Welcome to the Mastering Midlife Podcast where we talk about all the crazy fun things that happen when you are a midlife mama. I'm your host Heather London, let's dig in. When I was in Costa Rica, my boys came to visit me and we had the most amazing adventure
of all time, but like all good things, it must come to an end. And there was a day where they had to leave and that was one of my hardest days ever because the reason I went to Costa Rica in the first place was to help break up with my kids because it's so hard when
they become teenagers and they become their own people and have their own lives. It's so hard to let them go and see that this amazing relationship that you have, the way it is, being in the same house and doing all the same things and it just is coming to an end and it's so hard. So I decided I was going to go away and it would be so much easier, but then when they came and we had the best time ever and it was time for them to go, oh my gosh,
it tore my heart out again. It was so hard, I was so sad and I'm not going to lie, I cried a lot, but the good news was my brother was coming later that day with his girlfriend and so I had my moment even thinking about it now just really like, whoo, makes me emotional because I just love these people so much, these human beings so much and it's just really hard to let go of what we have right now even though I want them to go be free, like my
mission is for them to go discover life, but it doesn't mean it's not hard. So after they left and then my brother and his girlfriend left, I needed to find a new place to have an adventure because I was only in that town to visit with these people because it's a big touristy town and it's not really my jam, the beaches are super busy, parties all the time,
like just like a huge tourist trap. So I had found this place, literally I could see it from the beach, Tamarindo, I could see it across the beach and actually when I was there I'm like, oh my gosh, what is that over there? What's that place over there? There was a gorgeous beach with what looked like nobody on it and so I started to investigate, this is a beach called Playa Grande and it was I think a 20 minute car ride because you
had to go around the river, actually you could go across the river, this is crocodile river because it has crocodiles in it and when the tide goes down the river is low, like it would come up to maybe just below your butt or somewhere in that range, but there's crocodiles
in there and when you cross you would cross close to the ocean and the crocodiles you know technically don't like the saltwater but there have been I think two cases of people being attacked by crocodiles, so in that spirit you could rent a boat to go across, literally
it's just like the boat runs across back and forth and it's a 30 second crossing and it's like a dollar or two dollars but when it's super low tide the boats can't do it and I had my big huge suitcase, now listen I had this stupid, stupid huge suitcase because
I brought my tennis racket with me and the only suitcase it would fit in is the largest suitcase and so I couldn't take my suitcase and walk across the beach because once you get to the other side of crocodile river it's like a 45 minute walk on the beach and I
couldn't carry my suitcase because it was a huge suitcase, okay I'm not gonna lie, I actually did walk across crocodile river because I had walked all the way down to the beach which is a 45 minute walk to the river and I wanted to go to Temerando to go to the bank
and get some groceries and the tide was out and so the boats weren't running and so somebody had just walked across the river and it came up to like their their waste and I'm like I'm gonna do it and as I was walking across the river I was so scared all I could think
was there was a crocodile that was gonna eat me so I tried to run across the river but the bottom was really mushy and I it was like running in quicksand and the water was up to my waist and it was like flowing down from the river but up from the ocean and that
was like the longest minute of my life I could not get across that river fast enough and as I was getting in the middle of the river I'm like this was the worst idea I ever had and then of course what's I got to the other side was like oh I'm alive that was so
much fun and of course on the way back the tide had come in and so the boats were working so I could take the boat across I didn't have to walk across crocodile river again and I don't know if I would have done it yeah okay who am I kidding I would have walked across
it again so anyway I gotta rethink that strategy next time I travel but nonetheless I had found this place that I wanted to stay at in Playa Grande literally right across the river from Tamarindo super small town and the reason I wanted to stay there was because there
was surfing with nobody in the water it would look like nobody in the water in Tamarindo is super busy and the last time I surf I got nailed in the face with the surf board and it made me mad and I'm like there's too many people here that don't know how to surf
