I almost kept this to myself

Podcast Transcript:

Welcome to the Pattern Breaking podcast.

It's spring here in Ohio. Spring is just exploding. I tasked my husband just now with mowing off the dandelion heads. I'm all about dandelions, but the fewer seeds that are in my garden this year, the better. The weed seeds. So he's out there doing that. You might even hear.

the mower swooshing by in the background as I record this episode, as I land here in this moment. In this moment, in this moment, I'm in my grandparents' house that I bought from my grandmother's estate after she passed away.

It was 2022.

I was on an upward, a slope of upward momentum of growth and success in my pattern making school business. And I never would have guessed that this would have been the move. But when my grandmother passed away,

And not immediately, but

in...

the time after she passed away.

When my family was talking about selling the house, suddenly I realized I needed that house. I wanted that house. In all the years of family gatherings here, of climbing the big trees outside, of

Christmases in the parlor, and crochet, digging through her crochet magazines and all of her balls of crochet yarn, and all the years of...

photos of all of

dozens and dozens of family members all over the, were

sticky tack to the kitchen door, all of the years of being in this house with my grandmother.

never thought that I would buy her house.

But when she passed away and there it was for sale, there was no question in my mind that I was meant to buy it.

And there I was, capable of buying it.

And that's the thing.

that means everything to me in this moment is how following my heart, following the weird winding path, the impulses, the pull towards different things, towards changing my life, how it all brings me to this moment and how as I arrive in this moment, I realize it all prepared me.

for this moment.

The version of me before I left everything in Montana and decided to go back to school, that version of me would never have been able to buy my grandmother's house. That version of me would have been still completely invested in my life in Montana. That version of me would have been getting by, but would not have had extra income to make a mortgage payment.

especially on a house that she wasn't immediately ready to move into. I held this house. My family looked over this house for me for two years before we were able to move in last August.

two years of raising my daughter, the same two years that I raised my daughter from birth until two years old, I had this house waiting for us here. The same two years while we went through the green card process of getting my husband documents so that he could come and stay with us here.

in Ohio in the United States. So you might be wondering why in the world would I want to live in Ohio? Why would my Italian husband want to leave Rome, the city center of Rome, where you can literally walk to the Colosseum and the Pantheon, where you can literally go to the market and get

beautiful guanciale and beautiful vegetables and make a delicious amatriciana and carbonara and like that's your life. Why would you leave that and fried carciofi, artichokes, like why would you leave that and move to Ohio?

And all that time that I was in Rome, that Andrea and I were in Rome, we were so frustrated with our life there. And it all makes so much sense now. It's like we had to go through that pressure. We had to go through that period of pressurization so that the sweet release on the other side of it.

would make us so grateful for the life that we'd found ourselves in.

thing about Rome is, yes, it is breathtakingly gorgeous. Yes, it is the breadbasket of civilization. As a gardener, I fell in love with Rome instantly because plants grew everywhere.

There were weeds growing on the side of the Roman columns, the ruins of ancient Rome, growing in impossible places.

Any little patch of soil was, even if it was just a few millimeters of soil, was enough for life to thrive in that place with consistent warm weather, consistent sunny days, consistent rainfall. And that has made it a center of civilizations for so many thousands of years. There were Neanderthals living there before there were ancient, Italic peoples.

It goes back all the way.

But the thing about Rome is,

the thing about I've discovered about living in any city is

when you live in that close of proximity to that many people.

people start to hate each other.

There's something about

city life

where other people start to feel like they're in your way

and not like they're crossing your path in a serendipitous way.

And for me...

and also for Andrea, even having been born there.

Every day in Rome felt like chaos, felt like we were being forced to, like we were being aggressed upon by life. Like life in Rome is so aggressive.

We would step out the door and there would be taxis whizzing by that didn't wanna stop to...

let you with your baby in the stroller that's already in the crosswalk cross. Like, what in the Lord's name? Like, this is not okay.

It was so stressful to live in a place where you're feeling like you're always in somebody else's way and like somebody always has something nasty to say.

about your presence in front of them.

Add to that the fact that most of the time when I went on a walk in Rome, when I left the apartment, I would take our dog with us. And at the time, our dog was a very loud breathing French bulldog, Rufus.

I don't think that if I had not met Andrea, I would have never had a French Bulldog. I am not a purebred dog kind of a girl. I'm a wild farm dog kind of a girl. But Rufus was a lover. And Rufus's existence as a purebred monster that could barely breathe did not justify the way that we were treated when we would walk in public with him.

Can you hear how just there was no peace in Rome?

