I missed my sister’s wedding last summer. Two days before the ceremony, sitting alone upstairs in our Juarez airbnb, I felt lightheaded and stuffy and exhausted. I’d been taking Covid tests all week as a preventative. But each test was negative. Until it wasn’t. If it hadn’t meant missing my only sister’s wedding (after missing my brother’s wedding two years before), the ensuing events would have been comical. Within half an hour, I was driven to a hotel where I sheltered alone all night until the next morning when my dad arrived to drive me across the border to another hotel in El Paso where I sheltered alone until my husband made it down all the way from Denver.
We left early the next morning for home, driving mile after mile through barren desert, stopping to pee on the side of the road to avoid passing this dreaded virus on to anyone else. By the time we’d arrived back in Denver, Lydia was getting married via a pixelated screen. I was supposed to be there, celebrating her joy, dancing the night away, eating tacos washed down with agua fresca. I grieved the loss, felt acute pangs of envy with every photo I saw that summer of sisters attending their sister’s weddings.
We needed a healing trip. To go somewhere just the two of us and delight in the things that were ripped away unexpectedly. For years we’d dreamed of visiting Oaxaca together—a vibrant, culinary-infused city in southern Mexico. Last minute, we scored tickets cheaply (and by cheaply, I mean I combined credits from the canceled wedding flight with American Airline miles and finagled my way to El Paso where Lydia picked me up before we boarded a flight across the border in Juarez to Oaxaca).
We ate our way through a city that celebrates an ancient culinary heritage, sampled so many different types of moles, drank mezcal shots, ate roasted crickets smothered in cheese, discovered the brilliance, nuances, and sublime wonder of a dozen+ heirloom tomatoes sliced thinly and served with olive oil and beet puree. We walked through ancient cobblestone streets, ducked into small shops, watched the sun set brilliantly from a rooftop bar, wandered through botanical gardens and markets. It couldn’t replace a missed wedding. But it was healing. And hopeful. Wonder-packed and delicious.
This trip was the start of a year of unexpected travels, all somewhat solo and somewhat in the company of other women. 2020 and the subsequent years pummeled me. I encountered depression for the first time. Felt the gut punch of loss and canceled plans. I worried we’d never travel again. Or know life without so much anxiety. Or look forward to anything without a lingering fear it would be taken away again and again.
But life moves forward and hope alights in other ways. In January, I visited my writer friend
in Bozeman, Montana, during a frigid snowstorm. We hunkered down, shivered through deep snow as infrequently as possible, made cozy food, talked about the writing life and so many other things. Two months later, I boarded a plane for London. Then Munich. I met up with a small group of traveling women, all eager to learn the ins-and-outs of budget travel, all hungry for a short but significant spiritual pilgrimage through Germany, Austria, and Czechia. We enjoyed the camaraderie of shared quarters and meal meetups and also the independence of wandering and walking alone, allowing curiosity to guide us into old churches, up hills, into inviting cafes. The seven of us experienced each city differently, shared our stories over pastries and beer and absinthe. As days unfolded, we learned more about our individual faith expressions, our individual wounds. I’d initially signed up for this trip to finally step foot on the European continent (I’d previously only been to Iceland). But I discovered again the healing nature of a pilgrimage, even a short one. The empowering feeling as an individual, as a woman, boarding a plane. Finding my way around an enormous foreign airport, figuring out trains and taxis and local customs. , our trip leader and founder of Big Story Living, shared about her first visit to Prague as a restorative and transformational journey. A life changing gift to leave home for a little while and encounter the Spirit beyond her known world. I’d begun to see glimmers of this. Recovering a lost experience with my sister while wandering through Oaxacan market stalls, making risotto with an internet-stranger-turned-friend in Montana, clinking beer steins with new friends in a vast beer hall in Munich. There’s so much to discover beyond our familiar places. The initial scariness of the unexplored can be a balm if we let it. A glimpse of the myriad ways myriad people live and exist in this world.Travel alerts our attention to the complex and diverse people and cultures beyond our purview. But it also introduces new landscapes, new awe-striking, overwhelming wonders that send chills down our spines and leave us speechless. Like when I stood on the brim of the Grand Canyon for the first time and finally understood the expanse of it, the sheer magnitude of this massive rift in the earth. Or in June when I traveled to Oregon and Northern California with my friend
to behold the mighty redwoods, to stand on the edge of another magnificent hole in the ground—this one filled with frigid, brilliantly blue water. We camped in a quiet, damp forest, hiked down to a rocky beach where seals barked at the sea, sat beneath an ancient, giant tree and wrote in silence, made fresh coffee on a washed up tree trunk, dunked our bare bodies into the ice cold Pacific, and sat in a hot spring with 20+ other naked women. It was transcendent.Shortly after returning home from Europe, we moved from Denver to San Diego. I’d been feeling the heaviness of another new town, another new geography where the majority of people remained complete strangers. I was enraptured by the beauty of southern California, the pure joy of living so close to the ocean. But I was also restless, creatively locked, and lonely. This trip with KJ untapped something in my creative soul, attended to my lonely heart, and invigorated long dormant words.
Throughout this year, in the company of so many women—some I’ve known most of my life, some I’ve just met, others that were complete strangers until they weren’t anymore—I’ve been renewed. Like cells are expanding. Like wounds are being tended. There is still so much goodness to attune our souls towards. There is still so much beauty to behold.
Celebrate this small news with me!
1,000 subscribers!! Somehow (and I still can’t really fathom how) 1,000 readers have found this little digital letter and have subscribed. I am astounded and so very grateful. This Substack is my little passion project. Even when words are hard to find, I am drawn here to find them, to connect with so many of you, to ask questions, and continue honing my craft and voice.
Thank you!
As a thank you, I’m offering another sale for the paid version of Substack—subscribe by September 22, and enjoy 25% off your subscription forever.