A fortune-teller once told me
On the fear of change, shamans and overcoming blocks.
Dear readers, I’ve missed you.
I did send a new issue of my other newsletter, which I invite new subscribers to check (Hello and welcome to those of you who are new to Abroad, hope you’re enjoying the ride!), but I have not been able to write something with a bit more focus or presence of mind due to the unexpected twists and turns 2025 is taking. If I were the thrill-chasing type, I’d be having the time of my life. Unfortunately I happen to sit on the opposite side of the spectrum and I’m more of a “if ain’t broke don’t fix it” kind of person. Change and I don’t get along very well.
Cristina, I hear you say, but you’ve lived abroad for a very long time! Sure you must have faced change many times before in your life! Yes, you are correct but my younger self had dreams and ambitions and change was a necessary evil to achieve them, not to mention in these instances change was voluntarily and willingly initiated by me. My present self only has bills to pay and a new body ailment every month.
But I digress, excuse me. Of course you don’t have any idea of what I’m talking about, how rude of me. I beg you pardon for this lack of manners, it is the excitement of being digitally reunited with you once again.
Let me do a quick recap on how I’ve exceeded the change and uncertainty threshold lately:
I received an eviction letter in February out of the blue because she thought of selling (bad, confusing, frustrating)
I found a new flat rather quickly (good)
Meanwhile, I had to deal with my landlady changing her mind about the eviction one day and soft bullying my flatmate and me the other for two months (interesting to say the least)
The day I finally picked up the keys to the new flat I discovered it wasn’t somewhere I wanted to live in (shocking but also expected as I hadn’t been allowed to visit the flat at all in the two months from signing the contract to starting the tenancy) Having to get rid of a dead rat was the nail on the coffin.
Spent a week speaking to the agency and a lawyer friend to put an end to the contract (stressful but illuminating) and crossing my fingers so a new person could be found fast (it worked out because in this city there is always someone more desperate than you)
Spent many hours on the phone speaking to utility providers to close the accounts I had just opened (don’t wish it to my worst enemy although everyone has been very helpful but still nope)
Spoke to my landlady as I needed a place to live (again and as a result of she creating this chaos in first place) and she was delighted to have me back (good, I guess?) because she wants to do a few upgrades in the flat (obviously) and it’s extremely convenient if I can stay here so I can let people in (of course). Plus she has profusely apologised for the eviction notice (I believe she means it yet I can’t get over the unnecessary chaos she’s unleashed but I have nowhere to go so that’s settles it)
This means I’ve only delayed the question of where I am going to live next and whether I can realistically afford to live in London on my own or at all going forward. After a rational and careful analysis, and with the invaluable insights my recent first-hand experience of venturing again in the London rental market has provided, the answer to those questions is “no fucking idea” and “fucking impossible,” which is disappointing as I’d like to feel like the adult woman I am instead of an eternal student who is scrapping by and can’t make future plans beyond what to have for lunch tomorrow. Fine, it’s a bit of an exaggeration for comic relief but not too far-fetched from my current reality.
London isn’t the place I came to 16 years ago which means that right now you must earn at least six figures to be able to afford a decent flat on your own and compete against people desperate for a place to drop dead. And by decent I mean what we understand as basic in Spain. That is no damp or mould, bright (natural light when the sky is grey 11 months a year is a must in this city to avoid depression), ideally bigger than a shoebox, and in an area where you feel safe. When it comes to practical matters like choosing where to live it pains me to admit there is a premium to pay for things the other sex often takes for granted, such as physical integrity.
And while I could afford a super cosy studio flat in an area a bit less well connected where I don’t have to choose between taking a shower or having breakfast because the stove and shower are conveniently placed next to each other so I can do both at once, I’d probably be on Xanax within a month of living in such a place. If I’m still alive after a month, that is.
Of course if I had a partner I wouldn’t be complaining about what for some of you must sound like a first-world problem easily solvable with a man by my side1. Someone to take care of the other half of the rent and bills, which would reduce significantly the financial burden and would allow me to breathe again without the Xanax and for a fleeting moment think that I have made it. That’s how low the bar is: aspiring to share rent with someone. Except that I’ve been there and done that and when you break up is a full-blown shit show of gigantic proportions plus you’re destitute again. Not to speak of how unrealistic this scenario is in London because if finding an available flat you like and can financially afford is hard, finding an available man you like and can emotionally afford2 is mission impossible. Property websites in London have that much in common with dating apps when you come to think about it: what’s on offer makes you cry.
