grace

Be Who You Were Created to Be

~ Solo Chick Traveler ~ Leave a comment

Holy macaroni! I had my first coaching session yesterday–and I was the coach! I’ve been taking free webinars lately all about online marketing, social media marketing, branding and biz building. But you know how she found me? Not through any of that stuff. She found me simply by me being me.

More and more I step into my purpose, spiritually and verbally, and with each action there’s a counter action. It’s like playing Candyland. And in the days prior to this appointment, I was in the Molasses Swamp. My laptop was resisting everything I was trying to do and Apple Support was uncharacteristically, extremely non-supportive. 

Times like these make me think of archery–the arrow gets pulled backwards before launching forward. Most of my best moments, maybe all if I sat and really thought about it, have happened this way. 

During the maiden voyage of my first camper, it started on fire. Being fired lead to me going on a 30-day spiritual retreat that ended up lasting twelve years and completely changed not only my life, but myself. And getting diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease gave me the gift of needing to access the power of the mind-body connection.  

I haven’t talked much here about the book I’m writing Gut Instincts: How To Get Off the Medical Merry-Go-Round and Have a Self-Induced Healing. I was diagnosed over thirty years ago, back when Crohn’s was weird and rare. No one I told had heard of it, much less had it. The book is about how I found my way through the wilderness and healed it. And the coaching business I’m building, Gut Instincts Coaching, is to help people find their answers by following their inner wisdom and guidance. 

My life has been calibrating around this purpose for a while now. And my mind has been spinning with all the ways to let the world know about it. Cutting through the mist like a laser, comes a text asking for a couple hours of my time to help with something someone is writing. 

She’s a new friend I’d met through a mutual friend who’d hired me as a writer for her business. I’m just so entertained by how it all works. Doing what I love–a reset afforded me by a pandemic that took away the work I was doing, hospitality, and gave me time with myself to hear what I really wanted to be doing, helping others–has lead to me doing more of what I love. 

Instead of fitting into various pay scales, I decided on what I was worth and defined my own minimum wage. I’m just starting out so it’s low, but it’ll grow. It always does. Once, as a daycare administrator, I took a center from having two empty classrooms when I was hired to having a waiting list two months later. My last job, playing pool games at resorts here in Key West, (think cruise director, but on land) started with three pools a week and it grew to fifteen. 

I’m not bragging. I’m reporting on what happens when I follow my gut. It never fails me. While the brain is busy thinking and figuring and weighing and analyzing, the gut knows and it broadcasts it like a beacon. In songs and serendipity, inklings and seemingly random encounters. In nudges and nuances. It’s a station you need to be tuned into–an already programmed preset. Just push. 

And the more we listen, the louder it gets. 

Thanks for celebrating this milestone with me. Leave a comment about a time this was true for you and I’ll celebrate with you, too!

“I was smart enough to go through any door that opened.” ~Joan Rivers

One Night In Bangkok

~ Solo Chick Traveler ~ 2 Comments

My Facebook memory feed just popped up and took me back nine years–to Thailand. I had an eleven-hour layover on my way back from Australia. A“one night in Bangkok (and the world’s your oyster).” But what good was that? I couldn’t do much of anything with just one night. 

So I called the airlines and asked if I could extend it. 

“Sure,” she said, “you’ll just have to pay the taxes.” 

While she put me on hold to find out how much they were, I did a quick Google search of ‘things you need to know when traveling in Thailand.’ I was through the first ten–exchange rate (awesome), cost (cheap), the cuisine (good for vegetarians)–when she came back on the line.

“About twenty-two dollars.” 

Sold. I stretched it to a week (once there, I would wish I’d made it for longer). I made no plans, just followed my gut. I jumped on a ferry to the island of Kho Chang, then took a taxi–which meant riding in the bed of a pick-up truck and whacking the quarter panel when you wanted to be dropped off. I watched until I caught the vibe of a place. 

A poster advertising a full moon party piqued my interest. It was in front of a little resort with cheery yellow hobbit houses. A place to stay with a party on the beach bonus. Whack! I hit the quarter panel.

Fire twirlers kept time with the drum beats as the sun set over the gulf. Then a DJ came on in the moonlight. When I got tired, I swung in a hammock on the porch of my hut, listening to waves. Eating breakfast the next morning meant sitting on a cushion on the floor at a low table. Going in to a 7-Eleven, you took your shoes off and added them to the neat row of flip flops by the door. Thailand smelled like incense and felt like devotion. 

