#anjelicablogshawaii

[anjelicablogshawaii]

The Call

So much of my life has been marked by my struggle to find a home that sometimes I think that I don’t spend enough time thinking about my search for a calling. Maybe it’s because they’re so intertwined that it’s hard for me to separate one from the other. Admittedly, it’s a strange train of thought, but I’m a writer, and strange is my native milieu. 

I bounced around from major to major in college... I probably looked like the ultimate commitment-phone with all of my major changes looking for the major that would be just right. There were a lot that were almost right. But, for various reasons (math requirements, boredom, burnout, too many gut feelings while looking at my degree audit trying to figure out how to graduate in four years...), they didn’t work out. 

My interests are wide enough that often, I can see several options and feel that I could be happy with any of them, which makes figuring out My Calling even more difficult. 

In high school, I thought that going to Stony Brook was what would make me happy, but I wasn’t any happier there than I was in high school. I was actually miserable. My boss knew I wanted to transfer, and one day when I showed up for work, he ordered me to his work truck. When I asked him where we were going, he reiterated that I was going to his work truck. He drove me out to a satellite campus on the East End, parked at the dock, and as I got out of his truck, a breeze kicked up over the Bay. I started crying. I blamed it on the sun. It wasn’t the sun. It was enough, for a while.

Over winter break my second year of college, I visited my godparents in Utah. God found me again in a mission church on the edge of the Navajo Nation, and I didn’t want to finish school without figuring out what God was asking of me. I wanted to take time off to do a certificate program through a seminary, but that didn’t go over well with my family. I decided to put all of my energy into getting out of college as fast as I possibly could so that I could pursue ordination and get myself back to the Navajo Nation. I even had a job offer waiting for me to sign on the dotted line. But it didn’t work out. And I was devastated. 

I applied to grad school, went to Kenya, found a place that I loved, a place that needed help as much as I needed the feeling of wholeness I found there. I had little to offer, because what good is English language when there is no water? So, I went to Hawaii to learn how to farm sustainably and efficiently, and fell in love with a completely different environment, and somehow, I found myself, too. It wasn’t perfect. There were fights with the cook, conflicts amongst members of my Esky team, vastly different expectations of how our time would be spent and who we would answer directly to... It was different than we expected, but it was wonderful, too. I daydreamed about what I would do next. There was a Fulbright Fellowship on the slow food movement that I thought would compliment the farming bit well, but I didn’t want to leave Hawaii. I asked if I could apply for a second year. And then I broke my finger, got a sunburn, and got a rash. I knew what it meant; I just hoped I was wrong. I wasn’t.

Going back to Hawaii would be a fatal mistake.

I never understood how one sentence could shatter your life until that appointment. My plans to return to finish out my contract, my plans to go to Italy, my plans to go back to Kenya and spend my life there... They were all gone, only I knew they existed, and I couldn’t pretend they hadn’t for the sake of getting on with things. Still, life went on. I had to make calls.

I called my Esky Director. I felt horrible. I was offered the first contract on my team, and I was letting him and my team down. The reasons why didn’t matter. They were depending on me and I couldn’t follow through. He wasn’t surprised; I’d been gone long enough that he doubted there would be good news about what was making me so sick, but he had hoped, and I had, too. In every moment of fear before I’d left for Hawaii, and in every moment of fear I’d had before I had a diagnosis, I reminded myself that the will of God would never take me anywhere that the grace of God would not also protect me. And yet: everything I wanted to do, everything I felt called to do, every certainty I’d felt in my bones had been taken from me. It didn’t seem like there was a surplus of people who wanted to move to a remote, politically unstable region of the Horn of Africa. Why would I be taken out of the equation? What good could I do the world inside all of the limitations of my new life? How was that time better spent than it would have been going through the mystics with my Hawaiian spiritual director? What did the chronic pain teach me? My suffering was, for years, so intense that if I were a house pet, I would have been put down because it was inhumane to leave me in pain. But I had to endure it.

I knew that I would never know how or why, and that made it so much harder to endure it all. 

For years, I could hardly dream any new dreams for my life. It felt useless; even if I loved something, it would probably be outside of my capabilities, or something else would happen to take it away from me. And I’d had my calling. I couldn’t do it. Nothing came to replace it. Nothing eased that ache. I started to believe that I would spend the rest of my life with the phantom pain of my lost calling. 

I went back to Hawaii for a writers conference I’d been planning to attend before I got sick. It wasn’t painful. In fact, I felt happier than I had in years. When I swam in the Bay, it was like she remembered me. Like she was welcoming me home again. Slowly, the pain released its grip on me. And as it did, I waited for the day I would wake up and know that I had a new calling. A few years went by. No calling came. 

Before I turned 30, I asked my Esky boss why there was no new calling. “It’s been 6 years.” I told him. Plenty of time for a Type A Perfectionist to decide that God’s missing the cues. In a surprising turn of events, I found a new calling, and made lists and worked towards my goals. In a more surprising turn of events, a worldwide pandemic hit, and all of my plans and all of my lists went up in smoke. In the most shocking turn of events of all, it’s been a year since that pandemic started, and I’ve moved from despair to productivity. I’ve done more continuing ed this last year than I’d done in the previous ten--by a lot! 

