073 – Adventure Series: The Invitation [Scotland 1/5]

Sarah Tacy [00:00:00]:
Hey there. Welcome. You are tuned in to the summer of adventure series here at Threshold Moments where I am sharing bits and pieces of what it means to call in to your life a little bit of adventure. As Mischa Schuler would say, there’s possibly adversity and venture that not everything will go exactly as planned. And how do we take those elements of clarity and confusion to help learn more of what brings us alive and who we are. I hope you enjoy this. And please know that this particular series comes out twice a week. So if you want to be notified within your podcast app, please subscribe by pressing the little plus button up in the right hand corner, and you will be notified when these little 20 to 30 minute episodes come out.

Sarah Tacy [00:00:55]:
Enjoy. And if it is fitting for this stage for you and your life, may you find adventure And in your adventures, big or small, may you find yourself. Hello. Welcome. I’m Sarah Tacy, and this is Threshold Moments, a podcast where guests and I share stories about the process of updating into truer versions of ourselves. The path is unknown, and the pull feels real. Together, we share our grief, laughter, love, and life saving tools. Join us.

Sarah Tacy [00:01:45]:
Hello, and welcome to Threshold Moments. This is going to be a 5 point sequence, which we have yet to do. I have yet to do on this podcast, just these little mini musings of a 5 point sequence around my trip to Scotland. After interviewing Asha Frost, my editor, Amelia from Softer Sounds, suggested, why don’t you share a little bit about your trip? And I’ve really kept this trip, which was so special to me, near and dear to my heart. And that was suggested by one of the guides. They said, listen, this is Ginny Muir. In our culture, we tend to as soon as we’re doing it, we put it out on Instagram or we write a blog as soon as we get home. And there’s something about that, about integrating via writing or sharing.

Sarah Tacy [00:02:39]:
And I’ve let it simmer a bit to the point that sometimes it seems like just a dream. But there are so many take homes about this trip. And I would love to present it as preparation, beginning, middle, end, and integration. So a little reminder from an earlier podcast that in a threshold, we have these 5 points. In our birth, we have these 5 points. Ray Castellino talked about this 5 point sequence within birth. And we can look throughout our lifespan and say, oh my gosh. I rush into something and suddenly I’m in the middle.

Sarah Tacy [00:03:18]:
It’s like preparation and beginning weren’t even there, or I over prepare so much. And then suddenly, it’s the end of the trip, and was I even there? You know, people sometimes have that experience with a wedding, preparing so much and being so focused on all the details that we forget to be there for the beginning and the middle. And so it can happen in any portion that some parts are fast for us. Some parts are slow. And when we begin to look at this, we might begin to have more choice in our lives when we start to notice an end is coming near and that we are leaving before the end is over, or we rush the end, or any, any way this can show up, just having some form of recognition of a pattern gives us a little more choice. So I share this trip and these five points. 1, to honor it for myself, and possibly that it would be something that you might get interested in your own life of, if I looked at this from these five points, what would I learn about myself? What would be revealed? So the first point is preparation. And what I want to say about the preparation is that there are really 2 types of preparation that I can think of.

Sarah Tacy [00:04:38]:
There’s a preparation, the unknown preparation. And the unknown preparation is what happens when you are simply taking the next doable step, one after the other, until without even knowing it, one day you’re ripe for the adventure that presents itself or for the threshold that appears. A lot of people might say in hindsight, like, wow. Those 20 years of doing x, y, and z really prepared me for the threshold that came up. Or possibly, say, you were did the hustle culture for 20 years and that really prepared you for the threshold of burnout. Right? There are these ways that we’re preparing sometimes unconsciously. And sometimes it’s even just like, I will consciously do the next right step without knowing what it is that you are preparing for. So I’m gonna start my story with the unknown preparation that brought me to this trip.

Sarah Tacy [00:05:37]:
And then I’m also gonna share the part of preparation that was on purpose and how life giving it was for me. So my story starts back in 2023. My husband found sacred hunting, and it shifted his life and it shifted our marriage in a really beautiful and profound way. I have studied for so long various ways of conscious communication, but when a partner comes and says like, can you talk like this? Could you actually do it like this? Can we try this? It can feel more controlling and not so awesome. And so to enter something on his own accord, not because I suggested, it’s time you join a men’s group, it’s time you do some inner work, just something he felt pulled to. And within that 1st year, maybe it was a year and a half, there were about 5 trips, which meant that every time he left, I was holding down the fort. And I often had help. I would very mindfully set up as much help as I could, gathering with other families.

