There are so many reasons I am doing this I don’t know where to begin.  I guess I could start at the beginning? (trite, I know)  Everything I have ever done in life has left me wondering “what am I really supposed to be doing right now?”  I’ve gone through the motions and a multitude of jobs knowing full well I was meant for something completely different.  I noticed at one point that every job was something people oriented where I was helping someone, teaching them something that they needed.

My true beginning (I just didn’t know it) started in Hawaii.  The lovely women at work, all local Hawaiians, would take me to lunch once a week for girl time.  Being a tech geek in the Navy, largely a man’s world, was a tough gig.  One day one of them, Aileen, said we were going somewhere new.  Somewhere she thought I would like.  I had already submersed myself in the culture, wearing island style clothing, eating local food and talking pigin so she was comfortable taking me to her favorite spots.   She tried to explain what an Ashram was, while we were walking to the building.  It seemed natural that I would be going there and I was QUITE excited.  We walked in, took off our shoes and bowed to the greeter.  I looked up, met our greeters eyes and welled up with tears.  I felt like I had come home.  The people and the energy were welcoming, warm and comforting to me.

We returned regularly and I tried to maintain my spirit when I was later transferred to San Diego for a year.  By the time my enlistment was done and I returned to the mid-west, it was almost like it hadn’t happened.  My closest girlfriend even bought me a Buddha statue to take with me but it wasn’t the same.  I let myself get sucked back into typical Mid-western American married life.  Work, TV, shopping, going out and eating.  I tried reconnecting with old friends and tried making new ones.  My career floundered, my marriage became a divorce and I felt the pull to move to Denver.  Through the urgings of my oldest and dearest friend Patrick, I went to Denver.

I  wanted to go back to school for what I had always wanted to do.  Animal Medicine.  I have always felt the draw to animals and earth, I just never knew how to get there with my tech geek upbringing and tendencies.   I got yet another tech help desk job and eventually tried to get back to school.  It was a hard road.  For the first time in years, I started looking for an Ashram.  Nothing felt right.  Why?  What’s going on?

I ran into a LOVELY woman named Judith at work one day while explaining the virtues of being “The Toner Fairy” to coworker.  Judith asked me what I’d rather be doing.  I explained how my love of earth had gotten tangled up with alternative energy and wildlife study.  I was secretly reading a Microbiology book at the time as well.  How do I begin to explain myself?  I THOUGHT my dream was to go to Africa, it had been since I was 7 years old.  I took a 7000-level class at CU Boulder and was introduced to the world of conservation not only in Africa, but in Asia.  While researching a project on Sri Lanka, I ran across the website of a man in China that was teaching English to rural Tibetans and Mongols as well as writing grants for small alternative energy projects in the villages he was teaching.  I screamed inside “I WANNA DO THAT!”  I contacted the gentleman via email and explained myself.  He said I needed to try doing something.  In the mean time, I started rediscovering the Buddhist side of me.  I’m googling Tibet and China like a giddy school girl.  I ran across Isobel Losada’s web page and started reading……and dreaming.  Dreaming of going somewhere that didn’t have violence and hate.  Somewhere that the people could take advantage of my skills and I could submerse myself in their culture and find out who I really am.  Tibet!  No, my overwhelming desire to practice Buddhism and my big mouth would get me killed, deported or worse…in jail.  Where did all of the Tibetans go?  Dharamsala, India my good friend.

All that time, I was still looking for an Ashram to attend and nothing is resonating with me.  Darnitall!  What’s going on?  I woke up from a dream knowing what I have to do.  I have to go.  I read about Buddhist Nuns and I was there.  Nothing has felt so sure and so right ever in my life.  I am going to take my great people skills, my teaching skills, my geeky technology knowledge and my broken American head and I’m going to India.  I am going to empower women, give them any skills they want to do what they want.   And I get to go to the “Ashram” I want.  End of story.