Seasons of Love

Aug 11, 2024
12 min read

525,600 minutes & moments so dear!

Hello beautiful people! It is absolutely crazy to me to think that I started this blog a little over a year ago. So much has changed for me since then, and I feel so fortunate to be able to reflect on this past year as the best year of my life (so far!). When I look back at pictures and videos from this year, I am overwhelmed to find myself at a loss for the words to describe what these experiences have meant to me. I have traveled to amazing places, sobbed on the floor, laughed until my stomach hurt, sang aggressively out of tune, danced like truly no one was watching, and loved so so much. It has been the most beautiful 525,600 minutes I could have asked for. For those of you who are wondering, the 525,600 minutes is in reference to "Seasons of Love," a song from the musical Rent that becomes stuck in my head once a month (roughly). It used to annoy me, but now hearing the song just makes me laugh. For someone who struggles with growing up and getting older, this song is actually kind of perfect. How do you measure a year? Daylights? Sunsets? Midnights? Cups of coffee? Inches? Miles? Laughter? Strife? Then the whole beautiful orchestra creates this swell of music and the ensemble sings: "how about looooooove?" And it's perfect. How about love? When I look back on the past year, I am struck by the abundance of love!

Last year around this time, I thought my world had been turned upside down. I was forced to face some difficult realities in my family situation, and I felt very alone. I left my hometown for San Diego to lead a pre-orientation retreat for the freshman class, but I was convinced that they would see right through me. My self-confidence was at an all time low, but I did not know how to back out of this commitment I had made months prior. I showed up to training with more worries swirling around in my brain than I knew what to do with, but these wonderful souls met me exactly where I was at. This remarkable group of leaders made me feel seen. More than that, they made me feel held. I didn't have to be perfect, I just had to be Gracie, and that was enough. Thus began the first season of love of my twenties. This love made me whole again.

Just when I felt as though I was floating through life, it seemed that life had other plans. I had finally gotten my passport to go on my first ever "real adult trip" to Florence to take a class on Dante for three weeks. I was over the moon before I learned that my grandma, our safety net and model of love, was entering into the last weeks of her life. My heart shattered. I didn't understand how it could be that someone who had taught me everything I know could just not be there anymore. Still, I went to Florence because I knew she would be so upset if I didn't go on her behalf. In Florence, I think I understood for the first time what it means to explore. The wonder and awe rocked me to my core in a way that very little has since I was a child. I was surrounded by art, culture, cuisine, and relics of history that made me feel like a tiny human in a big world. And when grandma painted the sky so beautifully on the day she passed which just so happened to be the last day of my trip, I finally understood. Love is how we stay alive even long after we are gone. Love never dies. And thus began the second season of love of my twenties. Love comes back in abundance. Love shows up when you least expect it. Love wins.

I returned to San Diego for the spring semester with a renewed sense of purpose. I knew I carried grandma's love with me, and I was determined to give that love to everyone else. I signed up to go on my University Ministry's Spring Break Immersion Trip to Tijuana without second thought. I had no regard for the logistics or the emotional reality of the trip. I crossed over a speed bump, and I was in Mexico. I witnessed poverty and tragedy, but I also encountered more love than I knew what to do with. People who had nothing to give taught me what it means to be a true vessel of love for others, a light when all the world knows is darkness. We visited orphanages and migrant shelters, and even when I thought my heart could not take it anymore, we heard their stories anyway. I learned what it means to walk alongside people whose experiences I will never understand but to love them enough to hear them anyway. This is what it means to be a human being. The love I experienced in Tijuana introduced me to my third season of love in my twentieth year of life, so much so that I had to return for a house build. To this day, my proudest achievement in life is that little orange house we built on the corner. We may travel far and wide, but to know real love is to have found a home.

