March is my favorite time to leave Milwaukee. The promise of spring is still so far-fetched and the unpredictability of the weather is at its worst. Last week, my husband and I got to escape our routine and spend four days at a yoga retreat nestled in the rugged mountains of Mexico.

We synchronized our breath with gentle movement and invited softness into all those spaces in the body that hold on to emotions, stress and self doubt.

We ate regional cuisine drenched in passion, paying homage to local ingredients and watching the chefs plate each dish with the precision of a brain surgeon.

We scrambled over boulders on the beach and dirtied our feet in ash-stained sand in search of shells.

We let foamy waves crash into our legs and lingered to admire the specks of sand in the water, turned into gold glitter when hit by the sun.

We smiled at the ticklish sensation of the strong current stealing the sand back from underneath our curled toes.

Sounds pretty dreamy, right?

The other side of the coin was this–

We missed our flight out and had to catch a different one at 5 a.m. the next day. We spent a silent and windy car ride to the resort as I stewed over a misunderstanding that left me feeling offended. Once we finally arrived, I lost nearly an entire night’s sleep obsessing over the work stress I had left behind and my irrational, intrusive thoughts. After drowning out a day-long migraine with saltwater and sun (and pharmaceuticals) I was finally able to arrive mentally and unwind at this secluded sanctuary.

The moral of this little story is this – my problems follow me wherever I go, but so do the solutions. And they all exist in my brain! Luckily, I can now appreciate the irony in this. Life swells and retreats, just like the ocean. It seems appropriate that in Sayulita – a surfing mecca – I learned that letting go and riding the waves is the better option that gripping the sand.