Last spring--and I couldn’t even tell you how I found them--I came across a school and realized that I wanted to do every single degree they offered. I was in a panic about the future of my life, and decided that going back to grad school for housing security was a terrible idea. I had plenty to keep busy with without throwing grad school into the mix, so I moved on. I wrote, I learned, I meditated, I tentatively made new lists and new plans, but I still had terrible uncertainty hanging over my head. We moved. I came back to those programs, and read them all again. And in the unexpected and inexplicable way that it is when the Spirit moves, the path forward became clear. Joseph Campbell said, “Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls.”

I have struggled in the 8 years since I graduated to fully articulate how I see the interdisciplinary sustainability work of my BA working with my MFA in writing, beyond that I was interested in both fields, so I got a degree in each. The graduate certificate I’m taking now has bridged those fields in a way that feels exciting and natural. I feel like I got new glasses and now the fuzzy world has been rendered clear, sharp, and vivid. 

It turns out that the questions I’ve been asking and the things I like do actually go together... I just needed to find a place that understood those questions, and I think I have. I also needed not only to be ready, but to feel ready to undertake the work. While I still struggle with my imposter syndrome some days, one of the liberating and wonderful surprises of my thirties is that after graduating with an MFA at 23 and deferring to others for years, I finally feel like I can speak with authority, and not only on matters of writing or text analysis. I know a lot! And people value my insights! (Crazy, right?)

I also know that no matter what I do, or where I go, all roads lead me back to Hawaii. That is where my heart is at home, and where my spirit feels settled. 

#anjelicablogshawaii #Anjelica blogs Hawaii

[alwhitehorne]

Welcome!

From now on, all posts on my WordPress blog will appear here, as well as on WordPress. I may also be posting some original content that does not get posted on WordPress here, and I will definitely be linking and reblogging things that might be of interest to you.

It was my intention to connect my Instagram to this blog, but as of right now, Instagram cannot post to secondary or side blogs on Tumblr (anjelicablogshawaii is the primary blog on this account, as it is the one that I first registered this email to tumblr with), but hopefully that will change soon! In the meantime, please feel free to check my Instagram, as I update that most frequently (usually with pictures of the adorable Zoey Makana).

Please bear with me as I get things set up to my liking!

#alwhitehorne #anjelicablogshawaii #instagram #wordpress

[anjelicablogshawaii]

Crossroads

just after the new year, i received an email asking if i would be willing to serve as a lector for church of the crossroads in honolulu. crossroads is the church my former boss turned dear friend david serves, and though i’ve never been there in person, it’s a place that is so dear to me: a port in the storm to rest my weary soul.

i feel so fortunate to have been able to serve as the lector on valentine’s day. it is the tradition at crossroads that before the offering, a member of the community speaks about the impact crossroads has had on their lives and why they choose to support the good works of the church. i cried thinking about what i would say, i cried writing it, i cried reading it. and then, after a few weeks, i decided that what i read to them for the invitation to the offering deserved to live a second life here.

invitation to the offering:

good morning, and thank you so much for having me!

for as long as i can remember, i've been searching for the place i belong. i never had a sense of belonging and i couldn't wait to grow up so that i could go into the world and find the place where i fit. i hoped that this mythical home i had imagined--and convinced myself existed despite no evidence it did--would be filled with people who understood me. people who thought about the world in the same ways that i did. people who cared about the same things that i did. people who saw me and didn't think that i was too much or too weird. 

this mythical home where i belonged was my constant companion in my loneliness, which felt all too much like an exile, though i'd done nothing that warranted being left alone in the metaphorical desert.

i was a late bloomer, and spent most of high school miserable. i was told that college would be better. as soon as i had a car, i church hopped. i travelled, perennially convinced that the next place i went would be the place where i was the missing piece of the puzzle. i almost found it in arizona, where i had a standing job offer to work on the navajo nation so long as i got ordained. i didn't know how i would survive the grief that came when i was told that i wouldn't be allowed to pursue the process for ordination. i tried to put myself back together, and resumed the search. it felt endless, and endlessly disappointing. i applied to grad school, and stumbled into a opportunity to go to kenya. from the moment we touched down on african soil, every cell of my body felt at home. i had never felt so connected in my life. while my class swam in lake turkana, i kept going underwater to listen to her siren song and the promise of all of the secrets she could reveal. the villages surrounding the field school were suffering terribly under a crippling drought and political turmoil, and i never wanted to leave, but i knew that i had nothing to offer. what good is english when there is no water? 

shortly thereafter, my grad-school-boyfriend saw a new episcopal service corps jobsite in hawai'i. he was interested because of the location. i told him, 'yeah, but you don't give a shit about the environment.' he said, 'but you do.' and the next year, facing graduation and my family asking how exactly i intended to survive in the world with 2 useless degrees, i applied to creation care at camp mokule'ia. they were almost as unhappy as they were when i told them i was doing a master's in writing. 'at least this uses my bachelors' i told them. 

something that i carry with me is the knowledge that in hawaii was the first time in my life that i felt valued for who i was rather than what i could do for others. it took me years to understand that in the aloha and grace i had been shown from the moment i showed up, i was given the incredible gift of a community affirming what i could not see--that i was whole. that i was loved. that i was enough. that i was blessed. that my authenticity, which i did not even know because i had always had to hide who i was, was a blessing, and not a burden. 

inside of ourselves, we carry stories, and this loving community interrupted mine, which were full of brokenness and shame and unworthiness so loud that they drowned out the one given to me in my baptismal covenant.

