain, I thought I cracked my pelvis, but a late night trip to three different hospitals revealed that I had ripped a back muscle and possibly snapped a tendon or ligament in the pelvic region.
The hip/pelvic pain was so intense, it took two days for me to realize my thighs had actually swollen together from blunt force of the horns themselves.
8 days later I was on a 27-hour plane journey to a housesit in Arizona, where the traveling and housesitting continued. I had time to reflect on how low I had gotten in my emotional and spiritual life.
Sometimes you have to be thrown up three feet in the air to see how low you’ve gotten.
It was during this time that self-care came into play in my life in a real way. I swam in the in-ground pool in the Tucson housesit and went for long hikes through the desert. After Arizona, I continued on to a remote beach house in Mexico, where I practiced yoga on the roof at sunrise, watching the sky change from deep purple to bright blue over the calm Caribbean water. As my body got stronger and my injuries healed, I did Insanity on the deck of our infinity pool in our Costa Rican jungle beach house and continued on with yoga and meditation.
My body began working for me, not against me. I stopped feeling sorry for myself and felt entirely in control of my actions. Things no longer happened to me. I made things happen.
For the next two years, that shift in mindset brought on many changes in my work and personal life. I stopped drinking entirely and cleaned up my diet. I started a podcast and ran interviews on my blog about women creating businesses that allowed them to travel. I reached out and up to people I admired and they turned into a circle of acquaintances and friends. I followed whatever inspired me.
I started to understand the power of connection and travel and pursuing a goal with everything you’ve got.
In 2014, I joined a group of 15 travelers and hiked the amazing Salkantay trek to Machu Picchu in Peru for five days in the rainy season at 15,000 feet. I was the first in our group to make it to the highest summit on day 2. Watching the rest of the group huff and puff their way up the final steep incline gave me pause and perspective on how far I had come in those two years, physically, emotionally and spiritually.
I also knew then that it was time to step away from my partner and move on to a new chapter in my life.
Thanks to the cow and the self-care that followed, I know how to listen to my inner voice, appreciate what makes me feel good and be brave enough to make changes when things aren’t right.
And damn it if I don’t still feel pain in my hip sometimes. I call that area ‘my cow,’ as in ‘Ah, my cow hurts today.’ It’s a near-constant reminder of the humbling lessons I have learned along the way.