After we arrived, our driver maneuvered our vehicle along a narrow, twisting road toward the hilltop village of Provesende, in Portugal’s Douro Valley. It is a seventy-mile swath of steep stone-terraced vineyards, where port wine has been made for centuries, and is some of the most beautiful countryside in the world.
Nestled along the banks of the Douro River, Aquapura is a stately terra-cotta-colored nineteenth-century fifty-room manor house with an Asian-themed interior that mixes candles with natural light and wood finishes. I would relax with aromatherapy massages, swims in the indoor pool, and other treatments that incorporated locally grown organic crops, such as grapes, olives, and cherries. The experience warmed my soul, and I did not want to leave the healing embrace of Aquapura.
During this time, so many of my friends stood by the wounded me. Letters and emails sent in for support were endless, from Lee, my longtime hairdresser and the bestest friend a girl could ever wish for, to Helen Jones, my personal assistant, who to this day gave the last drop of herself to me. I shall always honor the love and loyalty of my friends. People tend to think that they have to fix wounds by taking a pill or tumbling into destructive addictions. The cure lies in the support of friends and family who remain by your side in the darkest of hours.
A friend gave me this bit of wisdom, “Tall trees carry a lot of wind. Be the tall tree.”
I would try … oh, how I would try.
From: David
To: Sarah
First, you might find it soulful to read St. Augustine’s Confessions. He did things much worse, and because of it, was sainted! It is a beautiful book and will calm you down. Second, you must put the whole thing in perspective; you didn’t do anything criminal, and millions of respectable people go round as their main career asking for money for introductions! It’s a totally legit thing to do in business. The entire concept of commissions is based on introductions! So you must not feel guilt-ridden. You committed an indiscretion, yes, but not much else.
Anyway, it is all past and undoable. If you dwell on your mistake, you will only commit another one. Stop soul-searching!
From: Sarah
To: David
My dearest,
Your naive and ignorantly stupid friend is trying to get a fresh canvas and a new pot of paints ready. Your steadfastness in friendship is heroic and I am in deep, deep honor and gratitude.
Love you,
Your Oriental sister, Moon
5 Montecito
Find the lesson in what goes wrong.
A DEAR FRIEND IN California was gracious enough to provide me a home for two weeks in Montecito, a lovely community on the southern flank of Santa Barbara and wedged between the Santa Ynez Mountains and the Pacific. There I would attempt to calm the rough waters of my mind and soul. I needed to stop ruminating about who was going to sell me out next, which tabloid would want a chunk of me, and the self-doubt that had turned dark and brooding.
There are people who walk quietly into our lives and influence us simply by being themselves. Anamika, my friend and spiritual counselor, is such a person. She is a combination of gentleness, intelligence, and generosity that speaks to my heart. And, for reasons beyond my understanding, she came into my world and saw something in me that very few others had ever seen. I have been working with her for several years. She never gave up on me, even though I had essentially abandoned myself.
You might say, well, if I was doing all this work, how could I have made this terrible mistake? As Anamika always reminds me: It is about progress, not perfection.
I’ve always been hungry to examine myself, peel back my layers, and find the true Sarah, and so much work began.
Anamika and I decided that I needed to take some reflective time in Montecito to look at what had happened and how I could use it productively. “This is a wonderful opportunity; it gives us a chance to look more deeply,” she said.
I had let my ego get in the way—again. The ego is that invisible barrier, that formidable enemy, we encounter every minute. Subtly, silently, it works—distracting our attention, diluting our reasoning, eventually destroying our judgment. The ego is sometimes completely innocuous, prodding us to hanker for affirmation, crave love and attention, or mercilessly blame ourselves. But each time, the ego has us in its grip.
Today the ego feels like a metal mask around my brain and head, I wrote in my diary. It caused a buzzing in my ears. I started to get so angry and wished it would go away. I longed for the calm stillness I know I can feel, now that I am on the truth road. But I was getting angrier by the minute. Then, eventually, I realized that I should make friends with my ego. Accept it. Fill it with compassion and understanding. I realize it is important to take the higher ground with my ego, not fight it, and in doing so, it eases, and a sense of harmony ensues. A breakthrough, but it left me fairly worn out.
In our sessions together, Anamika taught me that I didn’t necessarily want to get rid of the ego patterns driving the bus of my life. I just shouldn’t empower them. “Give the keys to your wiser, empowered self,” she counseled.
To do that, I had to feel—not “fix”—the impact of my ego on my being. “If you are trying to fix or get something right, it means that there is something wrong with you. If there is something wrong with you, then you are back in the loop of punishment and judgment and that is what de-energizes our system. It literally shuts us down,” she told me.
“Whenever you say you’re not valuable or you are a bad person or you are fat or ugly, you’re turning your own energy against yourself. You’re punishing yourself to avoid being punished by others. And you rob yourself of your inner resource, which is that you are loved, loving, and loveable.”
I tucked my knees up into my chest and wrapped my arms around them, as if to shield myself from the world.
“I feel like such a failure.”
“You are not a failure,” she said.
“What do you think of me?” The words skidded out before I had time to catch them.
