My body and I made it to Spain!
Here I am, on my first big sola travels in 30 years. After all the deep dives and inner attention on my physical and mental health, I’m celebrating this expansive new era of my life.
I’m doing it. I’m on my first big sola trip in 30 years! Estoy en España, la tierra de mi corazon. Lots to say about why Spain is so deeply embedded in my heart. For now, though, I’m just reveling in the beginning of the adventure! And sharing a few pics.
Enjoying the journey
A fluffy black bird hanging out inside the terminal where I waited to take off; the bright yellow grasses and flowers on the train from Madrid to Granada, and the peaceful little street where I’m staying (complete with pomegranate-topped street posts).
The trip over was long, but with the help of a super friendly Air Canada flight attendant (he was very attentive to my needs all throughout the flight), I had everything I needed to get to my sweet little home-for-a-week in Granada, Spain.
I’ve had the travel bug since I was a teenager.
Early on, I knew I was meant to travel, to explore, to be on the move. I had big desires for my life as an international businesswoman. When I was 16, I lived with a wonderful family in South America- Paraguay!- for the summer. It was my first time navigating a foreign country (sometimes sola), and it just felt so right. I felt alive in a brand new way.
There’s a beauty in being a foreigner. Brand new sights and sounds, different language, and just the feeling of being off-center. It requires new perspectives, and now I realize it’s amazing for brain health!
After my South America trip, I had a few more big adventures before my life as a gypsy made a huge left turn. I got pregnant, became a wife, and proceeded to redirect all my energy into being a mom (at the ripe old age of 22). It turned out that I loved being a mom- which was unexpected for me! But it also meant bending my life around other people every day of my life, and at some point I lost touch with myself. Since I really had no concept of self-care to begin with, I just kept getting more and more depleted.
Energetic depletion from constant caregiving and unresolved trauma
After about 4 years of very challenging married life and motherhood (sometimes single motherhood, when my husband was deployed), my nervous system was fried, and I started to get sick. That was the beginning of a very long, hard journey through chronic illness.
Over the course of 18 years, I lost the ability to do most of the things I loved: dance, travel, walk, sleep, eat good food. My body started rejecting pretty much everything: light, sound, touch, foods, etc. Most of my physiological systems (digestion, detoxification, circulation, respiration, etc.) were barely operational as my brain directed more and more of my energy toward protection (anxiety, hypervigilance, depression, etc.)
Over the past 5 years, I have learned sooooo much about what was going on in my body/heart/mind all those years of chronic symptoms and limited capacity.
And over these past 5 years, I’ve invested thousands of hours in my wellbeing: diving deep, excavating old structures that had been protecting me from trauma, and pouring love into the cracks.
This year, after 26-ish years of mothering and caregiving, and after 5 years of turning lots of that care toward me, I am celebrating a new era of my life. I don’t know yet all the places it will take me, but I do know it’s brought me to SPAIN!
After years of illness and even hopelessness, I am in awe of my body now!
I just want to say: there were many, many moments during my 20+ years healing journey when it was very unclear whether I would ever be well. Times when I thought I’d be stuck in the dysregulated loops forever. Times when I could feel myself “getting worse” and I was scared I wouldn’t get to see my kids grow up. Times when I just wanted to give up because I was so profoundly exhausted.
So I am beyond grateful (more like in awe and wonder and still a bit of shock) that my body is able to join me on this adventure!
Surrendering, finding inner peace, and creating a new relationship with myself
At one point in my journey, a couple years into learning about nervous system dysregulation, I actually gave up on making myself better. I decided that even if I never got better I would still spend time every day learning to love and tend to myself in a new way. It became my devotional practice to myself, with very little expectation that it would “get” me anything, that it would make me better. That moment was actually a turning point for me. I spent the next few years re-configuring my relationship with myself, my expectations of my body, my understanding of why I am here on earth. (It was a revelation to me that my main job was not to make other people happy and fix things that are “wrong”. More on that another time.)
So those five years of devotion to a new way of being went deep. And my whole system, which had been depleted and stuck in survival mode, finally started to remember how to live in peace. And that’s how I was able to reclaim my energy and my health. Pretty amazing.
