Finding My Peace

I've decided to start blogging about my constant search for peace and contentment and ways I've been recently finding both.  I've decided that no matter where I live I can find ways (mostly inexpensive) to adjust to surroundings and situations that I start off literally hating (and being incredibly depressed and unhappy with).  I have also come to terms with the saying "Home is Where the Heart Is" - it literally is.

Side bar - I remember seeing a program - 20/20 or something - recently where the reporter was in some third world, very poor village and interviewing (with translator) people outside their shacks (literally, paper bags in some cases it seemed) asking the question, "Are you happy"?  These people, all of them, did not understand - could not comprehend "Happy" - their happiness was not a consideration every day - what was the focus was finding food for themselves and their kids - not being sick - finding another paper bag to live in when the tsunami comes and blows away their current one. 

I have grown up privileged as an American.  Further privileged by my middle class, suburban upbringing and further privileged by my race and living in the 20th and 21st centuries.  I have never known poverty or hunger.  Nor does my 5 year-old son.  Also as an American I have lived under this umbrella of shelter and focus towards living a happy life.  Being happy.  Finding happiness.  Finding peace.  I grew up in a New Age household and we had a meditation room upstairs when I was in middle school in the early 1980's - something not so foreign today, but Vivien Koziel's mom wouldn't let her over anymore after she spent the night and told her mom about our room. 

Recently, I moved with my son to Dayton, Ohio (where I was born) for my husband's work.  Our home in Dexter, Michigan, where we lived for five years (I was 8 months pregnant when we moved into our house) didn't sell last year and currently has tenants whose lease expires April 3.  I have been living in a 2 bedroom apartment since last May.  The apartment complex is new and full of mostly single people in their 20's and 30's.  There are no kids.  There is a pool.  I am 44.  We live close to a major highway and practically on top of every chain restaurant and store imaginable and a shopping mall.  There is nothing neither quaint nor charming about this environment.

Quaint and charming describe the little village of Dexter a mile from my house in Michigan.  I could walk into our Life is Good Store and chat for 20 minutes with the store's owner, as I could the bakery, or barber shop where my son had his first hair cut.  We just got a huge, brand new library last year and the schools are touted as some of our countries best (public schools).  My son took swimming lessons at the public indoor pool during the winter and all my neighbors in our cul-de-sac knew me and liked me.  I liked them.  My son was just getting to the age where he could play outside and run over to the neighbors two doors down to play with their kids, or our neighbor's grand kids out back when they visited.  I try not to attach myself emotionally to material things (like houses) but I am an actress after all and my emotions regularly take over my intellect, so I say with much heart I love my Dexter house.  When I first walked in very pregnant with my first and only child I loved it immediately (and that intensified when I walked into the master bedroom, what became my walk-in closet and master bath).  When I had students (I coach voice-over) over privately, or in small workshops, first-timers would always, always remark how lovely my neighborhood and house was and I took pride in this.  Privilege.  Yes.  I never took this for granted.  I still don't.  But, my house was my haven.  No matter where my husband was traveling - no matter what stress I felt from parenthood, or relationships, or work (or lack thereof) or whatever I had my home to go to at the end of the day and I truly, truly felt blessed and my spirit renewed. 

The best part of my house in Dexter was for me, a feeling of living the best of both worlds between working as an actress and raising a child.  I have always wanted to be a mom.  In fact, that was the deal breaker when I met my husband.  He is 17 years older than me and has 3 children from 2 previous marriages.  If he wouldn't have had at least one more with me, we wouldn't be together (I also remember talking to Tony Brancaleone in Senior Advanced English in high school and asking him if in ten years we still weren't married with kids, would he consider fathering my child).