There was no peace.

And especially with me as like a blonde, round-faced American woman. I stood no chance. I was extra annoying for the fact that I appeared like a tourist. And I'm not saying that I never had beautiful exchanges, that I never made connections with people in the neighborhood who genuinely got to know us. We did, certainly. And especially with...

people who love dogs.

Victoria Werner (10:05)

But for day-to-day life, living in a place where the majority of your interactions are with people who are annoyed that you exist,

just not a healthy way to live.

didn't like what it brought out in me. I didn't like what it brought out in my husband. And it didn't really feel like the place that I would want to raise my

really, it didn't feel free.

And I, as person who visited and spent a lot of time in Italy before I moved there.

I used to love how vibrant and even how chaotic it felt. It felt life-giving.

once I moved there, the feeling was not life-giving. The feeling was threatening. Like, my happiness, my peace, my freedom felt threatened by living there. Period.

Victoria Werner (11:00)

I knew what life was like in the United States. I had come from Montana to Rome. I don't think there is a farther contrast between the most rural lifestyle that you could have to the most inter-urban, chaotic city life that you could have. Okay, maybe there's more chaotic in...

urban city life than Rome, but it's up there. It's in the tops, however many. And so I'm not going to lie, like moving from Montana to Rome was

I did not anticipate how it was going to feel in my body once I actually lived there.

It's one thing to visit Italy

a tourist and to kind of like

kind of like skim the surface and like just touch the vibe of the chaotic, wild city. Rome is so wild, you know, is like kind of how it felt.

I always loved, I heard Alessandro Michele, so he was once, ⁓ previously the creative director of Gucci. Now I believe his title is creative director at Valentino.

He lives in Rome, was born and raised in Rome. I actually would see him fairly often just around town in Rome. And I'm a huge fan of his. I never got the guts to speak to him, but ⁓ I'm a huge fan of his aesthetic and his approach to

one of the things that he always said about Rome,

or one of the things I've heard him say about Rome is that Rome is like,

Rome is like a hot, sexy mess. Like Rome is sexy. Rome is

Rome is romantic and it's, gosh, I don't know. You're gonna have to look this up and maybe I can find it and put it in the show notes, but I listened to an interview with Alessandro Michele where he spoke about Rome and he really like characterized it as this like

sexy but messy woman, like the sexy hot mess. And I feel like, yes, that is Rome. But my nervous system was not able to feel comfortable with that. And for me, what it felt like was it felt like a toxic relationship, where it was like, this is very sexy, and we have crazy chemistry that makes me feel like I am on drugs.

But this is actually not good for my health or my mental health or my long-term wellbeing. That's what it felt like to live in Rome. I mean, just let me give you this example, practical example. I love to drive, okay? I like love a road trip. I love windows down music blasting, like the feeling of the wind in my hair on the open road. I love to go fast. I grew up with my...

grew up with cars like I kind of am like not a I don't know not a car nerd but I just by my upbringing I know all the cars through all the decades anyways and and I you know there's that's like a part of my soul is like the open road and and just being able to get in the car and feel free and feel like I can go anywhere and I you know got my motorcycle license back in 2017 and I

briefly had a motorcycle and that just felt like it was going to be a big part of my life. I just picture myself as the... From the Neil Young song. Like, that feels like my soul.

And you can have that in Italy, but it's not the same because in Ohio, when I pull out of my driveway here at my grandmother's house here in Ohio, I can go straight up the 45, 50, and then I can get on the highway and go 70 miles an hour. And the only thing that I have to worry about being in my way is maybe a truck that stopped and turning right in front of me, maybe a squirrel crossing the road.

I feel free here. In Italy, in Italy, my goodness, in Italy, in Italy, when you get in the car, it's like Parkinson's Law. Anything that could happen will happen. I think that's the right name of it.

It feels like the world is coming at you. It's like the gauntlet, right? You know the gauntlet? I think that's what it's called where you're trying to move through this impossible obstacle course like

Indiana Jones or something and there's swinging axes coming and you have to dodge the swinging axes and dodge the thing that's trying to crush you. Like that's what life in Rome feels like. It feels like the impossible.

daring, treacherous, obstacle course of life. And if you just want to feel like a wild woman in the wind, it's not really there. Maybe in... I think that there are some... I think that some people... I think the Italians have, especially Romans, have nervous systems of steel. And I do think that moving to Italy was...

profoundly important for me.

Increasing my capacity to handle chaos, increasing my capacity to handle the unexpected, to not get taken out for days or weeks by a stressful interaction, to not spiral about an interaction that I had on the street where, you know, somebody listened to my dog breathing and thought that...