as i was beginning to come into who i am after years of sickness and loss and being forced into boxes in which i couldn't breathe, a global pandemic hit. and this lost pilgrim who had nearly given up on ever finding the mythical home she had dreamed of her whole life found her way to crossroads. and once again, i have been so heartily welcomed and so well-loved that i feel like i've always been here. i was a lost pilgrim, and i know that many of you felt similarly before you found crossroads. as much as i--and we--needed crossroads, crossroads needs us. there is no way that i could begin to put a price tag on what i've received from the gifts of this community, so i encourage you to give as generously as you are able, financially, and with your time, your presence, and your talents. your pledges and gifts are more important than ever: they allow crossroads to continue to do the vital and necessary gospel work, and to continue to be a lighthouse in the storm that is life: a sign of hope, a place of respite, a home for other weary, lost pilgrims. you can make a one-time gift or ongoing offering online through the church website, or you can mail a check into the church office. mahalo.

#anjelicablogshawaii #Anjelica blogs Hawaii

[anjelicablogshawaii]

That’s A Wrap!

We just finished our last meeting for this year’s virtual retreat. We had a lovely bonus session: a conversation about craft and careers with someone who attended the first ever Mokule’ia Writers Retreat. Since then, she’s traditionally published 4 novels! It was a great note to end on.

In the last hour or so of our morning class (it was an afternoon/evening class for me because of the time difference), we each read a few hundred words of our writing. I read the first page of the second book in my fantasy series, which I lovingly think of as my yoga and Hawaii book. To me, those fingerprints are all over the material and the presentation.

I think writing conferences and retreats are measured in how long a writer is able to work with the new tricks and skills they’ve learned afterwards. A conference that is both rich and enriching will take a writer much longer to digest than a conference that was heavy on networking and not as heavy on craft. 

This week was definitely a craft week, and I’m happy about that. I tend to write by ear, and can’t always explain to others the things in writing which I experientially know to be true. (This occurred because I made it halfway through a BA before getting any type of formal writing training, and then jumped into an MFA with a very literary culture.) I sort of went from parts of speech and grammar to writing novels and memoir and personal essays and in the entire middle bit between those two extremes, I was self-taught. It’s not a good thing or a bad thing, or even something I would change. But it has meant that I’ve had to learn names and terms, and have often found myself going AHA THAT’S WHAT THAT’S CALLED or I KNEW THERE WAS A RULE FOR THAT! Ultimately, we only learn writing by doing it, and my time in the chair figuring stuff out on my own was just as valuable as the times I’ve spent in classrooms.

Anyway, it’s nice to slow down and look at the difference between sentences that work and sentences that sing, or what is gained by choosing one point of view over the other. Even though I know, I don’t always consciously think about either of those necessary decisions for each piece I begin, and being forced to articulate and defend decisions can be very useful for brainstorming (especially when a writer is stuck). 

I feel so fortunate to be able to spend time on both my craft and on doing the work myself, and I’m equally lucky to have a good accountability group, and an amazing, magical unicorn of a critique group. Having a network of writer friends makes the solitary time at the desk feel less lonely.

#anjelicablogshawaii #Anjelica blogs Hawaii

[anjelicablogshawaii]

My Spirit, My Self in Translation, and Yours

I’ve been thinking a lot about place; how it makes us, how it connects us, how it disconnects us. I was trying to write a piece for a contest on the places that have helped to make me who I am, but I think words cannot adequately describe the condition of a soul, or the internal landscape of a tortured wandering artist such as myself.

Days, weeks, months pass. I still cannot articulate what it is I feel, but I try anyway.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the countries we carry within our bodies. The loves, losses, experiences, the things that are inexplicable but make us who we are. Inside of me there is a world of medical intervention. There are two deserts that teach me about beauty, efficiency, and tenacity. There is a tropical paradise that shows me it is a beautiful and special gift to share the very best of who I am with the world, even if the world may not appreciate it at the time.

I feel that I am indistinguishable now from these places. I belong so completely to them, I carry them so vividly in my heart and soul and memory that in a very real sense, I never left them. I cannot be separated from them because they live and breathe within me. If I cannot be distinguished from these places, nor them from me, how can anyone truly know me without first knowing these places? I’ve been through hells that words fail, because words are assumed to be hyperbolic. How can anyone know me without understanding the depths of my own suffering, the suffering of my family, the suffering I’ve seen in the world? How can anyone know me without also knowing the hope I feel, my heart floating in my chest, when I see things changing, when I see people helping. 

Perhaps we are all languages that no one can ever fully understand, and we each day are learning how to translate ourselves into something more universal, more easily understood. Perhaps we are all waiting for the person who will whisper to us in the dark and say, “You are not a language I speak natively, but you are a language I will spend my life learning to speak fluently.”

#anjelicablogshawaii #Anjelica blogs Hawaii

[anjelicablogshawaii]

Logging On For Introductions

We had our opening Zoom for the Virtual Retreat and I was so pleased to see some familiar faces! Two of the other attendees were at the last in-person Retreat I went to in 2016. The others are working on interesting projects, though not all will be in the same session I’m taking. 

I wish we were all together at Mokule’ia (and, barring that, that it was possible to dive through the computer screen into the ocean), but I am confident that the work that we will do together this week from our homes will be fruitful. 

As I’ve said, this isn’t the trip to Hawai’i I had in mind, but it is wonderful to have the spirit of the retreat in the midst of this madness we call 2020. Imua!