On my second night, while trying to take a selfie on the beach at sunset, a German guy approached and kindly offered to take it for me. We hung that night, sitting on cushions and drinking cheap Thai beer. He mentioned he was going exploring the island the next day and invited me along. The next morning I hopped on the back of his scooter zipping over hills and washed out gravel roads towards Lost Beach–so remote it ran on generators. We stopped at a park on the way to climb boulders and jump off into a swimming hole with waterfalls. We drank more Chang beer on the beach and acted out a play with twigs and shells. As night fell we decided to not go back, climbing a ladder up to a hut on stilts next to the shore and becoming lovers. 

In all my travels, this was the first time going to a country where I didn’t know anyone, didn’t speak the language and was all on my own. A powerful experience I wanted to commemorate with a tattoo. Like everything else, they were cheap. Different from the States, they were done with a needle made from bamboo. The shops were everywhere. I saw many getting them done while asleep, or maybe they were passed out, either way they were verifying the advertising touting it as less painful than machines.

It wasn’t. It took me two whole pokes to figure that out. But what do you do? I considered calling it off but then I’d have a few black dots on the backside of my neck. Keep going, hoping I’d toughen up, but each poke seemed to be more painful. I seriously stressed at my decision, my conundrum. Just then the South African chick I’d watched a few doors down popped in to show off her completion and ask how I was doing. 

“It hurts!” I almost cried. 

Her accent was soft, but her words were strong, “That’s because you’re resisting. You’ve gotta go into it.”

I wasn’t so sure about that. What if my acceptance was mistaken for approval and make it even worse? 

The artist stopped and asked if I wanted a cigarette.

I hadn’t smoked for years but I reached for it with an I’ll-try-anything attitude. 

Inhaling, exhaling. Breathing in pain, releasing it out and accepting. A little more each inhale and exhale. I found the rhythm comforting and paid more attention to the music in the shop. By the time the cigarette was done I’d relaxed into it, puffed my way above the pain. I went even further into it and it continued. I was in some sort of communion with it. 

When he was done, I was disappointed it was over. 

Years later, watching an episode of Parts Unknown, I heard a story that reminded me of this experience. It gave a take I was proud to resonate with. A native Hawaiin told the story he’d heard from a guy going out on a boat with his grandfather when he was five years old. 

“He said ‘When the wave make the canoe move, the canoe make me sick, my grandfather throw me in the ocean so I can go inside the wave. And when I go inside the wave, I become the wave. And when I become the wave, now I’m navigator.’ At five.”  

Acceptance doesn’t mean giving permission to get worse. Acceptance means going into it, joining with it. That’s where my strength is–in realizing I don’t have any limitations. Resistance is really just arguing for my limitations. Becoming one with what I fear dissolves limitations.

Are You My Home?

~ Solo Chick Traveler ~ Leave a comment

My commitment to blogging has been consistently inconsistent. It happens a lot with us travel bloggers. Magnetically drawn to adventure, we have a hard time sitting still long enough to tell anyone about all the adventures we’re having. But it’s a new year, I’m setting intentions and being older, I’m valuing history more–just like I’ve heard people say you do. 

Since I can’t go back in time, I’ll do the next best thing–use the Throwback Thursday trend to fill in some of the blanks. Beginning at the beginning: How I got into this wild and wanderful way of living on the road. . . 

I had just returned from Australia and over lunch with a friend, it came to me. “I think my four seasons are going to be Spring, Summer, Fall and Travel Somewhere Warm!” 

She nodded and smiled her understanding and we toasted my freshly hatched plan. But then, eventually, escapes from Wisconsin winter started turning into something else. What had started as flirting with foreign countries was turning into something serious. 

A couple years later, I was back in Australia for a second time. This was my longest trip yet. I’d left early on New Year’s Eve, traveled for twenty-four hours and landed in Australia in time to ring in New Year’s Eve. A month in, I was stepping off a city bus, looking up at the surreal blue sky above Melbourne when a revelatory thought streaked across my mind. I think I could be at home anywhere. 

The bus doors slapped shut behind me while something inside me cracked open, into a room chock full of possibilities. Biking the path along the river a few days later, I had a second revelation: There is no right way. There’s only the way that’s right for you. This threw a switch in the room of possibilities, lighting up Panama, Colombia, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Canada–every place I’d ever been, and reframing them as places to live rather than places to visit. I watched myself interviewing, entertaining the thought of moving completely. Gulp. Wisconsin had been my going from and returning to my whole life. 

