6 Kej

Despite their close family ties, Kej people tend to be wanderers. They often feel unappreciated in their native environment and seek out new worlds to carve out a niche for themselves far from their place of origin. To maintain equanimity, Kej people need to be in nature. ~Mark Elmy, The Four Pillars  

I was reborn on August 6, 2009, the day I landed in Guatemala.

Several years after my arrival, I learned that my Mayan nahual, or birth sign—based on the sacred Mayan calendar on the date of my birth (May 30, 1980)—is 6 Kej. And it turns out, my arrival/rebirth on August 6, 2009 was also 6 Kej. There are 260 nahuales in all (20 signs x 13 numbers) so the chances of this are about 0.38%.

As Tata Thomas often says during a fire ceremony, La vida es exacta, es punctual. No hay casualidad ni coincidencias en la vida. Translation: Life is precise and right on time. There are no coincidences in life.

I was home, somehow returning to a place I’d never been.

I felt myself on the precipice of a new chapter, a new life. Bienvenida a tu nueva vida. Touching ground, I was born anew: an expat, a foreigner, a beginner, a gringa in Guatemala. I didn’t know whether I’d stay two years (the length of the teaching contract that spurred my move) or longer.

When I found out that my nahual was Kej, it made sense.

Kej is FREEDOM!

Its spirit animal is the deer, the stag, the graceful king of the forest. Kej also represents spiritual leadership, the four cardinal directions, and humans’ connection to the wilderness and animal kingdom, as well as to our physical bodies (temples) and to sacred territories (homelands and heartlands). 

In modern society, we’re so disconnected from nature and wilderness that we paved roads through the hills, plains, forests and mountains. We paved paradise and put up a whole lot of parking lots.

At age 16, a newly licensed driver, coasting along a dark “farm-to-market” highway one evening to visit my friend Julie, I hit a young buck with my car. I screamed bloody murder and slammed on the brakes, but it was too late to save that gorgeous creature. I cried but kept driving and flipping out for the five minutes it took to arrive at Julie’s house and explain what had happened. Her dad drove us back to the spot of the tragedy and casually dragged the carcass off the road while I looked away, and that was that. I felt terribly guilty and traumatized.

When I found out nearly 20 years later that I was Kej, I realized I had killed my spirit animal on that lonesome county road. Lo siento mucho, querido venadito. I’m so sorry, dear deer. 

When I accepted the teaching job offer in Guatemala City, I was at my friend’s house in Bethesda, Maryland. I’d gone to an international teaching job fair the day before, one that was clearly for the procrastinators. About 30 schools were represented, most of them in the Middle East or Asia. The only two Latin American schools were from Brazil and Guatemala. Seeing as the official language of Brazil is Portuguese and (after consulting a Lonely Planet guidebook at the nearest bookstore) realizing that Guatemala is the northernmost country in Central America, just on the other side of Mexico, made the choice clear.

The next day, upon receiving the job offer and accepting it, I immediately became violently ill. Instead of gallivanting around Washington, D.C. and visiting museums and cafes, I was bedridden, feverish, and unable to do anything but sleep and groan in pain.

My body was saying NO to Guatemala, but my heart and soul sang YES.

My body knew that this was going to be a major life change, an ego death perhaps, and it shut down in protest. But my heart brought me here anyway.

What drew me to uproot my cushy life in Austin and relocate to an unknown developing nation in Central America? Language, primarily. I wanted to improve my Spanish. Freedom, secondarily. Because at first, I didn’t even know that I hadn't been free.

Life in Austin had been just fine; I had a bearable teaching job as at a public school. I had a car. I’d even bought (or, more precisely, taken out a 30-year loan on) a 1955 cottage with hardwood floors in south Austin. I also had nothing keeping me there. No one keeping me there. So, I conquered the mile-long checklist of “how to shut down your life in six weeks,” and I flew.

On a sweltering summer day in Texas, I boarded a plane and took flight into the unknown. The move was a leap of faith and a splendid escape hatch—though it took me years to realize that from which I had been fleeing, or even that I had been fleeing.

I brought along two 50-pound suitcases and my best fur friend, a teacup Chihuahua named Lucy. I left behind a loving family, fantastic friends, two cats, a cottage, a mortgage, a car, a lot of material possessions, and my comfort zone.

We went through a bit of intense turbulence shortly before landing. The pilot then executed a perfect landing, prompting the passengers to applaud when we touched down. I burst into silent tears of excitement, fear, trepidation and joy.

I had arrived in my newly chosen home.

Emerging from the airport terminal, I felt like a VIP as I was whisked to the waiting shuttle the school had arranged for me and several other new teachers. We were driven to the San Carlos Hotel, which would serve as our temporary home until we could find housing. The school paid for our living expenses as part of the compensation package.

San Carlos Hotel is next-door to the U.S. Embassy and a couple blocks away from a restaurant where we went to dinner that first night. Several of us walked down the street and dined together. Getting to know one another, excited for our new adventures abroad. Some, like me, were first time expats from the U.S. or Canada. Others had been teaching around the world for decades.

While we were on the short stroll back to the hotel, a car swerved out of its lane to park haphazardly on the side of the road. The driver jumped out of the car and ran toward us. For a moment, I truly thought I was going to die. I was going to be shot right there on the sidewalk by this maniac, after having my wallet and phone stolen.

Farewell, dear life. Snippets of memories flashed through my consciousness. Really. And all this was occurring in my cavewoman brain, why?