#anjelicablogshawaii #Anjelica blogs Hawaii

[anjelicablogshawaii]

One Day, You Wake Up And Six Years Have Gone By.

I opened TimeHop the morning before my 30th birthday, and saw the Christmas tree in the chapel looking out over the Bay. It was our Staff Christmas Party. In the gift grab, I’d gotten chocolates that I couldn’t eat. I didn’t bring them back to New York with me when I flew out later that afternoon, and a few weeks later, one of my teammates messaged me to tell me that I shouldn’t bother looking for them when I came back. A few years ago, that memory would have hurt me, because I didn’t get to go back. Not in the way I expected. That day, it took my breath away. The banner on the photo said 6 YEARS AGO, and I don't know how to reconcile that.

Six years ago, I left Hawai’i. It feels like yesterday and a dream of another lifetime all at once, though I’ve got the scars to prove it was this current lifetime. The one in which I celebrated my 30th birthday. I’m also having trouble with that. 

About a week before my birthday, before the realization that it had been 6 years since I left Hawai’i, I spoke to the Bishop about why I never tried to re-enter the discernment process. For me, the call to ordained ministry was always inseparable from the call to missions work. What the new call for my life is or will be, I don’t know. A week later, when I was processing all of this on the phone with David, I decided I would be brave enough to ask, “It’s been 6 years. Shouldn’t there have been a new call to replace the one I ‘lost’ when I got my third autoimmune diagnosis and the doctors told me I would die if I did missions work? Why hasn’t there been a new call?”

“That’s a fifth of your life.” He tells me when I say that it’s maybe not that long, certainly not in God’s time.

As we approached 2020, TimeHop began showing me pictures I took in Kenya each morning, with a banner that said 8 YEARS AGO. In my mind, in my heart, and on my necklace, Kenya and Hawai’i are forever intertwined. Without Kenya, I would not have had the need to go to Hawai’i. Without Kenya, even if I’d wanted to go to Hawai’i, i doubt I would have been brave enough to leave. I’ve been trying to write about this thread that I can trace between the Navajo Nation, Kenya, and Hawai’i, and over two years later, I still only have disparate, useless bits and pieces.

It’s been almost seven years now. Life looks very different. I have 3 dogs, each with a Hawaiian middle name, and I cannot imagine my life without my girls. I don’t know where my path is leading, but I’m finding out. 2020 hasn’t been what I expected, and I’ve had trouble with the new normal. In this liminal space of my life inside this weird year of liminal spaces, I am learning to imagine a new way forward. The road less travelled is well worth taking, and I am learning the same can be said of the road I never realized was an option. I have spent the better part of ten years feeling exiled in a metaphorical desert, but in reality, I just didn’t see the way forward because it didn’t look how I expected it would. So I light my candles. I journal. I realize that I’ve gone from panicked to peaceful when I look at the ways I could still get to where I feel called to be. In a few short weeks, TimeHop will show me the photos I took when I left Hawai’i. The banner will say 7 YEARS AGO. I will marvel at how brave I was at 23-turning-24, at how much I thought I knew, and how little I actually did. These 7 years have been incredibly difficult, but I was never one to learn lessons the easy way. And when I look at my girls, I know I ended up where I was meant to be. 2021 will deliver what it must; I can only trust that I will continue to end up where I am meant to be.

#anjelicablogshawaii #Anjelica blogs Hawaii

[anjelicablogshawaii]

7 years ago, I started this blog in anticipation of my Episcopal Service Corps year in Hawai'i!

I've started so many essays to post in the last six months, but the words are never quite right. It's surreal that in a few days, Timehop will show me pictures I took when I first arrived in Hawai'i and the banner on each photo will say 7 YEARS AGO. It simultaneously feels like another lifetime and a year ago, tops when I boarded a plane and set off for whatever adventures would come to me in Hawai'i.

I think I must have been so much braver then.

#Anjelica Blogs Hawaii #anjelicablogshawaii

[anjelicablogshawaii]

Travel by Zoom, No COVID Tests Required.

If this year had not delivered a crippling global pandemic, I would be flying to Hawai’i this weekend. The newly reimagined O’ahu Writers Retreat held at Camp Mokule’ia was scheduled to begin this Sunday. It would have been a week in Hawai’i, and, truth be told--eager for both a long overdue vacation and time in person with my adopted family--I packed my bag well over six months ago. Then, the pandemic happened. 

I had anticipated that I would be preparing for the final months of the Discernment Process at this point. I had hoped that I would be able to take some extra time on either side of the Retreat to visit seminaries in person, in advance of DCOM’s final decision, which would be given in February. But, the pandemic happened. The Discernment Process was cancelled. The Retreat was postponed. I am a planner and my fastidious plans did not account for losing a year to a pandemic. The extra year was a problem. I looked at different trainings and certificate programs, and since they were mostly online, they seemed to be unaffected by the increasingly bad news of the pandemic. One by one, those were cancelled, too. I tried to figure out alternate ways to get to where I felt called to be. While I waited for the US to respond appropriately to Covid, I took online classes. I filled my days, and felt satisfied that I was learning things that would enrich my writing, and would be useful for my (eventual) career in ministry. Still, the waiting felt impossible.

