Nonfiction
Date Published: 06-15-2021
Publisher: Burning Soul Press
Jillian Bright has lived and loved the world over, wild and free, her soul awakened and destroyed, mended and strengthened. From empowering women through custom-made bikinis in Costa Rica to listening to a Bulgarian astrologer predict her son’s unplanned birth, her journey took her from country-to-country, unveiling passion and purpose. But it was the various crossroads along the way that taught her the most meaningful lesson: It’s never the first step off the cliff that’s the most terrifying. It isn’t even the free fall that happens afterward. The scariest part is the crash landing when self-doubt makes you think that maybe you can’t actually fly. That’s when you begin to understand that you have to grow your own wings. That’s why when Jillian found herself in South America, robbed of everything that mattered most and facing the biggest crossroads of her life, she went all in—and dived off the cliff. The Trouble with Wings is a deeply honest and stirring memoir about living life from your heart and trusting yourself to say yes—even when it means you have to risk it all. Jillian Bright is an award-winning travel writer, author, copywriter, retreat leader, and mother whose mission is to empower women, especially other moms by telling stories, amplifying voices, and creating sacred space and community. She is originally from Northern California and now lives in the Italian countryside with her winemaker partner and their son.
Excerpt:
Part 1: Awakening
The giant blue morpho butterfly inhabits the jungles of Central and South America and is one of
the largest, most beautiful butterflies on the planet with its blue iridescent wings and impressive
eight-inch wingspan.
A morpho butterfly in flight is mesmerizing: slowly, audibly flapping its massive wings as it
dances through the jungle canopy. Its cobalt wings shimmer against the sky when they open
and seemingly disappear when they close, concealing itself in the brown color of its underwing.
You watch it float by as if you were in a trance, not saying a word, not even breathing. Every
instinct you feel is to follow it. The slow hypnotic flapping of its wings, appearing and
disappearing, gives you the sensation that you’re witnessing something entirely outside the
human realm, a moment of flickering beauty and transitory magic.
Some legends say that if you see one, you’ll be granted a wish. Others warn that it’s a
dangerous omen. If you fix your eyes on the dazzling flashes of blue and give chase, pushing
past dense jungle foliage and vines not wanting to let the butterfly out of your sight, it would only
take a few minutes to find yourself utterly lost. Getting caught too deep in the morpho’s spell and
following it into the jungle has a price.
If you can’t let it go, you might never find your way back out …
Chapter 1
The midsummer sun glowed orange and pink through the clouds and reflected off the
rain-slicked tarmac. I sat in the Ezeiza airport cafe in Buenos Aires with an untouched pizza in
front of me, squinting out the floor-to-ceiling windows into the setting sun and willing the nausea
away.
I’d been in dozens of airports all over the world over the last year—from Sri Lanka to
Scandinavia and now South America. But waiting for all those other flights, I had been diving
deeper into adventure and the unknown. This time, I was flying home. And I wasn’t alone—I
was pregnant.
I wasn’t supposed to be flying home, and I certainly wasn’t supposed to be pregnant. I was
supposed to be writing my book and then hiking Patagonia.
But that story line was long gone
now, lost somewhere between a rekindled love affair in Italy and a grimy bus station in Chile.
I watched the people bustling around me, annoyed, wondering what their stories were,
wondering where the hell my story was headed now. I felt a particular animosity for the woman
two tables over, thoughtlessly sipping her cool glass of white wine and typing away on her
laptop, while I, on the other hand, cautiously sipped my mineral water and scribbled my
frustrated, disjointed thoughts in a kid’s school notebook.
I had no idea when this new, hijacked version of my story really started because it wasn’t in that
airport. It didn’t start when I found out I was pregnant last week or when everything that
mattered to me was stolen the month before either.
Where on this wild and wonderful journey
did I choose the fork in the road that led me here?
I closed my eyes and let the memories wash over me:
The tickle of saltwater drying on my skin under the hot sun. The smell of coconut oil,
hash, and humidity.
The blinding, brilliant blue of the Mediterranean. The briny taste of sea urchin and rich
cannoli.
The cool edge of late fall in the woods. Soft, decaying leaves silent under my feet. The
thrum of my bowstring; the thunk of the arrow into dead wood.
Diesel fumes mixed with frying street food and the unintelligible humming of market
chatter. Grimy sweat on my skin and signs written in looping languages I couldn't read.
