What Blows Your Hair Back?
Image credit: La Carolina Lodge
Picture your favorite local watering hole. The place where you’re instantly comfortable when you walk in the door because the bartender knows your name and exactly what you’re drinking and whether it’s a single or a double by the look on your face and the energy you bring with you.
I was that bartender. 🙋🏻♀️
There were days I loved it, but there were days that left me hating everyone because not only did I hold space in my soul for all of the regulars, but also the new people and tourists who found their way to my bar.
Bartending wasn’t just about making drinks. 🥂 It was about connecting with each person that came through the door.
Combine that with the irregular hours I worked, grad school, the amount I was drinking, and all that comes with working in the service industry.
It was exhausting. ☹️
Now try maintaining a relationship on top of all of that. One that, deep down, I knew wasn’t going anywhere. I just wasn’t ready to admit it.
I didn’t know what I wanted anymore.
I needed a Break. To reconnect with myself. To find what blew my hair back.
I’d once been described as a wild horse, but that woman had lost pieces of herself along the journey.
So I booked the horse and yoga trip that I’d been dreaming of. The trip I’d had in the back of my mind for years but never had the courage to take until I found the confidence within myself to take a leap of faith and trust the unknown.
Three months later, I was on a plane ✈️ to Costa Rica for a month-long solo trip.
What I knew: I was starting at the Big Sky Yoga Retreat with Equisol in Nosara and ending at this place in the mountains called the La Carolina Lodge.
Image credit: La Carolina Lodge
It was rustic, it had horses, and came highly recommended. My plan for everything in between was to allow the wind to blow me wherever I was meant to go.
And that it did.
Three weeks later, I was at La Carolina Lodge. The only guest there. Sitting at the end of this huge dinner table by myself, with the staff and lodge family sitting at another table not too far away.
A yoga platform was nestled in the trees by the river and everything about the property was magical.
And yes, there were horses.
Image credit: Melissa Wolken