As the fall began, and we approached the Election, life felt less and less tenable, and from inside of that space, an email emerged. What if we held the conference on Zoom? What if we shared music and logged on from our respective parts of the country for a generative morning session and an afternoon master class? You could choose to attend one session or the other, or both, for 5 days. A small oasis in the midst of a year of unrelenting bad news. 

I emailed back immediately, eager to try anything to fill the Hawaiian sized hole in my heart. I unpacked my suitcase. This trip to Hawai’i does not require me to outfit myself in long sleeves and long pants and big, floppy hats. This year has taught us all that moving forward, the way things have always been need not define how things always will be.

Until then, I will visit the Bay in my memory as I have done for the last four years. Soon, I will return.

#Anjelica blogs Hawaii #anjelicablogshawaii

[anjelicablogshawaii]

The Last Days of Eskyland

My departure from Hawai’i was more dramatic than my entry, but for entirely different reasons.  I’d noticed a dramatic increase in my overall discomfort, and ended up doing twenty-two weeks of intravenous therapy to keep my body from self-destructing, but it took a long time for me to process what I’d lost by not going back.  I waited for my boss, David, to pack and mail my things back.  Though I’d left, expecting to be gone for longer than our allotted two weeks, I did expect that I’d be back.  My things were left in expectation of this.  I think my laundry was hanging on the lattice frame of the yurt to dry.

After treatment, after I’d realized that thinking about Hawai’i hurt much less than it used to, I was stunned to realize just how ferociously I missed my Camp ‘Ohana.

In the midst of a long email thread with David, he told me to consider attending the Mokule’ia Writers Retreat, which I’d anticipated attending when I was still working as an Esky at Mokule’ia.  As the plans began to come together, I grew more and more excited to go back to Camp, and to make up for two and a half years of missing hugs with them.  Janet noticed how much more animated I was when I spoke of Hawai’i, and as I discussed Hawai’i with her following her conference in Waikiki, she encouraged me to consider looking for and applying for jobs that would allow me to move back to Hawai’i.  I tentatively wondered what my moving back to Hawai’i would look like, and decided that it would probably look very much like summer in New York–hats, long sleeves, and staying inside during peak UV hours.  It would be workable. 

I add my apparent calling to return to Hawai’i to the list of things that David and I need to talk about when I’m at the Retreat, because when David says that he will be restructuring the Esky Program, every part of my soul screams that it must be involved in that restructuring, that I want to help the Camp and the Esky Program to succeed.  That not being part of that process will cause me pain.

 After lunch on the second or third day, I walk over to the farm with David and Puna, the now-retired farm guard dog, who is enjoying a second career at Camp as a therapy dog.  The farm is being packed up and shut down, and the thought of my Waialua home being moved causes an ache in my chest that reminds me of the constant agony that marked the days and weeks spent waiting for test results, waiting to know whether I’d be allowed to return to my small yurt on the off-the-grid farm with no electricity and no running water. 

I am walking over with them not to help pack, but to see what remains of all that has changed since my sudden departure. There are books, and David tells me that I am welcome to peruse them, to take any that interest me as long as they were not on loan to the Eskys. When I’m done choosing my books—I choose an account of a friendship between an anthropologist and a Hawaiian shaman, a book on Hawai’i and GMOs, an old magazine with an article I want to read, a a few others—I walk to the other side of the farm, and bring Puna to take pictures of him and of my old home, while it still exists as it did when it was my home. Puna is smiling, but I cannot manage it. It hurt too much for me to miss Hawai'i; I was too angry to miss Hawai'i for the first year or more after my exit from the program and subsequent enrollment in treatment. Then, disaster after calamity after fluke kept me too busy to miss it. When I was able to, the ferocity of it alarmed me, but returning for a visit wasn’t realistic enough to be a pipe dream, let alone a plan.

I watch the guys load up the trucks, and place my books on the bench, then climb into the truck to go with Teddy to the Hale’iwa Dump to see again what has changed in the two and a half years that I have been away.  The changes are substantial, and if I did not recognize the route, and a few of the shops, I would not know that this was the same Hale’iwa that Matt and I hung out in.

Two days later, we take a field trip to Kukaniloko, the Hawaiian birthing stones.  We were told to each bring two bottles of water for our offering, and I arrive armed with my 64-ounce water bottle, which I received as a gift the Christmas I was a part of ESC.  I jokingly call it “the weapon of mass hydration”, and though it is only one bottle, it is deemed to be enough of an offering.  After our welcoming, our gift from the Civic Society of Hawaiian salt, and our tour of the significance and history of the place, Teddy leaves, and I walk over to David, with whom I am riding back to Camp.

Our group of writers is moseying in the general direction of the cars, towards the road, and it will be a nightmare to get the group of cars out of the small parking area and onto the road. I turn and watch at the sun shining through the leaves of a coconut tree, because David had turned around. We agree that the week has gone by so quickly, the departure coming too soon, far sooner than I am prepared for. I did not know how to leave New York, and I did not know how to leave Hawai'i. I still do not know how to leave Hawai'i. I am a different person, arguably a better person when I am here.  Moving would be a logistical nightmare, but many days there is nothing I would like more than to start over here. I have always craved a fresh start, the opportunity to reinvent myself, and to be a person rather than a cog in the machine of other people’s lives. 