After staying in Australia for exactly the maximum three months the embassy said I could, I flew home on Thai Airways with a brief layover in Bangkok. I’d arranged to stretch the hours into a week. Since my next layover was at LAX, and some of my dad’s family lived near there, a two-day layover had been scheduled. As I threw my big and smaller backpack into my aunt’s trunk, she remarked, “I can’t believe you’ve been living out of that!”

“Me neither!” I surveyed it all. “I didn’t need this much.”

But I never got on the plane. I bought a new ticket for a month later, landing back home on Cinco de Mayo. Easter was on 4/20 that year and Wisconsin got snow.

That trip stretched the rubberband to a point I wasn’t sure it could keep snapping back. Not only had I survived in strange places for four months, I had thrived. A wildness had gotten under my skin. I could feel the wind in my hair, even indoors. Something, somewhere else was calling me.

Three things came together to start forming the picture of, and making a plan for, the gypsy life. Then there were three things that fell apart to take that picture out of my mind and into my world, kickstarting a plan into action. 

I’ll tell you all about the first three next Thursday.

I Think I’m Allergic to Being this Far from the Beach

~ Solo Chick Traveler ~ 4 Comments

Soon after arriving here at my current workamping gig, two major things happened. Hurricane Nicole began forming and I got a wicked sinus infection.  When I was a kid, my allergies could get so bad they’d trigger a head-in-a-vice-teeth-hurting sinusitis. Leaning heavily on my inhaler bought me some time, but as I packed to evacuate to a hotel, I had to stop and catch my breath after every trip to the car.  After checking in, I went to the nearest urgent care where they confirmed my suspicions and gave me meds.  I got better.  For a while. 

What began as a headache two nights ago–one I thought might go away once I slept–has morphed into a drill bit spinning into my right temple and an ice pick shoved up my right nostril and into my right eye.  And this is after I’ve taken my last three Excedrin. The ibuprofen the other campground host brought me hasn’t helped either.  So I saddle up and head to the other urgent care where I’m told a different antibiotic would be better.

“That other one really isn’t the best for targeting the sinuses,” says Dr. Dan.

He leaves me there thinking about how hard it was to get my gut bacteria back in balance from the last round and unsure if I want to put my tummy through another. It’s a more holistic answer I crave, void of long waits in the pharmacy pick-up line. An idea streaks across my mind.

“Are you familiar with Colloidal Silver as a treatment?” I ask Dr. Dan as I pass his desk on my way out.

He hems and haws and expresses doubt. Once back in my truck, I Google it. There’s thousands and thousands of reviews about how well it works for all sorts of things. Then I think about how disempowering the whole traditional medicine process often feels. How I didn’t get to offer much input on my treatment plan. How I didn’t learn anything more about my body and how it works. How I felt like a slab of meat on a paper lined table, just another chart to file when it’s done. Adventures into traditional medicine often feel incomplete, lacking in creativity and ignoring the spectrum of natural cures.

What would make me feel better right now, I wondered as I buckled in. I could feel the weight of it pulling me down. I’d felt this despair before in various tender, healing scenarios and this question had always been a trusty compass.

Buy more Christmas wrapping paper.

It seemed such a silly directive. Benign and completely unrelated. But I know better. I know to go how it it resonates rather than reasoning. I don’t know how the events that followed cured me, but they did. There’s this nice kid who works at the Dollar Tree, always says, “Welcome to Dollar Tree” from register #1. But he wasn’t there. While I waited for the couple in front of me to decide on the perfect balloon, he popped up and opened register #2.

“How’s it going?” I made small talk as he scanned my toilet paper, wax paper, stain remover.

“Oh, ya know, gotta take it one day at a time.”  

That’s a 12-Step program slogan.  I shrink it down to tell him where I’m at. “Sometimes one minute at a time.”

This little exchange bonds us somehow. It’s as if a window has opened in the swamp I’m sinking in. We tell each other to “Have a good one,” which feels more like a prayer than some robotic parting words. Once outside, I notice a lightness in my being. I’m not going to get the medicine. I’m just going to have to get better without it. I smile at the afternoon sun warming my face. I applaud myself for not going off on the rude receptionist at the clinic. I think about my cozy camper with my cozy kitty and how grateful I am for both those things. And for that sweet kid as my checker.

Turning the last corner into the park, I’m envisioning my flannel pajamas as the crisp air fills my open window while I talk to the ranger at the entrance gate. Closing in on my site, I notice something. The pressure in my head has eased. My teeth are no longer throbbing. The drill bit in my temple has ceased drilling and the ice pick is gone, too. I look at the time–I’ve got just enough daylight to bike the trail.