Staircases carved into rock, climbing into the snowy whiteness. Sweet hot chai tea drunk
in tight, dim rooms with damp socks steaming over the fire.
The Roman Colosseum lit up late at night. Zipping around Rome on a motorcycle;
kissing familiar lips above ancient ruins.
A bus station at dawn, the sensation of my heart sinking into my hollow stomach, and an
absolute knowledge that my belongings and irreplaceable words and photos were gone
forever.
Those unmistakable pink lines on a little plastic pregnancy test …
Instead of shoving the memories away, I let them linger in my mind and soon saw them
enveloped by a thick mist, rolling and breathing as if it were some hungry, primordial thing. The
dark and shapeless mass became foliage, palm trees, and vines. I saw iridescent rainbows
dance over dewdrops as the sun rose over a jungle canopy.
I heard monkeys—the deep, heart-stopping roar of howler monkeys—through the mist. Beyond
the monkeys, I heard millions of birds chirping, singing, squawking, shrieking, cawing, and
twittering as the jungle came alive in my mind.
For a brief and blissful moment, I was no longer nauseated, annoyed, and pregnant sitting in a
stale airport on an adventure interrupted. I was in my old bedroom in Costa Rica, watching the
rose gold sun rise over the Pacific Ocean and peep through the palm fronds into my window.
I felt the distant rumble of waves crashing into the sand and rumbling up through the cliffs. A
light breeze, cool from the overnight rains, tickled my skin, and I felt the vibrant pulse of life from
those sun-streaked mornings echo across the years into the new life growing in my belly.
And just as the vision began, it faded away back into the mist, and the commotion of the airport
and my new reality came alive around me.
The story I was living now wasn’t the book I ever thought I would write. But it was still my story.
My life. Maybe I didn’t know how it would end, but I knew now where my story started. In
Montezuma, where the jungle meets the sea …
*****
Central America, 2007
I planned my first solo international backpacking trip flawlessly, which was my first mistake. Two
things led me into a series of crises almost immediately after landing in Central America all by
myself. First, I’d assumed that my plan was a good one and that I’d want to stick with it no
matter what. Which I absolutely did not. And second, I assumed that everything would go as
planned. Which of course it didn’t.
I’d traveled internationally before—to Ireland with my boyfriend a few years before and to West
Africa on a mission trip after that—but never on my own. Traveling—and life—was never a wild,
self-determined adventure. I was always following someone else’s footsteps or rules.
I grew up just outside the city limits of a small rural town in Northern California, in a traditional
Christian family where more than a handful of my relatives and ancestors were preachers and
missionaries. From church and the Christian joint elementary and middle school I attended, I
learned a lot about whose footsteps I should follow and the rules of being a good Christian and
a good wife.
But there was nothing and no one to show me how to become a strong
independent woman and the scientist I thought I wanted to be.
I’d been protected and sheltered, taught how to keep myself apart from the real world, not how
to exist or thrive in it. The answers to my questions were filtered through what the Bible, my
parents, or Christian school taught me was true. The only way to heaven was to believe in
Jesus. Women were supposed to be submissive to men, and men were supposed to have
dominion over nature.
I accepted it all as Truth, as children do. And I liked the idea that I could have a personal
connection with God. It felt as natural as breathing to sit outside, hidden in the tall stalks of wild
oats on a warm spring day with a science book and a magnifying glass, talking to myself or God
or my imaginary friends and hearing them answer.
As I grew older, I still felt connected with
God, even though I stopped considering myself a Christian.
Nature enthralled me as a child and was the strongest formative force of my childhood, but in
high school I was introduced to something that captivated me just as surely and would become
the strongest transformative force of my adult life.
One day my freshman year of high school, I was sitting in French class, and our teacher, known
for his somewhat unorthodox teaching techniques, was showing the class photo after photo of
the year he and his wife pulled their three daughters out of school for the year to sail around
French Polynesia.
I was enamored with the vivid swirls of green and turquoise and azure of the South Pacific, the
smiles plastered on the girls’ faces, the wild freedom of sailing the open ocean.
But most of all, I
was captivated by the idea that life could be different. I didn’t have to do it the way anyone else
did or told me I had to. I could live my life in a way that was entirely my own, and it didn’t matter
what anyone else had to say about it.