No, romance isn’t the answer to my problems. It’s never been.
What I need, what I want, is to be able to go back in time and return to that younger version of me, the girl who didn’t have all figured out but knew where she wanted to go and moved forward with drive and determination, not afraid of the challenges and, above all, the changes because they were all leading to a better future and were necessary for her to grow into the person she had always dreamt to become. When I think about how uncertain my life was in my teenage years and early 20s I marvel at how focused, carefree and decided I was despite my lack of funds, skills or knowledge, or maybe precisely because of that. Perhaps when you have nothing to lose, you have nothing to fear and that is what propels you ahead with a force that can overcome any obstacle, no matter how big or small.
When I look back at my younger self, at everything she’s accomplished, it seems incredible that person was, is indeed, the same person who is typing these lines. Deep down the drive, the passion, the ambition, the big dreams about achieving the life I had always envisioned for myself are if not properly burning my insides at least providing a constant heat that keeps them rather warm. So what is preventing me from making the jump between the reality I have and the reality I want? I managed to do that before, so what is stopping me from that? Is it my destiny to rent a mouldy studio in zone 9 and be miserable forever while I cry in the shower eating a piece of soggy toast?
The answer to those questions may have already come from someone far away a few years ago.
In the summer of 2022 I wasn’t feeling particularly enthusiastic about the future -a common disposition in this city it seems-, so I did what every white girl in the West does when she is going through yet another existential crisis about where she’s headed in life: I watched Eat, Pray, Love. Except that this time I also booked a trip to Bali for three weeks.
I decided that going to a remote place in the middle of nowhere and spending my days practising yoga to cleanse mind and body was what I needed, and in hindsight I wasn’t proved wrong. When booking the trip online from London I noticed that as part of the optional activities offered to guests there was a visit to a local shaman and I found that intriguing and very much aligned with the purpose of my trip. Surely someone from a different culture, so far removed from mine, had better answers about the direction my life should take. At least that’s what I hoped.
As fate would have it, at the time of leaving for Bali I was reading a great book by Italian journalist Tiziano Terzani, A Fortune-teller Told Me. A mix of memoir, travel and history book, Terzani immediately sets the scene by presenting the inciting incident that inspired this title: how a prediction made by a fortune-teller saved his life and prompted a personal quest across South East Asia, where he worked as the region correspondent for a national Italian newspaper, to find other fortune-tellers in the hope they could spot the event he made a narrow escape from written in his fate but also to explore the social history and the tradition of fortune telling across different cultures. If there ever was a good omen, this was it. When Sukma, one of the guys who worked at the place I was staying at and who was in charge of the daily activities, asked who was interested in booking the visit to the shaman I was the first to put my hand up.
As I was staying at a family-run place there were only six of us making the trip to the shaman and we were split into two cars. On the way there, I bombarded Sukma with questions about the experience we were about to have as he was naturally talkative and always happy to share information about Balinese culture with us.
"So do you know this shaman then?”
“Me? No, not him, because he isn’t my local one, but he is the one that is closest to where you are staying, so we’re coming to him.” In my head this was the equivalent of when you run out of milk and know it’s cheapest to get it at the supermarket but it’s already dark and cold so you end up paying a premium to buy it at the convenience store around the corner and therefore buy the half pint because you’re stingy. Milk is milk and I bet a shaman is still a shaman but it felt like we were getting the convenient 24/7 version instead of the real deal.
“The owner of the place where you are staying comes to him, so this is why we are visiting him, because he knows him well,” Sukma added, perhaps sensing my disappointment and to put me at ease that we were not being shortchanged in any way or led into a tourist trap. “He is the local shaman of this area, many people come to him, I just don’t live here.”
“What happens when we get there? Is there anything we need to do or say? I have no idea how this works,” while reassured about the shaman’s credentials, uncertainty about the process remained.
“You’ll see when we get there. You don’t have to worry about anything. One of us will be with you to translate as well,” Sukma said with the confidence of someone familiar with a rite that I was about to be let into.
“So you do then go to a shaman yourself, even if not this one?”
“Oh yes, we all go in my family,” he shifted gear to slow down as we were approaching our destination. “You don’t have to be religious. I’m not, or not as much as my family. The shaman is someone in your community you go to when maybe you have a problem and want another opinion from someone wiser,” he seemed to hesitate a bit, as if he wanted to make sure I understood what he was saying. “The shaman usually knows many people so if you have a problem with a neighbour or with your cousin, for instance, and because he probably know them as well, he will give you advice but you don’t have to do what he says. He will offer, erm, I don’t know what’s the right word in English?,” Sukma’s English was quite fluent but he seemed to be searching for a particular word that wasn’t coming to him.