I felt good. I felt great! And I didn’t even buy wrapping paper.

You Know It’s a Good Day When You’re Saying “I Gotta Blog About This!” and It’s Not Even Noon

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It was at this exact spot—Delta’s check-in counter at Madison’s International Airport–that I first learned how awry one’s travel plans could go. A bubble of innocence popped. My trip to Europe had begun magically enough, on my birthday driving with my BFF through a snowy, cold November day when Marvin rings from London.

“Celebrating Jen‘s birthday!” Kate answered his what are you doing question while putting him on speaker. We knew him from a spiritual academy in Wisconsin, before he became a self-made millionaire, dreaming in code.  Feats I can’t begin to fathom.  Kate got a lot closer to him than I did—he’d flown her to Colombia, given her a laptop, a phone.

After his birthday greetings landed, he made a generous suggestion, “I’ll fly you both to my place in Holland as a birthday present.  We’ll tour around. . . Spain, Italy, Belgium, maybe come to my flat in London–I love London.  I’ll cover your food and drink, all you’ll need is spending money.”

We lived in awe of this offer for the next five months, our greeting became, “We’re going to Europe!”  In a shrill octave, like we just won the lottery.  And to my gypsy spirit madly in love with going anywhere, I felt like I had.  Europe.  EUROPE.  Across the pond.  The closer it got, our greeting became the countdown: “One month!”  “One week!”  “Tomorrow!”  The anticipation was titillating—a future we were living in the moments of the now until we’re wheeling and clicking across the shiny floor to the counter where the Delta lady wouldn’t let me on the plane because I didn’t have three extra months on my passport past my return date. 

Her words slap the silly grin right off my face.  Promises I’ll come back on time, claims of complete ignorance, an offer to sign said promise, nothing changed her mind because it’s not up to her.  It’s Europe’s rule, one that comes with a hefty fine if not complied with. “They could send you right back on a plane once you land.”

A risk I considered taking.

Instead, she suggested (and a plan hatched) that I drive the three and a half hours to the embassy in Chicago, get an expedited passport and fly out of O’Hare the next day exactly 24 hours later.  

I’m approaching that exact same spot now, twelve years later, my heart beating rapidly. In memoriam. There’s a woman off to the side, smartly dressed in a shade of orange best described as happy. She’s encircled by more luggage than can possibly be her own. I motion for her to go ahead. She gives me a big smile and motions for me to go ahead. Classic Wisconsin.

I hesitate, restate my motion that she go ahead.  Also, classic Wisconsin.  

“It’s a long story,” she offers by way of explanation, doubling down on her smile.

And I, by way of empathy, extend a, “Yeah, I was there once.”  Explaining my passport issue of twelve years ago.

Her eyes brighten, “That’s us, too!” 

Stunned (but also not, because I lived it) I keep going with how I solved it.  Her husband comes up, looking dejected saying how there’s no appointments for two weeks unless they drive to Colorado.  To which she exclaims, “She had the same thing!” pointing to me and explaining how I got on a flight the next day.

After a little discussion, they do the ol’ what do we have to lose shrug. Their gratitude and the timing of it all makes my heart do a different kind of excited beat—the thrill of playing a part in alleviating another’s struggle, a satisfaction in fulfilling what feels like my purpose, and seeing the big picture get divinely orchestrated once again. 

Turning back to the counter, the agent is beaming and says incredulously, “Oh my God, what are the chances?  I had no idea how to help them and then you came along!”

I feel the space flip from what had been a place of angst and mistakes into a place of magic and promise.  After twelve years.  Dare I say, it felt surreal.  

I’d once asked one of the main teachers at that spiritual academy about these serendipitous type experiences which often occurred in my life.  

“Checkpoints,” he’d said. “Between you and the Universe.”

I’ve carried that answer with me for years and it’s always made me smile.  Writing this, I decided to look the word up: a location whose exact position can be verified visually or electronically, used by pilots to aid navigation.

Yeah, that’s exactly what it feels like.

Just In Time

~ Solo Chick Traveler ~ Leave a comment

My financial funds hadn’t been this low since I was in college. I wasn’t exactly eating ramen noodle, but I was checking my banking apps daily–sometimes several times a day–keeping a close eye on what was coming in (not much) and what was going out (much too much). Do I drop my car insurance? The camper insurance? Food?

