We leave for Italy in three days!!! Eek
This may come as a shock but I am here, writing, reminiscing and eager to add some updates. But not all of them. Some things are not ready for sharing, maybe they never will be? It’s too soon to tell.
To say I am excited, happy, overjoyed and yes, a little worried would be an understatement. Last year, at this same time we had planned to go to Italy for our Spring break. The tickets, the Airbnb’s and hotels were all booked. My longtime friend Daniele was ready to take us on a private tour of the Vatican. We were going to see old friends of mine/ours whom I’ve known and traveled with in Italy for more than 20 years (I’ve known Daniele since my undergraduate days in Boulder). We had to cancel the trip at the last minute due to my (mental) health issues. They were different from how they exist now, though very, very real and very challenging for me and my family. Read about last year here.
I have been going to Italy since I was an undergraduate at The University of Colorado in 1990-91. Two of my best friends (I met them in the dorms our freshman year and with whom I am still very close 35 years later) plus one random girl, traveled around Europe for a month before settling in four different cities for the academic year. For me it was Italy, S went to Germany where she had family, P went to Madrid and the one I didn’t know well went to France. It was epic and I have so many indelible memories swirling back as I rehash those times with S and P over FaceTime this month. They have been some of my greatest champions–as have some other besties both near and far– as I get ready to make this trip again, reminding me that I can do it, I have done much harder things. I have been a solo, adventurous, courageous (and a little bit crazy) traveler for most of my life.
But now is one of the most challenging times in the story of my life. I’ve had many challenges over the years: death, loss, grief, divorce, significant (physical) health problems, pain and suffering. But who hasn’t? I have also lived a charmed life, a life full of joy and friendship, supportive family, friends, community and endless laughter and happiness.
Work, play, curiosity travel, fun, creativity have been part of my values since I was a child. As a Junior in high school, I went away from home for the first time and spent a summer living in New York City as a student at Barnard College. My first trip to Europe was the year after. I have not stopped traveling since. Several years ago when our daughter was about five, my husband and I made travel a priority, and spending money on experiences instead of things a goal in how we raised our child. Since my college days, I have been to Italy at least a dozen times. Study abroad, summer programs with students as a graduate student, professional gigs and vacations with family and friends gave me these opportunities and the memories will last a lifetime. Italy is my happy place, my home away from home, my ancestral land and one of the most special places in the world to me.
And here I am, about to embark (again) on the trip I’ve been dreaming about for the last 15 years –the last time I was there! A dream that includes taking my daughter there for the first time and showing her all of my places, the cities I’ve lived and traveled in, my favorite bars, piazzas, restaurants, gelaterie, apartments, schools and more. I am ready this time. I am stronger and wiser. I’ve learned so much about my “illness” ( I call it that because it *is* and it deserves to be treated as any other illness). My health is not who I am. It does not define me. It is a small dot on the ground that I see as I hover over the (Italian) landscape. It’s like a donkey on my shoulder (this told to me by an incredible massage therapist named Brian Wingate who worked on my frozen shoulder in 2019): “The frozen shoulder is a block, a donkey in Italy. It refuses to move and you need to ask what it needs; what you need to learn. Meditate on it and go into it, not away from it.” He saw this as he worked on my shoulder. A prescient and wise apparition. “Think of the surroundings, the trees (of Italy), go higher and higher and see how small it is from above, the donkey just a speck in the wider universe.”
I realize now, through years and years of therapy, meditation and yoga that my biggest challenges are Fear, Control, Uncertainty, Perfectionism and “Stuckness” as Pema Chodron puts it. In her book “When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times,” which I have read a dozen times and keep going back to for wisdom that has yet to sink in, she says: “Fear is a universal experience. Even the smallest insect feels it…It is not a terrible thing that we feel fear when faced with the unknown. It is part of being alive, something we all share.” And as one of her students put it, “Buddha nature, cleverly disguised as fear, kicks our ass into being receptive.”
So here we go…another “adventure of a lifetime,” perhaps even one of the most important of my life.
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