Mothers, daughters and sisters live in a complicated dynamic, especially in a world riddled by misogyny and patriarchy among many other nuanced concepts. I’ll try not to get too social science here in my blogs, but at the same time it is what I studied and how my brain sees the world. This blog means more to me than I could maybe put into words, which I would like to think are my thing. Starting a creative project of any kind takes a certain type of personal courage and commitment to your own heart. A type of groundedness that can only be encouraged and depleted from within, so starting this has taken countless conversations with those I love most. Talking it through, finding the ability within me to share beyond what is seen on the surface and to practice such a surrender of letting go of my own perspective in order to share something that is on my heart. I think often artists feel a pull to what they should create, an unseen force with little to no explanation except that if you pass it up, it will find someone else to complete the project. I do not want to pass this up, I want to create. It has come to a point that I must do what scares me most because passion has overridden any type of fear or feelings of insignificance. 

I remember reading Eloise in Paris as a child alongside my little sister and my mother. A children’s book that starts at the beginning of a grand adventure of a six year old leaving her life in New York for a life in Paris, France. My mom had been to Paris in her twenties with one of her lifelong, dearest friends. As the book became a defining staple in our experience of girlhood, along with the stories from my mom, it became a dream to travel to Paris. Not just any dream, one that sparkles in your eyes when you talk about it, one that is filled with all the magic of the unknown and that only comes to reality with the monumental privilege I have been afforded in this lifetime. 

To see all the things my mom and Eloise saw. To understand the magnitude of transformation that travel does to one’s soul, as I could see within my own mother. Since that moment, my mom opened a savings account and began saving any money she could to take us on this dream. I grew up privileged enough to have a father that could pay all our bills so that my mom could save money towards this collective dream. As I was five or six then, simple math displays that seventeen years of both material and mental investment had been put into this daydream of a trip. It slowly turned into a trip to Greece as well, as Mamma Mia premiered in 2008. ABBA is one of my mothers favorite bands and one that defined my childhood, as my sister and I would witness the song and dance that ABBA brought out in her, Greece became a must. I will forever remember the first time we saw Mamma Mia, and from that point forward memorized all the songs and brought them to life whenever we were together. It became a prime example of how much music and media is a connector to those you love.. Even when relationships remained rocky and complicated, music and media brought us together where magic was to be had and moments were to be savored. My mother would share her stories of spending time in Greece, the people, the culture, the beaches, the ideal of being carefree and in your twenties. Media has a profound impact on our lives, for better or for worse. Mamma Mia and Eloise allowed for a connection and understanding of our Mother before she was our mother. 

This is often a forgotten part of those that raised us, an unbearable thought that before us, there was just a girl also experiencing the world for the first time. Dealing with the world at a time I will never know, but only understand through stories, personal connections and media. Women’s lives before they become mothers is often lost in a blink of an eye, some love this feeling born to motherhood and some despise such a transition. All I know is change is a constant, yet breaks our human hearts for as long as we know life here on this sacred earth. Reflecting now at the age my mother traveled the world, I understand the immensity of being a young woman. The world looks different now, but the connection that media allowed for me to understand my mother before she was my mother is something I now cherish in ways I never had the capacity to do before. 

This trip was supposed to occur around the time of covid-19. Remember when our world shut down in front of our eyes? Now as much as I would love to conceptualize and discuss the mass impacts on both personal and societal levels, this blog isn’t about covid its about being a woman and the connections I have between two other women who experience the world through their own eyes, with my perception of it. Yet we have been lucky enough to be connected through song, dance and words that have then brought meaning. I am now 23 and this long awaited day dream of traveling the world alongside my mother and sister is coming to a fast approaching start. My life growing up alongside my sister and my mother as well as my older brother and father was complicated, as family always is. Ever since I can remember, the three of us have been the ones that bring out the best and worst in one another, as the ones you are closest to, often do. Something I am both very thankful for and that has brought me an immense amount of pain that has required healing and long reflection. 

