Eat, Pray, Love: LOVE

The post I know many of you have been waiting for…LOVE.  

Honestly, I don’t even know where to start here.  My heart is SO full of love right now that it overwhelms me and surprises me everyday.  I didn’t know that I was capable of this much love.  I have overwhelming, tear-inducing love for the beauty of nature, for a kind soul on the street who helps me find the bus station that I am looking for, and for the night manager at my hotel who waits for me to get home each night just because he’s worried about me and wants to make sure that I make it home safely.  ❤️

I have love for the pure joy and happiness that I have found.  I have love for all the new friends that I have met on the road, and an even greater love and appreciation for those friends that I had long before I left.  I have so much love for my family, who has been there for me every step of the way as I stumble through this new re-birth.  Not all of the conversations have been easy…some have been extremely difficult.  Some were angry, and some were sad.  We misunderstood each other, we found it difficult to express our thoughts and emotions clearly and articulately at times, but at the end of the day, all of the conversations came from a place of love.

For those of you waiting for a true “love” story, you will be waiting a bit longer.  Unlike Elizabeth Gilbert, I did not find the love of my life in Bali, or any other tropical island for that matter.  What I did find was a new love for myself.  A profound love that I truly believe you can only find by going away for a while.  And by a while, I mean A WHILE.  A two week vacation isn’t going to cut it.  To really discover yourself and to find the way that you can truly love yourself is a process, as I outlined in my last PRAY post.  I never really thought about it before I left, and looking back, I was so lost, and I didn’t even know it.  It makes me so sad to realize now how much I was hiding, and not being true to myself and to those people all around me:  My family, my ex, my step-kids, my friends, my co-workers…I mean, I was me, of course, but like a shrouded version of me; just going through the motions and getting through the day.  I wasn’t really enjoying it.  And I was most definitely taking it all for granted…for years…and years…and years.  My friend, Shelia, and I were discussing these changes and observations all around us and she said, “I have been watching all these people post their stories on Instagram and it is as if they have all settled and stopped dreaming.” “Yes!”, I said.  “And I did it too!”  

As I was walking around San Francisco on my layover after landing in the US for the first time in 7 months, I was absolutely shocked by how much beauty I saw.  I strolled through the neighborhood where I lived for two and half years almost 20 years ago, and tears filled my eyes as I realized how much I took it for granted back then.  Did I even enjoy it?  What an incredible place to live life!  How could I have squandered it like that?  I saw things that I had never noticed before, and these were things that were most certainly always there:  Beauty in the architecture, beauty in the layout of the neighborhood, beauty in the colors, the sights, and the sounds all around me.  As I walked, I became more and more grateful for this second chance that I have given myself.  It sounds so dramatic, but it is as if I had a near-death experience and now have a second chance at life.  I see everything differently.  I appreciate things so much more deeply.  I am more emotional and more in tune with my feelings.  I cry much more easily and all of the time now.  The good news is that most of these tears are happy and full of gratitude; almost like I am catching up for all the appreciating that I should have been doing all along.  Now I feel more alive and more aware of what is happening around me in each moment.  Truly, as I walked, it was like I was mourning the loss of the old Robyn, and celebrating the re-birth of the new Robyn at the same time…much like that lotus flower tattoo.  A symbolization of rebirth, strength, and a spiritual awakening.  That is me.  And I love me and this precious life that has been bestowed upon me.  I will not squander it any longer.

So really, this is a love story about weathering the storm, and coming out on top.  Not giving up on ME.  I have always known/thought that I was meant to do more, and that I would do great things.  I don’t know exactly what those things are yet, but they are slowly coming into fruition and I am not going to ignore my intuition any longer.  I am not going to settle into some cookie cutter version of whoever society says I am “supposed” to be.  I am going to me!  Because I love me!  And because I owe it to myself to live the life I want to lead; not the life that someone else expects me to lead.  This is MY TIME.  I have waited long enough to celebrate this self-love and I am not going to be ashamed of it.  This doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy.  Or that I am not scared.  I am scared as hell!  I have no idea what I am doing.  But it feels right.  And I owe it to myself to follow my gut.

What I do know is that I was meant to travel.  And I was meant to meet people along the way.  I feel truly alive when I am on the road.  It is my happy place.

My favorite word in the English language is joy.  I just think that this is the best word ever.  JOY.  Who doesn’t want to find pure joy in their life?  I have!  And it doesn’t come in the form of a boyfriend, or a husband, or a child, or a house.  For me, it doesn’t have a form.  It is that free-spirited feeling that envelops me as I walk out onto the beach for a morning sunrise, or that feeling that I get when I meet a new friend on the road and we share a beer and some genuine laughter.  It is that feeling when I am riding a motorbike through the countryside of Pai, Thailand with the sun shining on my face and wind whipping thru my hair.  That is my joy and my true love.  And I am so glad that I finally found it.