“Well,” Anamika said gently, “your real self is tender, gentle, creative, and funny. You’re a beautiful human being, you have a future, you have value, you’re the way you’re supposed to be.”
“I’m just so afraid I’m going to get it wrong, again.”
“Sarah,” she told me, “there is no wrong. There is a greater part of you that is full of love and that you can access.”
But how?
Anamika had me literally take a deep breath and move my focus from my head down into my body, traveling systematically through the body, stopping at each part to experience whatever sensation was present. This work shifted me from a thinking mode to a feeling mode that would include emotions and sensations of energy. How did I feel when punishing myself? How did I feel when blaming myself? How did I feel when I verbally beat myself up?
Ouch.
I saw how physical sensations result in either pleasant or unpleasant feelings and how I tend to react to this pleasantness or unpleasantness in habitual ways. With this exercise there was no attempt to replace the “bad” attitudes toward the self with the “good” attitudes toward the self. Instead, I witnessed the judgments, criticisms, and impatience. I saw how they made me suffer emotionally and created restlessness and agitation in my body. I got to know the nature of my hindrances by experiencing their horrid effects on me.
Ironically, there were days in Montecito when I missed Royal Lodge, and I shared my longing with Anamika. What I do love—no, let’s call it a passion—about Royal Lodge is the bluebell woodland that surrounds it in the spring. Perhaps it’s due to vivid childhood memories of playing and picnicking on an endless carpet of bluebells in the woods near my home in Dummer, I don’t know.
Bluebells bloom in the first steady warmth of April and May. They flood the woods with a sea of lavender-blue flowers and a sweet, lingering aroma that magically banishes all memory of winter. Wood or wild hyacinth, as the plant is also known, favors the dappled sunlight and humus-rich soil found b
eneath the deciduous trees that rim the forest’s edge.
Britain is also home to more bluebells than any other country. There’s a certain irony that one of the least wooded countries in Europe is the international stronghold of this iconic woodland flower, but the reasons for its proliferation have as much to do with Britain’s climate as the amount of suitable woodland.
Sometimes you see just one bluebell, an outlier poking up from opportunistic weeds, but usually the bluebells travel in packs. Some may be past their best, others bent or broken. But no matter, they form the most beautiful patches along a trail, and there are places where they ramble across the landscape and turn the woods into a Bluebell Kingdom.
On warm days, when the blue sky of spring is smiling down and the gentle breeze playfully sways the trees, I like to rise in the early morning when no one else is up. I walk slowly through the woods, where a sea of blue squeaks under my feet. On a single walk in springtime I can often count up to thirty different kinds of wild-flowers in bloom, peeking out from the bluebells. There are many birds flying all around, chirping and fluttering their wings. They seem to be excited, and I know the touch of spring has brightened their day. To me the bluebell woods is a place of great tranquility and freedom. It gives me peace and restores my soul.
If I can’t go to the bluebell woods in person, then I go there in my mind. Meditating on the bluebells brings greater peace into my life, as well as a refreshing and lasting sense of clarity and security. It is a way for me to escape the world around me and to put aside my worries. It is a place inside me where I feel warm, whole, loving, caring, in touch with the real me. My bluebell wood is my sacred inner place that no one can penetrate or pollute. It is where I go, when I go.
During my sojourn in Montecito, I wrote frequently in my diary.
DIARY ENTRIES
July 2, 2010
Today I chose thankfulness and forgiveness. I am thankful to Sarah, warts and all. Not that I actually have warts! I did find it difficult to forgive myself, but I am grateful for all the good bits and bad bits as they have got me here. I have detached from the constant brain chatter, and see it as only stories I tell myself, not reality. I caused so much pain and hurt to my family and myself, and the trail of debts and chaos that I have left behind. What a cleanup, and I feel sorry for Andrew, having to clean it up.
July 3, 2010
My two-week stay in Montecito is coming to an end. I have made many friends here. Their kindness has been the beginning of my rebuilding. Yet today I hit a brick wall, headfirst. I felt paralyzed and hopeless and unworthy. I languished in it and I felt forlorn, miserable, and downright bolshie. After twenty minutes, I detached from the feeling—Anamika helps—turned to the kind Sarah inside, got my energy back, and went for a jog. I felt so much better, especially since I am learning how to detach from my thoughts of so much self-doubt.
July 4, 2010
I played a Whitney Houston CD and listened to a track called “I Didn’t Know My Own Strength.” The words are so right: “I tumbled but I did not crumble.” Listening to this powerful song, I pulled my shoulders back, lifted my head high, and remembered the words of a refugee friend in Sierra Leone: “They can take my country, but not my soul.”
July 11, 2010
All those noisy voices. The dark voices. When fear enters you, it is like a sinister person approaching the gates. Seeing no one at home, he enters and makes himself at home. In fact, he makes himself the landlord and puts everything in the house at his disposal. I have been trying all day to kick the unwanted landlord out.
