A week after A and I called it, I was putting in an offer on a condo. A gorgeous condo with 10-foot ceilings, recessed lights and dimmer switches, and top-down Levolor blinds. Did I mention that it was a two-minute walk to one of my favorite yoga studios, too? Well, it was. Even the wall colors looked like an exact match to the Ben Moore Manhattan tan and sea glass that filled my current home. I told myself--and my realtor--that I was just looking. Researching. And that I wasn't ready to fall in love right away. With a house--or another man. But this place had everything I wanted. (Read: everything I was already used to, everything I associated with comfort.) I tried my best to ignore my inner Veruca Salt, but I was determined to make this place mine. I wanted it now. So, my realtor and I reviewed comps, talked strategy, and I scrambled to get myself pre-approved, even though my down payment was locked up in my current home.
Apparently, 11 other buyers wanted it now, too. And even with my endearing letter, a best-and-final that was well over asking, and a bank that backed me up, I lost out. I was mentally prepared for this outcome--just as I was prepared for that Friday night conversation a couple months back, but the reality stung. Hard. Now what?
It took a little wallowing before I was able to see that, hidden in this heartbreak was an opportunity. A real golden egg. A day or two later, I got a blast e-mail from Dave Romanelli, the yoga + wine and yoga + chocolate teacher from NYC that I once took a workshop with at Exhale a few years back. The guy who inscribed my copy of his book with "Forever Drakkar" and then gave it a spritz. He was holding his annual Yoga for Foodies retreat in Sedona at Mii Amo in December. The retreat that I had read up on every year since and passed over because it was a bit pricey--not to mention far, far away. I signed up that very day.
In the six weeks leading up to my trip, I started to read up on Sedona and chatted with friends who had been there--both to the town, as well as to the all-inclusive destination spa/resort where the retreat was being held. And apparently, I had just booked myself a four-day trip to heaven on earth. A sage-scented, red rock-ensconced heaven where a handsome man would greet me with a necklace made out of ghost beads by a Native American elder, presents would be laid out on my bed every night, and my dessert would await me by the fireplace in my bedroom after I returned from my evening massage. Which I would follow up with a dip in the hot tub under a starry sky, a glass of wine resting on a ledge behind my shoulder. That kind of heaven.
That kind of heaven also included some decadent spa treatments like facials and clay wraps, and some powerful, emotion-releasing ones, too. One of these was a reiki healing attunement. With nothing more than her two warm, healing hands, Dana conducted and released the doubts and worries and uncertainties that had been caught inside me. Since the break-up. Since well before then. Palpitations that knew no better.
Words can't do justice to the experience, but it was a release like I have never felt before. Like a door that had been sealed shut for so, so long was now able to swing wide open. From my heart center to my hip bones, all I felt was space. Lightness. Freedom. Right then and there, in this body of mine that I've been carting around for all these years, I found myself at home.
Soundtrack: "Landslide" by Fleetwood Mac
