Anyone who knows me knows how much I love travel. How I am filled with child-like energy when I feel my feet on foreign soil. The joy I feel exploring local markets and the anticipation of waiting for food to appear on my plate. I thrive on the magic and fascination of what I might find in new places and the conversations that inevitably happen.
But now I have to be content with being an observer of the world from my one same place. At first it felt like someone had put a ball and chain on my ankle, that my boat had got stuck on a sandbank. But then I found a different sort of travel; through connection, through conversations.
You may not know this about me but I am crazy about Italy! It was my second home for many years and I fell in love with the food, the language, the excessive hand gestures and the mad passionate family oriented people. So as the law of attraction works I put out my thoughts and backed it up with the feelings and the universe brought Italy to me!
Down the road and from out of nowhere opened an Italian café. I had my own slice of Italian heaven! The owners an Italian family baked everything on the premises. All I had to do was bathe in the feeling that they had captured and I was there!
And last night a new waiter from Naples appeared at our table in our favorite restaurant. That was it I was off disappearing back to Italy through our conversation.
We shared our passion; a shared connection to a city that we both knew so well. As he talked I pictured his family of four plus the dog on the scooter. The ones I used to dodge as I crossed the street.
I saw myself again in the tightly packed steamy café that was home to the first ever pizza.
And I was there strolling by the waterfront with the famous volcano Mount Vesuvius in my sight.
I realized how these conversations have enabled others to travel with me and the sense of all being in this together has united us. There are so many like me that have struggled with the separation of living away from loved ones. I have been an expat for over 18 years living away from my loved ones; my elderly parents, dear friends and the things that I still miss from another place I still call ‘home.’
Now more than ever I am slipping back into the ease and flow that comes with just accepting what is. Settling into peace and letting go of resistance. And writing about my experiences in the hope that others will maybe be inspired to look at things a little bit differently.