I was diligent in my inner work, and, over the two weeks, something began to shift. Hindrances began to dissolve because I was not empowering them any longer. As they faded, their opposites—love, patience, self-acceptance, and nonjudgmental attitudes—arose in their place. In fact, I realized that I created more suffering for myself by trying to push away undesirable states or by clinging to those that were comfortable.
By the end of the two weeks, I felt more at peace with myself. My chin was up. My attitude was hopeful. I felt like the tall tree.
NUGGETS:
• Detox yourself. Enjoy a drink of grated ginger root and hot water. Try watercress soup, or try the watercress soup diet, which is a seven-day detox.
• Sit quietly and notice your breaths and your heartbeat, rather than any racing thoughts. Anytime you catch yourself saying something negative—like “I look fat and ugly”—stop and take three deep breaths. Feel those breaths and listen to your heart.
• Go for a fast walk or run. This gets feel-good endorphins going in your brain and stops you from sitting down and mulling over bad thoughts or feeling sorry for yourself.
From: Charlie
To: Sarah
Try to be within yourself for some time. Discover what is beautiful about you. For the moment it is what it is. You are a fantastic human being. And forget all the others. Your generosity will win. The best gift of all is your nature. Think positive.
From: Leonora
To: Sarah
Dear sweet soul,
Always choose peace above all the commotion that surrounds you in daily life. We are only witnesses to the drama that unfolds. Mostly we are here in our human bodies to realize who we are and, as you well know, we are none other than God having an experience of Him, Her, It, Self.
I am always holding you in loving prayer. I pray that you have had time to delve into your true being which is none other than God’s beautiful creation. All we go through in life is a series of experiences. It’s what we learn from them that is important. You, my dear, have been through so much in your life that I hope you are choosing peace, where nothing and no one can harm you.
To: Robin and Scott
From: Sarah
Dear lovely Robin and Scott,
I am sorry for my foolishness. Andrew and the girls are amazing and they all know the truth. However bad the press is, we know. I guess it took this to strip me away to nothing, to stop the 25 years of being the Duchess. I am now Sarah. Just Sarah.
I have been on a spiritual retreat for 3 weeks now, and have been trying to rebuild myself from within.
It appears that the great mother I am to my children, I should have been to myself.
Much love and gratitude.
Sarah
Xxxx
From: Beatrice
To: Mummy York
Dear Mummy,
This is so strange, not speaking to you for this length of time. It is so weird. We are so missing you, Mummy, that we cannot wait till Spain when we can laugh and play and have fun and enjoy our little world and many adventures. This week is going well. Granny is in very good form. Eugenie and I are helping her with her little bits. We even had a picnic yesterday.
I’ve finished three books already. Yesterday, Eugenie went fishing and caught 54 mackerel. She had some for breakfast, and they tasted horrible.
We are so proud of you, Mummy, for doing all your stuff, looking beautiful, and kicking butts in LA. We know all this will mean so many exciting moments for the future and many adventures together to be had. We love you so much and cannot wait to see you.
DIARY ENTRY
July 6, 2010
You never know where you’ll find a kind face, or pick up a bit of encouragement. I went through security at LAX, and a kind officer said to me, “My name is Morgan, and I am from Wales. And I say every day that it is our moral duty to be happy. It does not matter what messes we make, just clean them up and move on, having learned from them.” I said I would always remember his kind smile and lovely words.
6 Lifeline
Life is the sum of all decisions and choices we’ve made so far.
OH, THE MIND, how it paints such a terrifying painting. And then you believe it. You find yourself sitting for hours mulling the mind’s masterpiece. With such thoughts invading my mind, I felt it was time for penance. I have been known to wallow in a paralyzing guilt that keeps me from doing anything useful.
What if I did something symbolic like they used to do in the Old Testament days—like dress in sackcloth, smear myself with ashes, and hit myself with a knout?
These were all acts of penance dating back to Biblical times and the early days of the Christian church. Parishioners dressed in an uncomfortable, hairy fabric, poured ashes on their heads, whipped themselves, and asked God to absolve them of their sins.
I did this in my mind. You might recoil at the idea of such self-abuse, even if only imaginary, but, you see, I felt I had made such a blunder of my life. I was so desperate to atone for my mistakes.
One of the greatest gifts in life is friendship. After the setup in May, Oprah gave me a hand of friendship and then introduced me to Martha Beck, who became one of the greatest life coaches one could have, and a dear friend. One of my “adopted” sisters, whose family I love and who I call Sisi, is Lisa Marie Presley. After my visit to Montecito, I bought a $700 round-trip ticket and set sail alone for her house in Hawaii. I felt really sorry for Lisa Marie. She put me in her best guest room. One morning, I broke the coffee machine because I neglected to use the filter papers! Then I nearly put my teacup with its silver-paint trim into the microwave.
As I sat down for coffee, I wrestled with my ego by thinking what could go wrong in my future. Could I go to jail? And if so, what would I be going for? Did I do something in my desperation that will return to bite me?
To tame my crazy thoughts, I went for a run. I looked for a shoreline to run on, but got lost and found myself vaulting over a locked gate into someone’s garden. Then I ended up on the ninth hole of a golf course where I had to duck a swerving ball.
Finding Sarah Page 5