On Monday, I started the drive from Los Angeles to Oaxaca, moving my whole existence 40 hours south.

Unlike when I drove through Mexico the first time, this time, I know exactly how hard it is. This time, I have one less rabbit. This time, my partner and I are breaking up, not starting our relationship.

I haven’t felt “at home” for a year and a half, since I left for that first trip in search of a new life.

But this time, I know exactly where home is. It’s waiting for me. I just have to get there. 

I’m 2 days into 2 weeks of this solo drive. And this time, I am really feeling the solo-ness.

As an only child and recovering independence addict, I used to do everything by myself and not think twice about it. 3 months driving alone through Mexico? No problem. 

But something changed. Since opening myself up to deeper connection, finding my people, and letting myself receive love and care, it’s not so easy being alone anymore. 

I was so used to it for so long, I didn’t realize what I was missing. I didn’t realize how much it hurt. But now those scabs are fresh, pink skin. And I FEEL it.

I feel everything so much - the heartbreak, the incremental progress, the sweetness of companionship - life is at full volume. And I am trying to meet it with gratitude, in addition to crushing heartbreak, fear and exhaustion. 

My companion on this long drive is a seven-year-old rabbit, Gnocchi.

This time last week, I thought she was dying. She’s recovering from health issues that left her unable to breathe and unable to move. I had to wake up every few hours to clear out her nose. I had to hold up her head so she could drink.

Oh my god, how precious life is when you think it’s over. When you think you might not have another day, every moment has so much gravity. Every flop, every cuddle, every shared glance, almost wasn’t and may not be tomorrow.

But she’s getting better. A couple days ago, she started hopping again. I’m crying right now looking at her sitting contentedly under the desk in this hotel room.

I cry when I think about how grateful I am to have her with me on this long journey.

I cry when she drinks water. I cry when she’s stable enough to groom herself. I cry when she gets comfortable and rests.

I am so affected by her every movement, because I am ACUTELY aware of her fragility. And I have lost some of the beings I’ve loved most this last few months. So every little development, every little blessing, every little connection, hits my heart so hard. 

On this drive with this precious little creature, I can’t plan more than a few hours ahead. I have to live in this exact moment, slow down and take it easy enough to actually enjoy it. I have to surrender to the absolute enormity of existing in a body on Planet Earth.

I can’t take anything for granted. I can’t take anything too seriously.

The point is to feel it and enjoy it. Not necessarily to sob for all 40 hours looking at her weepy eye and bald chin and wobbly legs and stress about if she’s living or dying. 

Because she’s living AND dying. We all are. 

So I cry.

And I kiss her soft forehead.

And I laugh when she can’t get back up after a sharp turn.

I am a recovering independence addict and know-it-all. 

I want to have all the answers, do everything on my own and never have to ask for help.

I grew up as an only child, and my parents were pretty controlling. 

So I either struggled until I figured things out myself, or someone swooped in with their agenda and took over.

There was no differentiation between being helped and being controlled. I couldn’t ask for help, and keep my selfhood.

So if I couldn’t get help and maintain my dignity and agency…I’ll keep my dignity and agency, thank you. 

And I thought I had to know everything. Love and approval from the adults in my life depended on me proving my intellect. I still feel the scars of this every day. 

So here I was, thinking I have to do it all on my own, know everything, and not let on that I can’t and I don’t, because it was too threatening. 

I was fighting upstream and burning out, carrying this heavy burden alone. 

We have an individualistic culture that reinforces this conditioning and keeps us lonely and depressed. In 2022, after a powerfully healing group retreat, my blinders came off. I could suddenly see how lonely my life was. I lived alone and I worked alone. And I live in a country that rewards those things as status symbols.

Feeling interconnected is THE NUMBER ONE THING that’s healed my depression and anxiety.

If deep down, you don’t want to receive (it’s too disempowering or scary or you feel undeserving) it blocks the flow of energy. I’m guessing you know how good it feels to give. What if you couldn’t because no one ever received?

It makes me cry to think about how much goodness and love I was blocking.

This was also the way I approached helping others. 

I was still carrying the conditioning that it was too shameful to be helped or to learn. That it somehow invalidated my ability to be a helper. I wasn’t strong or smart enough if I needed support. 

But, I also believed in the help I was giving, it felt incredible to be trusted to offer it and I was seeing the results.

This was the deep, invisible paradox of how I was living. And why I kept burning out. And why I was exhausted. And why I was unhappy.

And if I think my job as a coach is to give so hard I deplete myself, run my clients’ lives or give them all the answers, what am I really doing? Disempowering them. Trying to prove something to myself. Replicating the harm that was done to me.

It’s my job to show them their dignity. Empower them to ask for help. Uncover the wisdom their own bodies hold.

Life is so much more beautiful and easier and funner when we surrender, put down whatever baggage we think we have to hold, and receive the mysteries of life that we are a part of.

Thank you for choosing to receive this.

The more open we are to receive, the more we receive.

It’s pretty simple. So leave some room and ask for help. You deserve it.

In fourth grade, we took our first overnight class trip to Colonial Williamsburg Virginia. When I look back on that year, it feels like the last sunlit spot of my childhood. 

I was still a candidate for popularity and I loved my teacher, Mr Carollan. He was fun and engaging and made it seem cool to care about school. 

