What I see each morning when I wake up. The mountains are literally right there. It's such an amazing view that a photo just can't capture it.
Drinking Alpine water on the balcony each morning and breathing deeply of the freshest air on earth. I'm a lucky girl.If you haven't heard what's been going on in my life lately...here is the update!!
So, the story goes:
I was in Rome and getting ready to take the students I was traveling with to Venice. One of the mothers left her passport on the bus after we had already traveled by train to the station. Our next train left in an hour and it was up to me to track down the lost passport. I had to get the bus company to tell me where the bus was, call the bus driver, speak some bad Italian, ask him to wait where he was, hop in a taxi and drive like mad to the inner city of crazy Rome, get the passport, whisk back to the train station only to see the train depart without us on it.
I got my group settled and went to wait in yet another never-ending line in Rome to change our tickets. I got in line and about five seconds later an elegant and refined lady got in line behind me. She was beautiful and a sense of dignity and kindness just radiated from her. I turned to her to double check that I was standing in the right line. She assured me that I was and we began talking. We talked for the forty five minutes it took us to wait in line. We talked about her book and her clinic, we talked about her documentary and her television specials on Oprah and 20/20. We talked about my background, my travels, my work, my life. Before we got to the counter she had offered me a job and I had accepted. That was on Wednesday, and we planned for me to travel to Switzerland on Sunday with one of their good friends who was in Austria, where I would be.
So I took my students to Venice, had some lovely time there myself. I then took a night train to Salzburg and visited that lovely city for two days before taking a bus to the Austrian countryside to stay with my new lovely friend Diana. She has a house right on the lake of the beautiful town of Strobl. She was so amazingly lovely and kind and we drove the next day for ten hours across Austria, Germany, and most of Switzerland until we reached the little mountain village of Cranz-Montana. We became fast friends after that and it is seriously as if I have known her for a long long time.
So now we are situated in a lovely ski chalet and the mountains right out our door and I am being trained for the clinic that will open next year in Portugal.
The job has been offered. I would run the educational system of the clinic that is going to be opening. The clinic is a recovery center for people suffering from eating disorders and there is a lot of work to be done to save their lives and help them reach a state of recovery. I recommend that any of you wanting to understand more of what I will be doing to read Peggy’s book: The Secret Language of Eating Disorders by Peggy Claude-Pierre. I would also be assisting Peggy in her current research studies, helping her write her books and also work with her on her seminars across the world. I would help her produce the play she has written as well as possibly helping with some film work. Phew….is that enough do you think?!
The question now comes down to this…do I do it? Many of you immediately shout YES do it!!! But life is always a bit more complicated than that. I have a job I love back in Utah, I have my family that I love , I have a house full of furniture (would any of you like to buy some of my furniture, I will need to get rid of a lot of things in August) and a life that I have created. I have my photography business, my gallery show, all of these things that I was planning on doing,
and yet, and yet…
I think of what it took for the universe to bring Peggy and I together at just such a moment. I have been feeling a big shift coming into my life for awhile, I have felt the desire to challenge myself and grow and be better than I have been. We all do that in our lives, don’t we? We don’t want to get too complacent about things do we? The job would not be all rosy, it would be very hard. People suffering from eating disorders are some of the hardest people to help heal and recover. And yet, I feel that this job would expand my capacity for love and kindness and charity in a way that I have never yet been expanded. I want my life to center around loving and helping others, I always have, and here, presented to me in Europe, is just such a job.
What do you think?
