This letter stems from the remembering that we get this one big beautiful life and to remind ourselves to carve out time for connection, travel, friendship, and powerful pilgrimages. .
When I was twenty-two years old I spent a summer on the island of Santorini. When I was fifty-one I returned. I had no idea how profound that journey back would feel.
As I explored those same white-washed pathways, searching for the place that was home to my younger self all those years ago, it felt like a pilgrimage of sorts, a journey to rediscover the very young and slightly radical altruist as my present day self who now has lived and applied those young ideals into the real live world. As I turned a corner and found the very same, basically unchanged spot where I had watched nightly sunsets, nostalgia hit me in such a wave that I was taken aback and had to sit and allow the tears to come.
It felt as if that timeless village at the tip of the island was holding my younger self in a time capsule for me to visit. I could see her and feel her as if no time had passed, and yet… It was indeed a lifetime ago.
I returned as a mother to two young women approaching the same age I had been. My heart swelled at the possibility of all of the adventures before them. My soul felt overwhelmed at the beauty and pain of our lifetimes and how our very lives can feel at once limitless and fleeting, and how we truly get this one awesome chance to make the very most of the limited time we have.
Knowing this was going to be a powerful day, I brought two of my closest friends with me. As women do, they simply bookended me, holding space, bearing witness. Together we walked down hundreds of steps to the sea, my feet remembering how to carry us to a secluded off the beaten track place where we could swim to a small island and jump off a cliff into the sea, just as I had all those years ago.
That high, exhilarating leap felt like a reunion with younger me - all of her brazen confidence, limitless beliefs of changing the world, a hippie traveler collecting experiences and love as she moved along her path. The joy I experienced as my body plunged into the Aegean was fully realized. I felt viscerally grateful in knowing I am still that same girl but with the wisdom and humility I have worked so hard to achieve. It also felt like a powerful leap of faith as I venture into the next phase of life that holds its own mysteries and unknowns.
Could I have made that journey alone, opting not to bring my soul sisters along? Of course I could have. But what I know with all I am, every experience - the challenging to the very most fun - is infinitely more powerful when done in a collective. We now carry those experiences together and those women have become an even bigger part of my story. One of them gently pushed me to identify what I was feeling, and I was able to realize that there was some sadness - perhaps more wistful than anything else - to realize that part of life’s experience was uniquely extraordinary, never to be repeated as I journey into the second half of my life. That epiphany and willingness to feel the complicated swirling of emotions would have been impossible alone.
This is my dharma - knowing completely that when we choose to surround ourselves with kind, powerful, loving and wise chosen friends, the experience takes on a texture impossible to attain alone.
Choosing and curating our friendships and community is everything. I am abundantly grateful for mine.
Take the trips, the leaps. These memories become the fabric of who we are.