To be honest, I kinda wish the story had ended there. Hind sight I should have just gone home that day and booked my flights but I didn’t. I stayed in that vanilla groove life had seemingly created for me. I flirted, fantasized, and fully researched plane tickets and travel information. I read the website repeatedly. I told others, “I am going to go” and “I don’t think I can go.”

“I think you should go, just for you, to nurture your soul,” my husband said in therapy one day. The therapist looked excited for me, like she was relieved she wouldn’t have to convince my husband and for once, the solution lay before the three of us.

I still didn’t commit to the trip. The deadline creeped closer, the plane seats filled, and we inched closer to winter.

Finally it hit me. I can try something different or do the same thing. And the words I often say to clients that I learned from the incredible Virginia Satir came back to me, “we change when the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of doing something different.”

I did something different on November 8th, 2019. On a cold, particularly gloomy and windy day, I booked the trip. Just for me. No one else. Purely to do something different.