There are questions that at times people ask me when they get to know that I have been on the road for years.
Doesn’t really matter if it was after six months, 2 years and half or four.
I got individuals coming up to me with
“You must be so lost”
“How can you not want to go home?!”
“What are you running away from?”
“Don’t you miss….?”
“You must be afraid of commitment”
“Oh, and what about stability?”
At the beginning, I used to get triggered by this.
Probably, because deep down those were fears and doubts I was experiencing as well.
To allow myself to walk a path that was very different from most people I knew and absolutely opposite to what I have been experiencing up to that point was complicated, at first.
I had to eventually unlearn so much before being able to really, deeply enjoy my experience.
I remember very vividly the first three days.
I had to fight myself, people, and circumstances in order to get where I was in that moment, and I knew it.
Nonetheless, I found myself in a space that I was not expecting at all.
There I was, sitting on a beautiful beach on an early July (also to note, it was 2020, just few weeks after the first lockdown got lifted, which in Italy it had been harsh).
I was free, I was alone and I was in the place I wanted to be.
But the anxiety started to creep in soon enough.
I was laying in the hot golden sand, peaceful and content from the outside, yet inside of me my heart was pounding fast and my head was filled with
“What am I gonna do from now on?
How will I make money?
How could I expect to embark on the journey of a lifetime if I can barely afford two weeks of meals and accommodations? (Taken away the flight and the first week payed at a hostel, I had in total 800 euros in my account!)
Why did I choose to come here in the first place?
What am I looking for?
What is my purpose in life? (ah, this one, it haunted me for YEARS!)
When and where will I meet my people?
I don’t want to go back, what if I have to let go and fly back there in just few weeks?”
And so much more, endlessly.
Now I look back at that girl I was, at that experience I was having and I am so proud of her. I am so grateful.
I know that in those moments I was learning very important things; but I also know, that in reality I was finally experiencing myself for the very first time.
I finally had the space, peace and capability to hear “myself” fully; all the fears, conditionings, doubts, excuses that were residing inside of me up to that point.
After so long enduring, I was at the (unknown, up to that moment) point of releasing and letting go.
By creating space, all the clutter was coming up to the surface.
That was the moment in which I turned fear into creative power.
I knew I was not going back, there was no way I would put myself into that space again.
Fire was burning and so was I.
No matter how scared that girl was, how many times she sat somewhere feeling lost, scared and confused; she never gave up. She kept on feeling herself and then finding a way to move forward.
And trust me, on the way, there have been countless mountains, rivers, forests, city benches, canyons, tents, caravans, beaches, huts, starry skies in or under which I shed tears.
One of the most important advices I received before leaving was “it will not be easy. There will be lots of places in which you will sit and cry and feel lost and alone. Leaving, by itself, won’t the be the solution to your problems”.
Not only this person was right; his advice gifted me peace in my mind and my heart.
Because whenever I was experiencing despair, whenever I was sitting in a beautiful place crying my heart out, I knew I was not alone. I knew that it was supposed to be that way at times for many of us and that it would eventually go away.
It was not the wrong experience, it was just part of the bigger picture.
Also, I never got up from one of those moments without feeling better and relieved.
I always allowing myself to ugly cry, sing, speak it out (or even scream if needed) until I felt energetically and emotionally free.
There have been times in which I struggled to understand the wholeness of what I was experiencing.
I felt that I was not fitting into “backpacking” by itself, I was definitely not a party traveller, not fully a hippie, nor a punk; gypsy, maybe, a bit.
I would observe the experience of those around me that were on a similar path and still I couldn’t find many similarities.
So what was I up to?
It has never been about simply travelling; living naked on a beach, growing my own food, writing stuff and painting everywhere. Recycling, upcycling; happy caravans across countries to build a community for a month somewhere and then move on.
Picking olives and lemons; sorting flowers.
Building new spaces in abandoned places.
Busking on the street and cooking pasta on a sidewalk with a camp stove.
Living in spiritual communities and ashrams, silent retreats, yoga classes, cacao ceremonies.
Hiking everywhere, discovering new peaks, seeing new horizons.
Embracing new cultures, learning new recipes, hearing different perspectives.
Finding new masters, trying out new methods.
This and much more, were parts of the journey, not the destination.
A journey on which I embarked because I wanted to find myself.
I wanted to know that another life was possible out of what I have always been experiencing.
I wanted to created space so that I could heal, and be free to love myself, the way I am and not the way I was supposed to be due to external requirements and expectations.
Just the way I am, fully.
Complicated, deep, hermetical, silly, direct, curious, different, sensitive, intuitive, creative, caring, fierce, independent, resilient.
The more I allowed myself to go and grow through experiences, the more I could expand.
The more I would expand, the more I got the ability to pick what serves me and what doesn’t.
To let go of anything that is not in alignment.
To dissolve the fear of not having enough and letting go even when it feels like I would be left with nothing.
To discover what i love doing, what i can do effortlessly, naturally, intuetively.
What brings a sparkle of divinity within whenever i do it.
To discover how loved and protected we are.
To find magic around us, within me. To let it expand and accept it without fear.
To be amazed by how deep we are as creatures.
How incredibly beautiful, unique and powerful we are.
To accept myself as I am, especially those parts of me that I used to fight so hard against.
Those are making me, fully, myself. I love those parts so much.
And eventually, I found that I have never been running away from anything and anyone.
I have always been running towards.
Towards love, towards myself. Towards the dissolutions of a line between the two, and just be, fully.
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