and are learning surf which is me I'm learning to surf but it just wasn't fun so off I go on to my adventure to Playa Grande and I had to take a taxi to get there because I couldn't walk across the river down the beach with my big huge suitcase so I arrive in Playa Grande
and I was staying at this place where they would give you a discount if you stayed for 28 days or more and so I'm like well I'll just stay here till the end of my trip because it had everything that I wanted and this is what I was looking for I was looking for
a place to surf like a gorgeous beach where I could practice surfing I'm not a good surfer but I do love to surf so I'm looking for beginner waves and I had read that this is a wonderful place to surf the waves are awesome and right across the street from where
I was staying so I got the discount where I was staying and I was staying in a hostel with a woman's hostel so there was four beds total and that was like a reasonable price because Costa Rica is very expensive and then literally right across the street from
where I was staying was a tennis court that's right a tennis court now unlike here there aren't public tennis courts that you can just go and use for free this was a one tennis court that some guy had built so it's the tennis center and down it's a small town and
he rented out his court so it was like a thing you had to go and pay for so I went over and I introduced myself actually phoned him before and he's like yeah yeah I can hook you up don't worry it's all good and then I went and talked to him and he's like yeah
well we don't really have any you know openings right now and you can't play during the day because it's smoke and hot out so it's early morning or just before the sun goes down because there's no lights on the tennis court and there's no top on the tennis court
so it's super hot during the day anyway I was super excited because in my mind I'm like I'm every day I'm going to go surfing every day I'm going to go play tennis and I'm going to get better at both of them and when I went I took a surf lesson and it was so good
I'm like I got this I'm a rock star I can pop up but the thing about the surf lessons is they push you and they don't necessarily teach you like how to read a wave and when to start paddling and all that fun stuff so I was extremely successful when I was taking
the lesson because he was pushing me and I was popping up all the time and then when I went out on my own I got hammered of course and I'd been surfing throughout my whole trip but these waves were bigger they were bigger and they were you know close to a beach break
so not very forgiving when you wipe out because you're on the sand and so when I went out on my own I found I was getting the crap kicked out of me by the ocean so the for me the waves were just too big and too powerful so it wasn't fun for me to surf it was more
like going through the ring or the washing machine every single time and I ended up taking up boogie boarding or body boarding instead because I could just catch every wave and I'm telling you I felt like a little kid I laughed out loud every time I caught a wave which
was all the time that was the my success rate went up exponentially I was like a rock star and I was like a rock star but I still didn't go out into the huge crazy waves but it was so much fun when you're just laying on the board and it pushes you so I ended up not surfing
there but I did a lot of boogie boarding every single day but I couldn't get into the tennis courts no matter how hard I tried I just couldn't get in the guy wanted me to take a lesson and lessons were sixty bucks I was on a tight budget I'm like I don't need a lesson I just
want to play tennis I even join the local Facebook group where I'm like hey anybody want to play pickleball or tennis I can organize a group because it's forty dollar rental I'm like I could do that ten bucks for an hour for tennis no problem and I just couldn't
pull it together and the guy was super not helpful with getting me on the court which I found really strange very strange and so my time in play a grand day was not successful from the point of view of these are the two things that I wanted to do surf every day
play tennis every day and I didn't get to do either but I met the best people and I had the best adventures it was so amazing this little town I can't recommend it enough it was just so beautiful but along the way when I did all of my journeys by far the people
I met made my journeys and I made some friends for life when I was there it was just so so good and when I was there I met this Swiss couple and we ended up going out having some drinks and chatting and they were telling me about their adventure now they started in
South America and were traveling up through Central America so they were deep into their trip by the time I came across them and they were telling me how they were headed to Nicaragua next and I was like oh tell me everything because I had already planned just to stay in Costa
Rica for my whole three months and they were telling me about where they were going next and it was based on surf beaches so I like I need to know everything that happens on the rest of your trip and when they left they kept in touch through social media and they would
