“Okay, so where are you going?” The insurance representative was robotically filling out a routine form on her computer. I could hear the clicks of her keyboard on the other end of the phone.

Me: “I don’t know.”

Insurance representative: “Um…okay…uh, when is your return date?”

Me: “I don’t know that either.” Brief silence. “Would it be helpful if I made up a date for you?”

Insurance representative: (Uncomfortable) “Um….”

*sigh* We had reached that point in our interaction.

Me: “I’m sorry, Ma’am, what is your name again?”

Insurance representative: “Dash.”

Me: “Dash, I know that it sounds completely crazy that I don’t know where I’m going or when I’ll be back, but how about I give you a quick rundown of why I can’t answer these questions and then together we can figure out what to do next….?” I gave her a 30-second summary of our life.

Dash: (with sincere compassion) “Wow. You really don’t know where you’re going or when you’ll be back…? I’m scared for you!”

Twenty minutes later, after she had all of the information she needed (ha…and more!), we were buddies and she vowed that she would do all in her power to push my unconventional request for a 90-day thyroid prescription through and would call me back later today with updates on her progress. Thank you, Dash. Thank you, Universe.

I gotta tell ya….I’ve had a lot of help and signs from the God/the Universe this week. On Tuesday, I went to the dentist. The dental hygienist was going through the typical questions at the beginning of a visit. “Pain? Changes in medical history?” I responded very generally with “just a lot of stress these days.” That was it. Nothing else. I didn’t want to invite any questions about living on a boat. My normally gregarious self didn’t even want to talk. Too down. I just wanted to blend into the chair and be cleansed, even if it was just my teeth.

She reclined my chair and I opened my mouth for her to begin. She had a warm and calming energy about her—I liked her right way. After a minute or two of brushing/scraping, she soothingly said “well, while you’re here, just let it out.” I chuckled.

Did she just say “let it out?” Ha. So weird. That’s my mantra for the week—"let it out.” I just wrote about that yesterday in my blog post. Huh.

Normally, I would have said something to her like “you have no idea how spot on you are,” but her hands were in my mouth and there was no way for me to speak intelligibly. I just had to sit there quietly and listen to whatever she had to say. I didn’t even say “uh-huh.” I simply remained still.

She continued to gently clean my teeth. A minute or so of silence passed and she continued. “Yeah, I hope I’m not overstepping, but I just think that as women, we care so deeply about other people and we get so wrapped up in other people’s emotions and hopes and wants….it’s so hard.”

Yes. Yes it is. I said nothing. I didn’t move a muscle.

She took a minute to examine her work and then kept going. “But the one thing I would tell you is this: you have to take care of yourself before you can take care of other people.”

Are you #$%!-ing kidding me???? The tears sprang out of my eyes and ran down the sides of my face. I tried to take it in. Really??!?! I mean, she used the EXACT same words—VERBATIM!—what I wrote in my blog post yesterday! The same words that the priest had said to me personally the congregation back in San Diego—my direct communication from God all of those years ago coming back to me once again. No way. No. Way.

And then—and friends, you are not going to believe me, but I would swear on a Bible or any other holy book that this next part is 100% true—I then heard the background music that was playing: “Shout” by Tears for Fears.

“Shout. Shout. Let it all out….C’mon….I’m talking to you...C’mon.”

I am just sitting here laughing as I think back to that moment. Unreal.

Call me weird, because I am, but this is how God talks to me. Always has. Through strangers and music and bizarre experiences that are typically accompanied by an ever-so-slight physical sensation or a fleeting, but heightened awareness of my senses. I am lucky, very lucky, to have had many moments like this in my life. I think of them as “God winks.” A divine and friendly elbow-nudge that I’m moving in the right direction or that I’m in the right place. I have them regularly but not always frequently. This week either I’ve had a lot more of them or I’m paying closer attention. Or how about this one? I got the text message below from Steve on Monday.

*Steve always has this compass with him.*

His compass broke? Ha.

I get it, God. I get it. I don’t like it, but I get it. We are where we are supposed to be. I hear you. Can we please get to a nice beach now and try out at least one of the five new swimming suits each of us have?

