My whole life I've struggled with anxiety. I had endless energy as a child and was reprimanded for not containing it. The religious upbringing I had frowned on mental health diagnoses, so it wasn't until I was about a decade into adulthood that I realized I actually had anxiety. It explained so much. I finally had a context for the stress I put upon myself and the ceaseless energy I had in trying to solve problems that probably didn't even exist in many cases.
I'm a teacher, too. I was a teacher in the United States for 6 years, and while I could talk at length about my experience, all I want to say right now is that it made my anxiety spin out of control. That and other circumstances I was dealing with outside of the school system. During this time, I still did not have the context that I did in fact HAVE ANXIETY.
A few years ago I panicked and left the United States. I had been in such a high-stress place for so long that I didn't know that was what I was doing, but now that I'm out of it I can see that I was fleeing a bad situation. I was desperate to get out and somehow Fate led me to Guatemala.
I moved here because I wanted to get away from my life and I was offered a job. Simple as that. The school I worked for when I moved to Guatemala City was similar in many ways to the schools I worked and trained in in the United States. It was nice to be in a new place, but it still wasn't right
And then in December I went to Lake Atitlan. Lake Atitlan is the deepest lake in Central America and well known as a spiritual hub. I say well known, but I did NOT know at the time. In fact, when I first visited I had a completely different idea of what to expect. I imagined a lake like something from the show Ozark in the winter. It was winter, after all. When I arrived, I was still in a high stress situation, so the first two days of a five day trip were spent nursing a stress hangover. This is what I found:
In spite of the bone-aching fatigue during my trip, I really enjoyed my time there and had a subtle desire to return. The lake had made me feel something I couldn't quite name. I had that chance the following April.
It was another 5 days that went by too quickly, this time with a few friends. The experience was again wonderful, but not quite everything.
Finally, the following December, my second Christmas in Guatemala, I went again and I realized: this was my home. I didn't know why, or how, or what was making me feel this way, but I felt it. In my mind I thought I would work as a teacher in places I didn't love, but that earned me enough money to be comfortable, and eventually retire there.
Fate had another plan. My job in Guatemala City became soul crushing. While I had learned the anxiety thing at this point, I didn't have the mental space to address it. Fate was telling me to move on, but I wasn't ready to leave Guatemala. So Fate opened a door to a job at Lake Atitlan.
The first half of the school year after I moved to Lake Atitlan I was still lost. It was sometime in December that I finally felt like I could heal. That life had given me permission to get out of the dark hole I had been in for so long.
It was then that I began to practice meditation. Through this I learned to love myself and let go of a lot of the little things that brought me down. I'm not perfect, and for the first time in my life that's okay.
Ask almost anyone who comes to Lake Atitlan: This is a place of spiritual healing.
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