The Influence You Have

How do you see yourself? Do you see eyes that shine, unrelenting and strong? Eyes that see real beauty, the beauty of the earth that is raw and untouched, quiet and unsuspecting. Eyes which seem to unlock the secrets buried in this earth, this earth that is flowing forward with steady longing to keep on moving. Eyes that see the rivers, rivers that have a heart beat of their own, a pulse that beats with desire that is ravished with current. Eyes that notice the mountains, giant peaks overlooking it all, vast and fierce. Do you see yourself in these mountains? 

Do you see your magnitude? The magnificent influence that you can have with your time on this earth? Do you take the time to remember to find within yourself what it is that you know to be true. The insight and wisdom we have that has been shaped by opening our eyes and taking in what is happening around us. 

With our humanity comes moments of weakness. Moments of self doubt and moments of confidences lost. It is during these moments that you must remember that this time, this second, is your life. You have a choice, every minute you have a choice, to be exactly as you imagine yourself to be, or to close your eyes and look away. Look away from what is happening around you, choose to not see what needs to be changed.

Remembering that the moments lost are gone, but bear no influence going forward, help us to have the courage to change our course. We can change paths, change our minds any time we want, even when someone is telling us we can’t. It may take time, with trial, error, and heartbreak at tow, but our moments are waiting.

We have the ability to change the world! Take action when action is needed. Stand up and use our words for fights that need to be fought. Plant our feet in the soil, not moving back even when being pushed. Recognizing that there may be more than one truth to a world that is complex and overwhelming helps us to understand the influence that we actually have.

How do you see yourself?

The Day We Met..

Now, of course, this is the way that I remember the story, Curt’s version, I’m sure, is much different..

Our story started in the breathtaking Columbia River Gorge...

It was August 1st 2009, the Gorge was bustling with excitement, as it is most summer days, with people strolling on the sidewalks of Hood River or racing to get to their favorite summer activity. Kayaking, kite boarding, rafting, windsurfing, hiking.. the list is endless. I had a fun filled girls weekend planned full of camping under the stars and rafting under the endless blue skies. My girlfriends and I arrived at Wet Planet Whitewater for an afternoon rafting trip. This being my first trip, I tentatively took the wetsuit and booties offered to me by the handsome raft guides. As we giggled and pulled on the tight outfit, we all chatted about how excited we were and how cute the raft guides are. Then we arrived at the put in, knees shaking and eyes wide, the White Salmon River was roaring in the background.

 The clear blue water, rushing down the narrow gorge, was thrilling and a bit nerve racking. What an amazing way to spend a saturday. Then, we were introduced to our raft guide, Mr. Curt Joyce. There he was, looking as handsome as ever with his own gear, suns-out-guns-out tank top, and sunglasses that were hiding his baby blue eyes. Now, obviously Curt was used to this whitewater rafting thing so he was quick to instruct us to get into the boat. Me, being not quite so used to this whole new world, needed a little more reassurance. So.. I had to slow him down a bit. “Hold on, hold on.. I’m really nervous and I don’t know you, can you please take off your sunglasses so we can officially meet?”.. Needless to say, as his glasses came off, it was all over. Those baby blue eyes looking back with reassurance.. how could I not melt? 

The rest of the trip was amazing. How had I taken so long to find this amazing activity? Under the hot sun and crystal clear blue skies, on the wild and scenic White Salmon River, I fell in love with whitewater and was soon to fall in love with the one who introduced me to it. 

During that trip I sat in the back next to Curt. As we all talked and laughed and went over waterfalls, fate was taking its course. Looking back now, the pictures show a young, innocent girl who couldn’t take her eyes off of her young, handsome guide. 

After the trip, with a little encouragement from my girlfriends, Curt was given my phone number. The tip, well that is another story.. Nobody told us we were supposed to tip!! I have yet to live that down, phone number but no tip... oops. I suppose getting a wife out of that trip is the ultimate tip, right? 

And... that is the story of how we met, and as the story goes... they live happily ever after!

