Once upon a time, I had a LOT of common life plans: college, career, marriage, house, kids — in that order. I assumed I controlled the outcomes in my life, and I would follow the same path millions of others had trod before me.
At the university where my journey into adulthood began.
So at 18, I left for college. At 25, I started my career. At 28, I settled into marriage and a new house and enjoyed my role as a weekend step-mother. For many reasons, I put off trying to have my own children until I was older. At 40, after a lot of strife and struggle, I was finally pregnant.
Maybe it was just the hormones, but I felt like I had tapped into the divine. Pure love for my unborn child forged a deep connection between me and every living thing. For the first time in my life, I knew with absolutely certainty that the purpose of my life was to be this baby’s mother. The trifecta of love, connection, and purpose added up to pure bliss.
And then, as life plans are wont to do, everything fell apart.
The trauma, the grief, the aftermath of losing my baby wounded my body, destroyed my spirit, and decimated my soul. While biology told me I was a mother; the absence of my baby harshly assured me I was not. I dragged myself through each day with the promise of getting back in bed as soon as I could. Loss tugged at me. If I could have found the pathway to heaven, I would have walked there to be with my son.
Unable to face the empty spaces of time that would never be filled by my own children, I did something daring one day from the safety of my bed: I signed up for a summer writing workshop in France.
For nine months, planning the trip became my hobby. And while the details could overwhelm me at times, allowing something else to occupy my mind besides my loss and grief was welcome relief.
After looking at the costs of flights and trains, I asked myself, why not seize this opportunity of being in Europe and look around for a while beyond the workshop? My trip plans expanded. My friends called it “a trip of a lifetime.”
How does one survive the gray days, weeks, months, and years of loneliness, solitude, and grief after a soul-shattering loss or life-altering disappointment? I don’t know the answer. All I do know is that traveling became one answer for me.
When I arrived in France all alone, I was both terrified and foggy-headed. I sat in the airport, mustering the courage, cognitive energy, and high school level French skills I needed to board the right train to Paris.
Obviously, I survived the journey.
The next morning I woke refreshed and ready to explore. But where to go? I studied the map. When I saw a monument to the archangel after whom my son had been named, I knew that’s where I would begin.
From there, I wandered to Notre Dame Cathedral, surprised to see it with my own eyes.
When I walked in, the scent of hundreds of years’ worth of candles and incense soothed me. I sat for a long time in that cathedral, trying to soak it all. Amid the snores from the homeless man sitting near me, the pieces of my shattered self began to fall back into place.
Over the next six weeks, I traveled through nine countries, some alone and some with friends.
I saw many beautiful and ancient things. Paris, Prague, Vienna, Salzburg, Barcelona, Corfu, Dubrovnik, Venice, Dublin.
Over that six weeks, this is what I figured out: traveling makes life delicious.
For ten years now, I have slogged my way against and through time. Through work and hobbies and education, I have tried to embrace my childless life and fill my time purpose and meaning. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t.
But for rejoining the game, for getting out of bed each morning and setting my feet upon the ground, I give myself the gift of travel. It is my consolation prize.
There are still moments when I wallow in self-pity or feel like a complete outcast or misfit because I live a life with no children. In those moments, I try to remember this:
That is not my journey.
Henry David Thoreau once wrote about his own journey:
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived…I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.”
Henry David Thoreau
Indeed. Life is so short. There are simply no guarantees, not even when you have everything meticulously planned out and the path seems so easy to follow.
Though this is not the life I would have chosen for myself, it is the one — and only one— that I’ve been given.
So pardon me while I carpe my diems and suck out all that marrow. While I am young enough, healthy enough, and have enough, my wish is to travel as many roads as I possible.
Even if it means going solo.
Christine
The above blog was first posted on This Girl Goes Solo