As it goes with most things, we must save the best for last. My seasons of love are no different. My twentieth year of life has culminated in one ultimate season of love: Camp Wamp. Yes, Wamp. So named after the remarkable Stephen J. Wampler who began this camp in 2002 to provide an authentic summer camp experience for children with disabilities. My mom, an adapted P.E. teacher and angel of a human being, first discovered the Wamplers on Instagram back in 2020. We went on a road trip to Truckee and nearly drove out to the camp site before getting lost on the dirt road. Fast forward over two years and my randomly assigned freshman year roommate Maddie at the University of San Diego sits down at her desk next to mine and is absolutely glowing as she talks about her interview for a camp for people with physical disabilities. What are the odds of that? So this year, I decided to apply as a spur of the moment sort of thing. My sweet Maddie and I were catching up over coffee, and she told me that she would be working at camp this summer. I applied that very afternoon, but I didn't tell her just in case I didn't get it. Luckily for me, Camp Wamp just happened to need a lifeguard!

So we took another shot at that dirt road before my parents said goodbye to me for five weeks that would ultimately change my life. I remember getting tossed around on the three mile off-roading excursion, my coffee churning in my stomach because I was so nervous that I was wildly under-qualified. Thankfully, we got there and I was immediately met by Maddie's friendly and familiar face. I set up my sleeping bag on a cot that was completely outside (I must have missed that in the fine print!) and met everyone in the dining hall. Our training week together was spent with lots of good laughs and special conversations under the stars. I ate more s'mores than I thought could be physically possible and laughed harder than I have in years. When the campers arrived, we could not have been more ecstatic! Many of our campers needed wheel chairs, walkers, or AFOs, but they were not going to let these aids slow them down. We even had a number of nonverbal campers who taught me that communicating and connecting with one another is so much more than the words you can say. Everyone jumped in the lake, and I swear it could have been a scene out of The Parent Trap. I couldn't stop smiling! Just when we were getting settled, we looked up into the sky and saw a huge plume of smoke. Within two hours, we had evacuated to Reno to a hotel and casino called Circus Circus.

I look back and laugh now at how grateful I am for Circus Circus. This incredibly niche experience brought us all together in a way I never could have imagined would be possible. My new friend Isaiah and I spent over a dozen hours in the arcade with our hilarious camper, Drake. Drake has cerebral palsy and had been to Camp Wamp before, and still he handled the whole evacuation like a professional. I will never forget one conversation we had about what he referred to as the "d-factor." The "d-factor" is something we all experienced in the arcade. A well-meaning woman approached us and gave Drake a stuffed animal, claiming she didn't want it. Another worker kept giving extra rings to him to try to land around the Coke bottles. He expressed that he wished that people would just give him a chance to try rather than acting out of pity. This one conversation with Drake at Circus Circus single handedly changed the way I viewed people with disabilities, and if you are interested to learn more from Drake, you should check out his Instagram @ddogcity.

After two days at what felt like a legitimate circus, we made our way back to camp. We had more lake time and more s'mores and the silliest skit night I have ever seen. Saying goodbye to this group of campers was one of the saddest things I have ever experienced, and then, less than 24 hours later, we had a whole new set of campers! This second group gave me a run for my money. This was our week of younger kiddos, so naturally I was a British mermaid. I spent two hours everyday during B.O.B. (bodies on beds) time reading Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince in an aggressively bad British accent that I myself had only learned from the Harry Potter movie franchise, but it was the only way I could get some of them to smile through their homesickness. I even put some of them to sleep! Silly David and sweet Yuvi had plenty of questions about Mermaidlandia which I was sure to answer thoroughly, and they reminded me of how good it is to embrace your own imagination. So much of adult life is spent in such a hurry. People haven't found meaning in their lives, so they're running around all the time looking for it. They think it might be the next job or the next internship or the next conference, but maybe it's just the next time you can play mermaids or get into Harry Potter politics or come up with a winning Uno strategy. A goofy eleven year old named Cater even told his dad as he was leaving that I was the girl who "spoke British" all week, and I laughed at that so hard that he must have thought I was crazy!

I brought that energy with me into the third week which was exactly when I needed it for prank wars. We had a number of campers who were absolute characters that week, and I somehow managed to get myself mixed up in the prank wars (I did egg them on a little bit). The camp directors would break up the campers into teams and create challenges for those teams to complete. When a team won a challenge, they were rewarded with an "overnight" which was a hike across the lake to a camp site with real camping: no kitchen, no cots, no adults! I learned to play the guitar and got some of the best sleep of my life on the overnight, and when I returned to camp, my bed was hanging from a tree! So much for the "zen" we were working on. Attached below is a picture of Ben and Kacy hanging up my bed and all of my stuff, and this is where things get messy. I ended up setting up an elaborate scavenger hunt for them to go and find their own stuff, but I also got my boss Steve in on some of the action! He offered to be the decoy while I enlisted in David's help to get Ben's bed on the Wampler's roof. David, the quiet maintenance guy with a sweet heart, smiled and told me "my family never had enough money to send me to summer camp as a kid. This is the first time I've been able to do something like this." And with that, he let me do the honors of catapulting Ben's pillow onto the roof. I have never seen a grown man laugh so hard in my life.

