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Writer's pictureHarriet Lanka

BACKSTORY 7: Sharing my journey at Morpho in Costa Rica

It was November 17th, 2023 around 6:30pm on a Friday evening, and there I was standing up in front of a small crowd in the outdoor palapa of my daughters’ school, La Paz. I was speaking at an event called “Morpho,” and I’m one of 6 speakers and the theme is “Action.”

I have a fear of public speaking but I also got a full body yes to participate in the event from the moment I opened the email the month prior.


Feeling fear and leaning in was the name of the game for me that night.


I thought I was going to stand up in front of everyone and read what I wrote, but I didn’t. Instead I winged it by memory hoping I’d land where I wanted to, hopefully expressing some “Action” along with the theme.


I thought it went great, and I got wonderful feedback from a loving audience. I was also so happy to get it over with. What a great opportunity.


So in this backstory I'm sharing what I wrote:


I was (and kind of still am) a workaholic. I’d work my spa job almost every day, but when I’d leave, I’d turn to my other job, which was trying to find love.


I wanted an epic love story.


So I waited and waited and waited for that epic love story to come into my life, and watched many friends fall in love and get married. But mine didn’t come. I had many boyfriends or short run ins with men, but it didn’t feel like what I was seeking.

Instead of falling and staying in love, it felt like I kept getting hurt and disappointed, but yes stronger and learning a lot.


Yay me.


So when my 33rd birthday arrived in August of 2010 and I spent it single, I decided I was done waiting for love to find me and the time was now for me to find and the one.

So what did I do? I leaned into online dating and rewrote my entire dating profile in a unique way, and I broadened my search on my match.com profile to include men who were up to 100 miles away and who were religious.


Because why not?


I lived in the small town of Park City, Utah, and it felt like I knew all the men in town already, we’d gone to high school together or they were clients. So I’d exhausted all my dating options in my immediate area, so it was time to broaden my search.


I had described myself as “spiritual but not religious” in my dating profile, but I wanted to take a new approach to dating and invite God into my life, after taking almost 20 years off from religion. Because a little help from God could be fun and rewarding, right? I decided I’d even start praying for love. Because again, why not?


So with my new profile description and search criteria set, I got an immediate rush of attention from new men, from all different ages, backgrounds and origins. It was exciting and a rush.


They all complimented my profile and said they loved reading it and enjoyed my pictures.

I’d just returned from a month of solo travel in soothing east Asia, so I had a ton of fun new pictures by the way.


But one man in particular stood out, and we'll call him D. When he reached out, he first said how much he loved reading my profile and that I was a great writer. Wow, Really? Thanks! That was fun to hear. And then we kept talking, and writing back and forth.


D was so interesting but he lived about an hour away, so arranging a first hangout was a little challenging. Does he make the drive? Or do I? That’s a long way to go for a first lunch date. And I didn't want to go after dark. And so I had the random idea to see if D the rock n roll preachers son wanted to pick me up from the Salt Lake City airport one afternoon, since I was coming home from my cousin’s wedding in Houston. And I got an immediate yes.


He was thrilled to pick me up from the airport and take me home to Park City, which was not a small thing. It was a big commitment of time that benefited mostly me. Thanks D.


I was both excited and nervous about this airport pickup experience, and I remember D pulling up in a silver sedan-like car, like a Celica or something (I can see it but can’t remember the name) and me laughing at having to move a few random things off the seat and throw away a McDonald’s French fry bag in order to sit down. But our hang out was so fun and easy, and involved a casual friendly sleepover and extended hang out that lasted 2 days. Time disappeared because we were having so much fun talking. D was handsome, funny, kind, had done some modeling, was a guitarist and also a back up singer in a band with his best friends. H was also a part time electrician, but most intriguing of all was that D was both religious and a preacher's son. So he fit the bill of me wanting to experience a new kind of guy, so I fell hard and fast for him. That meant I went to church and late night shows, hoping that adding God to whatever we were would solidify our bond and I’d finally have a boyfriend.


Well, D did not fall hard and fast for me.


And how did I learn that? Because for Christmas 2010 I gifted him the most epic multi stop scavenger hunt full of gifts you’ve ever seen. Even I was impressed with my creativity. It ended with a gift certificate for a massage from me, who had been a massage therapist for nearly 2 decades, and I included a note that said I was falling in love with him.

Lucky D, right?


I was definitely going to have love in my life after this display. Or so I thought.


But no, that’s not what happened.


D's response went more like this…


“Harriet, this is the sweetest gift anyone has ever given me, but I don’t have the same feelings for you as you do for me….I consider you more like a best friend….I’m sorry.”


