One Year Later

I was so sad here...it was taken minutes before we started our road trip

One year ago today I began my epic road trip.  Little did I know my life would be changed forever.

One year ago today I plastered a decade old Post-it Note to Princess’ dashboard with duct tape.  The Post-it Note read “I Welcome Change.”  I stared at these words realizing I had been seeking change in my life for 10 years without success.  One year ago today I was driving up the California coast in the pouring rain with tears streaming down my cheeks.  I wondered if I could ever be happy again.  One year ago today I wondered what the hell I was doing, a single woman and her dog driving with no destination in mind.  I wondered how in the world the US roads could finally bring change to my life.  Would I possibly find the inner-peace (Shama) for which I was seeking?

Almost every single plan I made for my trip fell through, meaning I never knew what the next day would bring.  My initial disappointments eventually morphed into a humble gratitude.  Over the months it became apparent that a force larger than myself was watching out for me, making certain I was exactly where I was supposed to be each step of the way.  Night after night as I sat down to write my blog entries, I realized that the road was teaching me.  She’s a wise one, and the lessons of the road about which I wrote seemed simple, yet profound at the same time.

Initially I planned to be on the road for a month.  That month turned into 2 months, which then turned into 5 months.  5 solid months of living on the road, followed by 7 more months of being in transition and spending almost as much time on the road as I have off the road.  But somewhere along the way I started to feel blips and spurts of happiness and inner-peace.  Somewhere along the way my constant tears were replaced by a feeling that I had spent my entire life asleep.  Now it is time to wake up and finally start living.

I’ve always lived my life by the book.  Follow the rules, don’t take chances, stay in my safety zone.  The road has taught me that living by the book is something I no longer want to do.  I’m proud of taking a chance on the new love I found on the road and for moving 1,600 miles to Houston to explore it.  I’m even more proud of myself for leaving that new relationship when I realized it wasn’t going to be healthy for me.  I’m proud of myself for moving to Austin – a place where I knew no one, yet a place towards which I felt a magnetic pull so strong that I knew I needed to spend time here.

I’m learning to trust that by letting go of the rigid constraints with which I have always tried to control my destiny, that I’m finally leaving room for things to happen naturally.  I believe the Universe is constantly giving us signs, signs to help us understand and signs to help us find our way.  The problem is that for most of my life I didn’t see, or intentionally ignored those signs.  I ignored them because they were contrary to how I thought I should live my life.  Now I’m realizing that those signs help me listen to and trust in my intuition.  I am learning that FAITH and INTUITION and CHANCE are all closely related.  If I trust my intuition, and have faith that I am doing the right thing by acting on that intuition, then things happen fortuitously (which is often mistaken for luck – which I don’t believe actually exists).  The Universe is on our side, and it would never allow us to make a change without giving us what we need to make that change successfully.

The past year has been the most difficult, emotional, exhausting and rewarding of my life.  I’ve been healing myself and working through this transition in my life through my writing.  So it’s extra fitting that, since I moved to Austin, the Universe seems to be blasting me with signs in the form of graffiti words.  Positive, happy words.  Words that are often painted over by the city just days after I discover them.  Words that I’m interpreting to be signs from the Universe that I’m exactly where I am supposed to be…at least for now.

A couple weeks ago I bought my first pair of Tom’s Shoes.  They are very colorful, verging on obnoxious, and they repeat the following words over and over:  The Journey Is the Destination.  This is my most valuable lesson of the road.  My journey will never end.  But it will get easier as I learn to trust in the process.

Read me on The Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christine-buckley/

Tagged as: Change, Life changes, Road Trip, Serendipity, Texas, Transitions