These tricks may seem cruel, but rest assured I got what was coming to me when I was pied in the face with shaving cream not once but twice on skit night that week. As Elizabeth Wampler all but waterboarded me with the hose and shaving cream dripped down onto my feet, I can say with utmost sincerity that there is no place I would have rather been than right there in that moment. It's been two weeks since coming home and I can still feel the shaving cream burning my nose. And so our third week of campers came and went with a flourish. Our final week, alumni week, was marked by the return of many campers who had aged out due to Covid-19. Because many of them were my age, I had so many real and authentic conversations about what it means to be living this crazy life. Sweet Ava, Aiden, and Riley were known to render me speechless with their thoughtfulness. I will forever remember Miss Sarah, a remarkable camper who once told me "I am just enjoying being here right now with these people." She had managed to capture something in five short days that took me five whole weeks to learn, she was and still is wise beyond her years. Every single one of these campers has changed my life in ways I will never be able to fully put into words. The Camp Wamp staff and counselors have reminded me that there are so many beautiful souls in this world. I remember calling my mom during training week and telling her "I didn't know so many good people could be found in one place."

Every week, we would end the week with a dance party. I was known to scream the words to Before He Cheats more times than I care to admit, but I also know one thing to be true: I was more authentically myself than I have ever been. Everything will fall into place and turn out so much better than you hoped or were terrified about. You'll wonder why you ever worried so much. You will find your home. You will find your place. You will find your people. Give it a little bit of time and yourself a little bit of grace but it will happen. There's a whole lot more life to live! More adventures to have! More art to make! Love to give! Oceans to see! Every season of love lives inside of you. You are the amalgamation of everyone you have ever loved and who loves you.

I am 21 years old this week. It's crazy and it's weird and it feels super mature but also not really at all. And here I am in this moment right now, typing away for my little blog that you beautiful souls take the time to read over and over again. How lucky am I? How about love? Tell someone you love them today! Do something you love today! Camp Wamp has been such a beautiful reminder for me of what it means to be inspired. I went into this experience with no idea what to expect and emerged with a love that I will carry with me for the rest of my life. These people have taught me more about myself in the last five weeks than I have learned in the past twenty years. The ways that they embrace their disabilities and refuse to shy away from real conversations amazes me. Their vulnerability in the face of challenge and determination to persevere anyway brings me more authentic joy than I have ever experienced before. I am so immensely proud of everyone I met, they have all my love forever.

Whether it be San Diego, Florence, Tijuana, or Soda Springs, I have experienced an abundance of love in all of the seasons of love of my twenties so far. By stepping out of my comfort zone and embracing the unknown, I found that there is so much joy, laughter, and love to be felt. Feel it. Embrace each moment as it comes. A couple days before I left camp, I had the privilege of having a beautiful conversation with Steve Wampler. Together, we discussed what it means to be authentic. There seems to be so much pressure to appear to be doing your best on social media. Perhaps that is why this blog means so much to me: this is the outlet for me to be authentically myself. There are typos and cheesy sayings stolen from my Pinterest board "Pinspiration," but this blog was born out of my love for life. To scroll back and look at Gracie Turns 20! is like my own little time capsule. I think about the person I was then and the person I am now. I can see the seasons of love of my teenage years reflected in that post, I just didn't know it at the time. Love shows up even when we don't realize it.

Glimpses of Gracie is a whole year old now, and all I have to say is thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you! I cannot thank you all enough for reading these little blog posts of mine and taking part in my silly little life. This is without a doubt the project of mine that I am proudest of, and it means the world to me to be able to share my heart with all of you. Thank you for caring, thank you for loving, and thank you for just being you!

I love you!