This photo, taken in Taos, New Mexico, will always remind me of the personal journey we have been on over the last nine months. After a week of it trying to snow, we woke up to a serious dumping with almost two feet of snow piled up at the door. Both Tali and Teya had only seen snow for the first time in their lives a week earlier. On this morning, Tali sat on the doorstep and contemplated how long she could hold out without needing to go outside and pee, and Teya put on pretty much every item of clothing she owned and then went and charged around in the snow having a fabulous time.
And what did I do? I packed bags and worried about how we were going to get the car out, and would the roads be open and where would we stay if we couldn’t get out? I’m the organiser in the family – the one who can look at a 24hr period and itemise how every single activity will fit into it. It can be an all consuming habit- useful but not always fun to be around.
When I see that photo it reminds me of all the time I’ve spent stressing on this trip, all the nights I’ve spent agonising over logistics, the nights I’ve spent trawling job sites when I haven’t been able to sleep for worrying, or the panic attacks I’ve had looking at our dwindling bank balance, of the realisation that I could pack up one life entirely, travel halfway around the world and still have all the same hang ups. This isn’t a photo of our car, but it might as well have been!
I’d like to say that that day in New Mexico was the turning point – the moment I realised that something had to change, but it wasn’t.
Over the last nine months we have come to realise that there are three key things we need to change if we are to get the most out of our journey and out of our lives. All three are still a work in progress, but just starting down the road has transformed our lives. This process has opened us up to one of my favourite expressions - ‘there are infinite possibilities’ - and has allowed the magic to happen.
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