Dec 18, 2019
ALL THE WAY FROM MADAGASCAR!!!
Alison Rakotonirina is a Colorado Girl transplanted to France in 2013 and then to Madagascar in 2018. With my childhood spent frolicking in the Rocky Mountains, my first love is nature, physical geography, and sleeping under the stars, but I need people. I’ll try just about anything once. I enjoy most things I try.
My grandmothers and all the strong women in my family have been my inspiration for years; they also taught me my great loves of baking, cooking, traveling, and doing yoga. All this given that one of them never made it off the ground in an airplane, and the other didn’t bake. I am grateful that as a young woman, my mom imparted in me the gift of unabashed joyful confidence and kindness.
To me, life is about making love, practicing compassion, making connections, pursuing excellence, leaving the world better than when I arrived.
I adore architecture and botanical gardens, beautiful food, tasty food, anything handmade with love. I love to move my body, to laugh, to sleep, to read, to swim, to run, and to try new things.
I am not ashamed to live a conundrum. I am a pacifist married to a retired soldier. I am a cowgirl and a city-slicker. An American and an Expat. An immigrant and possible an emigrant. I am a stranger in a strange land and get called that every day here, and yet I feel at home. The Malagasy word is Vazaha — sometimes it’s a compliment, sometimes it’s a statement of fact, and sometimes it’s not so nice. I am reminded each day that I am both a foreigner and that I am welcome.
I am a logophile, a bibliophile, a cafephile, and an advocate of becoming.
“For every door that’s been opened to me, I’ve tried to open my door to others. And here is what I have to say, finally: Let’s invite one another in. Maybe then we can begin to fearless, to make fewer wrong assumptions, to let go of the biases and stereotypes that unnecessarily divide us. Maybe we can better embrace the ways we are the same. It’s not about being perfect. It’s not about where you get yourself in the end. There’s power in allowing yourself to be known and heard, in owning your unique story, in using your authentic voice. And there’s grace in being willing to know and hear others. This, for me, is how we become.”
-Michelle Obama
Peeling Back the Layers of Your Life® Podcast Creator, Host, and Producer: Loronda C. Giddens
www.lorondainspiresgreatness.com
Copyright ©2019 by Loronda C. Giddens All rights reserved