“A week here isn’t enough. Not by a long shot.” I tell him. The eleven-month contract felt impossibly long when I signed it, but once I settled in, 48 weeks didn’t seem long enough. I toyed with the idea of applying for a second year, before I got sick. I only served five and a half months of my eleven, and it wasn’t enough. I hated the day that I had to call David to tell him that the doctors said that if I went back to work on the farm, it would be a fatal mistake.  The pause feels longer than it was, as the two and a half years I have been away feel longer than they have been. “Neither is a lifetime.”

On my last night in Hawai'i, the conference has wrapped and is considered to be quite the success.  David called Kirsten while we were sitting on the couch talking. She told me that he wants us to go out to dinner, and this call was to say that we had been invited to go with conference instructors, but David preferred it to be us; did I mind it being the three of us?  That was my preference.  I wanted my last night in Hawai'i to be spent with David and Kirsten.  We hadn’t gotten a lot of dedicated time.  The majority of my conversations with David had been while we were both in between items on our schedules, and mostly, they’ve been very early morning talks.  

When we got back from dinner, we talked for a while longer, and when David and Kirsten went to bed, I set my alarm for 5:30 AM because I don’t want to sleep through my last morning in Hawai'i. I hoped that it would also help me to sleep on the plane, but I knew I would likely cry instead of sleeping; with the sadness I feel leaving this place, and these people, with the emotional upheaval that always accompanies the end of a conference if it has been a good experience, with the uncertainties of the weeks to follow, with relief that I will soon be reunited with my rescue dog, who has taken my absence hard–which I expected, but still wish I could have made easier for her.

The fog was so thick on my last morning in Hawai'i that the mountains disappeared behind it as if they belonged not to here but to another place. It drizzled, and I was surprised that there was anything left in the fog and the clouds to fall, because rain pounded the house and the ocean for hours last night. I liked to fall asleep to the sounds of rain in Hawai'i, but this was too insistent to sleep to. 

In the car on the way to the airport, David asked how much time we’d had together the two of us, and I said probably about four hours, but we seemed to have an unspoken understanding that we weren’t going to have as much time as we wanted, so we got into it without throat clearing. “God and stuff,” I think I said, when we said we’d really gotten into it and made the most of the time we had to talk. 

I don’t want to leave, just like I didn’t want to leave the last time David drove me from Mokule’ia to Honolulu, though this time I am not dreading scary medical news.  I will land in New York, and then celebrate Mother’s Day with my family, which is certainly a much more favorable way to leave Hawai’i. 

But David is right.  A lifetime here would not be long enough.

#anjelicablogshawaii #Anjelica blogs Hawaii

[anjelicablogshawaii]

May Day is Lei Day

I left my house on Friday evening to spend the night with family who live substantially closer to the airport than I do. Since I found out that I would be returning to Hawai'i to attend this conference, the only thing that has been on my mind has been my dog, Zoey Makana. I know that she will be well cared for in my absence, but the thought of being away from her for a week is excruciating, so I try not to think.

I don’t sleep much Thursday night into Friday morning, but I don’t compensate with caffeine. I have been running on adrenaline for at least a week, and I have too much to do. I pretend that I am sleeping for an even shorter amount of time Friday night, and wake up at my 3:15 AM alarm to do my hair, brush my teeth, and go to the train, where I will here off at Jamaica to take the AirTrain to JFK Airport. My flight departs JFK at 6:35 AM, and I am surprised by how many people are traveling this early on a Saturday. I have not properly slept in at least two days, and it is too early to be awake. I am all sorts of out of sorts, and the knot in my stomach seems to be telling me that I won’t want food for at least a week. I have spend my first night away from Zoey, who is a rescue dog, and without her, I would not be well enough to have considered attending this conference. When I land in Hawai'i, we are 45 minutes early, and it is not David who is meeting me, but Teddy, and we are going to his nephew’s birthday party. David will pick me up from Teddy’s house in the evening. I have been traveling for almost 24 hours, but I do not feel it. I am too happy to return to a place and a life I left suddenly two and a half years ago to care about not sleeping and smelling like airplane. I have missed my Camp ‘ohana more than I can say, and to a degree I hadn’t known until the anger had transformed into a deep, permeating sadness, and then, finally, into an 'I wish it had been different’ that didn’t break my heart when I thought about it. I eat two hot dogs with no buns and white rice at the party, and have a Hawaiian fruit drink. Hawai'i is hot, and no longer the lush greens of my memory due to a winter altered by El Niño. Teddy tells me there was huge surf, which I’d already known because there was an Eddie, and also because the Camp almost lost houses and cabins, because I saw pictures of the mini bus-sized sinkhole outside of David and Kirsten’s house, which followed in the wake of the waves that broke on the roof of their house. I didn’t know, though, that there was a record-breaking number of weeks this winter without the Trade Winds, and that there was heat and humidity sit-up it rain. It is not just the effects of El Niño; climate change is affecting Hawai'i, and while it may not yet be as dire as I saw it was in the Horn of Africa, it is incredibly concerning. I am having trouble reconciling the future of Hawai'i and the scorched earth I see out the windows with what I am watching, with the children running, screaming, playing, and laughing.

When David and Kirsten pick me up, it feels like I have returned home after a ten year war. I don’t know how I have survived the last two and a half years with only emails, without face to face conversations, and without hugs. The conference schedule is quite full, but there are many conversations to be had over the week. Some will be easier than others.