Pause.


“Do you want to go skiing tomorrow?”


I felt like he could hear my heart breaking. Ugh. And Yes D, I do want to go skiing tomorrow.

And so we went.

Mostly because skiing is something I’m really good at, whereas finding a forever kind of love was obviously something I wasn't good at.


So that Christmas night, while nursing my broken heart & ego, I prayed hard and asked God to set me free of desiring romantic love with D.


And God totally showed up and answered my prayer, but not in a way I could have seen coming or been excited about.


We met as a group the next day, on a Sunday the day after Christmas 2010 and we’re going up the 6 pack chair lift skiing in a group, and I’m having a great time because I was pretty sure I was the most experienced skier of the group. I was excited to maybe have the opportunity to show off a little on the slopes.


But the Universe had other plans for me that day.


Do you know what makes everyone a bad skier? Flat light. And do you know what was happening that day on the slopes? Flat light.


It's hard to see anything you’re skiing on in flat light. So there I was making my way down a blue slope at The Canyons Resort in Park City, when I came upon a mountain of snow I couldn’t see due to the light, and my ski pole got stuck immediately in the snow bringing me to a surprising abrupt stop. I then pulled on my ski pole so hard that when it released from the snow, it flew back and punched me in my mouth.


It all happened fast; and yes it was incredibly painful to punch myself in the mouth with my own fist, crushing all my top front teeth in the process.


It was awful and embarrassing. Especially when D skied up and stopped beside me, his eyes wide in disbelief and horror. I could tell he was holding back a gasp or a scream. Because it was pretty gnarly.


I remember hearing the crunch of my teeth meeting my hand and knew what had happened instantly; and I also knew because I was spitting out blood and pieces of my teeth into the snow in front of me. D just told me to just sit down on the snow, because he could tell I was getting dizzy from shock.


I now had a bloody broken smile on an intermediate ski slope sitting next to a guy who I had just professed my love to, and we were waiting for ski patrol to examine me to see if I was clear enough to ski down the mountain, which I did.


I soon found my way to an emergency dentist open on that Sunday after Christmas, and a sweet looking man maybe in his 60’s arrived in his sweatpants, mountain slippers with socks, a button down shirt and a hoodie. He was so comforting from the moment he entered and unlocked the door to his office, and I liked him instantly. He cleaned my mouth up and talked me through what the next year would look like in order to repair my mouth and teeth.


Year?


Wow, what have I done?

He said he needed to surgically remove the remaining part of my front 3 teeth, I needed a crown on the 4th, I needed to heal my broken top jaw, and then he’d rebuild my mouth slowly using implants in my front 3 teeth, connected by a bridge. It was a lot. So that meant I was going to have a removable retainer with teeth on it for about 10 months while I healed.


Okay, sound good? He said with a smile.


No doc, but yes. Thank you.

The good news? I instantly got my heart & mind off of thinking I loved D, but it was challenging to love myself when I had a fat lip and 4 broken teeth. I had surgery 12/31/2010 and spent New Year’s Eve in bed recovering drinking all liquids and having no alcohol due to my pain meds. I was at such a low point that I decided to declare 2011 as my year Harriet, where I focused on learning how to love myself and my life. No matter what happens or what people said about me or to me.


And no dating. Because of the retainer with teeth thing. Nobody wants that on a romantic night out.


During this year of Harriet I worked more than I ever did before doing massages, because I loved my work; and I added more yoga, journaling and reading in my new free time when I wasn't dating. I also took some big trips alone to go seeking who I was out of my comfort zone. I backpacked through the north and south of Thailand, and took a boat to and through all the islands of Thailand. I also went to Cambodia, and finished a trip with attending a Full Moon Party with my old Algebra teacher from Park City High School, who I hadn't seen in 15+ years when we decided to meet up in Koh Phangan thanks to Facebook.


I met so many amazing people that whole trip and made some lifetime friends.

I also read the popular book “Eat Pray Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert in 2011, and read how she had a powerful healing experience with a woman named Wayan in Ubud Bali, so off I went to Bali to find that medicine healer, Wayan and hopefully receive a session. I made it part of a work trip, because I had found a Thai massage course in Chiang Mai for a week, so I wanted to do something fun after. And the idea of having a transformation with Wayan seemed perfect.


And I certainly had quite the adventure in Bali.


