Carol Mossa has gone through a lot of changes. When last we heard from her, she was Carol Davitt, married to a builder of high-end homes and living the good life in a sprawling Colonial in the woods of South Kingstown.
Mossa, a former real estate developer who's written books on remodeling, was 44 when she was featured on the cover of the Home section of The Providence Journal. The story told how she and her husband, Matt Davitt, turned a tumbledown dump into a prize-winning palace.
Now, 15 years later, she looks back on that life as a "time of excess, when I spent more money than I had to and felt spiritually dead."
"On the outside, I looked pretty good," she said. "But I was a shell of a person. I kept looking outside myself for joy, happiness and fulfillment."
In 2008, three years after divorcing Davitt, Mossa underwent what she refers to as a "spiritual awakening." She quit drinking, became a vegan and took up meditation.
"I'm not drowning myself in alcohol anymore," she said, not shopping every day. "I finally feel whole."
Now 59, Mossa lives in a more modest but charming loft in the heart of East Greenwich, where she has a massage studio and holds writing workshops. (She earned a graduate degree in creative writing from Goddard College in the 1990s.)
An animal lover, she has been trained as a massage therapist for show horses and works for a horse farm in Rehoboth.
But she is spending much of her time these days growing her budding greeting-card business. Her cards, which she prints herself, feature her nature photos along with inspirational verses she either finds on the Internet or writes herself.
She's been selling them to boutiques and to some of her 7,500 Facebook followers, hoping that someday card sales will pay the bills. But she's also interested in having her positive messages change attitudes. This week, she is taking those messages on the road.
Before dawn Wednesday, Mossa will pack a couple of pairs of jeans, a raincoat and camping gear into her 2012 Hyundai Elantra and head across the country, hoping to sell her cards and meet some of her Facebook fans along the way.
She plans to arrive that day in Syracuse by 10 in the morning and give her college-age son, Matt, a hug. Then she'll have coffee with a Facebook friend outside of town before heading to Buffalo for the night.
On day two, Mossa drives to Michigan by way of Canada to have lunch with a fellow animal lover, then will stay the night in Illinois.
The rest of her route west will depend on the weather, she said, but plans call for her to spend time in Seattle with the friend who designed the logo for her Earth's School of Love card business. And she has a daughter in San Diego.
Along the way, she will be scouting out gift shops that might sell her cards.
And she plans to spend next to nothing. Along the chilly northern route, she'll be staying in inexpensive "Airbnbs," spare rooms in private homes that are rented via the Internet. Then she'll camp in state parks as she returns home after stops in Arizona and New Mexico.
Mossa expects the trip to take a month, and that she will return a changed person.
"You go out with an open heart and an open mind. How could that not be life-changing?"
Mossa took a similar two-week trip this summer with her filmmaker boyfriend, Paul Roselli, driving to Savannah, Ga., looking for card buyers, camping along the way. She sold eight packs of cards at $30 a pop and ended up with a couple of reorders.
"I suppose I could've found a sugar daddy after my divorce," said Mossa. "But I chose to go deep inside and find out what it's all about. I underwent this journey inward and I've traveled a lot of miles there. Now, I want to take what I've learned on the road."
Mossa admits that her words of inspiration might seem clichéd to some, and that there are others out there with similar projects. But she feels she's also helping people "redirect their thoughts from 'Woe is me' to something more positive."
"It's all about attitude," she said. "We really are architects of our own adversity. I totally believe in helping people shift their attitude."
Mossa said her message is all about "love versus fear." If she's in a fearful place, she contracts and can't be there for the world, she said. But when she leads with love she finds it opens her heart and she's able to appreciate people — and the world — more.
Mossa, who said she was without faith before her 2008 awakening, is the older of two siblings who grew up in Connecticut with an alcoholic father and a codependent mother, leading her to become an overachiever who thought it was up to her to get things done.
That led to graduate degrees in business and writing, as well as two books on remodeling, one aimed at teaching builders how to market themselves. She has also published short stories and poems.
"But it came at a price," she said. "I was busy self-directing my life and not giving the universe a chance. And all that came to a screeching halt when Matt and I split up and I had nothing. I had to figure out who I was."
She also harbored a lot of self-hate back then, she said, and often found it hard to be nice to people. Mossa said she wasn't religious, didn't know how to pray, but was willing to give meditation a chance. She found that made her "open, teachable and willing to lead her life another way."
"Spirit, or God, or whatever you want to call it, entered my life."
The idea for Earth's School of Love came to Mossa two years ago as she worked in her studio. The phrase came to her in a flash, and while she was not quite sure what it meant, she shared it with a graphic artist friend, who designed a logo. Then she went with a suggestion from another friend to start posting her photos on Facebook. A dozen followers grew into thousands, people who told her how much her page has helped them.
At this point, Mossa is never without a camera, snapping shots of flowers, birds and children frolicking in the grass. She was an art minor in college but has no formal training as a photographer. "I think the photos speak for themselves," said Mossa, who said she's always looking for images of things we pass and don't notice.
One of her close-ups shows a fly on a flower. "Often it's the most unwanted things that have the most to teach us," she says.
Another photo, of doors leaning against a Vermont barn, is accompanied by the words, "Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls." A shot of a stone Buddha quotes the American Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön as saying, "Come as you are."
Mossa feels she's changing the world in small ways, one thought at a time, as her card business logo states. Maybe sending a healing message to one person will help.
Her willingness to reach out to others has impressed her longtime friend Patti Burton, who owns Raw Bob's Organic Juicery, in East Greenwich, and carries Mossa's cards.
"She's a testament to the power of change," said Burton. "She's a completely different person."
All this has taken a certain amount of courage, though. Years ago, Mossa tried to sell to stores a line of children's dresses she made, but found she was too scared to get out of her car. Fast-forward 20 years, and she's about to spend the next month facing her fears as she promotes herself and her product.
She said her trip this summer to Savannah was a dry run. Roselli, her boyfriend, left at the halfway mark, leaving Mossa to fend for herself as she camped on the beaches of the Outer Banks and promoted her cards.
"I can't say I've stopped being afraid," she said. "I could mail my cards, but I think doing it in person is more powerful."
Spreading her inspirational messages seems like just another step on Mossa's winding road to finding herself.
Find Mossa online at facebook.com/carol.mossa.7
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