“You mean advice? Guidance?”
“Guidance, that’s it! He will offer guidance. You can take what he says to you or not if you don’t think it helps you. Ok, here we are,” and with that we came to a halt, unfastened our belts and jumped out of the car to make our way into the traditional stone house where the shaman would be soon dispensing his guidance.
When we arrived we had to take a sit on the floor just outside the room where the shaman was and which served as a covered atrium where we would wait for our turn to be received as there was a man in the room with him, which we could see perfectly from the outside as there was no door. I don’t know what idea I had in mind about the setting where a shaman carries his business, but I found it reassuring that he could be seen by those waiting outside but not heard. Like those excruciating trips to the confessional in my pre-teen years where everyone could see me kneeling but not hear the sins I would have to atone for.
Seating on the floor was a test in hip flexibility as we were wearing traditional Balinese clothes, which had been provided by the retreat as they were a must in order to be received by the shaman, further proof that this wasn’t a tourist trap after all. However, since the female outfit consisted of a long and tight skirt I found myself contorting in poses that not even our experienced yoga teacher would have been able to replicate. While I arranged my legs into a pretzel, a woman came out of nowhere with a tray of white rice on one hand and a bowl of water on the other.
“It’s part of the ritual,” Sukma whispered to me as a splash of water landed on my face and caught me totally unprepared as I was the first in line to receive it. “Now she’ll put some rice on your forehead,” which was pressed on with a force that made me question whether I’d end up on the news as a fatal victim of a ritual where the victims were killed by the insertion of rice grains on their brains by sheer force.
As the rice woman carried on her vicious ritual with everyone, the shaman dispatched his visitor and we were told to get ready. One by one everyone in our group went in, discussed what was on their mind, with Sukma acting as our interpreter, and then came out quietly and sat again on the same atrium until we were finished. When my turn came I hadn’t really thought about anything I wanted to ask and I panicked a bit, so afraid to lose my chance to receive illuminating guidance about my future, maybe something that could change the course of my life as dramatically as that prediction Tiziano Terzani heard in his day, I blurted out the first thing that crossed my mind.
“Should I quit my job and become a writer?”
I eagerly waited for Sukma to translate from English my question and then translate back to me the answer of the shaman, who had grabbed my hands and asked me to look into his eyes the moment I sat down in front of him. He spoke very softly and articulated every syllable clearly even though I couldn’t understand what he was saying, but there was something hypnotic and soothing in his manner of speaking, almost trance-inducing. After what seemed a very long explanation, I was ready for Sukma’s words to deliver some life-altering message.
“No, you aren’t ready, he says. You don’t need to rush.” Without questioning the accuracy of the content, this was like reading the abridged version of a classic: the essence was surely there but so much had been clearly left out.
Not happy with this answer nor its translation, I offered a few re-elaborations, all of which led to the same exact response, which felt frustrating. I already knew I wasn’t ready, I didn’t need to come to Bali for that. What I was naively hoping by embarking on this experience was to find someone that, not bound by the capitalist material needs we are slaves to in the West, mostly in the shape of rent and bills to pay, could give me an encouraging sign to follow my dreams and finally say “fuck this shit!” the moment I landed back in London. But it was clear the shaman wouldn’t be the person pushing me to jump into the void with a solid plan B, or A for that matter. But what if he would and Sukma was the one censoring him? Impossible to know.
After what seemed a prudent time of running around in circles asking versions of the same question and receiving the same invariable answer, the shaman squeezed my hands and said to me one last thing, almost as if he took pity of me and wanted me to understand why he wasn’t encouraging my foolishness as ardently as I had expected.
“You first need to remove a block. Until you do, you won’t be able to follow that path,” he said fixing his dark eyes into mine as if he wanted to make sure the message got straight into my brain, like that grain of rice almost did before, by the sheer power of his stare.
“A block? Which block? Can you ask him?,” Sukma obliged immediately but I didn’t need to speak Balinese to know the answer. “He’s just said the same: that you need to remove a block you have,” and with that the shaman bowed to me to indicate my time was over.