tell me where they were and they would rate their experience based on because they had stayed in Playa Grande too so they know the beach they know the town and they would give me their feedback on how they liked it compared to Playa Grande and from that feedback I decided
to screw it I'm leaving Playa Grande and I'm going to go just travel through Nicaragua and I'm going to follow their path because they said Heather this place is amazing Heather the surf beaches insane Heather oh my god you have to see that I was like oh it was so
amazing to have people going ahead and then giving me feedback like people I'd actually met and could relate it to where I was currently staying it was just so invaluable so I'm like packing up my stuff my tennis racket my big huge suitcase like God that thing got thrown on top
of buses and shuttles and all the things so now I had to get from Costa Rica to Nicaragua so I hired a shuttle and what happens is you meet in a little town in a parking lot and you all get into the shuttle and then they drive you to the border and then when you get to the border you
got to get out of the shuttle and then walk across and you have to go through two border crossings you have to pay to get out of Costa Rica and then you got to get into Nicaragua so you pay to get out of one and as I was at the teller paying one of the guys that I was in the van with from
Chile came up and he's like hey um do you have any extra cash because we were told we wouldn't need cash and we don't have any it's $20 cash to get out and there was no bank machine there but there was a bank machine at the other border it was like going into Nicaragua but there was one
at the other border anyway he said if you give me this I'll I'll pay you as soon as we get across the border no problem and I'm like okay because I like to help people okay for sure and it was him and his wife so it was 40 bucks I was on a tight budget so for me this was a lot of money at the time
because my budget was like super super on point anyway so at the end of going through this actually when we were in the border for Nicaragua it was so funny because we had to wait for everybody to come out the other side and some people got stopped and some didn't and as we were waiting there was
this American couple who were like talking to this um I want to say Dutch girl and they're like what should we do should we split it and I'm like what are you guys talking about the American girl had found an envelope on the floor and she thought it was the Dutch girls and it was like hey did
you drop this and the Dutch girl said no or I think she was Dutch or German she said no and what was inside of it was a wad of cash a just a wad of cash and they're like what should we do the American girl and they're like well let's split it which was funny because the the German girl or um
Dutch girl she didn't do anything so I don't know why they would split it but they ended up splitting it and it was like 650 dollars so they walked out of there with like 325 American dollars and I walked out of there 40 bucks in the hole because they kind of never paid me back but it
was such a weird experience and I remember thinking feeling bad like oh my god somebody lost that money that's horrible but if they turned it in the guards there would just do the same thing they would just keep it and split it so I could see why they would keep it um but I I felt bad
that somebody somebody lost like all their travel money so that was sad to me but then once we get to the other border some guy is looking at a picture and he's like yep this is the girl coming with me and getting this van and we all get into a couple separate vans mixed up the group
again and they get dropped off in our town and the first town I went to was San Juan Dilser and this was based on my friends that went before me and it was the cutest little town and the place that I was staying in was so cute it was called the kiss room and I'm like what the heck is a
kiss room but the the pictures online looked really good and the reason it was called a kiss room is because it was based on I think um a franchise which is called kiss ice cream so there was an ice cream stand right next to the ice cream there was a pink door a small pink door and it was
said kiss rooms and that was where I was staying so when you would go in the door and it was like a narrow hallway and then it just opened up into this little outdoor patio space that didn't have a roof and there was brick wall and plants on the wall and the kitchen is outside all the
kitchens are outside and there were rooms and then there was my room and in my room it was just a basic room and my bathroom was across the hall so I had to go out of my room into the bathroom and it was my private bathroom but I had to go out of my room to get into it and it was full of
cockroaches which was awesome but it was the cutest little place because this little open air patio is where you would just meet the other people I think there were like five rooms and I really liked it there because the lady who ran it I kept my mother in name she lived up
stairs she was from Spain and she'd been in San Juan del Sur running this Airbnb so she rented the property but ran the Airbnb so she's a little entrepreneur so I love supporting female entrepreneurs and she was so helpful she just could give you all the answers tell you all the
