Something has always pulled me towards nature. Towards the peace and serenity that comes from connecting with the same earth I was born from. I’ve been lucky to call many places home. I grew up in Solon Springs, Wisconsin, graduated from a high school on the Iron Range of Minnesota, and attended college in Duluth, Minnesota.
I met my husband while living life in Duluth. After we married, we packed up and moved to Los Angeles, California. It was the big city that really broke me. It was the city of dreams and boy did I dream. I didn’t miss a beat. But it also was the city of heartache and redemption. After a long battle with addiction, it was LA that brought me to my knees. My husband, too.We found sobriety and a new chance at living life.
After getting sober, we knew LA wasn’t for us, so we moved north to Santa Clarita, California. We worked a recovery program among one of the greatest recovery communities in the country. When we had our son and were ready to plant some roots, we didn’t know if Santa Clarita was the right place for us. We found out about this little mountain town called Tehachapi. And unexpectedly, we found our paradise.
After visiting Bear Valley Springs in Tehachapi, California, we knew right away that this place was full of magic. It was the perfect mix of all the things we loved about living in the Midwest, without all the things we didn’t love. We bought our dream home with land, privacy, peace and quiet. With abundant nature and the most breathtaking views of the mountains from our windows, we were finally home. We found “our place”, the home we would raise our children in. Bye, bye city life! It really was a dream come true.
For me, I see our entire journey as necessary for us to find our path. Each experience, each failure and each success, is a chance for us to learn to be more true to ourselves. To find the very self we were born as, to let go of all that the world influenced us to be. In the small town, I wanted more. Bigger. On the iron range, I lost myself in addiction. In college, I dove deeper into my addiction. Never satisfied, and always wanting more from life.
The move to California challenged me more than ever. In LA, it’s easy to get swept into “lala land” and it’s not necessarily a good thing. I tried so hard to find myself there. Searching for validation and love from others, not knowing what I really needed to learn was how to love myself. To be true to my spirit, I had to recover from my addictions. Over close to eight years, sober for five, having a baby and becoming a woman, I’ve gotten in touch with the truth of my spirit.
This spirit called me back to nature. To the mountains. Here I could breath and really live my life the way it was meant to be lived. God led the way. Every step, from childhood to today. Each experience was significant. One thing is for sure, I love my life today. I truly believe in the saying “home is where the heart is”, and to me, the heart is as wide open as the earth. It can grow, manifest dreams and find peace and happiness anywhere it chooses.