After I give David and Kirsten the platter that I painted for them, and video their reactions, David makes me a salad, because I have been traveling for so long that I want vegetables, and Kirsten and I split a gluten free beer. Their daughter Nai'a has gotten them hooked on a tv show, and we watch two episodes. I sleep, finally. In the morning, I wake up at 3 AM. The power is out, and eventually, I decide to get up and get dressed. I put my bikini on under my clothes, and it is so lovely to be back in a place where everyone wears their swimwear all of the time. It is so lovely to be back in a place when you can always squeeze in a swim. I watch the sun rise, and then have a long conversation with David. When the power comes back on, after the estimated time of resumed service, David makes breakfast. He told me last night he would make the best gluten free waffles I’ve had, and I can’t wait to try them. I ask if I can do anything, but Kirsten makes the coffee, and David tells me to prepare myself for the delicious food I’m going to be eating soon, so I watch, and we talk. I bring up the breakfast he cooked when my Esky team was new to Hawai'i, laughing that I don’t remember what breakfast was because none of us could eat after we’d had the three different shakes he’d made for us. I think about the Kailua Monkey more often than a person with an old, not good blender should. David spontaneously makes a large pitcher of Kailua Monkeys to eat with breakfast, and asks about bacon. I will always eat bacon. I set the table on the lanai, and we say grace and dig in. I’d asked last night if they were going to go to church this morning, and the conversation returns to that. By the time we need to leave, I have eaten no fewer than 3 gluten free waffles–they were every bit as good as David said they would be–with butter and maple syrup, 3 strips of thick bacon, coffee, and a large Kailua Monkey. I quickly change into one of the dresses I’d brought, and do something with my hair. We are going to an old church in Hale'iwa where they sing hymns in Hawaiian as well as in English. I am so full I do not know if I will be able to sing. We arrive a few minutes late, but nothing has begun yet. The church, Queen Lili'uokalani Protestant Church, is beautiful, and though I’d driven by it many of the times I was in Hale'iwa in 2013, I’d never gone in. The church is historic, and the congregation small, but friendly. The Kahu, or minister, was running late, so they took requests from the hymnal. We sang my request, Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing, just before the Kahu arrived. During the service, I try to remember how to sight-sing in Hawaiian. I have listened to chanting and Hawaiian songs since I’ve been home, and sometimes I sing along, but I am out of practice at best, and they are singing fast. My thoughts inevitably turn back to Africa when Kahu speaks of our abundance here, even as other people have less and don’t give of their abundance in aloha. It is difficult to think of Africa when you are as uncomfortably full as I am. Had I not gotten sick, I would have finished out the year in Hawai'i, and either tried to stay on at Camp or gone back to Kenya to try to help the remote villages I visited. I am trying to be at peace with the timing of my life, though I do wonder about the timing more frequently than I should, because I do not understand it. I do not understand how I could be of more use in America than in Africa, or why Hawai'i brought out the lupus, when I grew up spending every summer in the sun at camp. It was a perfect storm, and intellectually I know how each factor created my three disease flare, but I don’t understand why it happened then when I could have made a difference to those villages. At the Peace, I hug Kirsten and tell her that I’m so happy to be here with her. A woman in the congregation gives me a lei made of crown flowers, a much nicer lei than one would probably give a stranger, but today is May 1st, Lei Day in Hawai'i, and giving leis to people you love and people you welcome is important. I wear my lei all day. I feel deeply cared for, and more open and relaxed than I ever can be in New York. My old life, who I was when I was here, comes back to me. I am in a place I love with people I have missed with a ferocity that stunned me. I am happy, and I would not change the path I have walked if I could. I do not understand, but I am better for it. Now, I remember how to sing in Hawaiian. Smiling helps.

#anjelicablogshawaii #Anjelica blogs Hawaii

[anjelicablogshawaii]

The Return

Every spring for as long as I can remember, my mom has had a camp dream. She'll come downstairs the next morning reminiscing about what it was like to work at sleep away camps. In my late teens and early 20s, knowing her experiences at camps and having spent every summer of my life between ages 4 and 16 attending some kind of camp it seemed natural for me to work at camp. I set off for my first summer working at Camp DeWolfe at 19. Camp DeWolfe is the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island's church camp, on the north shore of Long Island. On clear days, you can see across the Sound to Connecticut from the Chapel. Every year since then, I, too, have had a camp dream. Since I left Hawaii just before Christmas of 2013, I have had lots of dreams about Hawaii, separate from camp dreams. It didn't surprise me. So much was open-ended and unresolved. Over time, the grief and pain has faded into longing. This, too, was not unexpected. I was surprised by how much I missed Hawaii, and Camp Mokule'ia. I missed my Hawaiian ohana. There was a lot of loss to process, and surrendering is not something at which I have ever been good. My plans for that year, and for my life, were irrevocably altered. My life will never be what I had anticipated it would be before I set off for my service corps year. There are days when that still hurts. I have learned to find freedom in what I would have previously considered failure. I have picked up, brushed off, licked my wounds, and figured out how to attempt to get on with things. Summer of 2014 was a sad one. I was in treatment, and I knew that I would not be able to work at summer camps again. My sister went off to DeWolfe for her first year in their Leaders In Training Program, and packing up her camp clothes and supplies and not mine brought sadness and the grudging peace that sometimes accompanies a reluctant acceptance. I've never feared getting older, but the moment when I was officially and permanently past my camp phase was a sad one. This year, my camp dream arrived early. I told Mom I'd already had my camp dream, and we laughed about how in most cases, you inherit your eye color and your sense of humor from your parents, and in ours, I've inherited annual camp dreams. In just over a month, I will be flying back to Hawaii, and going back to Camp Mokule'ia for a weeklong writing conference. I have been richly blessed throughout these last few years, and my going to this conference was the result of quite a great deal of scheming by several dear friends. When it was first mentioned to me, I wrote it off, convinced that it would never happen. At least not now. I shouldn't have been surprised when everything started to fall into place. I will be taking a class in nonfiction (memoir and personal essay), and I already have an idea of how I'll be using that time writing-wise. I'm so excited that I'll be back at Camp. Aloha, A

#anjelicablogshawaii #summer camp #sleep away camp #church camp #camp dream

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This essay was published last week by Role Reboot.

