¡Feliz Año Nuevo!

HappyNew Year!

Here we are. On the edge of a new year—2020. It sounds nice, right? I, for one, am so looking forward to this decade, this new year that feels…different. After 7 months of international travel, I have found myself back to where it all started in Boulder, Colorado. Holding hands with the family and leaning into the biting cold with some backcountry hiking to warm up this winter. This is home. It always has been. But that doesn’t mean I have to stay. This thought is what brings me to the page, to summarize what took me away and how this trip has left me changed. Summarizing this past year has proven to be the largest task I have taken on. For there are pages upon pages and memories upon memories to sift through in order to get it all out. There are images to follow, too. Videos as well! Dense digital folders to document that I was out there. I stepped outside of the comfort of home, of community, of culture and language to be integrated in Latin America. I left with not much of a plan. But, I knew that I wanted to immerse, to swim all the way to the deep end and then swim a little further.

2019 taught me that stepping outside of my bloodline and the clay that we are, is not only necessary, but highly rewarding. I came home this year feeling different. I don’t know if anyone has noticed, but my relationship to myself has so drastically shifted that isn’t it obvious that it will affect my external relationships as well? I have drifted away from myself and come back loving her even harder. I wonder if they see this? I grieved alone in the jungle for a month and thought my heart would simply stop working. I wish I could have been closer to home for that loss. There were times when I was so far out of the culture via language and tradition and commonality that I thought that maybe I was actually invisible. Made of dust. I wonder if they see me that way, too, sometimes. I stepped into roles that once intimidated me and gave me anxiety, surrendering to the idea that maybe I have something to say. Will they listen when I speak to them in this new found voice? I reached higher peaks than I thought were possible. 15,000; 17,000; 19,000 feet high in the ether. I am stronger than I thought, did they already know that?

I am different and it feels enlightening. Like I tasted something sweet and raw for the first time in my life. I got a natural high from traversing new landscapes independently, despite my gringita image and embarrassing language fails. I had new relationships, fleeting but fabulous. I wrote my heart out on the page, cried on Instagram, laughed under water, swam with strangers to abandoned ships, hiked with locals who led me up snowy rock-faces only to smile at the summit, because what else is there to do when you reach a goal with blisters to prove it? I was blessed with good fortune and found my way through a few troubled situations with the help of young Venezuelans, elderly Ecuadorians and indigenous Peruvians. They gave me a restored faith that most humans are good, our differences paper-thin and our values quite the same. I wonder if my friends and family see me changed. I see them differently. I can’t help it. The world opened up and now all I see is infinite space and possibility. That we all change, we all come back different. The key is just…to go. Book the flight, the retreat, the time to take-off. Say yes to the book club, the ski trip, the romance, the harder route, the unpaved path and always say yes, to more time to be still as well. I learned that not everybody has the chance or the access to dream as big as me or my community back home does, so do it for those who can’t and be willing to go just a little further in this swimming pool of life.

I wrote this excerpt while traveling north from Popayán, Colombia towards Cali, Colombia after traveling for 6 months around the western slope of South America. Out of all the experiences I have had, I think this window into my time abroad is summed up well. Thank you so much for reading and joining in this journey with me.

I am alive. 6 months of travel and I am alive. This pain in my ass, literally, is the reminder that I can feel. The man next to me, who sits broad-shouldered with wide knees in the back of the van is my reminder that I am never really alone. There is connection every step of the way. Invited and not. This fever and aching throat is a reminder that I have been incredibly healthy for the last few months. Besides a stomach bug that has dwelled in me since Peru, I have been blessed with energy and a strong body that has taken me through the most difficult hikes of my life and bending with intention at the front of a yoga class. I am moving forward, heading north, about to embark on Mexico for the 4th time in my life. Mexico always comes when I need it. It was my celebration after quitting my job in LA, it was my retreat after grandma passed where I would heal alongside the Caribbean waters. I wonder what it will heal this time around.

As I sit here, deeply uncomfortable and slightly feverish, I realize that I am creating this all. And with creation comes frustration, because growing can be uncomfortable, uneasy and unsure. But this is my life. This is exactly what I left the office for, what I left the familiar for. So, I embrace it. I remind myself the beauty of tucking myself into cars with strangers and raging down dirt roads in the back of pickups and staying with new friends who don’t speak english and getting really dirty and really annoyed and feeling unsafe and unsteady but still having to tap my stamina and not give in to the weak girl that lives with me as well.

I travel to place myself in a thousand different contexts, to stumble over my Spanish and question my place and my purpose. I travel to rock the ego and fall in love with the strange. I travel to fold and refold my past, organizing a girl woven with insecurity into one that tells a tale of growth and transformation. I travel to listen and press my ear against the stories that I can’t find online and in my favorite authors voices. They are there but I need to hear it for myself. Even the documentaries and the reporters don’t speak loud enough sometimes. I need to walk the dusty roads and eat the street food and sweat with strangers and dance out loud and blend in and stand out and make myself known without silencing those around me. I am balancing amplification and silence; surrendering to those who need to be heard while projecting my voice and my light without apology. I travel to feel. And I feel so that I can create; making art from my heart and inviting along as many people who care to join. Even when my responses are small and few between...I create through that and into a place of freedom. I believe that success is freedom.

The freedom to feel,

A L I V E.

We hit a bump in the road and then turn sharply into the careening forested hillside and I am practically sitting on this dude’s lap. I’m tired. 6 months of travel and I am tired. Then I look out the window where the jungle-meets-country landscape of southern Colombia. A skinny boy kicks a fútbol into the setting sun and then disappears below the cornfield. Two white birds glide above the ambrosial flower field and for a moment we are moving at the same speed as them in our white caravan. Suspended in time. Flying still.

Wishing you each well this new year. The roaring 20’s are back. I wonder what this decade will bring us all. Will they be as musically oriented and financially prosperous as the early years of the 1920’s? What will we embrace, what will we leave in the past? Whatever we make of this next decade, I hope it opts towards progression, peace and intimate experiences that show us more deeply who we are amidst this wild world.

Cheers, salud and namaste for a bright and abundant 2020.

Liv