I met several incredible people, one of which was Maarten, a young man from the Netherlands who became my traveling companion for the week I was in Bali. Maarten was in his early 20’s, and we met in the airport taxi line in Denpasar Bali. I’d nearly missed my flight out of Bangkok (for a reason I'll share in a different story), and I had drawn the attention of all the passengers on the plane when I ran down the jetway of the Bangkok airport banging on the airplane door crying and begging to be let in. And they did let me in, and everyone on the plane cheered for me, including Maarten. We laughed and I said I had good reason to fall asleep in the chair, and he said he wanted to hear the story, so we decided to share a cab to Kuta beach where I was meeting up with old friends, and then 10 minutes into the taxi ride we decided to share a room, because it had 2 beds. Our energy was easy and fun together, so he was the perfect addition to my Bali adventure to find Wayan.


Along our travels we shared most of our meals together, during which we’d talk about anything and everything about life, love and the pursuit of happiness and dreams.


Maarten didn’t know or care that I had 4 missing teeth and wore a retainer and he also didn’t care about finding the medicine woman Wayan, but he cheered me on. So on one of our last days in Ubud, Maarten stayed at our guesthouse while I went in search of Wayan. And after several hours of following different people’s directions, I found her on the last street I explored. She was about to close up her shop for the day, but we made eye contact and she saw the desperation in my eyes, so she invited me in for a healing session. I was ecstatic.


It all happened rather fast from there.


She stood in front of me, tapped my head and tapped my heart, and then said in broken English that my head and my heart were both strong but the two weren’t communicating. She said I need to connect them and get them working together. She also said I needed to not drink alcohol because my system was too sensitive, and then she disappeared behind a counter making a tincture for me to drink later, and that was that, she sent me on my way.

Land I walked back to our guesthouse


Maarten was so happy for me that I found her, and we went out for a final dinner. While at the restaurant he surprised me and gave me a beautiful small Buddha statue that his mother had given him after his dad died a few years before. His mother told him the statue was to help him find his way and he wanted me to have it to help me find my way. I cried.


He went on to tell me that I’d helped him so much during this week of traveling together and that he loved hearing my funny and crazy stories of me seeking love and life, and he enjoyed talking with me every day and getting a woman’s perspective on life, business and love.


Maarten also was the first person to tell me I should write a book of all my crazy life stories. He said he’d definitely read it. So as he got into the taxi to take him to his next stop, he made me promise I’d write a book. And I smiled and nodded that I would.


I kept that Buddha statue with me as a sacred totem that I deserve love in my life and as a reminder that my stories were important and worthy of being told. And so for the next year it felt the Buddha Statue was a quiet traveling companion cheering me on.


And I kept Wayan’s words close to my heart, and responded by adding more yoga and meditation, doing my best to quiet my mind, drinking less and adding more opportunities to explore the world and who I was in it.


And did all this lead me to love? Maybe not immediately, but eventually and many stories and learning experiences later, it sure did.


As I shared in ALIGNED, on December 5th, 2012 while on a yoga retreat in Potrero, Costa Rica, I booked a chakra healing session with a young man named Adam after I saw his flier on the activity board at hotel sugar beach where I was staying. And since I hope you've read in the ALIGNED story, you know that magic happened between us as connected seamlessly in a heart space frequently that I’d never dipped into before. It was Pure unconditional love, something I wanted, but had zero experience in actually having. But Adam designed a beautiful container for me to learn, and come back to. I ended up marrying him 2 months after we met and moving to Costa Rica 6 months later at the end of my 5 month sabbatical from my day spa in Park City.


It was a lot and it was fast.


A few years after Adam and I got married, Maarten from Amsterdam came to visit us in Costa Rica and I surprised him and gave him his Buddha statue back…because he was now intent on finding love in his own life. And he loved seeing how much my life had changed since we met in Bali 6 years before.


And remember D, the rock and roll musician and preacher's son who helped me find my way back to God? Well he is still a good friend and he also came to visit us last year in Costa Rica and got to meet both my daughters, which was such a gift.


It helped to remind me that my journey of seeking love was an incredible one because I made meaningful connections and memories along the way.


I'm proud of myself that I finally wrote the book I promised Maarten I would? Sure it took 12 years, but the important thing is that it happened.


I believe we’re all on our own healing journeys with our own goals, hopes, and dreams, and we’re all here to help each other learn, grow and find the one, which is often ourselves.


I’ve also learned in my life that everything in life is so connected, and we are all so connected, helping each other in big and small ways to achieve who and what we want to be in our lives.


So my invitation to you is to find the helpers, find the silver linings and find the lessons in your life, because they’re always there. Because everything is happening exactly as it should. Yes, even the messy parts. Sure I wish I didn’t have to knock my front 4 teeth out in a ski accident to activate my self love journey and desire to go seeking who I was and what I wanted, but look at where I landed.


In love in Costa Rica.


And cheers to that.




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