I’m going to continue my blogging on tumblr (I’ve been blogging this whole time on my WordPress blog) on @alwhitehorne, if you’d like to follow me there!

#anjelicablogshawaii #alwhitehorne #role reboot #the year i was diagnosed with lupus

[anjelicablogshawaii]

In 2010, after nearly ten years of unexplained sickness, I was diagnosed with celiac disease and hashimoto's thyroiditis. Both celiac and hashimoto's are autoimmune diseases. Neither can be cured, but both can be managed. I was put on a gluten free diet and immediately began to improve. For the f...

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The Beginning

It's been a long time since I've written on here. There are a few reasons why that's been, and I'd like to take the opportunity to be open, honest, and authentic with you, my readers, who have supported me and cheered me on.

Going to Hawaii was incredibly difficult for a number of different reasons. Firstly, it required leaving my family for the longest period of time I'd ever been away from home, and going the farthest from them I had ever gone. Secondly, the work we were doing was physically demanding. I went from graduate school to doing manual labor in the sun all day. My joints and my body hurt all the time, but I loved the work that I was doing and the skills that I was learning. I found myself very lonely, very isolated, and, honestly, depressed. I tried not to talk about the fact that something didn't feel right, but not talking about my questions and my doubts doesn't make them go away. I had not realized before I left New York just how much my writing community and my ballet school meant to me. I knew, of course, how I would not be myself without writing and ballet, but I never realized how much I depended on the people: on my mentor and dear writing friends, on my ballet teachers, on the ladies I took ballet class with, and the friends I sat with at readings. I felt incredibly isolated, and I didn't know how to fix it, because the fixes were in New York.

The longer I was in Hawaii, the more I realized that something was wrong. I thought that it was simply my thyroid condition worsening, but a trip to an incompetent doctor seemed to say otherwise. He presented his theory: a very scary condition that I quickly nicknamed The Autoimmune Clusterfuck Triad of Doom. I didn't think that I had this condition, but it was scary to have it put on the table. I knew that if I was going to get any kind of scary news, I would react best if I heard it from my own "Dr. House." My symptoms worsened, erasing my hopes of being able to hold out until July to get answers, as we did not have enough money to cover an extra round trip plane ticket for me to be able to fly home at Christmas. I tried to accept that I would not be home with my family at Christmastime, and spent my first Thanksgiving away from home. Then I bought a ticket home, and made an appointment with House to figure out why I felt so unwell all the time.

The diagnosis was lupus. Lupus is triggered by sunlight, making Hawaii the perfect storm: a different environment, and a tropical, sunlit climate. I was working in the sun from 7-4 every day, and though I'd been sure that my hives were actually a lupus rash for less than a month, the lupus was damaging my body. My doctor referred me to an immunologist he practices with when he suspected that there was more wrong than my body was willing to tell him. The immunologist concluded that my immune system was non-functional, but not for the reasons they'd expected. Usually, the cause of immune dysfunction falls into one of five categories: Poor nutrition, Infection, Toxins, Trauma, or Stress. My immune system presented as 'Lights on, no one's home'. For a terrifying two week period, they thought that I had leukemia. I am still so incredibly relieved and grateful that this is not the case. However, my lupus has already stressed and inflamed my bone marrow. My immunologist said that my bone marrow is as stressed out as it is possible to be without having cancer. Because of this, the treatment protocol is much more aggressive, and much more expensive, than I had previously thought or hoped it would be. Between the lupus diagnosis and the damage it had already done to my body in the nearly-six short months I was in Hawaii, I was told that it would not be wise for me to return to Hawaii, unless I wanted to decrease my quality of life and, possibly also its length.

I have finished the first two weeks of my new treatment protocol: two IV infusions a week, each lasting between 3 and 4 hours. I have slowly begun to make lifestyle changes that will improve my health now and in the future, though they were not doctor-mandated. I currently take 25 hormones and supplements across 4 dose times each day. I am home, with my family, trying to accept that, even though Hawaii was not what I expected, that this does not mean that it was not good, and that does not mean that it was not enough, and that it does not mean that I shouldn't have gone. I am angry at God, yes, I will admit it, but I must still trust that He knows what He is doing with my life, and that I cannot know His ways.

I am not sure where the road will lead, but I am hopeful that this is the beginning of a greater adventure than even I'd dared to dream.

The Beginning.

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[anjelicablogshawaii]

Every time I promise an update, the internet goes out.

But, I'm home for some testing and for the holidays, and it is so very good.

I also just played with the settings on the blog, and I wasn't able to enable anonymous messages, but I did enable the Ask Box, as well as the ability for people who have been following me for more than 2 weeks and people whom I follow to respond to my posts.

Mele kalikimaka!

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