It was also in high school that I tossed aside my science dreams after hating every science
class that I took, and in college, I found the International Relations department instead. I studied
the politics of terrorism and the economics of developing nations. I studied French, Japanese,
Arabic, Spanish, and even dabbled in Mandarin. I wanted to work in women’s empowerment
and development, but I had only a vague idea of what I actually wanted to do.
By the time I was twenty-three, I was ready to forge my own way and test every rule I’d ever
been given. I was living a normal life, hanging out with friends, going to college, and dating. I
liked my life, but I wasn’t passionately living it either. I was young but I already knew, feared
even, that if I didn’t go out and do something about changing it now, I risked staying trapped in a
mediocre life of my own making forever.
I yearned for the wild, uncensored adventure that set me apart from the traditional acquiescent
life I grew up in. I wanted independence and unbridled adventure.
I needed a change, an
experience that would catapult me out of the ordinary life I was living into something
extraordinary. I wanted to be special. A semester off and a solo backpacking trip felt like the
perfect answer.
The plan started as an idea to travel awhile and then volunteer somewhere so I could extend my
trip on a tight budget. I searched online volunteer sites and job boards for months but couldn’t
find anything I could do. Just about every remotely interesting job out there required either a
degree that I didn’t have yet or thousands of dollars that I definitely didn’t have yet.
Finally, I found a position teaching English at a little village school in northern Peru. And even
though I wasn’t exactly passionate about teaching English, or kids for that matter, it didn’t
require a degree or a down payment, so I signed up to teach for three months. I booked a
month of Spanish language and surfing school in neighboring Ecuador where I would take surf
lessons in the morning and Spanish in the afternoon for a month prior to teaching. I also
planned for a month traveling Central America before school started.
Of course, I was excited. But I was also scared, and I didn’t want to admit it. If you admit you’re
scared, people who will never have the guts to do what you’re doing take it upon themselves to
address your fears in a way that just makes them feel better. “It’s ok, you don’t have to do this,”
they say. “Of course, you’re scared, it’s dangerous. Maybe you shouldn't go …”
I didn’t want to
hear any of that. That was their fears talking, not mine, and their fears made me angry and all
the more determined to go.
At that point in my life, I thought fear was bad. It meant not being sure or confident enough. It
meant not enough desire or commitment. It meant if I listened, I might not do something that
had the potential to change my life. I didn’t see the value in it, only that other people might use it
to keep me safe where they felt comfortable, to try and talk me out of my dreams. Or that I might
listen and never pursue them. Having that flawless plan helped me ignore my fear before I left,
but it didn’t do me a bit of good once I landed.
*****
I’d been in Belize only two days when I received an email informing me that the school in Peru
was closing. “Nothing changes faster than a plan,” other travelers told me, and we laughed as
we lounged on the beachfront hostel deck, sipping warm rum from plastic cups and staring out
over the moonlit Caribbean.
“You’ll find something else no problem,” they said with the casual confidence gleaned from
countless setbacks and potholes on the road of backpacker life. And so, I didn’t let even a
whisper of fear creep in. I let the unsettling news slide off my back like the sparkling drops of the
pale turquoise sea that I swam in every afternoon, and I trusted that I would indeed find
something else before time—or money—ran out.
But after just a couple weeks of rum-soaked, blissed-out island life, the money did in fact run
out. I had been waiting for money to come in from selling my car, but I hadn’t checked my bank
account in about a week.
I knew it was getting low, but the day I sat down at the internet cafe to
check in on things, it contained a shocking $17.82, not even enough to pull out a last
emergency twenty bucks from the ATM. And no update from my friend who was in charge of
selling my car.
I fished out my wallet and frantically counted my cash. I had only five dollars. I sent a quick
email to check in with my friend and another to the school in Ecuador to inquire about getting a
refund for a nonrefundable program, then I logged out as fast as I could. I was paying for the
internet by the minute, and today’s enlightening session had already cost me nearly half of what
I had in my wallet.
I walked down the sandy path back to my hostel to mentally berate myself and to figure out a
new plan. I couldn’t leave the island I was on or even buy myself food to eat until there was
money in my account again. Until my car sold or the school agreed to refund me, I was good
and screwed.