I spent the way back to the retreat thinking about those last words. What block? Was it something internal or an external situation that was preventing me from moving forward? The more I considered it, the less sense it made so when I came back to London I was no more enlightened than when I had left.
I’ve often come back to that moment and I remember my frustration and puzzlement at the time at not having got as much guidance as the people who made that trip and went through that experience with me. They were all women and all of them without fault had asked after espouses, grandchildren, siblings, close friends, or romantic relationships as they revealed when we were having dinner that night and exchanging our impressions about the visit. They all felt the words of the shaman had been helpful and would certainly be putting into practice a few things he’d said. It dawn on me that these women didn’t doubt for a second about asking about their loved ones while I hadn’t even thought about that possibility.
Was the lack of concern for those in my life the block? Was I perhaps emotionally stunted? But it couldn’t be, I thought, I cry with La Bohème3 no matter how many times I’ve seen it and despite I know damn well she dies of tuberculosis at the end because who didn’t in the XIX century, hardly a spoiler if you ask me, and yet there I am pouring tears like I’m a bloody fountain every time. I am a sensible person, maybe not overly attached to people, but definitely not devoid of feeling or the capacity for intense emotion. I still have goosebumps remembering the exultant joy I felt for a week after finding my favourite pistachio spread brand back in stock at my Italian deli after months of blatantly subpar alternatives. No, that couldn’t be my block.
It’d probably be something silly or absurd once I figured it out, I thought. Something along the lines of being a perfectionist or wanting to be too much in control. Those sound much more like the classic Western problems the shaman was probably sick and tired of giving guidance on to emotionally restraint people who didn’t bother to ask about their loved ones, those selfish little shits who spend a fortune to come to the other side of the world for a stranger to sort our their lives but wouldn’t pick up the phone to speak with a friend they haven’t heard in a while. I bet those would be his words, not mine, if he could openly speak his mind.
A year after my Bali adventure I found myself touring New College, in Oxford, at 9 am on a Sunday morning. Among the long list of renowned writers, politicians, and artists that our guide mentioned and who had studied at Oxford, two names stood out: Hugh Grant and Rowan Atkinson4. I found the coincidence amusing. While both are icons of contemporary British culture and excellent actors in their own right, the characters that brought them fame are, in fact, on opposite ends of the Britishness spectrum. At least for the collective female imagination.
The reason for such an early cultural education was simple: I had decided, after much hesitation and considerable damage to my meagre finances, to enrol in a writing summer course and invest on something that I had desired for years but always found an excuse to postpone. The experience proved to be satisfying beyond my wildest expectations, not only because I actually stayed at New College during my stay (which felt as if I had finally been admitted to real life Hogwarts) but mostly for the clarity of mind those days offered. Removed from the expectations of the outside world and focused only on my writing, I was at last happy, energised, driven. I was my younger self once again. It was in fact at New College where the meaning of the shaman’s words was eventually revealed to me.
Unlike those eureka moments one often imagines when being on the receiving end of big revelations, everything happened rather casually and I could have missed it had I not paid close attention.
After an open mic night where against type I read out loud something I had written, as did several other people, three of us headed for tone of the courtyards for a bit of air and to discuss the evening. One of said people was a classmate who was a published writer and had read an excerpt of his latest book that was being translated into English. It was a very personal and vulnerable passage about an episode of his life that left everyone speechless and somehow transformed, as often good writing does. There was something that had touched everyone in that room only an hour ago but the feeling still lingered and it was only fair to admit it to its creator.
“But the question is why do we write?,” he interrupted me and the other classmate without the slightest sign of feeling flattered by our comments about his writing. “Each of you, tell me, why do you write?”
“Er, I don’t know, maybe to be seen?,” I wasn’t even sure I meant it.
“To express something inside me that no one around me feels, or not in the same way,” the other classmate said, far more convincingly than me.
“Those are good answers, but they’re wrong,” the writer didn’t even flinch as he said those words, cigarette in hand. “We write to be loved. We want people to love who we are, as a writer I mean, maybe also as a person, but ultimately as someone who has the ability to evoke things in them, things they too feel, and by extension they project those emotions onto us and love us for making them feel alive and less alone,” a long drag of the cigarette, the smoke and the words just spoken both floating in the air as we inhaled them.
