My only plan was to not have a plan. I stepped into my car in California and began driving. I didn’t know myself anymore, what I wanted or what to do. So I chose to just move across space and time.
In the 8 months prior, I had ended a toxic 10-year relationship, given away most of what I owned, turned 60 years old, given my house to a property manager to rent, been diagnosed with breast cancer, questioned whether life was worth treating it, endured surgery and radiation therapy, then taken to the road with no goal other than hoping something inside of me would arise to give some direction.
It began in 2012, when the world was supposed to end…and my world did.
Since then, I have driven across the United States and up and down the Eastern Seaboard, lived a winter in Asheville, North Carolina and driven west from Quebec City across Canada to Vancouver and south through the Pacific Northwest back to California. I have spent 3 months living in a small town in Ecuador at the foot of an active volcano. I have spent a summer traveling in Eastern Europe and am now in my fourth month in Medellin, Colombia.
Occasionally I have had a travel companion or a visitor. Usually I am on my own, exploring the world around me and the world within. I have never been attracted to art, but I’ve been pulled like a magnet to paint in oil with my fingers and found it a healing, grounding meditation. I have made many new friends in many cultures, some transitory and others who will be with me forever, I am sure.
I make it up as I go. Sometimes I change my mind at the last minute. I try to visit my children once every six months for a few weeks in between ‘excursions.’ I rarely know where I will be in 3 months. I sometimes call myself “Vagabond Granny” when my grandchildren don’t want me to leave. As someone who used to be a strategic planner and lived my life the same way, I have learned to face the future with courage and delight, following whatever intuition arises.
I am so happy to be alive! The contributions I hope to make on SteemIt include:
• Providing a glimpse into other countries or regions of the U.S. to pique your interest in visiting there yourself
• Sharing some of the sights, experiences, foods and impressions that may enable those who cannot travel now to live a little vicariously through my posts
• Being an example who demonstrates that the future always holds promise…that no matter how bad life feels now, a new dawn always arises with the possibility of creation.
I invite you all to join me on my journey as I share it with you here…and mostly I invite you to begin your own. It’s possible for you too…and easier than you think. The hardest part is deciding.