Young, Wild, and Free

We never thought we would change so much. With every day that goes by our eyes shift and we can see just a touch more of what is real. I wonder what is next. New sensations at every turn and new loves with every heart beat. New loves form that we never even dreamt of forming. Loves that open new pathways that were not there before. Love of being free to be who we are in a world where not everyone is free to do so. Love of new art that has the ability to change our perceptions of the common to the uncommon. Love of wilderness and mother nature through magical forests that we take walks in and ponder their mysteries. Love of the history of our world, the rights and wrongs we are learning from. Love of critical thinking that enables us to move forward and to make changes to our society through acknowledgment of the contextual differences we all have and bring together.

We never knew that during the course of being young wild and free, we would grow at such magnificent rates. Through the new loves we experience we begin to learn about change and growth. Through the history of great feats carried out by many before us we begin to get inspired. We realize that we all have voices that with a little courage can change our world that we live in, just as those before us changed their world. The shear weight of this realization can be life changing, the outcome breathtaking. At magnificent rates, at different stages of our lives, we begin to accept that our own dreams of change can lead people to truths that they do not yet see. And the circle of life, the circle of change, will continue.

We never thought we could change so much. As we continue to grow and change we need to remind ourselves to be conscious of the barriers that we all inevitably face. We all are different and we all have biases whether we choose to acknowledge them or not. We should strive to be able to recognize that knowledge is directly related to power and gaining new knowledge will give us the power to make a change and take action in whatever form that may mean. With being young, wild and free comes the responsibility of making our world a little better than when we found it. Taking a stand for something that we see is wrong, saying it out loud, and researching it until we all understand it.

The pages of our life..

In our life we go through countless stages, new places we move to, new faces that become a part of our lives, and new ideas that sweep in and take a hold of our decisions.

With each new chapter of our lives, the pages are filled in and these pages slowly become the book of our life. Pages filled with loves and losses and immeasurable times that have slowly created who we are. The chapters that have shaped our lives and created our unique stories will be looked back upon, read again and again. When we pause and look back upon those pages, we will continue to be reminded as to how quickly those pages can turn and how fast a new blank one can appear before us.

In life we learn new ways of thinking while keeping a hold of the things we have already learned. We learn from our mistakes vowing never to make the same one again, but sometimes not achieving this. I believe that it is not the mistakes that matter but what lies in your heart that is of importance. When I am old and look back at my story, I want to smile when I think of the times that make up those pages. I want to know that for every heart ache I have had, before it there was a great love. I want to remember those who entered my life, whether it was for a brief second or a long road together. I want to know that I learned from my mistakes and my heart was always in the right place. I want to not be afraid to remember the pain and relive the pleasures, both of equal powerfulness.

Our time is moving fast, each day matters and each day is another page to add to our stories. The lessons that we are currently learning, whatever they may be, are shaping the next chapter of our story. I'm excited to be able to look back at these pages with contentment and gratification in my heart.

The Perplexity of Prejudices

Prejudice... “An unfavorable opinion or feeling formed before hand or without knowledge, thought, or reason” –Dictionary.com


I would like to believe that humanity would never do this on purpose. People actually thinking and speaking on something they know nothing about, holding themselves on a pedestal and believing that what they are, who they are and how they are… is any better than someone else. Because, after all, what you believe to be true may be completely different than another merely because of the different paths you have taken in life. To me it is that easily explained triggering the much debated question… how can we not all see this? How can we not all know that there is no right way, there is only what we know which is completely different than what our neighbor knows… so there is no right or wrong, just different. Simple right?



Prejudice, to me, is a word that invokes udder sadness. A word of unconscious hate, a word that limits someone’s ability to see the world as it actually is… full of lives that are beautiful, colorful, alive, and thriving. As we grow and change, our eyes open to new ideas. I believe that when you have a deep rooted prejudice, sometimes it is hard for yourself to see. We get stuck on a course that keeps you from thinking outside of what you normally do. We go to the same places and talk to the same people, stay close to what we know in order to feel safe. It is when we are not careful of this complacent state of existence, that our learned behaviors can become prejudices.



