Finding Bliss

I met my husband in the Winter of 2015. I had recently quit a job that I loved but had become too comfortable in. I needed a big change. After twelve years as an Executive Assistant at Warner Bros. I left with no real plan except to follow my bliss. I wanted to travel. To get uncomfortable and see new things. That is in fact exactly how I met my husband. The first conversation I had with him he quoted Joseph Campbell. “Follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be.” Thinking of that moment now, I knew it was special but I also had no idea the path he and I were about to embark on was a long one that was going to require all the patience and love two people, who live in two different countries, could muster.

My husband is Bahamian and I met him on a trip to a small settlement called Hope Town in Abaco, Bahamas shortly after quitting my job. I was traveling there with my mom and her best friend and after he and I were introduced we felt right away something deeply moving was happening between us. I was able to spend a few days with him before returning to Los Angeles. We began emailing right away and our friendship blossomed into romance over hours and hours of letters we shared every second we could type to each other. We fell in love and five years to the day we met we got married. The thing is, we have been long distance our entire relationship and even now, as husband and wife, we are not legally allowed to live in the United States together. You see, we are in the middle of the process of getting a Green Card and until he has that card in-hand, he cannot travel to the United States. We were in fact married on a Tourist Visa. This is very different from what they call the Fiance Visa, or the K-1 Visa. Getting married on a Tourist Visa limits the amount of time an alien can spend inside the United States. A K-1 Visa gives the flexibility for a non-resident alien to stay in the US with their spouse, but they cannot work and therefore cannot earn an income, until they receive their Green Card or apply for a right to work. The waiting period for both of these Visas is a lengthy one. In our case we’ve been advised a year to a year and a half is the best case scenario, but there are reports of these Visas taking years.

My husband is a survivor of Hurricane Dorian, which struck and destroyed Abaco Bahamas on September 1st, 2019. For five days I didn’t know if he was alive. When his family and I were finally able to talk to him I was overcome with emotion. You see, on August 23rd, 2019 he had asked me to marry him, over facetime. The day he asked me we were having a serious discussion about the long distance between us and what the future held for our relationship. I remember seeing this calm look on his face, as he paused and then said plainly, “Marry me.” I blacked out a little bit but do remember asking him if he was serious and then saying something to the effect of “over facetime?!” before saying yes. Of course I said yes. The following days we kept the exciting news to ourselves, just to cherish it a bit for just the two of us. So on September first, the morning of the hurricane he had prepared for along with the rest of Hope Town and The Bahamas, I trusted his words when he texted me a reminder that hurricanes are part of living in the Bahamas and that Bahamians are well equipped to ride out these storms. The thing is, no one knew what was coming. Hurricane Dorian was one of the strongest hurricanes to ever hit The Bahamas on record. More than 200 people died in this category five storm and even now the death toll is hard to quantify. After he was finally evacuated to Nassau and reunited with his family there, we knew right away we wanted to get married. We didn’t want to wait and so we planned to marry a few months later, in a small ceremony on the ranch where I am a caretaker. Five weeks later he had to leave the country, as a Tourist Visa is usually good for 30 days to a few months. A Tourist Visa is that stamp you get in your passport when you enter a country. Sometimes Immigration is generous and will give you a few months. Enough time for you to take your vacation and get home safely with plenty of room for changes to your travel if needed. Once my husband returned to the Bahamas we began the process of applying for his Green Card and once you begin that process, a non-resident will not be allowed to re enter the country. That’s just how it works. Five weeks after we exchanged vows, he returned to The Bahamas and he hasn’t been back to the United States since. His home was destroyed so he bounced around for a bit from island to island where many of his friends had also been displaced and searched for a spot to begin to pick up the pieces of their lives. A month after he returned I was in a bad accident with a horse I care for. I’m a caretaker on an Arabian horse ranch and I’ve got a beautiful herd of ten well behaved horses. But horses can be dangerous and on March 24th, 2020 I was rushed to the hospital with multiple injuries, including a broken pelvis, ribs, teeth, knee, shoulder, ripped cartilage in my chest and a concussion. I was in a brace for the next eight weeks before I began physical therapy. In July I had to have knee surgery because of the accident and again was laid up for six weeks before restarting physical therapy. My husband still couldn’t come to see me or care for me. My mother moved in with me and bless her, she helped me through the whole process of healing but my heart ached every moment for the man I love. That March the world went into lockdown for Covid and as if we didn’t already feel so far from each other, we feared for each other’s health and safety as the world came to grips with the virus. A friend of his who owned a home in Nassau let my husband move into his house so he had a safe place to ride things out. I facetimed with him throughout the days and I saw the light in his eyes fading as the loneliness and isolation took their toll. When I couldn’t sleep at night, waking up in pain or from worries, I would text him and sometimes that eased the distance, if just for a second, as he always, immediately replied. We are about ten months into the Green Card process and we are in a good place in that our Petition has been approved. Firstly you file a petition with USCIS and once that is approved, in our case this took nine months, then you can actually apply for the Green Card. It’s a process that takes a lot of work, money and patience. It is the same for everyone and very much a situation where you need to get in line. Covid didn’t help this process as government offices were closed and wait times were extended to make adjustments for those closures. It is for the most part a clear process but it takes a long time and a lot of help. Family wrote letters for us, every picture we’d ever taken with each other had to be located, every airline ticket we ever bought to see each other had to be found and scanned, every piece of our story had to be laid out in order to prove we were a real couple who want to be together and not two scammers trying to negotiate a Green Card with a fake marriage. And many people do try to scam the system with fake marriages! The checks and balances are in place for good reason because some people actually get away with these scams too. For us, we knew we had nothing to hide and so we approached this process as openly as we could and with faith that the US Government would see the truth.