And I cared about school. A LOT. It was my whole identity.

Everything was about getting an A and being the best. Because if I wasn’t, who was I? How would I earn love and attention?

I won the class spelling bee twice that year, which I’m still proud to report. But I came in second place to Aaron Chennault in memorizing the state capitals. A devastating blow.

I was sensitive and intensely perfectionistic.

I was also lonely and not well socialized, an only child to older, emotionally unavailable parents.

When I look back on that trip to Williamsburg, I see flashes of funny moments with the kids in my class and remember feeling excited to be in the mix. But I also remember something sad. Something I was ashamed and embarrassed by, and kept tucked away until a few months ago, when I told my partner Ike.

I remember it vividly. 1999. A hot day in Colonial Williamsburg. We were given a couple hours to wander freely. Alone, I stumbled into a highly sought after attraction. I went to the back of a long line of people waiting to have their photo taken in the old-timey stockade. (I did not know what a stockade was. I stuck my neck out, held up limp wrists on either side, and said, “the thing they put you in when you’re in jail.” “Stockade,” Ike said.)

That day in 1999, we could hardly wait to wriggle our body parts between those slabs of wood and pretend we’d been captured for our heinous crimes.

In the beating sun, I sweat and waited patiently for what seemed like an eternity, trading my precious free time for a turn to have this sensational experience. I inched forward, clutching my disposable camera, watching person after person wedge their arms and head in, smile for a photo, then bounce off contentedly.

I was finally next. I looked down at my disposable camera, and after all that waiting, realized there were no pictures left. And no one I knew was around to take it. I looked around, helpless and ashamed. I wondered if it was still worth wedging my arms and head in. That was the part I was excited about anyway. But I was too embarrassed. So I just walked away. 

That memory sat frozen in my mind for over 20 years, coated in the sinking loneliness I felt that day. A feeling I knew well.

If you’ve been following along, you know that we’re currently traveling the East coast. Last Saturday, Ike and I had some time to kill before we had to be in Maryland.

“…We could go to Colonial Williamsburg and get that photo of you in the stockade.” We erupted into laughter. 

To drive all the way to there to redo that moment from 1999 was absurd. But it also meant the world. To reach our arms back in time and hug that lonely 9 year old I’d given up on all those years ago. Laughing and crying, I agreed.

2023. A crisp day in Colonial Williamsburg. There was no line outside the courthouse, no swarm of sweaty kids waiting to be publicly arrested. Just me. A 33-year-old woman, standing exactly where I stood 24 years ago, looking at those same pieces of wood. Everything around me snapped into place. I was there, in the past and the present. Standing with my child self. Waiting. Not for one click of a disposable camera, but for 24 years to pass, so I could show her how worthy she was. Show her the person we’d become. 

When I got in the stockade, I told Ike to hold his phone up like he was taking a picture, but never tell me whether he took it or not. The mystery seemed more fun. Because it isn’t about a picture, or a spelling bee, or an A. It’s about going on absurd adventures, revealing your vulnerablest parts, and walking yourself through becoming cooler than you could have ever imagined in your wildest, 9-year-old dreams.

Last week, I pushed through the discomfort of telling people I had a blog. It’s the worst part of having a blog, aside from writing it. 

I got some really exciting and heartfelt responses. It reminded me why I bother. And it activated the part of me that is afraid to let you down. I think that’s called…caring? So, with my heart beating just a little harder, here I am, writing and caring.

In one of the responses, a friend asked for “words of wisdom for upending your life.” The life coach in me is tickled. 

As it turned out, there was something very specific that I needed to hear. I was grateful to her for drawing it out.

Sometimes, I get stuck in ‘efficiency mode’: let’s only do what is necessary and avoid wasting time or money.

En route to the East coast, my partner Ike and I are currently in a little Colorado mountain town between two halves of a train ride he insisted we take. The train is twice as slow as driving. TWICE. This excursion and this whole mode of transportation were entirely inefficient, which I reminded him often. 

But, it was essential.

It’s essential to take the long, windy road and leave room for life to surprise you. Those are the days where you get to the end, because you spent the afternoon relaxing in a huge, geothermally-heated public mineral pool and then stumbled into an unbelievably corny vaudeville dinner show, and you go, wow. That was weird. I am satiated. 

You feel it in your body. You sleep well at night. You wake up, shrug your shoulders because it’s all a question mark, and get ready to do it again.

But all this mirth and togetherness and spending money has the part of me that thinks I’m being frivolous and neglecting my responsibilities very nervous. 

This morning, I opened my emails and started to respond to things that had piled up, including my friend’s email. 

I told her, “document how you are feeling along the way and reflect on where you were.”

Until deciding to move to LA in 2018, I was lonely, depressed, and made pretty much every decision based on my future and career. I’m still unwinding that program.

Soon after making a change, you focus on the next set of problems. You forget the ones you solved because they're not there anymore. Traveling with Ike, having fun and being together all of the time has solved my longest standing problem: loneliness. But if I don't take time to recognize and appreciate that, a week in, I’m back in efficiency mode, worrying I'm doing something wrong.

This is what it feels like to change, to stretch my capacity to enjoy myself. There’s tension between the old way and the new way, arguing in my brain as I walk my new walk.

It doesn’t feel perfect all the time. It isn’t supposed to. But it feels right.