Sarah Tacy [00:06:45]:
I my desire was that I could feel good while he was feeling good. Right? It wasn’t like he gets to go off and do this thing and I but, nonetheless, there are times where it’s like, oh, and that week, they were both sick and they were both out of school and, you know, things happen, life happens, and it’s not always easy to have a partner gone. And on the other side of it, I got to have somebody who was home, who, when we were communicating, he started communicating in a way that was so much gentler and invited me to be more reflective of how

Sarah Tacy [00:07:22]:
I was communicating. I was like, wait, what’s happening here?

Sarah Tacy [00:07:27]:
And so there is also this payoff on the other side that we get to have this more mature relationship together. Up comes his 40th birthday at the end of December. And for that whole year, I was like, Hey, by the way, 40th birthday is coming up. Would love to prepare for it ahead of time. What do you think you wanna do? And there were many layers there for him, which is his story. He can tell another time. But I will say it ended up being a very last minute trip to Nosara, Costa Rica. And Nosara, Costa Rica, talking about preparation, the unknown preparation, Nosara Costa Rica is near and dear to my heart.

Sarah Tacy [00:08:08]:
I went there right after graduating from college. I did my first 200 hour teacher training there, and it was there that I felt my grandmother return to me, Sarah a message to me. It was there that I began to understand energy better. It was there that I shed my first tears. I was not a crier. I took so much pride in not crying and just to be an Sarah in sequence and feel tears running down my face without any story behind it. I was moved in such a way that if anyone at this point in my life were to say, imagine yourself in a place, where is it? Where do you feel most alive? It would be Nosara. It would be me and really in my maiden energy riding on a beach cruiser with salted hair and warm wind blowing and the howler monkeys howling and having these beautiful relationships with some of the locals, as well as teachers and friends who have been growing and weaving into the community for years.

Sarah Tacy [00:09:14]:
This place that was the Sarah home, this place that invited me to teach my first 100 hour course, that I was really so scared and so confident at the same time. And it pulled on every piece of me, my mental, my physical, my spiritual, my energetic. It pulled me to my edge and I felt so alive in that role. So here I go back to Nosara after 10 years off. Now with 2 kids, a husband, and my parents dropped everything, changed all their plans to join us. And it’s so special to share it with them all and every day, Steve is super into surfing. So every day, morning and night, he’s going out and his first night out, the first sunset of when we get there, he comes back and he’s like, that was the best surfing of my life. And I was like, any wave? Because usually in Maine, it’s like you get one awesome wave.

Sarah Tacy [00:10:10]:
No. No. No. Every wave was the best wave of my life. And it continued throughout the week. Morning and night, he’s out surfing. And this is for his birthday. And I’m generally with the kids and that my parents are there too.

Sarah Tacy [00:10:24]:
So again, just like feeling well resourced, but also noticing, like, I’m not going to yoga classes. And part of that was not feeling a huge draw. I went to a Pilates class and feeling, like, happy and fulfilled and somewhat neutral, but it was in contrast to my husband who was like, I feel so alive. And I should say right before we went on this trip, the very end of hunting season, he had his first contact with a buck. And it was a direct shot, which I know is so hard for so many of us to hear, and I eat meat, so I’m trying to come into relationship myself. It’s a very sacred and meaningful and not taken lightly event. And he had been practicing for a year, an hour plus a day of just going out first thing in the morning and at night with his archery so that it can be the cleanest, most respectful process possible. And so he’s having all of these things that are feeling transformational and peak.

Sarah Tacy [00:11:33]:
And Thursday comes around near the end of the week and he and my dad decide to go deep sea fishing and I didn’t really wanna go. Although when I was like in Maidenhood and out on a hammock at 5 AM and neighbors are like, You wanna go? We’re going. I’m like, Yeah. And I had an epic time and it was great. This time, I was like, No, that’s okay. And I’ll stay home with the kids. And it ended up being kind of a challenging day for other reasons. And they come back and they’re like, You.

Sarah Tacy [00:12:00]:
We are so many fish. We just we would just we just released because there were so many. We we kept 1 tuna, and we had ceviche on the boat with the tuna that we caught. We brought it home. So it, you know, it fed us for days, and then we gave it to friends who are local in the community. And they’re like, there were thousands of dolphins. Not like the dolphins you see in Florida that are somewhat like, they’re wild, but not really. They under These dolphins were hunting.

Sarah Tacy [00:12:30]:
They were playing. They were they were everywhere. And there were these sailfish, and there were these I’m I’m trying to think what they’re called now, there were these flying fish. Do they really fly? Do you think they were flying? Because it was, like, 100 to 300 meters that these things were going. Were they just, like, were they just going off the air pressure right above the water? Did you know that that’s like the deepest water, like 2,000 feet where we were? You know, they’re going on and on about this most epic day that they’ve had. And one would think that my reaction would be like, I’m so happy for you. That is amazing. But that day was not easy.

