Who Is This Rich Hippie?
Hello, my name is Kimber. I’m 54 years old, average built, average looks, but far from average life! My life has taken me to the deepest depths of Hell and brought me back to the highest highs a girl could ever dream of! I truly am a Rich Hippie, living this amazing Rich Hippie Yoga Life. By definition, “Rich” adjective- plentiful; abundant…”Hippie” noun- a socially unconventional person…”Yoga” noun-Sanskrit translation ‘union ’- thought to be the union between ones mind and the divine. So put it all together and you have a person who is incredibly blessed with an abundance of…well…everything, who is socially unconventional, and one who has intelligence grounded by soul, who’s just trying to live her life to its fullest!
My visit to the depths of Hell was a slow beautiful journey for almost 18 years. I gave birth at 23 to a child with a disablilty, Spinia Bifida. I got pregnant and married the father, but then the night she was born with a disability, he left her, he left me, left the hospital, and then left the state. Didn’t take me very long to realize I was going to be raising my daughter by myself. I was scared, alone, living away from my family, but somehow knew we were going to be alright. By the time she was 4, I had gotten back on my feet and in the groove of raising her and her now 2 year old sister, as a single parent while working in ER on a Trauma Team as an EMT, all the while going to college studying pre-med. Then my world got rocked again. She was diagnosis terminal.
We would spend the next 14 years of our lives in the eye of a tornado where it was peaceful, and beautiful, and happy. Our life was full of so many amazing opportunities, and adventures and love. But the wild winds of the tornado were always circling us ready to devastate our world in a heartbeat. Some days we would get too close to the outer walls of the eye and feel the power and the damage the storm held. Some days would start with wild flowers and sunshine and end in PICU and heart monitors or brain surgery. We were prepared everyday to leave in a moments notice and be gone for weeks. Somehow, we would always find our way back to the center of the eye and feel the calm again, but we were always aware the storm was surrounding us.
We spent 9 birthdays, 7 Christmases, and countless days in the hospital. She was on thirteen different medicines, catheterized every four hours, there were feeding tubes and home IV treatments, wheelchairs, and surgery. Our world was so far from a normal life! It seemed it didn’t matter what we planned our day to look like, it would almost always end very differently. When the girls were 8 and 10 I chose to have another daughter ( a story in itself) crazy right! Yea, so I heard from everyone. I stand here today and say it was the right decision, just like I did back then.
Shortly after that I got closer and closer to Hell. We spent the last three years of her life, driving three and a half hours each way, so my daughter could do dialysis at a pediatric hospital three days a week. Everyone use to ask why we didn’t move to the city so we didn’t have to drive. Well, I had decided one thing I was not going to do was move my very popular, high school cheerleader daughter to a new city just to watch her sister die. She was losing enough, she didn’t need to loose her support system too. So we drove.
Most people would say that was a horrible life, but not us. We thought those years were the best years of our lives. It’s crazy how the tornado held such devastating power all around us, but in our eye there was laughter and happiness. We were living each day like it was our last. Having adventure after adventure, seeing things, going places, experiencing life to the fullest. But at the same time, we were spending hours in dialysis with her hooked up to machines, removing, cleaning, then returning her blood back to her body, feeling the winds pick up watching her plan her own memorial service.
The last week of her life is when I finally reached the bottom of Hell. When my daughter was seventeen, she made the decision to stop dialysis. Her team of 10 doctors backed her up on this decision. As a result, I went from a mom who had been watching her child slowly dying, to one who now had to give her daughter permission to die on her terms. Then, I had to do the most heart-wrenching thing because my daughter asked me to. The last week of her life, my daughter asked me to wake up everyday, get dressed, put her in the car, drive her to everyone she loved, put her in her wheelchair, and watch her tell everyone, one by one, goodbye… for the last time. We had the privilege of knowing ahead of time that she would probably only last a little while off dialysis, so this is how she chose to live out those precious few days. So this is what I did everyday for six days. I watched my child one by one say I love you and say goodbye. Then, she died.
I wasn’t sure I was in Hell til that next day…that was the day I had to wake up, get dressed, and live without her. There are those that will not like my use of the word Hell….but trust me…when your heart shatters into that many tiny pieces and you still have to wake up everyday and have movement…it is unimaginable Hell you are living in.
In the mix of this chaos and pain, I managed to raise 2 amazing women. Though they will be the first to tell you it wasn’t easy , it wasn’t fair, they sacrificed too much, I wasn’t there for them enough, I wasn’t a good enough mother…yet somehow… one was a beautiful dancer and cheerleader all though school, and the other one a beautiful, intelligent Homecoming Queen and soccer player. Today both are living happy, wonderful lives. Maybe because of my choices, more likely in spite of me, but either way this chaotic, high stress, stormy life taught them compassion, charity, humanity and most important flexibility. Whether it was bracing for impact to ride out the storms, or bending and stretching through Sun Salutation, these girls learned to bend and not break. Their strength amazes me! I never worry about how they will handle what life may bring them, they have been tested and proven to have impeccable survival skills. They also happen to be kind, charming, funny, patient souls.
So how did I do this? Yoga! I have lived a Yoga Life for 40 years. My yoga mat was with me in high school. It was with me in college. It was with me during all those hospital stays. It was with me that first day and everyday after my daughter died. I found my way back to the land of the living on my yoga mat. I slowly put all the pieces of my shattered soul back together on my yoga mat. When God reached his hand out and pulled me back from the depths of Hell…it was on my yoga mat. Soul healing, soul searching, learning to breath again, moving my body from asana to asana when I didn’t know how to put one foot in front of the other, all happened on my yoga mat.
My life looks so different now. What once was a life full of chaos, appointments, crisis, stress, and storms…is now a quite, relaxing, decluttered, simple life focused on happiness. After my house was empty and I was alone, I simplified my life. I became self employed and traveled for a living. There had been so many restraints on my life for so many years, but once I was alone and free of the stress of any responsibilities, I was able to quietly sit with myself and began to heal.
My girls are both grown women now with their own lives and I have started a new chapter of my life. After living my life as a single woman by choice for so many years, I met a man my soul recognized immediately. I have now been swept up by Prince Charming, who happens to be a helicopter pilot and I’m living a fairy tale life with the person I was meant to have by my side. He says when he met me, I was this Hippie living this Yoga Life, but now with him I am a Rich Hippie, still living my Yoga Life, but by his side. This man loves me to a depth I never dreamed possible. He fills up my newly constructed heart completely. Everyday is an adventure! I have taught him how to declutter his life, his mind, and his soul. He has taught me how to fly. We now live in a small town on a Lake. My life is so rich with blessing, whether we are on the lake in the speed boat or cruising the skies in the helicopter, or on the yoga mat together in meditation, we are living our life with simple, decluttered happiness!
I’m not sure I have completely healed…but I am sure I am well on my way! So join me as I continue my journey and I will share stories and adventures and moments of enlightenment as I teach you the techniques that keep me centered, grounded and strong in hopes that you too can find your simple decluttered happiness living a Yoga Life.