This trip means the most because of the weight of catharsis, love, connection, joy and on the other side grief that all overlap in each of our hearts. As I have the immense privilege thanks to my mother and father to both experience this world and to go on this trip, it’s a time whether I like it or not to explore and experience who we are as grown ups and live dreams that have stayed alive only by the will of our hearts for over a decade. We will be gone in Europe for two months, as I have graduated college and my sister has taken a gap year. Time allows for months abroad that we never thought we’d have because life is busy and often personal priorities and dreams get pushed aside as life unfolds in front of you. The places we are lucky enough to lay eyes on in real time are Paris, France, Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal where we will both be experiencing things my mom described to us as children together and new places that only came about wanting to travel to in time. I know this trip is going to push me in both physical, mental and spiritual ways that I will in no way know, until the moment comes. Writing is my deliverance, and with such a monumental chapter opening, I wish to share my vulnerable experiences and inner world with those that care to listen. 

The way I experience the world has often been through a sociological lens, even before I knew what that was. I am an overthinker by nature which has brought me innate brilliance and also self proclaimed suffering. I wish I could tell you what I think I will experience on this trip, but for one of the first times in my life I do not know. I do not know what lies ahead of me and because of this I’ve leaned into the power of curiosity. I am learning the immense power and intellect in such a statement as “I do not know”. I feel in my bones that many deaths and rebirths will occur as I am far away from the places that feel familiar, how could such events not occur?. Transformation is inevitable and I have learned time and time again that all you can do is surrender to the experience being created and destroyed in front of you. To lean into the magic of what is destined to be created in your favor, but the importance is the surrender. I have a feeling that if I do not surrender to what is coming for me, I may miss out on all the magic that lies before me. I am learning the blessing of the unknown and seeking curiosity over fear. A very hard and conscious decision that must be made, yet one I seem to reap the rewards of over and over again. All I can tell you is I know that these next two months are going to be a powerful transformation for the betterment of my life. I think answers and assurance to a lot of girlhood’s questions will be found or better yet felt. I am learning the value of feeling things over looking for concrete answers these days. In a world that lacks passion and magic, I wish to be one to see it because we are what we bring into this world.

“All of us,’ he said, ‘have hopes of being poet, artist, discoverer, philosopher, scientist; of possessing the attributes of all these simultaneously. Few are permitted to achieve any of them in daily life. But in travel we attain them all. Then we have our day of glory, when all our dreams come true, when we can be anything we like, as long as we like, and, when we are tired of it, pull up stakes and move on. Travel — the solitude of the mountains, the emptiness of the desert, the delicacy of the minaret; eternal change, limitless contrast, unending variety.’ (Eric Lang)”

― Robert Edison Fulton Jr.

I hope my path is always magic and a sparkle in my eye and in those I love. I guess at this moment all I can ask for is that this trip brings out more of my feminine. More of my ability to flow with the beauty of this world. I hope it encourages me to see more of the mundane miracles that exist all around us. I hope it makes me softer, more compassionate and understanding to the ways of the world. I hope it shatters any ignorant beliefs about myself or the world. I hope it makes me feel sure of the dreams I’ve always chosen to believe in. I hope it allows me to see more people for their souls and none of this surface level bullshit we have allowed to be normalized in society. I hope it seeks to remind me of the importance of passion to living a fulfilled life. I hope it opens my eyes to the systems that exist and have persisted throughout time that could provide answers to the many troubling problems that persist today in our world. Above all, I hope it allows me the gift of groundedness and the immense push to achieve the large impact I’ve always wished to provide to this world. I do not know too much about the concept of confidence because I think it seeks to find validation elsewhere, but I hope this trip pushes me far enough out of my comfort zone that I learn to feel grounded only within myself, the only constant in this world. And I hope that through this, I become unstoppable to live out the magic I wish to never stop bringing into this world, with an ease I can only provide to myself, in time and gentleness. I hope to come home as an unrecognizable version of myself, one I must spend time learning how to live with because I will have allowed these experiences to have changed me so drastically, personal learning will be necessary to make sense of who I have become, no matter what comes next. Come along as I unravel for the betterment of myself and the women that surround me, as I watch this collective dream become a reality and manifest for all of us in all its unique and rightful ways. 

https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/137766-one-man-caravan-incredible-journeys-books