After a few stomach-gnawing days of doing literally nothing but writing in my journal, swimming
in the sea, and sleeping, the school told me I could attend for two weeks instead of four and
refunded me half my tuition. The day after that my friend messaged me that he was able to
hurry up and sell my car, but considering the rush, he got only a quarter of what we were hoping
for it.
I was far tighter on cash than I would have liked, but I was free to feed myself, pay my
hostel debts, and technically, get back to my plan.
The only problem was, to get from where I was at to where I was supposed to go, I would need
to take a ferry off the island followed by a long series of bus journeys from the capital of Belize,
south through Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and finally arrive in San José, Costa Rica to
catch my flight to Quito, Ecuador. And I only had a week to do it.
I was looking at a trip that would require almost a dozen separate bus journeys and more than a
handful of overnight layovers. And all those ferries, buses, taxis, and hotels would cost money.
I
had less than a thousand dollars for the remaining four months of my trip or until I found a job.
Or until I had to admit I failed on my big solo adventure and went home early. And that, I vowed,
was not going to happen.
I cancelled all my flights and changed the plan entirely. Instead of heading south to Costa Rica, I
went north with a couple of Australians to the Yucatán region of Mexico to camp in the jungle
outside Tulum. I used flight credit to take off from nearby Cancún instead and spent an awful
night laid over in Mexico City because of it, sleeping on a bus bench by myself outside the
airport because the entire airport closed during the predawn hours for cleaning.
I landed in Quito right on schedule to start Spanish school the following week, but my backpack
didn’t.
When it finally showed up three days later, one of the straps was ripped off and my
favorite bikini top was missing. Despite what I saved by changing my flights and itinerary, I was
too short on money to buy a new backpack, and the idea of getting it repaired didn’t even occur
to me. So, I picked it up like an awkward sack of coffee beans, boarded an overnight bus, and
headed to the coast.
Once in Spanish school with my friend Suzie from California, we settled into a familiar rhythm of
waking up just after dawn, slipping on our swimsuits still half asleep, and walking the four blocks
down to the beach for our morning surf lessons. We’d surf until lunch and then walk back home
to cook ourselves some basic pan fried chicken and white rice before going to Spanish classes
in the afternoon.
On the weekends, we went to the beach and checked out the surfers all day while drinking
endless rum and Cokes and participating in low-grade debauchery until Carnival weekend when
the debauchery was decidedly kicked up a few notches.
The Monday after Carnival weekend, Suzie and I were walking home for lunch when a man on a
bike whooshed by and ripped my purse right off my body. I whirled around and screamed “Fuck
you!” as loud as I could at him. He took a quick, panicked look over his shoulder at me before
disappearing into the blaring midday chaos.
Normally, I carried only a couple of dollars and a school notebook on me, but that day I had
taken my camera to show everyone pictures from Carnival weekend, and I had made a trip to
the ATM just that morning. The thief made off with a week’s worth of cash, and since this was in
the days long before the cloud and smartphones, nearly all my trip pictures were gone and so
was any way of taking more.
Suzie hailed the first taxi that passed by, and I sat sobbing in the back as she directed the driver
up and down narrow, unmarked streets, searching for the thief and my purse that we of course
never found.
Back at home, I curled up in a ball, feeling miserable and sorry for myself. Maybe this was it,
maybe it really is just time to go home, I journaled. All those denied and barricaded fears
flooded in as they tore away the illusion that I had been able to will away anything bad
happening to me.
It was the first time I really considered flying back home to California. My life wasn’t so bad back
home, hanging out with friends, studying, and going out on weekends. I had a job at a swanky
restaurant where I made good money and could have easily saved up and left again. No one
would have laughed or judged me for coming home early. I’m sure they would have felt quite the
opposite actually—glad to have me safe at home and proud of me for making the responsible
decision.
But there was something inside me, small but fierce, and it wasn’t content with calling it quits. It
knew that despite all evidence to the contrary, despite my shaking anger and raw sense of loss,
this trip wasn’t over yet.
After a few hours, that small something had grown into a substantial force. In my mind, I had
been initiated into an elite club of travelers—those who got held up on the road and didn’t let it
derail the adventure. Determination and willpower surged through me like the crudely wired
electricity in my bathroom. I wasn’t going to give up and go home. Not yet.