To be able to learn new cultural ways of thinking is the key to keeping this world a world free of prejudice. There are billions of us on the planet.. But as DeGenova puts it so well “Imagine what it would be like if the whole world were populated by people just like you”. The travelling I have done has only begun to open my eyes to the vast amount of cultures there are to learn about. I want to see it all, strip myself of any prejudices that I may have, hold myself accountable for every thought and every emotion that I have and be conscious of each one of them. This world is so much bigger than the United States of America. Every day billions of people on this planet live such extremely, astonishingly, incredibly and mind-bogglingly different lives. With each story completely matchless, with each story having the possibility that it could have been you, how could we ever hold an “unfavorable opinion or feeling" about someone's story?

Can you feel my heart?

Do you believe that if you think about someone hard enough; think about their heart and their soul, their eyes and their hands, just maybe you can make them feel you. Make them feel your thoughts as if you are standing there looking into their eyes and feel your touch as if you are right there holding their hand. I feel like our hearts are powerful forces therefore I can’t help but wonder if my whole heart and soul is thinking about another person, how could they not feel it no matter where they are.

There have been so many times in my life when I long for someone that is not with me. Times when I miss someone or just can’t get them out of my head, times when our pure humanity overwhelms my mind and I feel that if I am quiet long enough I can make them feel what I feel.



We are all unique yet exactly the same in our hearts. I hear stories of heart break and loss, these stories are of people who have lost their true loves to forces of this world, or lost the ones they love through forces unknown to us. Loss and gain in this life continues to drive our minds and our hearts, overtaking our spirits at times, driving us towards never-ending thoughts and powerful realizations. Countless hours spent in meditation of sorts, countless hours worth of thoughts being sent out into this world, how can they not be felt?

Whether you miss someone because they are far away yet still planted on our soil, or you miss someone who is not with us anymore but with our maker, or you miss someone that has changed and grown and moved on in this world, I believe our hearts tend to ache the same. Anytime you are longing for a person that is not in your arms, the bleeding feels the same to you.



So the question remains the same and the answer has to be yes. If we close our eyes and think about their touch and their words, think of the moments shared that are only real to the people that were in those moments, close our eyes and send our heart to theirs, they will feel it. They have to feel it; this is what makes it easier for the one that is aching.

It is then, after you send those thoughts out into the world, after you gave those thoughts your time and your energy that you have to let them go. The thoughts that are taking up your time, this precious time that you are given, have to be released while resting assured that you will not forget them. Your moment that you are in now is your time to make new memories, while storing the others deep in your heart. Releasing the never ending thoughts gives you the power to grow; keeping them in is hindering the process.

Light in this world

Figuring out what you are intended to leave behind, seems to me to be the same thing as figuring out what you are supposed to do with your life. For what greater thing is there than to be a light and a voice of motivation when you are here, and when you are gone to be a memory that lights another’s path and an inspiration to change the seemingly unchangeable.

We all have different views as to what will make us happy, a good job, a big family, a nice house, or travelling the world… We are all similar in the sense that we all long for happiness and all at times go through seasons of wondering why we are not happy and struggle to figure out what we can do to get to that point.

Realizing that we all have something special that not everyone has is such a powerful realization. We all have the ability to turn on a light in a dark room, be the inspiration that another person needs to go on. We all have gone through battles of war, whether it is the war of love or the war of family burdens, the war of losing a loved one or the war of feeling completely lost in this crazy and hectic world. The wars are endless, but so are the impacts that we can make during the wars.

So often I am inspired by those I meet, or those I hear. The voices that are out there to inspire, to share the stories of strength and the stories of survival, those who have overcome more than I, and those that have seen wars that I cannot imagine. The stories that inspire me to not take for granted the times of peace that surround us. There are hero’s that are no different than you or I, they just have a different story and their struggles are neither worse nor harder, they are just different. For we all are who we are, because we all have been on different paths that are completely unique to each and every one of us.

It is my hope that it will be clear to each of us what it is that we are supposed to leave behind. Our legacy that can be anything we make it to be, as long as it reflects our hearts. I long for my heart to be mirrored through my actions, my tongue to be impeccable with my word, and my life to be a reflection of growth and change while I listen to the stories that people share of wars that have been won and wars that still need to be conquered.