Homecoming

August 2014

I landed back home after 8 months of traveling. It started with quitting my job and then driving to St. Louis for 2013 Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays... then to Costa Rica for 10 days over New Year's with my beautiful niece, Andrea. Then I went to India at the end of January for 4 amazing months, I topped this off with a 2-week trip to Thailand. I made a plan far ahead of time to visit friends and family on US east (New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Virginia) coast for three weeks when I returned. I figured, since I have time and will be coming into the east coast from Asia, I could reconnect to them on my way home.

But I was in a mental state that was unlike I had experienced before... I had not been working, not driving, not cooking, not shopping... just being and exploring. I was alone a lot traveling in Asia, and now being with people constantly since arriving in the US was a challenge, as I was visiting old friends, cousins, aunt, sister and niephews. I was going cuckoo not having time and space to integrate my experiences from the India journey while visiting people who were going at full speed in their own lives, happy to have a visitor to bring into their own world... but I wasn't ready to go into others' worlds. I wanted to talk about my experiences, and I wanted to write. I wanted to go into my cave, or share with a person who was really curious about what happened for me on my journey.

I was still living out of the backpack and now suddenly in high-drive visiting-mode with people I had not seen in some years, I was so happy to see these people who care for me so much, but I was having a hard time taking care of myself, and under the happiness to connect with my loved ones, I felt a measure of grief, confusion, withdrawal, and loneliness.

A beautiful moment happened when I went home to St. Louis after all that traveling... Mother was so ecstatic to see me. I felt like a 4-year old again, feeling her love, relief, and adoration when she picked me up at the airport. She was beside herself with excitement and hugs, like a child herself, letting her emotions totally show. She took me home and offered me food, candies, drinks and comfy places to sit. She was dying to hear all about my trip and see all the pictures. She was so happy to have me home, safe and sound. Then my sister Margaret came home and she squealed and hugged me so hard. She was equally excited to see me, and to learn of my experiences, she couldn't wait! I felt so loved and adored, it was such a sweet homecoming!

I was so surprised that I really wanted and needed this. I needed to feel welcomed home and, I guess, to be celebrated? Margaret mentioned that maybe I felt celebrated when I told her how it felt...

I watched Kanika's family welcome her home when she went to her parents' house in Panchkula near Chandigargh. They had everything ready for the important guests! Kanika, her husband Patrick, son Watson, and me, friend Kathleen. Bedrooms were perfectly prepared, and amazing foods cooked to welcome hungry travelers. All attentions and affections were poured on Kanika and her family. There was no mistake she was the most important person in this moment, having been gone, and now welcomed back to the nest. She was celebrated and loved! They all wanted to know about her life and how she was doing. I so admired and enjoyed this adoring, welcoming energy. And she poured gifts upon her parents, brother, sister-in-law and niece. What a great time they were having in their reunion, like Christmas.

It is such a beautiful thing to celebrate a person. I think this is one reason I do love birthdays. I like to sing to people on their birthdays, on the phone or in person. I want to be more conscious of celebrating others. It is a beautiful thing, to celebrate each other!

I want to celebrate people when they make big life decisions, when they return home after a long or intense absence, when they go through a big life change. We used to have more ceremony in our lives, to mark these important moments of change, return, and departure. I believe we can re-integrate those traditions, or make new traditions to be conscious of each other's growth and process with love and attention!

Stepping Off

I did a wonderful thing. I quit my secure, well-paying job at a university with great insurance and a great retirement plan. I got to bike to work in a great town through beautiful neighborhoods. I got to be at the nexus of policy, research and education at state and national levels. I made friendly connections with interesting dynamic change agents and decisionmakers at state and local agencies and educational institutions across the state. I got to travel to Africa and Central America to help on watershed projects. I got to work with top scientists in aquatic ecology, hydrology, geochemistry, and climate science. I learned tons about those sciences, and about water sustainability, research, hydrologic databases, and academia.  I also learned that I am not meant for a desk job dealing more with computer files than people being asked to help groups of faculty that are not sure what they need to be helped because they are in a brittle system set up to function only if each person devotes a tiny amount of time and thought to each of their 100 projects/students/classes.

Going to work started to feel like a chore, and even punishment, because my passion was really in my social, arts and nature activities. I had projects in sewing, puppeting, organizing, and work just seemed to get in the way. I had no time for this "work!"

My spirit started struggling and rearing up. My higher self  decided I was done with this pretense of comfort, because in actuality, I was growing to be very uncomfortable on many levels. I found I was pretending that how we were doing things was fine with me. And I felt unseen, and I squashed my own expression more and more... first with a sense of frustration, and then peacefully, with a sense of acceptance with a deep knowledge that this was so temporary and so not my world,,, I used to think that this academia thing should be my world. Then it was clear that I was meant for other endeavors.   I could see this was a big machine working in ol dwell-worn ways with old worn out ideas at the institutional level. How incredibly boring and uninspiring. I could go on. But let's get back to me.

I found a part of myself rebelling against the comfort and security... something suddenly surprised me... a suggestion that I should quit  without finding another job... I needed a break from 'working.' It was my spirit that insisted on this. So I saw myself deciding to quit as soon as I had saved $12,000.  I would somehow go outside of my routine and out of my current society for a while to shake up my world in such a way that things would look different, like shaking a snow globe or a etch a sketch like blowing a Mandala away. e a hunch that things aren't really as they seem right now. There is a lot of illusion. Until I get out of my routine, my house, my comfort, I will have limited viewing.

So it is time for a retreat, a time to step back, zoom out, refresh, put on new glasses (or take off the glasses), climb out of the cave (I love the image of Plato's cave where people are enchanted by their own shadows and are comfortable in that safe warm cave and don't want to realize that their shadows are just shadows, and that the bigger truer world of life and expansion lay outside the cave itself.

So I plan to go to India on January 24 with my friend Kanika and her family. We are invited to her cousin's wedding and I am so honored that they will host me in their home! I go north from there to the base of the Himalayas for meditation retreat down the road from the Dalai Lama. I will travel south after that to do yoga and retreat in several other places, to meet a few friends, to experience elephants. Then I fly to Thailand. There I will explore more of the elephant world and conservation. More about that soon... 

People want to know the PLAN... I think they get confused and worried when the plan is very loose, and undefined... maybe I am too a little bit. My goal is to establish connections with people there, and learn about opportunities and then have those in my list of options once I am there... but I won't have everything planned out. I know I will be ok. I am trusting the world to catch me as I step off the edge into the  arms of love from people and animals. I will invite that love by sending love out And I have plenty of intellingence and travel savy to help me along.