We are lost in every way. (Thinking) Well, not every way, I guess. We just needed to re-center. I’m reminded of a sermon Rev. Doug, our transitional Unitarian Universalist minister, gave in January 2023. His words resonated with me greatly then and I made notes so I could find the substance again if I ever wanted to. He offered guidance for re-orienting yourself based on these thoughts from UU minister Rev. Karen Hering. (Sheesh, these posts have been so spiritual lately!)

So what happened? I mean, the boat is moving, right? We got to Ft. Pierce, so surely we must be in a better place…? Well….

The boat has continued to cause frustration. The bow thruster—the one that was just fixed—broke (again), the fresh water pump—the one that was just fixed (see the pattern?)—was going off (leaking) every minute or so (again), the dinghy was leaking (again). Steve and Sid fixed all of those things (again) this week. Thank you, Steve and Sid! And our brand new oven? Something is not working with the knob that turns the gas on and off (Oy!).

Also, remember the night when we almost had a head-on collision with that other boat and then Steve had to scoot out of the cockpit and release a tight line from a fender? Remember that night? Steve went to bed at 2AM after he released that fender. That’s where that blog post ended. But, only an hour and a half later, the engine battery light popped on unexpectedly and we suddenly lost all of our engine gauges—fuel, temperature, RPMs. I had to wake Steve up. His direction to me? “Whatever you do, Holl, do NOT turn off the engine or we might not be able to turn it back on.” Ugh. As if all of that wasn’t enough, about six hours after THAT (!), we had our most harrowing experience yet when we surfed—yes, surfed—into the Ft. Pierce inlet on 10-15 ft waves. Our rudder and our engine propeller were out of the water at some points and it was absolutely terrifying. I won’t go into the details, because I don’t have the energy, but know this: it was, by far, the scariest part of our journey yet and we will never again enter the Ft. Pierce inlet (or any other inlet for that matter) when a strong current is going against strong winds. Ever.

Is that all? Oh heck no. There’s more!

After that traumatic 24-hour period, Steve woke up the very next morning and jumped out of bed because he had had a dream about the boat batteries running down. He had been monitoring them in the days before but forgot about them (can’t imagine why) and sure enough, they had dropped below 10% (which could permanently damage them). This meant that we were somehow using more power than we had anticipated using…or that something is not working right (aka…broken). Back in September, Steve had isolated and tested every appliance/laptop/ipad, etc. to see how much power each one of them required. We subsequently invested in new batteries and solar panels before we left to more than accommodate our anticipated needs. Where was our power going??? How are we going to keep everything going when we’re at anchor if we don’t have power??? Steve and Sid have spent much of today investigating this and rerunning tests of the loads required for our electronics.

And THEEEEEN (!!), just for fun, the night before Addie and I left for St. Louis, we discovered that about a fourth of the food we had in our freezer had thawed and was ruined. Oh friends, I had……..a moment. Losing food is always tough. But losing food on a boat—food that you had had to find a way to get to the store for, food that you had METICULOUSLY (!) menu planned and inventoried, paid for, hauled back in a marina cart, creatively unloaded with a four-person system through the front hatch and forward cabin, unpackaged, vacuum sealed and then finally stored—is really, really tough. Arrrrrrrghhhhh!!!!

*Sigh* So much. There’s just so much.

Yeah. I needed to re-center. And I think I’ve done a lot of that this week. Am I happy and ready to conquer the world again? Heck no. My eyes are still leaking a lot these days. But am I feeling better and like I’m on a good track? Yes. At the very least, and this is a lot, I feel like the God winks have given me peace that I’m where I’m supposed to be, even if it’s not where I want to be. So….I’m trying my best to trust the process and have done all I could this week to take care of myself. That has looked like buying a few new items of clothing (I didn’t have time to shop for myself before we left), taking walks, talking with friends and family, getting some much-needed beauty tips from my gorgeous mom (I’ve felt sooo frumpy lately), having two face-to-face and very civil conversations with staffers from my two senators’ offices to make sure that they are keenly aware of my profound concern for our country, watching movies with my parents and old Cheers reruns with my mom, hanging out with my brother’s family, going to therapy, etc. It hasn’t been a very joyful week, but it has been a good and healthy week. I did have a breakthrough in therapy yesterday…

The first 35 minutes of the session felt like a waste, like I was listening to someone who was trying to put a positive spin on something that I didn’t feel like spinning positively yet. “Well, the East Coast could be fun. Maybe you’ll meet up with other kid boat families along your way…?” Truthfully, I was getting annoyed and could feel myself shutting down. And then she said it: “Holly, you always want everyone else to be happy, in fact that’s why you started coming to me in the first place—your concern for the happiness of someone else. I wonder if you think that you’ve let your kids down.”