Because, at my parents’ urgent request, I’d read and believed the US State Department’s dire warnings about violent crime in Guatemala, especially in the capital city. It was alarming, but I was willing to take the risk. Hence, my assumption at the fast approach of an unknown man hurtling toward our group of gringos was brutal murder. Instead, he bear-hugged people. Turned out he was the athletic director of the school we’d all be working at. He’d recognized some members of our group, hence the hasty parking job and the need to sprint over and greet us.

I would live to see another día. 

In my three long years in Guate (a.k.a. Guatemala City), I was never robbed at gunpoint, but I was lied to, cheated, rear-ended, side-swiped, overruled, and manipulated. I experienced homesickness, loneliness, anxiety, confusion, rejection, grief, and frustration. And yet, no matter what, I kept sitting, kept stretching, kept breathing, and kept going.

I quickly learned about the 36-year internal conflict, the state-sponsored genocide of untold thousands of indigenous Maya that had “officially” ended in 1996 with the signing of a peace accord. I read books, met people, absorbed a bit of culture.

I had the duty and privilege of working with some of the wealthiest and some of the poorest people in the capital city. I was surrounded by a large and lively community of fellow international teachers. Although at times I struggled to find compassion for our rich, often “spoiled” student body, through my experience as a high school academic special ed teacher of sorts, I saw that the rich kids suffer, too. Many had bodyguards, mansions, helicopters and endless material possessions, but they lacked nurturing from their parents and therefore were short on compassion and self-love. 

I ventured into the “ghetto” when I volunteered at Camino Seguro/Safe Passage, a NGO with a learning and nutritional center for the community surrounding the city dump. There, I spent several Saturday mornings teaching yoga to teenage break-dancers. In 2012, I taught yoga at a safe house for female survivors of human trafficking and domestic violence. They ranged in age fro 8 to 18 and were generally delightful. They loved doing yoga.

I experienced the Buddha’s first Noble Truth firsthand in a deeper way than ever before. Just about everybody seeks to avoid suffering and discomfort and pursue pleasure and happiness. Though our circumstances vary widely, we all experience pain and bliss, attachment and aversion.

We all want to experience joy and peace.

It wasn’t cool, in my mind, to be single in Austin in my twenties, watching with envy as my friends and acquaintances gradually coupled off, married and started families. I was always striving for true love, lacking meaningful romance and settling for what I could get, which was never enough.

For my first year Guatemala, I had no exes, no friends-with-benefits, no personal history whatsoever. I basked in solitude. I got to do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted to a lot of the time. My one commitment was showing up to work at a country-clubbish school every weekday from 7:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. In my vast pockets of free time, I read for pleasure, started a blog, and practiced solo yoga and meditated more than ever before. It was nothing short of brilliant. 

But by my third year in Guate, urban life felt like a struggle. I wanted out. I was fed up with the dirty, dangerous city. I was sick of my job and missing several dear teacher friends who’d already moved on. I struggled every day as I tried to teach unruly 8th graders, many of who gleefully claimed, “We hate mindfulness!” at the beginning of every class when I’d lead them through a few minutes of a meditation technique.

Oh how I stressed over when and where to make my next big move. I debated as to whether to move across the globe to Asia and pursue a teaching position in an international school in Thailand, Vietnam or Nepal versus moving three hours away to a gem in the western highlands of Guatemala called Lake Atitlán that I’d discovered back in 2009 and immediately felt drawn to. 

Then, within a matter of months, I met the man who would soon become my life partner, got pregnant with our precious daughter, moved from the city to the magical lake, and started a new job at a place called LIFE School.

I discovered that—for me—time trumps money and quality of life is way more essential than having a high salary and health insurance. I value being surrounded by nature and like-minded souls and trusting in the natural unfolding of life.  

When I left the U.S., I didn’t think I was running away.

I thought I was running toward adventure, newness, Spanish fluency, and a somewhat irrational change. In retrospect, I see clearly that I was also feeling from a general emptiness I felt.

I couldn’t see that for a long time, and then I could only see it because I’d stepped out of the frame. I intentionally left the framework of my upbringing and of my young adult life: middle class, educated, passed for White even though I was half Mexican, relatively privileged, never broke a bone or experienced a major tragedy. I also left the society that had labeled me as mentally ill and diagnosed me with depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder and had me committed to the psych ward and tranquilized in my mid-twenties.

To make a long story short (too late!): I was chained, then I was released, and about four years later, I became an ecstatic expat in Guatemala, but I did not connect the dots between these events for a long time.

I now see that the culture of my home country is consumption. Work hard, play hard, buy stuff, and—whatever you do—keep busy. And just keep taking these one of these handy pills every day for as long as you live.

I was seeking adventure and a change of culture. I wanted to improve my Spanish. I wanted a new experience, and I was open to whatever that might mean.

I was a true beginner, knowing almost nothing of Guatemala other than what I’d read in my recently acquired guidebook. I was ignorant of the country’s history, geography, and customs. Mayan culture was another unknown. So much was waiting to be discovered.  

Now, 14+ years later, married and a mother, I’m a “permanent resident” of Guatemala, although I recognize that nothing is permanent; life is change.

At one Mayan fire ceremony I attended and interpreted, Tata Thomas said, in Spanish (and I interpreted into English), “It’s better to be a deer than a horse. Why? The deer is free, untamed, liberated. This is priceless.” A horse is strong and powerful, but a domesticated horse is contained, restrained, trained and not free in comparison with its wild cousin the deer in the forest.

Today, again, is 6 Kej in the sacred Mayan calendar. I’m sitting on my balcony overlooking the lake with my two black cats curled up on my legs. My husband and daughter are inside our cozy house. I’m eternally grateful for this moment and this life. I’m grateful to live like a wild deer in the forest.