Welcome to Libbie’s Odyssey!
Tomorrow (March 21,2007) I leave on my adventure. I wanted to leave on the first day of spring – that day of balance between light and dark. The days will get longer and the light will win for a good while – most of the time I will be traveling.
Getting ready for this trip has been a three-month odyssey as well. Running away when you are 18 is simple – no mortgages, no bills, no obligations for the most part. Now in my 50’s it meant finding renters for the house, selling stuff, storing stuff, planning for paying bills while on the road. I have worked at it full time everyday since January. The lists upon lists seemed to never get shorter only longer. Get the taxes done early; get some medical things taken care of. Who would look after my dog? The garden? Should I give up my home phone number or turn it into a voice mailbox? Get the power of attorney etc lined up in case of an accident somewhere on the trip. Get another signer on my safety deposit box. Pack the boxes, move the boxes to storage. Move out of the house, move in with a friend while sorting the last stuff to pack in the car. Put more in storage since I had way too much for the car.
In the midst of all this it was hard to hold onto why I wanted the adventure in the first place. I kept visualizing myself driving down a highway in Arizona whenever I lost sight of the goal. Other days I felt so sad to leave my family friends that I wondered why I would leave everyone who loves me to be alone? Then I would try to think of great reasons to stay and my heart would say NO – I want to go!
I have wanted to make this adventure for a few years now. When my daughter Rachel went off to college two years ago, I spent a year lying on the couch. I wasn’t depressed, I was tired, tired from 18 years of organizing my life around her needs. Now with her gone and no partner to concern myself with I felt adrift. I had thought I was her anchor but discovered she was mine. Her life structured my life and now I couldn’t answer the question: Libbie, what would you like to do?
It’s not like I didn’t have a career and interests while raising Rachel, it’s just that I discovered that raising her had been central to my heart and now I needed to find a new way to organize my heart. It also didn’t mean that I had abandoned her. We are still very close but there is a line that has been created that makes my parenting her different now and different for the future.
So for a year I napped and read and watched movies whenever I wasn’t working. Friends worried about me but I was ok. I was resting after a job well done and letting my mind and heart try on new ideas. The idea I kept getting was to sell everything and get in my car and drive, drive south and east and wherever and somehow the journey would yield the answers I needed.
So here I am. I invite you to share the journey with me. I promise to be honest and open. I pledge to be kind to myself and learn what I need to learn. And I will trust that I will be in a new place with new directions in this year I plan on having my adventure!