“I didn’t love myself when I wrote that piece I’ve read earlier. But I really, desperately needed to be loved, I wanted to be loved, so I didn’t worry about how people would see me or perceive me. Of course, I did worry a bit, I’m human after all, but you know how it goes. Either you conquer your fear or you would never write anything at all if you are scared about being seeing for who you are,” an intense pause and a stare in my direction, “or if you don’t think you can’t find common ground with other people somehow. You can keep a diary if you’re so sure that you’re alone in feeling the way you do, right? Why share it with anyone else?,” this time the piercing stare was directed towards the other classmate. “So my point is that we always write because at the end of the day we want to be loved and for that we have to conquer fear, whether is the fear to be seen or fighting the belief that what we experience is unique to us and us alone, and therefore no one could ever care. Those are blocks we put in our way towards being loved. Just think about it.”
And with those words I was no longer in a dark courtyard in the middle of New College but in Bali, grains of white rice firmly stuck on my forehead, hands held gently by a shaman, his soft voice and piercing eyes finally speaking a language I could clearly understand without the need of a translator.
“Ah, there you are you three, confabulating in the dark! Come join us inside, we’re getting a drink before they close the bar,” it was one of our tutors who had put an abrupt end of our conversation and came to summon us back inside before the night ended. “By the way, well done you three, I was very impressed by your pieces, great job indeed.”
It was only a fleeting sensation but in the few steps from the courtyard towards the room where the rest of our classmates were gathered I felt I walked with the confidence of someone who had made the breakthrough of a lifetime. The shaman had been wrong after all and so was my writer classmate, that much I had understood after our illuminating conversation.
For there wasn’t a block after all, there was no imaginary or real barrier preventing me from achieving the life of my dreams I had been obsessing over for years. There were, in fact, tons of them, bloody loads indeed. It was obvious now. To begin with, how can anyone expect me, an introvert with slightly misanthropic tendencies, to want to be loved by total strangers or share my innermost fears and feelings with them publicly just in the hope of being understood, heard, and seen? By complete strangers, I remind you. Who am I, Joe Fucking Goldberg5? Hasn’t people learned anything about identity theft and how you should never trust others with personal details about your life? Not even if you wish to be a damn writer? Especially if you want to be a writer, for Christ’s sake.
My only regret is not having understood this much earlier because then my interaction with the shaman would have been truly meaningful and the years that followed less confusing. I wish I could have said something that showed him I had agency in my unfavourable circumstances and lack of purpose, that I wasn’t just someone passively being stopped by a block from pursuing a different life, but someone, in fact, willingly hiding behind it to avoid changing my miserable comfort zone of an existence for the exciting possibilities uncertainty could bring.
I should have said to him that I really heard what he was saying, and I knew it was coming from a good place, but I’d rather complain about my situation without doing the slightest to improve it, demanding it magically resolves itself somehow so I can focus on regretting the unlived life that a more emotionally mature and driven version of me could be leading by now if only she could be more vulnerable, more fearless, and more willing to embrace change if that means getting closer to what she truly wants, like I did in the past. So if he would excuse me, me and my blocks had places to go and things to see. And then we’ll complain about everything for a bit because that’s how we roll. By the way, what’s with water splashing and the rice? It was a brain trepanation out there. I was fine because I’ve always been quite strong-headed but someone may not be as lucky next time. Anyway, take whatever resonates with you from what I’ve just said. Peace and love, my friend.
Damn, I’d make a great shaman.
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I guess the option of leaving London is also a possibility but I’m not emotionally, mentally, physically or financially ready plus my job is London-based. As I aspire to a better life where I can significantly reduce my stress levels and my salary doesn’t disappear on rent, bills and train fares as it soon as it arrives in my bank account I can’t see how relocating outside London would help with either. Unless I change countries altogether. Again, not ready for that conversation so better put my focus on the illusion of a romantic partner as the deux ex machina that saves the day.
With this I mean someone who, while not perfect, at least won’t cause you additional trauma if he can avoid it because, unlike you, he’s emotionally mature and stable. It’s all about balance.
A Puccini classic that leaves no eye conduct dry when the orchestra plays the first notes of “O soave fanciulla”
Loyal readers may wonder whether my obsession with Hugh Grant may have been sparked further during this stay at Oxford. The answer of course is, to say à la Grant, “don’t be absurd, I had been wildly obsessed with him for decades by then”
A dangerously charming serial killer brilliantly played by Penn Badgley for 5 seasons on Netflix show “YOU”
Do you know that Marianne Williamson quote Cristina? 'Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?'...
I think maybe the guy’s reason was right, but whatever, you write beautifully and maybe you should write a bit every day ( as I should.) I look forward to your posts.