BAM. Oh that landed. That landed hard.

I started sobbing.

Yes. I don’t want to let my kids down. I want to give them the world. Argh. Even typing those words makes me tear up. (Let it out, Holl!)

*May 22, 2021 - Carlyle Lake, IL - First Sailing Class*

*July 9, 2021 - Captiva Island, FL - Second sailing class*

I feel like I’m letting my kids down (even though, logically, I know I’m not). I feel like I subconsciously promised them a super enriching, fun, immersive, global, education-for-life experience in a beautiful, tropical setting with countless new best lifelong friends from all over the world. A real-life paradise—albeit, with a lot of canned food and dirty dishes. (Ha. I’m processing what I just typed in real time. Oh my! High expectations, anyone? No WONDER I’m disappointed! I mean…talk about setting myself up for failure! Sheesh…! Another breakthrough! Boom!) And then it got cancelled. Like we trained for years for the Olympics and couldn’t run in the race because we got covid and had to sit out.

Ugh. I need closure. Otherwise I will always wonder. And wondering, to me, would be torture. And we still can do it. That magical “place” (place = experience) will still exist for us next season (November). I just don’t know if we can stomach the off season if things continue to go the way they have been going. I don’t want to turn around 26.1 miles into the marathon but I also don’t want to keep pumping energy into an oh-so-tempting slot machine mirage that may never pay out.

Oh, Closure. What crazy things I have done to find you throughout my life! The men I dated, the embarrassing conversations I’ve had, the jobs I’ve followed, the places I’ve lived. My curiosity and wanderlust (combined with an ever-there longing for certainty) is often in the driver’s seat…and I believe I am better for it. My best friend Hannah encouragingly laughed at me the other day: “Holl, when Steve floated this idea of an adventure all of those years ago, you didn’t really have a choice. Not at all because Steve would have forced you into it, but simply because of who you are! You’re just wired differently. If you and Steve hadn’t followed through with this, you would have gone crazy with regret. You had to see it through, no matter how it turns out.”

She’s right. My biggest fears are wasted potential and missed opportunities. Give me a big ‘ole pile of embarrassment any day of the week—I’ll get over that eventually. But do NOT give me regret at not trying something or for not seizing an opportunity or for not speaking up or pushing boundaries when I feel it’s really needed. In 2016, I took a class that helped me articulate my life’s purpose: “Unleash potential for good—always.” It’s who I am. Good things and not-so-good things have come from this. And a lot—A LOT—of stories.

Which brings me to today. We are doing it. We live on a boat. We untangled from normal life. Although we were stuck in NC for most of our time, we have already met amazing people, seen sights and had some good times. We have plans to go to the Bahamas next week. I hope we make it. CNN ran a story on Tuesday about how hurricane season is going to start early this year. It said that named storms in the Caribbean could generate as early as May 15th. Friends, that’s next week.

When I was still in Florida, Steve said to me, “Power. Water. Movement. Those are the three main systems that a boat needs to work. We have had chronic issues with all three systems since we started. I expected things to break, Holl. It’s a boat. I even expected major systems to go wrong every now and then. But I did not expect this.”

*Deep cleansing breath*

So….now you’re caught up. Phew. Time to end. And I need to pick up my daughter as the Space Camp coaches are going to arrive in about 20 minutes. Luckily, Addie seems like she has had a wonderful time at Space Camp. I’m sure she’ll have a ton of stories. We’re definitely racking up the stories these days.

We head back to the boat on Monday and then we’ll be trying to get to the Bahamas—it’s so close. More from us soon. Big hugs to all of you.

5/9/25 - Oversharing: Excessive Reflections & Updates From My Parents’ Patio

5/25/25 - A Non-Post: Boat Life Extremes

5/5/25 - Self-Care