Meraki Healing Center, PLLC

Over the last six weeks I drove across the country, from the east coast to the west coast and back, on a bit of an on-a-whim road-trip. I had not planned this trip for that long before embarking, but I wouldn’t change a thing about that because it allowed me the freedom that comes with spontaneous and uninhibited decisions (my forté).

I have been sharing recap updates over the last six weeks on social media in an attempt to both keep my family and friends updated on my whereabouts (see above’s mention of “spontaneous and unplanned”) and also to record the destinations and stops for myself, to properly mark the details of the memories that will likely fade with time. I may end up sharing a blog post that is more of a consolidated recap of the trip, but the most recent recap I shared is one that feels relevant to use as the first post on this website.

Full transparency, I’m not sure what shape this site will take, what use the blog will consist of & what amount I will be posting here. But, I do know that as I embark on my career in mental health and experience the shifts that are inevitable, I like the idea of having a space where I can offer updates and provide glimpses into the way this work is moving me and shaping my life along the way.

So, here’s an expanded version of the last recap post I shared to sum up the road-trip. May it offer you the chance to reflect on where moments of awe, wonder, and curiosity are present in your life, and an opportunity to consider how these things can continue to be incorporated more intentionally.

How do I sum up the last six weeks and still do the trip justice?!

I don’t know that I can. I don’t know that I want to. It was – a whirlwind. Predictable and also completely surprising. Overdue but perfectly timed. I experienced the excitement of adventure and yet still found the most rooted and grounded version of myself in those moments of discovery.

My pictures and videos and words will only ever share part of the story. The moments of reverence, the memories that are intertwined in my being – those I’ll treasure as my own. I won’t try to shape your understanding of their meaning to fit what they provided for me.

So instead, I say: go find your own awe, discover what stirs your own wonder. Embrace curiosity about what most grounds you, and what feels most true to who you are, at the core of your deepest self. And MAKE the time for those things. You don’t need travel or insane road trips to do it (although if you also have this privilege and a wanderlust soul, I say 100% go do it).

For me, I experience it in music, in the lyrics and words of songwriters and storytellers (to me, one & the same). I knew I would experience it in the stunning nature and landscapes that made up our hikes & pitstops. I don’t know why it still surprises me when it happens, but I feel it when I’m connecting with those I love, with those I’m safe to be me around. And perhaps what I’m most grateful for are the ways awe and wonder, grounding and rootedness showed up in the mundane on this trip. In the day to day moments, the kindness of strangers; in the recognition of the powerful and unexpected flood of emotions from conversation and connection; & particularly in the enjoyment I found during the hours and hours on the road, in solitude, occupied only with the curiosity & self-exploration in my own head, & the inquisitive hunger for the perspectives and words of the authors I listened to along the way. 

I firmly believe this trip provided the necessary opportunity for me to dive into the question, “what’s next?”: What’s next for my career? Who – and how, and where – do I want to be? This happened alongside some other big questions: Who & what have I not fully grieved, not fully mourned and accepted as a loss, that is preventing me from moving forward in the changed version of myself that’s a result of said loss(es)? What expectations or hopes am I holding onto that are not actually of my own calling, my own longing? Where am I still looking to external sources for validation, and to provide intrinsic needs – of comfort, safety, belonging – that I can learn to provide to myself?

These questions, and the answers that came from the time with them, are what I will recall long after the memories of specific places fade. It’s really cool to experience the shift that happens when you let the shame or insecurity about certain things melt away as you embrace the parts of you that at one point were not yet conditioned to be hidden – when you let your childlike awe & wonder & curiosity have a place again.

I recently heard this in Cole Arthur Riley’s book, This Here Flesh: “Protect the truest things about you and it will become easier to hear the truth every place else”. Woof. She nails it perfectly. That’s all I’ll say on that. (But really, if you are someone who is entranced with questions about what it means to be human, particularly what it means to be a spiritual human in this world, go buy this book. Run, don’t walk.)

To sum it up, this trip felt like a coming home. A coming home to myself. And for that I’m grateful beyond words. I hope you get to experience the magic of it for yourself, too.

Here’s to finding this magic in the other forms of adventure that are yet to come.