Or...What A Difference 365 Days Can Make
Last year, on this day, I wrote this entry. I can't help but wonder, as I sit here in my own house in Salt Lake City, where I now live and where I now actually work for Sundance, if perhaps that chance meeting with Sundance's Coolest Volunteer was perhaps not a chance meeting, after all? But was the Universe taking very good care of me?
I know it may sound crazy to some of you, but let's look at the very interesting chain of events that followed that chance encounter exactly one year ago.
Sundance's Coolest Volunteer, it turned out, was named Chris B. It turned out that he was, in fact, moving back to Santa Cruz from Portland, Oregon, in February, right after the Sundance Film Festival ended. Which is exactly what he did. And when he arrived in Santa Cruz, he called me. DSD and I went out for Chinese food with him and his beautiful wife, Holly.
I think I've spoken about Chris and Holly enough here on Nakedjen over the last twelve months that you all know that I basically adopted both of them and their two amazing children as my family. I saw them nearly every single day. I would walk my dogs in Arana Gulch and stop by their house, sometimes twice a day, just to see what was "up". To sit at the table and chat. To be fed amazing delicious organic food at their table. To hang in the living room and just talk and talk and talk.
While DSD spent the year attending Cornerstones workshops and men's groups and gatherings, I found myself spending more and more time with Chris and Holly. Chris became my weekend Husband. Because DSD was so busy, Chris would gladly go with me to parties, to concerts, to movies. And Holly was a great date, as well. She and I discovered that we LOVED the same movies, we were great dinner partners and that we could walk for miles and never run out of things to talk about.
They were both absolutely there for me that morning when DSD woke up and told me he was done. And both of them have loved me completely in the months that have followed.
I will also share that while I was sitting in that yurt in Bonny Doon contemplating my future last October, that cold night when I said to the Universe, "I'll get a job at Sundance!" it was precisely because I knew that Chris would be there as the Coolest Volunteer that I boldly made that move. I knew that if I did get the job, I wouldn't be attending Sundance alone. That he would be there, too.
Of course my decision to move to Utah, to leave Holly and Chris behind (because they are not leaving Santa Cruz for anything!), was very difficult as we all know. It wasn't just Holly and Chris, of course. It was all of Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz is my home. My community. My heart is very much still there while I continue to find more reasons to love Salt Lake.
In just one short year, one trip around the sun that began at Sundance, that saw the complete dissolution of my marriage and my life as I knew it, that taught me that forever is never as long as you think it will be, and that now has us back again at Sundance, I have certainly learned that the people you choose to love and allow to love you are really important!
I am loved, truly loved, by many. I am very lucky for that. But I am also very grateful to the Universe for that chance meeting in the Airborne Lounge one year ago. Because that has certainly made all the difference.