Sarah Tacy [00:13:12]:
That was a hard kid day. And I had to sit with the fact that I was holding back tears. And one could say, how great would it have been if I could have just let my tears be there and let people see me? But it was like, oh, I don’t want to rain on the parade. And I went out for a walk the next morning and I realized there was like the part of the unseen preparation was that if I had been given the time, if someone said like, I’ll stay home, you go do something that brings you alive. You go take that time. You go take that space. I wouldn’t have known what to do with myself. Can anybody relate to that? Like if somebody did, I’m sure some of

Sarah Tacy [00:13:52]:
you are listening here, like, I would go to a spa. I would take a nap. I would take a bath. I would go surfing.

Sarah Tacy [00:14:03]:
But I wonder if there’s anyone listening who would be like, yeah. Like, if someone said, go do something that makes you feel alive, would you know what to do? In my mind, because I was watching Steve, it was like, there were these skills, right? There was this archery, there was surfing. There were these things that he was working to improve upon that really brought him to life. And so something really important here that I want to put across is the power of just having a question and then letting the question go into the ethers, letting it go into your subconscious mind because it’s in the subconscious mind where new realities and new possibilities can be seen that you can’t come up with on your own. If I tried to answer that question, it would have been frustrating or I would have been or I would have been going in circles, trying every single thing and using so much energy to try to figure it out. So I simply noticed I don’t know what brings me alive. I wonder going back to the reticular activating system. I wonder, wonder what brings me alive.

Sarah Tacy [00:15:24]:
I want to know. I also want to point out that there’s a study done on monkeys where they show monkeys doing something and they, you know, they do it right. And they get a cucumber and they’re so stoked about the cucumber. And then one of the monkeys is given a grape and the monkey who receives the cucumber looks at the one who got a grape and was like, WTF,

Sarah Tacy [00:15:48]:
I want a grape.

Sarah Tacy [00:15:49]:
So he was so satisfied with cucumber. But when he Sarah that there was a grape, he threw the cucumber back at the scientist.

Sarah Tacy [00:15:57]:
And so I also just wanted to say that I

Sarah Tacy [00:16:00]:
was having experience of, like, am I like the monkey who has a cucumber here? Like, everything is really awesome here in Nosara. In comparison to when I was here younger with more vibrancy, I’m not feeling as alive. Maybe that’s a grape, but the other grape was like my husband having peak experience after peak experience after peak experience. So also wanting to just put that out there as something I noticed. And again, I’m always reflecting this back to you. Have you ever noticed that in your life where you’re like, I think I’m good with this thing. And then maybe you see it in comparison to something else. And you’re like, am I good with this thing? And I will say this to kind of deshame this.

Sarah Tacy [00:16:42]:
There are many times where I see people who have, quote, unquote, better things than I have, and I don’t care. I don’t want it. That’s so great. I’m so happy for you. Not for me. So I do also wanted to say that this is also I wanna honor the feeling in with within me and so shame it. It’s also this is a bread crumb, That there is a curiosity, there’s a desire, there’s a ping in me that is ready to move from a survival place, from a coping place, to a place of feeling alive. It’s a big deal in our cycle of recovering from trauma or recovering from exhaustion or recovering from heartache, the day that you recognize you actually are ready to know what’s going to bring you alive.

Sarah Tacy [00:17:39]:
So we come home and we also have to have a conversation kind of feeling like, Oh, I’m sorry. I couldn’t be so sight for you last night. And this this is what I’m recognizing about myself. We come home and I let it go. And my friend, Timothy Joy, who is on this podcast, post something on Instagram that says, I want a friend that will join me in the Scotland Highlands in a little hut to have a cup of tea by the fireside. And I was like, I’m in. I’ll see you there. And we both just kind of laugh it off and let it go.

Sarah Tacy [00:18:09]:
And I let it go for a couple, you know, couple of weeks pass by. And Janine Yoder, who is also on this podcast, she was early January episode and Kimathi, I believe is November 9th. Janine Yoder, I think January Sarah, something like that. She posts something about going on a retreat to Scotland. Scotland is not even, as far as I’m aware, it’s not in my mind. It’s not something I’m looking for. And, yeah, Janine says, I say, that looks amazing. She says, why don’t you come? I open up the link and I get a full body vibration.

Sarah Tacy [00:18:51]:
It’s not just chills. It’s not just goosebumps, which would be enough. It’s like the crown of my head is the vibrating. My whole body feels so alive and alert and embodied. So it’s not alert and disembodied fully in myself. And I had this moment of, oh, this is what a hell yes feels like. I haven’t felt a hell yes in years. I’ve had yes, and like, yes, this is great, and this is there.

