Solo Travel: A return to magic

What do you do when you end a five year relationship, get a divorce, and your lease ends - all in the same day? You tell your building management that you're not renewing, sell all your furniture, donate what you can't sell, pack your clothes in one suitcase and have a backpack for your other random stuff, and you book a one way ticket to Peru. No, just me?

2024 was a year of shedding for me, and what they don't tell you about shedding is that it hurts, and it hurts like hell. I found myself in a year of endings. A year of gruelling letting go of the curated life that I had created and facing myself. I had lived in the United States for about five years prior to this big decision to set it all on fire, metaphorically of course. I arrived in the U.S in March of 2020 with a solid plan of spending a good six months helping my exe's grandfather readjust to life after a cancer diagnosis. What we both didn't know was that COVID would have us grappling with a pivot neither of us wanted to make. I had never had aspirations of living in America. My ex before that was an American as well and her and I chose to settle in the Philippines over settling in the America. Staying felt like a decision that didn't really have any other options since we literally couldn't go anywhere.

When my relationship hit it's end in 2023, I booked myself a flight to Mexico and settled in Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca for three months. I felt like I was running away and maybe I was but for some reason, this running felt like a move to meet myself. When you are in a long term partnership, you loose yourself. Your loose your essence. You loose the things that drive you, the magic that you carry. In Oaxaca, I found all of that. In the midst of the grief, heart break, doubt, resentment, guilt - was the flickering light of that magic again. I would find it in my flip flops, shorts, and scooter as I drove through the town. I would force myself to keep my eyes open as they would beckon to close when smelling the flowers that perfeclty lined up the highway on the way to the beach. I would also feel that spark when I sat on the beach, closed my eyes and listen to the sound of the waves. They sound like millions and millions of voice when you listen with your eyes closed and you can even hear them through your body. That magic would flicker even more when I would sit on my patio with my roommate Jesus, who spoke broken English and we would converse so effortlessy with my broken Spanish. It is in Oaxaca, under the most perfect sunsets where I remembered that traveling is my MAGIC.

You can imagine my internal struggle when I made the decision to return to America at the end of November that year. I knew that I wasn't done with whatever I left in America and America wasn't done with me. And yes, as much as Puerto Escondido lit that spark and reconnected me with that magic again, it was not set up to sustain the life I want to live as a traveller. From the wifi that worked only when it felt like it, to the power outages that lasted a few hours in the day and the water cut offs in my rental, I wasn't going to able to sustain and grow my coaching business. And let's be honest, a girl was also running low on money, lol. I begrudgingly and logically returned to Austin, rebuilt my life from the ashes of a looming heartbreak that came with its perpetual hurt that I KNOW I ALLOWED. I got my first apartment, it was so lonely. I slowly turned it into a home, my home. I spent that whole year, in my apartment and witness myself emerge into the full magic, and bigness that I have always known I am. I truly BECAME someone I liked, and someone I trusted with my life.

As a self development coach, I know the importance of overcoming the fear of starting over. It is one of the biggest things that keep people stuck in cycles that no longer serve them. It is one of the fears that shackle us in lives that we know no longer feel good and we make excuses as to why we're staying because starting over feels like so damn scary. It is my job to help people through this, and what I know is that we overcome fears by FACING them. I overcame the fear of starting over in 2024! For me, that looked like being honest about who I was and who I wanted to become. It called me to sit in the silence of an empty apartment, sober, and present. It was about feeling every single feeling and oh, some of them felt like they would drown me, and they didn't. But, it is in feeling them that I could heal them. One of the journeys I embarked on was redifining what relationships meant for me. In that journey, I realised that my friendships are also as important as my romantic relationships. This is why I spent the first month of my travels visiting people who have held me when I felt like I was crumbling.

This was a revolutionary act for me. Changing how I participate in relationships. I no longer see my relationstions as a hierarchy that places romantic love at the top of the pyramid. No, my relationships are now a garden, and I realize that for it to thrive, every seed needs the other to grow. It feels so good to have released the pressure to have my needs met in one place, my friends have the ability to showup for me in different ways and all I have to do is ASK. All I have to do is engage with them, and that is something a future partner has to value, friendships outside of a our relationship.

I am now in Coscu, Peru, after spending a week in Lima celebrating my birthday. I am living in that magic and I am excited to share it with you. Not just the good, no, ALL OF IT. I would be failing at my job if I only showed you one side of this adventure. It has been EVERYTHING, and that is "what makes it an adventure" my friend H. If you're queer, and black or brown, and a woman, with a spirit that is asking to be FREE but it's wings have been clipped by fear, I hope they grow back as you live through my journey. I hope you to will return to your MAGIC.