Intro 0:07 [musical interlude] This recording is an offering of Networks for Training and Development Online University. Rosa McAllister 0:25 Hi everyone. Aloha, this is Rosa McAllister. You might hear the ocean in the background I hope you do. This is our monthly Healing Circle Call from Networks for Training and Development. We had moved to twice a month, the last couple of months with Coronavirus (COVID-19) happening -- pandemic, many of us on lockdown. We're moving back to our once a month schedule with these Healing Circle Calls that will be on the first Monday of the month at 8pm Eastern Time. And I'm thrilled to be your host today. So yes, I'm at the beach, and I thought maybe this would be a good place for us to have our call today. Rosa McAllister 1:12 So regardless of where you are, whether you're in a city or a town, whether you are in a small village, in the mountains, near the ocean, wherever you might be, you're joining me today at my beach, my ocean, here in Maui, Hawaii. So unbelievably fortunate and blessed I am, I know that, that yes, this is my home. This is where I live. And going to the beach, going to the ocean is my several times a day occurrence, because I live right on the ocean in West Maui. It's an incredibly beautiful place. You might hear children laughing and giggling in the background. You might hear neighbors talking. There's some people playing ummm ukulele and other things and music. There's even some people practicing hula. I'm at a park that's just right up the street from my house and my feet are in the ocean as the tide is rushing in. And yep, there goes the sea turtle, a honu, just outside the reef, I can see his head coming up. All of this is a daily occurrence for me. And I oftentimes have to pinch myself that this is my life. This is what's going on. This is my world. It's not, it didn't just land in my lap. It's a combination of being blessed and having an amazing opportunity to come to Hawaii for work, to present at a conference many years ago. But it's also the confluence of other things. It's also coming here and being open and hearing and seeing connections that I had no idea could exist. And knowing somehow that Maui was my destiny, that I was supposed to be here. I had no idea how this girl from Abington, Pennsylvania living in Spring City, Pennsylvania, would ever come to call Maui my home... but I believed and I hoped and I dreamed and I planned. And I saw other opportunities and I grabbed for them and shared my dream with others, who didn't chase it or dash it or say it was impossible, but held it with me. And the dream has become real, amazingly enough and even a little ahead of schedule. In just another month in August it will be 11 years that I've lived here full time. My husband, Mike, and I plan for it.... pain stakingly planned, using dreaming but also reality. And we plan that we would be here a year later. But we actually jumped ahead a whole year, or at least I did. And then the dream shifted right after I moved here with my husband, Mike, having an accident in the ocean, of course, not here but in New Jersey. And it took his life. He left way too soon but I continued on. And this dream now is not just mine, but it's still ours. And life is somehow going on. Somehow I'm not sure exactly how but it has. And I have found my laughter again, and my dancing again and my ocean again and my dream is again... 11 years later. Unknown Speaker 5:04 And so I share with you Rosa McAllister 5:08 the idea that we all can dream. We all can believe, we can hold out hope. And yeah, we're gonna stumble and bumble, we're gonna have problems, we're going to mess things up. But we can also achieve amazing things. And life can unfold for us in amazing ways that we never thought possible. But first, you have to believe. You have to believe in yourself. You have to believe in possibilities. You have to dream. You have to hold that dream sacred. Don't discount it. Don't let anybody dash it. And also work, work towards that dream, finding small steps and small ways to make a little closer tomorrow to that dream. So I like to tell the story that one of the things that I did early on, as Mike and I were dreaming of living in Hawaii and someday having my feet in the sand every day and the oceans washing up on me as they are now. One of the things that I did to make my everyday a little closer, is I started trying to think like a Hawaiian, not that I am a Hawaiian, but thinking of what it would be like. So when we would come here to visit, which we did, because my son and daughter-in-law, as they say, borrowed the dream. When we come here to visit, we'd made sure that we were not coming as tourists. But we were coming as people returning home, trying to be as local as possible, not faking it, but just trying to act as such. While at home in Pennsylvania, I gave away my turtlenecks, because a Maui girl doesn't need turtleneck, even though I was still living in cold weather, at least part of the year and really could have used some! I didn't want to have those turtlenecks because they represented an old way of life. We shifted many different things. And again, we shared our dream with many people who, even though my guess is they secretly didn't think it was really going to happen, they believed with us or at least they didn't tell us they didn't. And those friends and co workers would find various ways to support us. Like saying, "Oh my gosh, I was just watching HGTV and they had a special on Hawaii and I thought of you right away." That was their way of saying they were sharing my dream that Maui and Hawaii was a reality for me... that someday we might find our dream home, too. I hope you can hear the kids in the background, squealing and splashing and part of it is because a sea turtle is right by them. Swimming right by them undisturbed. So here I am