Living in my house in Dexter, Michigan I was able to have a good life in the northern Midwest, surrounded by families and good people and in a home and neighborhood conducive to raising my son, and occasionally be able to fill my personal spirit with the work I was born to do in the performing arts.  I knew I wanted to be an actress at 14 and I have a BA in Theatre from Roosevelt University in Chicago.  I have been performing in plays since I was 14 and in 2009 performed in my 50th at a wonderful little theatre in Williamston, Michigan, 50 minutes north from my Dexter house and run by my friends.  I am a member of three professional acting unions - Actor's Equity for the stage and SAG and AFTRA for radio, screen and television.  In 2006 I threw myself into voice acting (voice-over) and set up a home studio which led to representation by a New York agency.  I am also represented by an agency in Detroit.  I began narrating audio books from my house for an Ann Arbor client and that has led to narrating a dozen fiction audio books for Brilliance Audio, in Grand Haven, Michigan, and a three hour drive from Dexter.  When I realized there was little to no voice-over training in the Detroit area (I regularly travel to Chicago and LA for voice-over events and workshops) I began coaching and producing workshops at a recording studio in Birmingham, Michigan, about an hour and fifteen minutes from Dexter, bringing in the likes of Pat Fraley (celebrity voice-over talent/teacher and my mentor and friend) from LA and Sherri Berger in Chicago.  Then, I met Pamela Lewis who is a veteran New York voice-over talent and teacher (and author of the book "Talking Funny for Money") who resides in Ann Arbor (ten miles from Dexter) with her husband, and frequently travels to New York to teach or to loop major motion pictures.  Pamela (now a very good friend) and I put on several workshops at RMS recording studio and from my home.  I was never in the business of producing voice-over workshops and teaching to make a bunch of money, but rather to give back to people and enjoy the events - I also got to learn from the folks I hosted, so it was like getting paid to take class.  This began in May 2009 and ended in December that year and in the 7 months I coached privately and hosted ten or so workshops I averaged nearly $2,000.00 a month.  Again, very blessed.  My friend Petrea Burchard in LA, as well as Pamela Lewis, told me I just may well have my own voice-over academy soon.  I was also on stage, acting in a co-shared play between two of the 8 or so Equity Theatres my union allows me to act at for 13 weeks early last year before we moved.  I was acting on stage in at least one play a year for somewhere between 6 and 12 weeks and that was just fine for me.  The film industry landed in Michigan in April 2008 with a huge tax incentive to producers (currently, the television show Detroit 1-8-7 is shooting there) and I was all of the sudden, along with all my talented peers in the area, auditioning for day player 1-5 line speaking parts in A-list television and major motion pictures, for some very big name and well-known directors (I met Rob Reiner - couldn't have been lovelier - at a callback for his film "Flipped" and very well-known TV director - "Lost" - Jack Bender, among others).  Funny though, my recent film roles came not from being cast out of Detroit, but by Donna Belajac in Pittsburgh (Love and Other Drugs and Super 8).  In any case, my penchant for performing and mothering was well-suited, I believe, to Michigan.

Then we moved to Dayton.  Dayton, where I was born and lived briefly as a child and visited my grandparents until I was 38.  Dayton with its even more dwindling economy than Detroit (my husband's work is contracted by the United States Air Force without whose Base I believe would leave Dayton a dust bowl of a town).  Dayton with no casting directors, one Equity Theatre (whose artistic director was the one friend I had returning here and just died) one, in my opinion, low-end talent agency and no commercial recording studios.  I have driven an hour to Columbus for an occasional on-camera industrial film audition for Macy's for an agent and over three hours to Cleveland for the same.  Driving a 9 hour round trip to Pittsburgh for Donna in a day has become a welcome escape as has returning to Michigan for a voice-over job or audition driving 8 hours in a day.  Grand Haven, where I've already recorded two audio books this year, is now a six hour one way drive; 6 1/2 with pee stops.  Last summer I was hot (it was nearly 95 every day and humid) and slave to the indoors, with not even an indoor play place like Jungle Java or the Chelsea Tree House to take my son to and kick back with my computer or book (I know, poor me, right?)  Worst, there is no water here.  No lakes.  No beaches.  Independence Lake was a bike and trailer ride away from Dexter for my son and me with a lake and small sprinkler park.  The pool at our apartment is full of beer drinking idiots who let their dogs poop in the pool area and swear and touch their boobs.  Last summer I cried all the time.  I was depressed.  I was miserable.  I was not a good mommy.  I was not good to be around period.  Then my husband deployed to Afghanistan for five months (returning over Christmas for 3 weeks for hernia surgery and to go to Disney World with us - another welcome escape).  During that time I busied myself volunteering at my son's school twice a week and even taking him out of school for two weeks dragging him to Grand Haven while I narrated (we have no family around - no friends - no unpaid support - which was never an issue in Dexter where I had a slew of support, even in neighbors, I could turn to for help with Sam or whatever when Dave traveled).  Dave is home now and we are going to Spain (an almost yearly thing for us for Dave's bicycle camps - his passion) in three weeks for a two week stint.  When we come back, we will have to decide where to live.  Do we put the house back on the market in Michigan?  Do we move back in?  Does Dave push to work out of the Ann Arbor office and chance being let go if they do cut-backs?  His company was just on the front of the Dayton Daily News yesterday boasting building a new office complex and employing more people.  Does Dave work out of Virginia or Washington D.C. and commute back and forth to Dexter?  Do we stay here and buy a house before our Michigan house sells and carry two mortgages?  Does Dave continue looking for employment at other company sites like San Diego?  Do I have it in me to relocate again so soon and have to acclimate to another new place?  (Dave adjusts wherever quickly going to work and socializing and cycling - I am a white, aging actress raising a Kindergartner who survives on human connection - didn't realize that one until I moved to Dayton and didn't have human connections the way I'd had them in Dexter anymore). 