Sarah Tacy [00:19:23]:
No, but this. Like, there are often two things that are true in any given situation that I’m making a decision on. To have something that was a full body yes was incredible. And I could say, I can make the argument, well, I don’t know that, like, a trip to Scotland is the same thing as archery where you can go out and practice every day or surfing where you can go out and practice anytime the waves are there. But I’m gonna make an argument for listening to the times when the body gets upset and when it gets lit up. So this was my unknown preparation. Wasn’t like saying yes to my husband going on all his trips and really almost like pushing him out the door for the first few. Yes, please go do this.

Sarah Tacy [00:20:16]:
Yes. Yes. Yes. And and just being really honest and authentic. I’m taking a moment to pause. I would like to acknowledge the privilege of being able to say yes to this trip, to have the financial ability to be able to do it. That’s a really big deal. And so I’m just feeling like it’s worth saying that here.

Sarah Tacy [00:20:44]:
And as I move into the known preparation, I wanna say that something really cool happened for me, which is that I know I feel very alive in summer dresses that are barely touching my body, that are super flowy. I feel like a goddess. I love them. It’s so comfortable. There’s no layering. There’s no putting thought into it. I throw it on and I feel great. I live in Maine.

Sarah Tacy [00:21:14]:
So September to May, that’s not possible. And as soon as jean season comes about where many people are like, oh, so cozy, love the layers, I just feel very I’m coping. I’m just getting by with these clothes. I haven’t figured it out yet. So when they send that itinerary and they talk about different ceremonies and different things we might want, and the fact that it’s probably going to be cold and it’s definitely gonna be wet. There was an opportunity to look at what would I want to wear if I wanted to call in the energy of ceremony, the energy of ancestral awakening while also being warm and ready for the rain. It could have stressed me out, but this comes back to the nervous system thing of community. They had Pinterest boards.

Sarah Tacy [00:22:17]:
People were sending things back and forth. I’m going to try out this. I’m going to do this. You could look on my Instagram account and scroll down and it’ll say like preparing for Scotland. Preparation. And it would have in almost any other scenario been really stressful. And what I learned in the preparation, I mean, I felt like I had this awakening during just the preparation of how I could actually feel super empowered through my clothing. I know that’s not a new thought.

Sarah Tacy [00:22:54]:
This Carrie Montgomery for many years did somatic dressing. The way we dress could either help us to want to, like, cozy in or to feel more powerful or to be more social or feel more aligned with our business. And in this retreat, there was an element of how do we adorn ourselves and what energy does that bring in and what are we calling into the energetic field and the intentions. And again, because it was with the help of sisters, it was fun. I didn’t have a sister. I didn’t grow up with a sister changing clothes in a closet or trying things on or working things out. So I just wanna say that my preparation for the trip, my known preparation, and many of us said this in the 2 to 3 weeks, maybe it was the month leading up to it, was really profound for me to be excited about clothing that was cold weather. And I also learned that wool tartan skirts are so warm and so protective against wind and rain, and so I have a very classic Scottish skirt now that I have actually worn since being home as well.

Sarah Tacy [00:24:13]:
And I think that’s all I have for this preparation portion. So next podcast episode will be the beginning of this adventure, and it will also include our work with Falconry. So please listen in next time for the beginning of the trip, this ancestral trip back to Scotland. And here’s what I’ll add before we close this. I’d love to ask you if you can find micro thresholds in this story. In Costa Rica, there was anger to asking or maybe sadness to asking a question. There was the threshold of curiosity and listening to leaping. There was phase 2 packing to phase 3 inspired packing.

Sarah Tacy [00:25:05]:
And for this week, I’d love for you to reflect. Can you think of a time in your life that by continually taking one right step at a time, how it has perhaps prepared you for an unexpected adventure or a monumental threshold. Or you could look at present time to honor the small, continuous steps you take, not knowing what will be the threshold, what will be the leap, but you have enough trust to take those steps. Again, I will see you next time on Threshold Moments for the beginning with a medical emergency and Falconry. Why not? Thank you for tuning in. It’s been such a pleasure. If you’re looking for added support, I’m offering a program that’s totally free called 21 days of untapped support. It’s pretty awesome.

Sarah Tacy [00:26:13]:
It’s very easy. It’s very helpful. You can find it at Tacy. And if you love this episode, please subscribe and like. Apparently, it’s wildly useful. So we could just explore what happens when you scroll down to the bottom. Subscribe, rate, maybe say a thing or 2. If you’re not feeling it, don’t do it.

Sarah Tacy [00:26:35]:
It’s totally fine. I look forward to gathering with you again. Thank you so much.