Our most important journey
on knowing ourselves
Dear friend,
Happy New Year.
We’re just back from our family trip to Vietnam. It was an inspiring time away. We had nearly three weeks, so we really disconnected, which was what we’d hoped for.
I’ll share more about our trip to Vietnam in the coming weeks.
But since getting home, I’ve thought a lot about the journeys we take. I have an insatiable desire to travel to far away places, particularly Asia. The religion, the philosophy, the culture, the food, the history, and what I learn from the discomfort of hard travel, ignites something life-sustaining in me.
But by journeys, I don’t really mean the traveling we do.
I used to work for a company that took young adults abroad. I guided over in India. The teachers (me included) were all broke, but well-traveled, and this teaching gig was what kept us adventuring. But we were slightly jaded by the affluent youth we worked with. Many of them had travelled so much, that this trip with us was just another tick on their endless checklist of places their parents wanted them to see.
I remember teaching a lesson on this history of Buddhism when one student raised her hand and randomly asked, “When are we going to see tigers? Because that’s the whole reason I’m here.”
Traveling to amazing places is not entirely what I mean by the journeys we take. We can lose ourselves in always planning the next big thing, too… deluding ourselves entirely from what’s already before us.
I’m referring to where our lives take us. The inside game.
Sometimes we wander down chosen paths. We feel inspired, excited, renewed because the decisions we’ve made are panning out beautifully. And others, we end up at dead ends. Stuck, confused, and a bit lost. Not where we want to be at all.
It wasn’t until about week 2 of our trip that I realized I hadn’t had any time alone. Not even a moment. Of course, I adore my family. I also am prone to losing myself within their needs, hopes, duties and more if I don’t intentionally pull away.
Somehow I forget this. It is natural for me to take care of others. Maybe it is for you, too. But so quickly this becomes my whole deal. And it’s not until there’s a rub that I remember I am a separate person, with my own needs, who is not here solely to make everyone else’s life, dreams, and schedules flow like melted ghee.
At the two week mark, I started taking walks alone in the early mornings. I would hear the street dogs barking, greet a worker in the rice fields with xin chao and a shared smile, and relish in the bright pink bougainvillea, or another shockingly beautiful lily pad-studded koi pond.
I remembered that this was how I’ve always come to know and love other countries—walking alone. Witnessing. Observing. It’s how I’ve come to know and love myself, too.
Despite the inkling to go a million places, see the world, and always be planning that next adventure, I remembered on my yoga mat this morning that the most important journey we take is always inward.
It is solitary. It is quiet. It is inside, and has nothing to do with travel or anything at all external.
Here are a few ways I’m sparking my inner journey these days..
Radical self care.
When people start talking about self-care, I zone out. It’s so damn buzzy, it’s annoying. But the truth about women, in particular, is we have a very weak relationship with our needs. We are GREAT at handling everyone else’s needs. But when it comes to our own, we put those babies on the back burner.
Maybe we’re good at one thing—like exercise, or eating habits, but we neglect physical therapy, or dressing in a way that makes us feel confident. It’s like we’ll only give ourselves the slightest bit of care FOR ourselves. Everything else goes to everyone else.
Since coming home, I have been aggressively self-caring. For me, that looks like exercise, meditation, infrared sauna, chiropractic care, colonics and more. Bring it on, baby.
I get so out of sync with putting my own needs out front. The truth is, no one is going to invite me to do so. It’s gonna have to be me. I’m dabbling with going for it hard right now. Over the top self-care. I wanna see how long I can last:).
Alone. Alone. Alone.
My walks reminded me that walking alone can bring us back to ourselves. There’s something unique about going slow. About moving, not just so we can knock exercise off the list, but because we are alive.
Moving, observing, and noticing calms our energy, and helps us remember that the beauty in life is in the little deets. It’s rarely the BIG, sweeping things. Though this is what we’re constantly seeking—the big stuff.
It’s the little things. The subtle energy. The glances, the bees, the scents, the kind words, or exchanges that flicker our hearts, and make us feel human and alive.
Walking alone forces us to slow it down, and calls us to pay attention.
Fiction
My daughter and I read our faces off over break. (My annual post about best books of 2023 forthcoming.) I’ve had a dry spell with fiction lately, and it’s broken my heart. But I blew through five great fiction books while on break, each of which taught me just as much about my life as traveling all the way to Vietnam did.
There’s something about reading fiction, as opposed to non-fiction, that allows the mind to soften into story, move more into a parasympathetic, relaxed state, as opposed to alert and attentive with non-fiction, that I find very healing.
All the while, you’re reflecting, learning, drawing parallels in your own life, without even knowing it.
People who read fiction show higher levels of empathy and emotional intelligence than their non-fiction reading counterparts. I think there is something about stories that allow us to be in a state of child-like wonder.
So, here’s to your all your journeys, and to whatever it is that brings your awareness back to your inside self. I look forward to being back in touch with you.
Get your YOU-time on lock:
IGNITE Retreat (Crestone, CO) - September 19-22, 2024: Reclaim your feminine fire as we explore principles of masculine and feminine energy and their influence on our relationships.
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