Florida can sustain me with sunshine, the salty air in my hair and surround me with the calm and curiosity that the aqua blue of the ocean evokes. But a pandemic that ended my job made me dependent upon an unemployment benefit of $197 per week (one of the lowest in the country) that I had to coax from an archaic website meant to discourage access. There was literally a stick figure that moved across the screen telling me where I was in line.

I’d lived like this for the past year and a half. I was now newly employed, but the paychecks hadn’t hit my account yet. Just as I was scanning my mind for even more creative financing options–I’d already returned all the Amazon purchases that still had the refundable window open and spent all my gift cards and return merchandise credits–my birthday weekend rolled around.

And as I was working in my new gig of Pool Game Instructor, the topic would come up. This led to one of the guests/gamblers at my floating BlackJack table insisting, in his accent from Quebec, that he was buying me a birthday drink. And then another. Sure, he was winning, but it was only Monopoly money–er, chips.

I was drying off next to a chaise lounge after saying I really had to go to another resort and play more games in another pool when he came up to me and handed me a hundred dollar tip. I tried not to take it even as my wallet’s mouth watered, knowing how much I needed it. He pushed it back towards me. I shook my head, took a step backwards, trying to give my resistance deeper meaning.

“Just take it.” He said it so softly it was almost like he knew how much I needed it.

So I took it. Because I did. Badly. And then I thanked God once again for filling a gap that I was powerless to fill. I was grateful, this week before Thanksgiving, and somewhat amused that this Power greater than myself had Its own creative financing at play. Moments like this humble me. Remind me. Of that Bible verse “Consider the lilies of the field….”

Tales from the Side of the Road

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No, I’m not broken down, everything works fine, I could leave anytime. But I don’t want to—-I’m in Key West. And everyone pays a high price to be here. I pay in guts, not money. I take chances; chances most people would be uncomfortable taking. It’s sometimes uncomfortable for me too, but I’ll take it over being a slave to corporate America any day. The price of my lifestyle is risk but with that risk comes great rewards—-freedom being one of my favorites.

I have good Spidey-senses and let my intuition be my guide; most of the time. Tonight was not one of those times. I hear their walkie-talkies before I hear them knock.

“Are you alone in there?” Always the first question.

You mean besides the fool who told me to park here? Is what I think but don’t say. “Yep. Just me and my kitty.”

They answer with the looks of disbelief that I’ve come to know so well (and actually kind of get off on). That boost that comes from being what I’ve always been—unconventional—never gets old. It only encourages me; adds fuel to my fire.

They let me stay after stern warning and one even helps me lift the steps into my camper back up.

I learned my lesson: don’t let anyone have the final say on where I lay. If it feels wrong, then move. I was not surprised by my middle of the night visitors, I was surprised that I’d let myself park somewhere that I felt in my gut wasn’t right.

Where In the World is Jennifer Montero?

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My blog is my online journal–rough and raw. It’s me throwing paint at the canvas and being more concerned about the colors I have chosen than the strokes, shape and impression. The first baby steps in an effort to express myself, the birth of creativity. My live processing of what happens in this mad world.

I use the term mad in the most endearing Alice In Wonderland kind of a way. I take the potion often, the red pill, and it takes me through the wardrobe and behind the wizard’s curtain, finding the truth rooted in love. Something pierces the illusion and sets its sites on my fear. I find that if I keep moving, don’t establish, stay in the humbled state of unknowing then those magical moments happen a lot more often and my grip on the world loosens. My mind, released, naturally rises to the only home it knows–the one of infinite possibilities.

I post about my gut reactions and often about the sucker punches to the gut that life has a way of throwing when you’re busy looking the other direction. There’s a lot of things I’m still trying to make sense of or things I thought I already understood, learned the lesson but here it is, back again for another round. I seem to have a deep instinctive need to try to figure things out, look at them another way and grow and advance on the game board of Life.

Jason Isbell talked about touring in an interview. He said he felt stagnant when he was home yet his relationships were strained by him being on the road. Can’t decide which is harder. Doesn’t really feel made for either one of them. I can relate. I don’t find the safety and security that others find there, in stability. I don’t share their ambitions. Longing to break out of the crowd of popular opinion. I’m a wanderer, a wonderer and I live on the fringe.

“If you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much space.” Cool thing to say as the first American to summit Everest. And I agree.

One more thing. I call it solo chick traveler because I usually am, solo. Sometimes with someone, but usually not for long. The constant and common denominator is always me and I make my moves quite independently even if it may look otherwise.

Where in the world is Jennifer Montero because it rhymes and because of the three last names I have had, Montero is my favorite. Compliments of my Colombian ex-husband.