*****
As soon as Spanish school wrapped, I hopped a bus back to Quito and after just two days, I had
my plan B. Several English schools said they would hire me, so in a way I was relieved. But the
truth was, I didn’t want to teach English or stay in Quito. I knew there was something else, even
if I didn’t know what it was yet.
Even though I didn’t have the time or money to be just hanging out and waiting for whatever that
something else was, I didn’t sign a contract with any potential employers. For the first time in my
life, I trusted that feeling, and I waited.
Salvation came in the form of an email from a German surfer I had met in Belize and who, unlike
me, was now in Costa Rica. “If you want to work,” he said, “come to Costa.” He and his friends
were surfing in Tamarindo, the country’s tourist hub where there was no shortage of restaurants,
surf shops, and hotels. “Shouldn’t take more than a couple days here to find a job,” he said.
This is it … Go … that something inside me whispered.
Even though I wanted to listen and my
heart leapt with excitement, I was terrified. My palms and armpits prickled with sweat, and it
wasn’t from the late summer heat in the city. I didn’t want to settle for plan B, but I wasn’t ready
to say yes and hop on a plane into the unknown with just three hundred and fifty dollars to my
name either.
I left the internet cafe and sat down at a bar in the historic center, ordered myself the cheapest
coffee on the menu, opened my journal to the last blank pages, and started writing. I sat at the
table watching people buzz around me in the plaza, thinking and writing long after my coffee cup
was emptied, trying to decide what to do.
Where there is a will, there’s a way, that voice whispered again, and despite all the perfectly
logical reasons I should end my trip, I began slowly closing all doors that would take me back
home.
I left the bar, walked back to the internet cafe, and emailed my friend that I would be on the next
flight. I called the airline company to reserve my flight, still buzzing from my decision to go, but
they were totally booked the next day.
They said the best they could do was to put me on
standby, which meant I had to go back to the internet cafe every afternoon and call to check on
flight availability until I got a seat.
The next afternoon they gave me the same answer. No seat. And the same answer the day
after that.
On the third day of waiting, my friends left Tamarindo to head down the peninsula. There were
plenty of small towns farther south, but my chances of getting a job at the end of the high
season were getting slimmer the farther south of the tourism epicenter they went. And yet day
after day, I marched myself from my hostel to the closest, cheapest internet cafe, spending
precious little of what I had left on phone calls to the airline and on cheap street food.
Finally, on the sixth day, a seat opened up.
I emailed my friend that I finally got a flight. “Great,
meet us in Montezuma,” he told me. Montezuma … where the heck is that? I thought. As soon
as I got back to my room, I flipped open the hostel’s worn copy of Lonely Planet’s Central
America on a Shoestring and found a single brief paragraph:
This isolated barefoot, bohemian pueblito offers little in the way of creature comforts but
makes up for it with a rowdy nightlife, beautiful beaches, a memorable waterfall, and
colorful locals.
I shrugged my shoulders, packed my broken bag, and prayed I didn’t just make the biggest
mistake of my life.
About the Author
Jillian Bright is an author, award-winning travel writer, ghostwriter, copywriter, retreat leader, and mama on a mission. She wants to empower women, especially other moms, by telling stories, amplifying voices, and creating sacred space, community, and a vision for a better future.
She believes that when we truly listen to each other, connect, collaborate, and organize, we WILL create a better world for our kids and our future generations.
Jillian has lived in California, Costa Rica, Argentina, and Italy and traveled throughout the world. She was the founder of a custom swimwear company that existed to empower women to embrace who they are rather than who they’re told they should be and organized several fundraising efforts to fight destructive, irresponsible farming practices in one of the Northern California cannabis communities.
She’s currently working on a historical fantasy trilogy series set in the ancient Mediterranean and organizing retreats and travel adventures for women in Italy, Argentina, and Costa Rica. She hopes her retreats will inspire women to come together, claim their passion for life, and collaborate with each for lasting change.
Rising Sisterhood is her second book as a contributing author and her memoir, The Trouble with Wings releases June 15, 2021 from Burning Soul Press.
Jillian donates a portion of her book and copywriting revenue to women and women-led organizations creating change for women, girls, and mothers across the globe.
Jillian is originally from Northern California and now lives in the Italian countryside with her winemaker partner and their son where she eats as much gelato as humanly possible and is determined to learn to sail.
Contact Links
Instagram: @wildbrightandfree
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