My Eat Pray Love Journey

has looked nothing like Eat Pray Love

I was in high school around the time when books like Eat Pray Love and Wild were exploding in popularity. Like most women who read those stories, I was inspired by the idea of a woman going on an adventure and centering herself.

My best friend at the time said “I just know you’re gonna do something like them one day. One day, you’re gonna sell all your belongings and hike a trail or travel the world.” 

She was right about that.

I spent years dreaming about the day when I would set off with just a backpack. I would have a perfect map of the places I would visit and how long I would stay. Obviously I would have thousands of dollars saved up as a safety net. My friends would throw me a goodbye party and I would set off on my hero’s journey.

The reality didn’t quite go that way.

It felt more like a swift kick in the ass out of my comfortable life and onto a barely lit path. I started having nightly dreams about it being time to leave Milwaukee. I felt change pulling me forward like a magnet that was hard to resist.

But I thought, this cannot be right! I don’t have any money saved. I don’t have a plan.

I’m not ready.

Then, the pressure got turned up. It felt impossible to stay in my teaching job. I kid you not, my paintings and pictures started falling off the walls in my apartment. 

Eventually, I couldn’t deny that my old life was crumbling around me. I could cling on to a chapter that was clearly closing or I could take a leap of faith.

Little by little, I let go of everything I owned. I re-homed my plants that I had carefully cultivated for years. I donated my spices, pans, and dishes that I used to serve dinners for friends. I asked my books to tell me who to gift them to. 

I gave everything away until it was just me and my shaky legs mustering up the courage to take the first step.

Instead of that safety net of thousands of dollars, I had just enough cash to get me to New Mexico, my first destination, and no idea what I would do after that. 

I never could have predicted the three year journey I was about to embark on. I’ve stumbled my way through the dark to people, places, and ideas that I never could have planned for. 

Now here’s the thing. 

I thought that my hero’s journey would look like Elizabeth Gilbert’s or Cheryl Strayed’s. I thought these Eat Pray Love type journeys are about becoming an independent woman- someone who breaks the chains of codependency and learns how to do it all by herself.

I thought these journeys were about going it alone. It hasn’t felt like that for me. 

I have seen what I’m capable of and there have been times of feeling very alone, but the biggest lesson I’ve learned has been about how to receive.

Receive help. Receive love. Receive community.

I recently realized that doing things by myself is not a challenge for me. It never has been. In fact, I have been hyper-independent since before I could pronounce hyper-independent. I grew up in a house with many children and very little room for my big feelings.

I learned to deal with them on my own and take care of myself. I am so good at taking care of myself! Maybe a little too good.

My journey has not been about becoming this mythical independent woman. Instead, it has been about learning how to let people in. It has been about experiencing community and asking for help. 

I went from the person who fed everyone else to the person who gets fed by others.

To say that this has been an uncomfortable shift for me would be an understatement. I spent so much of my time traveling feeling like this just can’t be right! This doesn’t feel romantic or spiritual. This just feels fucking hard. 

Looking back, that was the clearest sign that I was on my hero’s journey. You know you are on the journey of your life when you are so scared that your hands are shaking. You know you are creating a new path when you can’t see the path anymore. 

This isn’t to say that my path forward feels crystal clear. It doesn’t. But I am different. I am much more comfortable with the uncertainty of a journey. As much as this irritates me, I have learned that I only really need to know the next step.

The surprise of my life has been seeing how far I can go by just taking it one step at a time down a barely lit path.