Alaska PART THREE

From the Beach Bar to the Last Frontier.

Continued from part two

The first weekend Liz was gone, Allison mentioned a yoga retreat she was attending. “It’s in a yurt up on Diamond Ridge,” she told me one day while we were planting turnips, excitement rising in her voice as she went on, “It’s the whole weekend, and we could carpool if you want to go!”

To be completely honest, Allison was usually excited about everything. Allison always had a huge smile and a kind thing to say. During the first few days of our arrival in Alaska, I met one of Allison’s friends, Kara. “When I first met Allison,” Kara told me that night, “it was on the side of the road in Colorado.” There had been an incredible double rainbow, and Allison had pulled her car over, waving to people driving by to look to their right and see it. I could not think of a more fitting story to describe Allison.

On the farm, we all had nicknames. But I had my own special nickname for Allison. “Tiny.” She thought it was hilarious as she was not a tiny person at six feet tall, but I finally explained it to her over a cocktail, my last week in Alaska.

“It’s because your heart is so huge that it wouldn’t matter how big you are, your body would always be tiny in comparison to your heart. “I don’t even know how your heart fits in there,” I told her. And she lit up, smiling so big that it made me want to cry. “Yous so sweet, Mags!!!” she said wrapping me into a huge hug.

Mags was my nickname on the farm. A combo of my first and middle. Mary Agnes, Mags. It felt like I had taken on another personality that summer with a new name. Mags was a farmer who lived on a homestead and showered outside and had an outhouse. Mags volunteered at the local library. Mags baked.

Mags was happy.

Allison sent me the link for the yoga retreat after work, and I looked it up immediately. Perhaps Mags was a yoga person now, too? The event was run by a woman named Anna and was labeled as a “Kundalini Yoga Retreat.” I had never done Kundalini before, but I was desperate for something distracting and fun. The next morning, I spoke on the phone with my friend Cali, who was on the East Coast. “You should definitely go,” she told me after I mentioned the retreat. It was a little pricey, so I had been back and forth about it on our phone call. Two minutes after we hung up, I received a Venmo notification on my phone. Cali had sent half the cost of the retreat with a note saying, “Now you can go.”

I signed up.

The retreat began Friday night. Everyone assembled into the brightly lit Yurt and found their spots on their yoga mats to face our teacher, Anna. She did a few breathing exercises before having us settle in to listen to a story that would set the theme for our next two days together: “Returning to Oneself.”

Anna was an amazing storyteller. I noticed how everyone else was as captivated as I was by listening to her.

One day, a fisherman noticed a group of seal maidens dancing upon the shore. They had glistening white skin and beautiful, long hair. He had never seen anything so beautiful. Each of them had stepped out of their seal skins to dance on the beach. While they danced, the fisherman walked over and grabbed one of the skins.

As it was time to go, each seal maiden ran to grab her skin and jump back into the ocean. One seal nervously looked around everywhere but could not find her skin. Then, she saw the fisherman holding it from her. She approached him to ask for it, but he told her it was his pelt now and that the only way she would get it back was if she married him.

With no choice, she went home with him. They married. Eventually, she became pregnant. As the son grew up, the seal maiden slowly grew old. She lost her shine; her nails started to break. Her hair fell out. Slowly, without her pelt, she was dying. One night, the boy heard his parents fighting. He heard his mother telling the man that he had made a promise. She married him. She gave him a child. She needed her pelt back now. But the man refused and yelled back, asking how she would ever want to leave her family now.

In the distance, the boy hears his name being called. It’s stormy outside, but he goes outside and follows the voice. Eventually, he is led to the sea. And there, tossed behind a rock, is his mother’s seal skin. He walks over to it, not knowing what it is, and holds it to his face, inhaling. Suddenly, he gets an overwhelming feeling of his mother. He takes the skin back to the home, where his father is now sleeping, and shows it to his mother. Her eyes light up at the sight of it. She immediately puts it on and feels better, then takes his hand and leads him to the water. She breathes her magic into the child and then takes him into the sea, showing him her world. As the magical breath starts to wear off, she brings him back up to the surface and promises to visit.

Anna stares around the room at us after she finishes the story. We were all digesting the words differently.

It wasn’t until the next day that we began to explore the story and see how it wove itself into our own, how the loss of the woman’s pelt was a metaphor for the loss of herself. How had we lost ourselves? A woman in the front shared, through tears, how she felt she had lost herself since having her children, as her life now revolved around them, survival, and work. She couldn’t remember the last time she had made one of her paintings.

For the next half hour, women shared their stories, and all I could think about was the child.

“But his mother left him!” I thought, angrily!

His story, instead of hers, was the one haunting me. The one that had woven its sad, tragic claws around my thoughts. My initial response was one centered around him. But as the day progressed, I reframed my thoughts. I couldn’t control losing my mother, but I could control continuing to lose myself. So, I would focus on that instead. And I would try to figure out how to get my pelt back.

Our weekend was spent practicing Kundalini yoga, enjoying homemade blueberry and buckwheat muffins, as well as fresh soups and tea, all made by Anna. We sat in nature, practiced guided writing, and listened to the symphonic gong.

On our last day, we discussed the man versus the seal maiden. Ego versus Soul. Ego, played as the fisherman, goes after what he wants so desperately. We all have that within us. The want. The desire. Sometimes so desperate we lose track of what we already have – because our want overshadows everything.

For so long, I wanted a partner. I wanted my own family. I dreamt about it all the time. I created stories to manifest it. It was that part of my ego I wanted to silence now. I just wanted to enjoy the things I had, and not hyperfocus so desperately on what I did not have yet. I had to remember what the ego gave me that was good. Without my ego, I would have never believed in myself and my More Good mission. It made me believe people would show up for me, and they did. It gave me the confidence to ask for what I needed, which I did.

My soul was the one that provided me with my open heart, so trusting and forgiving (at times to a fault). My heart has brought me to places of great love and connection and dragged me through the mud of deep hurt and loss. It is a tricky balance; I realize now that I had been given this gift. And when I finally got off the road in 2019, I know now, my seal skin was dried up like the seal maiden. I had lost my shine. I had to find my way back to myself.

And it was Alaska that was helping me return to my skin. It was putting the shine back in my eyes. It was here that I wasn’t bound by a script society had written for women. I didn’t feel like a failure at my age for not having a husband and a child yet. I felt like an adventurer here. I felt brave. Strong. Resilient. And I was surrounded by like-minded people. I spent my days working in the dirt in fresh air, surrounded by mountains, glaciers, and saltwater. This place was different than anywhere I had ever been. I learned that the very first week I had arrived, when I was introduced to John.

*To be continued.

A very short video I created to thank Anna for this beautiful weekend in June 2024.