This all leads me to this week and finding my peace.  Finally, right?  I am typing from a coffee house/winery in downtown Yellow Springs, Ohio.  Go ahead and Google the place.  Quaint.  Charming.  Some say, "Hippie" - very artsy, culturally diverse.  I AM HOME.  Why did it take me nearly a year to hang here and instead wallow in self pity?  I AM HUMAN.  My humanness, anyway. 

Side bar - Monday I interviewed to volunteer at Easter Seals in Dayton, volunteer narrating for their radio reading services program.

Tuesday, I took my first yoga class at Yoga Springs studio in Yellow Springs.  It was my first yoga class in a healing studio environment in years.  I shopped at a little boutique called Kismet and had lunch at a place called the Winds.  Wednesday I took another yoga class and lunched again downtown and went through more shops.  Wednesday afternoon I brought my son to children's yoga and I walked the bike path for 45 minutes on a beautiful, sunny, 48 degree March 2nd day.  Then I let my son browse Mr. Fub's Toy Store, shared a muffin with him at the very same coffee shop I'm typing at now and took him to a park to play.  This morning, I took another yoga class (my arms hurt). 

I'm easing off the spending money aspect of discovering this new place.  I found myself this morning (and yesterday morning) looking forward to Yellow Springs as if I were getting ready to commute to a new job. 

I have been able to rest.  I have been able to appreciate.  I have been able to reflect.  I have really been able to calm down.  My edge is disappearing (also from cutting way back on caffeine) and I am more patient with myself, my son, my husband - everyone everywhere.  I must be finding some inner peace.  It's the explanation I've come up with anyway. 

So, no matter where I am, I can find this peace.  Now it happens to be in Yellow Springs.  Later, it will have to be in my Dayton apartment (even if the TV is blaring at 60 decimals so my husband can "hear" it) and later this month in Spain.  I will continue doing the yoga (I am tired of the gym every day and my body is sorer from yoga over the past three days than from ever lifting weights for one).  I will continue calming down and noticing simple, little things and appreciating them, like the duck couple outside my apartment window in the man-made pond, or the sun and being able to walk outside (it's supposed to rain tomorrow and over the weekend) or mine or my son's health (and his gorgeous blue eyes and smile)!

I am finding my peace.  I will share what I find here, no matter where I am or where I find it so I can reflect when I am feeling not so peaceful and full of despair (which I hope, is truly in the past).

Oh, and I was reminded in yoga class by how lucky I am to live by a man's foot long scar on his calf that he told me was from a motorcycle accident - and here he was standing on that leg doing balancing poses - as I thought of just last February in 2010 when I was driving home from my opening night in a play around midnight, going 75 on I-96 in Michigan (the car on cruise control) when I lost control of my car and turned my 2003 Jeep Liberty over in circles at least three times before landing upside down in a ditch.  I walked out from my car wreck through the back window and into the arm's of angel people who held and comforted me until the paramedics arrived, and away from everything with no more than slight abrasions on the top of my head (oh, if only I were wearing my hat!) and a bit of stiffness.  I was back on stage the following week.  Not my time. 

This is my time. 

Peace.