in Maui. I consider myself a Maui girl, even though I'm a transplant. As is said here in Hawaii, when you live here, at least seven years, you're considered local. Because your blood starts thinning, you start getting cold when the temperature drops below 80. You have to be in the ocean at least once a day. And many many other things start happening in that your life slows down dramatically. So here I am this Maui girl with my feet in the sand and the ocean lapping up on me. Looking out between our two islands, Lana'i to my left and Moloka'i to my right and the space that's in-between. And I look out on this view every day, especially at sunset because we face West and have the most amazing sunsets. And the sun sets between, depending upon the time of year, on part of either one end of Lana'i or the end of Moloka'i or in the ocean in-between. And you can tell what time of year it is by where the sun is setting. The sun sets at almost the same time every day, a little bit different based on seasons. But not nearly as dramatic as the east coast where I grew up, where in summertime, sometimes the sun doesn't set so almost nine o'clock at night. Here we're closer to the equator and so everything's pretty even and pretty equal. The sun rises and sun sets at almost the same time every day, give or take maybe 40 minutes, half hour, something like that. Here, the temperature is about the same throughout the year, give or take about 10 degrees whether it's evening, whether it's daytime, whether it's summer, fall, spring, winter, it doesn't matter. And also a part of our evenness and balance here in Hawaii, Rosa McAllister 10:10 the ocean water is almost always the same temperature as the outside air. So rarely is it shocking to the skin or to our psyche as we jump in. And it's usually just feels kind of that same blend and balance between earth and water, sky and self. As I look into the openness between our islands of Lana'i and Moloka'i in the distance, I can't help but wonder what else is in the distance, in my distance, in my future, and in the world. Right now things are a little topsy-turvy, to say the least. Things are a little up-ended. There's a lot of chaos in the world. And yeah, even here in Maui, where things usually are just pretty Aloha, as we say, are pretty easy and even keel and easy going. The world between the pandemic / this virus and once again, seeking and looking at racial unrest, white elitism, inequalities etc. The world is going through a lot of chaos. And as I look between our two islands into the unknown, I'm also thinking, you can't help but wonder about the unknown of what our world is about to step into next. What it will be the so called "new normal" we speak about as the world tries to reopen after being shut down and careful. And then realizing maybe we need to shut down again. Maybe we need to shut down harder. Maybe we need to shut longer for many different reasons, not just the virus. As I look into the space between our two islands here in the distance, and I see now several turtles swimming by, we call them honu, popping their head up for air every now and then. I can't help but think who else what else is under that water that I can't see. And I don't think of it as lurking because I love to swim and snorkel and dive. And I love to find new friends and creatures underneath the surface of the water. Just like I love to find new adventures, and new friends in this life. So the more we open ourselves up to those adventures and those possibilities... the more we open ourselves up to seek who we really are, what our dreams are really about, what the possibilities really could be if we just chose to be open. The more we do that, the more open we can become. And I believe the more adventures, the more love, the more beauty, the more adventures, Rosa McAllister 13:14 the more of us the real inside will be. Rosa McAllister 13:22 So as the waves roll in and wash my feet and splash my legs, as they help center me and ground me, as they help me sink my toes and wiggle my legs into the sand and plant myself further so I don't get knocked over. May you do the same in your life. May the waves of life always, always ... may the waves of life always wash over you in gentle but strong enough waves that they cause you to maybe get a little unbalanced, maybe a little splashed, hopefully rejuvenated and cleansed. And feel a need to dig your toes deeper in to ground yourself while also looking into the horizon between the islands of your life to look about and see the possibilities of the future of you, of your life, of your dreams. May the clouds pass by you gently as they are me. May the trade winds of life blow gently on your skin to cool you. May the water cleanse you. And may you always dream huge, big, luscious dreams... with friendly honu passing by popping up to look at you and give you a nod of approval. Thank you for joining with me today in my Maui, in my ocean, in my life. Thank you for loving and supporting one another. Thank you for being all that you are that blesses this world. You are the light, be the light, shine it bright for others so that they can see, so that they can find their light to shine too. And if we all shine our light brightly, and help one another to shine, just imagine how beautiful and bright this world will be. So I'm going to end speaking now and allow you to just listen to the ocean. let it wash over you and bathe you wherever you are, with beauty, with love, with healing, and with light. Aloha. We'll join you again the first Monday of the month at 8pm Easter Time, Eastern Time excuse me, for our Healing Circle Call. Aloha and mahalo! Jessica Stover 17:16 Thank you for listening. We hope the information provided was helpful. Don't forget to stop by our website and take advantage of all we have to offer. Transcribed by https://otter.ai