With Gratitude

Dear Sweet Friend and Mr Bee,

It’s Tuesday morning and I am sitting on the veranda drinking an Americano from Ah Cacao and reflecting on what an amazing month I have just experienced here in Playa. I want to tell you both, I will be forever grateful for the time I have spent living with you at Las Olas (the “waves”). The name of your home is very appropriate when I consider the never-ending waves that have washed over me this past four weeks. I loved the ocean waves (of course), but the waves of extreme gratitude, of love and friendship, awareness, and of healing – these were the strongest waves of all. Gracias.

The month has also been about reconnecting with one of the very dearest friends of my heart. I won’t ever forget the night that we met at a recovery meeting back in the day, Sweet Friend. I shared in that meeting that Soul Mate and I were brand new in our beautiful new town. I shared that moving there was a culmination of years of hard work and years of dreaming, but that the dream was tempered with a little bit of fear because I had arrived in our new life with a diagnosis of stage three colon cancer. I was scared. I shared that we had left our kids and family behind and I didn’t know anybody and that I really, really needed a friend. You came up to me at the end of the meeting Sweet Friend, and I knew when you hugged me and I looked into your beautiful green eyes that you would be a friend for life, however long that life was going to be. And so it is.

Here are just a few of my favourite Playa moments and things: 

• Starting each morning with tropical fruit, yogurt and granola
• Tuesday excursions to Xpu-Ha to lie on the beach (whoops, kind of burned myself up a bit yesterday)
• Friday night recovery meetings
• Tacos at “Tacos on Juarez” after Friday night meetings (Ten pesos each, I mean seriously)
• My nearly daily walks to and through the Mega store (can you really ever buy too much hot sauce?)
• Morning meetings with Bruce, solving world peace and other minor issues
• Fish filet dinners, at home or out
• Working on my course work for Recovery Coaching and learning that I am going to love being a coach
• Learning that I like Kundalini yoga
• The many laughs shared three ways
• Shrimp tacos
• A Valentine’s Day trip to Tulum with my Sweet Friend
• Shrimp ceviche at El Camello in Tulum
• Planning the She Recovers retreat that we will hold later this year
• Getting over my fear of walking down Fifth Avenue (the vendors really can’t make me buy stuff)
• The zillions of hours that Sweet Friend and I spent pondering the meaning of our lives and recommitting to our dreams
• A wicked massage on the roof, under a full moon
• More tacos 

So today I start my journey home. I have a lot to go home to. I will be extremely happy to see Soul Mate, First Born, Yoga Kid, and all of the other girls and people in my life. I lead an extraordinary life, and am blessed to have extraordinary people in it. Thank you both for your generosity, and for everything that you have taught me this past four weeks. We are all going to be beyond okay. Skype you soon. 

The next time you are both walking down the beach in Playa, think of me, okay? Oh, and have a taco for me on Friday night after the meeting. Or better yet, have three.

Love

Dawn