I have been able to visit him twice since this process began. We talked about me moving there but because my job is here and we ultimately want to live together in Colorado it didn't make financial sense for us to uproot like that. He also didn’t have a permanent place to live as his home was destroyed and Abaco uninhabitable at the time. Even now they continue to rebuild. The company he works for was literally blown off the island. As an American I cannot work in The Bahamas, until I gain a spousal permit. Which we did finally file for in November 2020 but again that is still in process and The Bahamas has its own waiting period for such things. Travel is expensive and paying for lawyers is too. Every dollar we make goes towards saving to see each other or paying for the Green Card. Money is tight to put it lightly. All this said, I’m not sure we would do anything differently. Our story is an unusual way to begin a marriage but we have so much to be thankful for. Finding each other, recognizing that gift and fostering it with every ounce of love and respect. For his survival in Dorian and for my recovery. For our health. For all the support of friends and family. For somehow affording to pay for the legal fees and the travel. I swear I don’t know how we do it but we so far have been able to. He has been without work mostly as he tries to rebuild his life and I was laid off from a second job this Winter because of Covid. Gratitude and faith have carried us all this time and even now, when I wake up at night feeling alone or afraid, I text him and he responds immediately and I remind myself that Joseph Campbell has proven right, doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be. If you follow your bliss you do somehow put yourself on a track that has been waiting for you and the life you ought to be living is the one you suddenly are living. It might be scary and it might not be easy but it will feel right and you’ll find a way to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

I remember the exact moment I decided it was time to hand in my resignation at Warner Bros. and move into the unknown. I was walking past my local donut shop in my neighborhood and feeling this sense of, not unhappiness, to the contrary I was very happy with my life, but a sense of unfulfillment was creeping in. A quiet stirring. A soft question of, is this all there is? Meaning, I had so much but it suddenly felt like it all didn’t quite fit anymore. I remember thinking to myself with a clarity I can’t completely explain because like I said, I loved my job and the people I worked with, but I knew that come Monday I was going to talk to my boss about an exit strategy. I was in no hurry to quit immediately and I did not have a clear plan as to what I was going to move onto but I knew if I kind of pulled that string that maybe this ball of yarn that was my life was going to begin to unravel. It was a terrifying thought but it was real and I let it sit calmly inside me. I listened to it. I listened to myself. On Monday morning I knew I was going to go for it and I walked into my bosses office and asked if we could talk. That was the first step. After that moment my entire life began to shift and change and I felt myself growing in ways I needed. Like dominoes one piece fell onto the next and the next and then the next thing I knew, my entire life had changed before my eyes. That’s not to say it’s been easy or better even. It’s been different and it’s actually been harder in so many ways. But it has felt right. All along even with the challenges my husband and I face now, I haven’t been too planned. I’ve been as planned as I could be considering leaving a job with zero new prospects and moving from a city and life I loved into the unknown. The point has been to embrace the unknown and to face it head on with some confidence and commonsense and a lot of faith in myself. It’s only in doing that, that suddenly doors have opened for me. Doors I never could have seen before. Just as Joseph Campbell said, “If you follow your bliss, doors will open for you that wouldn't have opened for anyone else.” It might sound idealistic but it is true. You can’t truly find those doors until you really listen to yourself. Count your blessings. Embrace the challenges, embrace the hardships and remain grateful because you never know what’s around the next corner.

In one of my last days at work someone gave me a New Yorker cartoon with a homeless man on the street holding a sign that reads ‘Followed My Bliss’. I got the joke. But you know what, I’ve kept that cartoon in a safe place and it reminds me that success comes in many forms. Waking up everyday, happy and content is true success. Not money and not power. Sure those things help at times and no matter what your path there are going to be hardships and challenges and some days aren’t going to feel perfect but that’s ok. That’s life. I agree with Mr Campbell, I say follow your bliss and don’t be afraid and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be. Even in the Department of Homeland Security.