I had the intention of testing something I had been learning in the months leading up to my trip. I am a planner by nature and I was anticipating all the goodness I would glean from this first solo trip, not only externally (volcano hiking, mountains, surfing, beach, food, etc) but internally (good lord what am I learning about myself and who I really am?!)
The dominating thought in my head was this: “whatever happens, wherever I go, I am and will be able to show up and respond. I am safe. There is no situation to fear. There is nothing I can’t handle. Sure, I may have to learn something, and I may have to take some time to assimilate myself to a new situation in order to become aware of how to navigate it, but there was and would be nothing that would be so overwhelming that I just would not be able to handle it.”
Going to another country alone, not planning every moment and every place to lay my head, being entirely immersed in the Spanish language after many years of not much use (I had my Latin playlists bumping in the weeks leading up to my arrival for practice), not knowing the entire infrastructure and how public transit would work, or even where precisely I wanted to go from day to day – these were the variables I opened myself up to. Fantastically, I only had a rare few choice times where I paid more money for something than it was worth or felt uncomfortable in a situation as a woman traveling alone.
This is a realization I believe we all can come to. Have you experienced this before, where you are placed in an entirely new situation that you’ve never encountered before, but quickly knew how to navigate it? I believe we all have this power and can tune into it and trust that there is nothing to fear in life and that we are amazingly adaptable and insanely powerful beings.
aubreyeicher 