I don't know, they had to say something nasty about him.

Any of these things, I am a stronger, more resilient person for having lived in Rome. And so I will not either, I have no regrets. I have no regrets. But I also, just because I learned how to live there doesn't mean I have to stay there.

doesn't mean that I don't have to, that I can't remove myself and take my family to a place where life is freer and more peaceful and more just life-giving.

If I hadn't have left Montana, which at the time it felt brave, it felt crazy, it felt like I was leaving before my time had run out there, it felt like, I think it felt to the people who I left behind there like, you'll be back. You're gonna go have a little one year adventure and she'll be back. And I even felt like that might be the case. Like, I'm gonna go try this out. But it...

took me so many places all to arrive here. All to arrive here. If I hadn't have left Montana, I wouldn't have gone to pattern making school. And if I hadn't have gone to pattern making school, I wouldn't have started an online course teaching people how to make patterns. And if I hadn't have had an online course teaching people how to make patterns,

I probably would still be back in Montana making $40,000 a year, working very hard to earn that physically on an organic farm. And while that was beautiful, it would not have made it possible for me to afford buying my grandparents' home when my grandmother passed away. It would not have built me the business that connects me with my creativity and connects me

with my spirit and connects me with people literally all over the world.

I wouldn't be in this moment if I hadn't have taken that leap that feels so distant, feels so unattached to this moment, and yet is absolutely the result of me moving and making a decision in that moment in 2017 in Montana.

And when you realize this, like when I sit in this house, I feel.

this connection to my place of origin and to all of the places I've been

the time since I originally left Ohio.

I left Ohio in 2009.

And my life took me so many places all to bring me back here.

Victoria Werner (20:22)

And so I think about last week's episode and about Frozen 2, which I kind can't believe that this is like turning into this beautiful metaphor for my life, but let's go with it. Because I just keep thinking about that voice, that

That voice calling you, where you wake up in the middle of the night and you know that you're meant to be somewhere else.

How that was me. That was me in Montana, riding the tractor through the cherry trees in this breathtakingly beautiful, literally paradise valley. Well, it's paradise. It's a river valley. Paradise Valley is actually a different valley in Montana anyways. Just in this breathtaking landscape feeling like.

Why am I being called away from this place? Why do I feel this calling in my soul to leave here? makes no sense.

I had everything there. Why would I leave? Why? And yet I'm here in this moment realizing how clear that call was. And I can't even help but feel like that call that I was hearing back then was me.

It wasn't God, it wasn't a spirit, it was me is how it feels.

I don't think that I orchestrated all of the twists and turns in between here and there. That feels like it was something bigger than me. But I do feel this line of energetic connection to that girl sitting on that tractor.

knowing that even though

I had found like

family there,

a community of people who loved me, that for some reason I was feeling called to leave.

I felt that I was meant for something bigger.

I was meant to speak to more people. That I was meant to touch more lives than even the lives that I was touching in my farmer's markets each week.

My mentor Melanie Ann Lair talks about this concept of atemporal coherence.

And that's what I'm experiencing right now.

And at the risk of

everyone listening to this having no idea what I'm talking about, I'm going to speak to it because maybe you do.

It's this idea that

I am her and she is me. I am that girl on the tractor.

and that girl on the tractor is me.

and that she is me, she was me in the making.

And the thing about this is, is that...

It feels like at any given moment, like the past is this loud thing that happened, but is complete.

And it feels like the future is this big unknown.

But I think that time and I think that physics...

has been revealing to us that it's not quite so clear that our perception of time

is a narrow

perception when in fact

time is much more slippery and much more mysterious than we experience on a day-to-day basis.

And when I experienced this feeling of feeling so connected to that girl that made that decision, that brought me to this moment.

almost 10 years later.

feeling like I am the one that was calling to her.

Feeling like that voice in Frozen 2 is Anna calling to herself, a future Anna calling to herself.

Are you hearing a calling of your future self?

to take a leap, to go and do a crazy thing. I am, I'm feeling it again. I'm feeling at the beginning of a whole other crazy journey.

It's been seven years since I went to pattern making school and the seven year cycles.

There's something to it.

If I've done this much, if I've created this much in seven years.

watch me and see what I'm going to create in the next seven years is how I feel. And I really kind of say that to myself.

I want you to say that to yourself.

Watch me take this next seven years and go on the wildest,

most improbable,

most life-changing journey.

because when I'm on the other side of it.

I will be so grateful for every twist and turn, for everything that doesn't make sense in the moment.

for all that I become.