places to go and she had a couple of dogs and a couple of cats and one cat would jump out of the tree at you and eat the flowers but it was just it's such the cutest little place I really like staying there and it was easy to meet people because everybody would come and just sit at this
little open air patio and when I was there I met some Canadians I met people from all over the world but one girl that I met she was a shy quiet girl and I believe that she was from Germany I can't remember I can't remember anyone's names because I met so many people on my trip like hundreds of
people on my trip and it was definitely the people that made my trip so amazing but this girl was a young German girl and she would always be sitting in them on the patio and she would be smoking and studying Spanish so she was taking a Spanish class but she was very shy and kind of kept to herself
and I just invited her out I'm like girl let's go out for some drinks I was only in San Wondelle's server two nights maybe three nights and I just went out every day and every night and did stuff and so she was got by herself so she didn't do too much I think she was a little bit
leery about going out on her own so I invited her out we went out for drinks and we had a wonderful time but as we were outside of our place by the ice cream shop there was a couple of Canadians young Canadians that we met and they were you know drunk having a good old time and it was funny because
the one guy looked at us me and the girl and said oh is this a mother daughter trip and I thought oh my gosh at first I was like insulted like that was my first reaction and then I stopped and I'm like wait Heather you are old enough to be her mother and that was when it really like shocked me
it kind of like woke me up a little bit to I see myself as 23 24 25 that's how I always think of myself like that's just kind of the identity of the age of where I'm at all the time in my life I see myself as that person so when the Canadian guy said oh is this a mother daughter trip
and the reason I felt like insulted it versus because I'm like I'm only 25 how could I be her mother but that's not how old I am isn't it amazing how in our brains we always see ourself as a certain age and when I realized that I was actually 54 and I was old enough to be her mother because
I have kids similar to her age I was like damn wow look at look at me living my life like I believe that mindset is everything and if I feel if I think that I'm 25 then that's how my body is going to be that's how I'm going to live my life and that is a fabulous way to live your life
so how are you seeing yourself what age are you thinking you are because we always are stuck at one age where we think we are and I love asking this question of people because some people who have never thought about it before are really like shocked by the answer like this is how I see myself
as like maybe it's like a 12 year old maybe it's like 30 maybe it's who knows but I do know that if I think that I'm 25 then that's the energy that I'm putting through the rest of my body that's how I show up in my how I live my life every single day that's the energy that I'm putting out so
that's what I bring back to myself so my brain is thinking you're 25 you can do all these things you're healthy you're happy you got all the time in the world and that's how I create this fabulous energy in life for myself but it was so funny that it took that person saying that comment and
it's shocking me into like damn I am 54 holy smokes because that's not my every day awareness of myself and it makes a big difference so I just want to invite you to look at how do you see yourself because however you see yourself subconsciously without thinking about it is what you're
creating every single day so if you think you're unhealthy or you're old or you can't do these things then then that's what you'll create but the opposite is true too if you think you can do anything like I dragged that huge suitcase with my tennis racket all through Costa Rica and
Nicaragua and I got it down from you know like the top of buses and it was a pain in the butt but I knew that I could do it because hey I'm just 25 so of course I can carry this suitcase around so that's my invitation for you is like just to investigate how do you see yourself so how do you
see yourself and what are you creating is that a positive thing you're creating because if it's not you can change it with your mindset because it's just a thought the thought that I'm young and healthy it's just a thought but it's a powerful thought that I've created in my brain and I'm saying it's
just a thought because if it's not serving you then you can change it but if it's serving you you run with it that's what I do I run with it I every day that's the what I'm thinking that's how I'm feeling that's how I'm showing up and I see it in the results that I create in my life and I want that for you too so contemplate this what age do you think of yourself as and why thank you for listening always always always love yourself first and have an amazing day