Chapter 11: Becoming a Whole Human

Recently, I traveled from the comforts of my humdrum, uptight, Midwestern life to a city I’d never been in and always wanted to visit. Being newly divorced and finally having the means to travel sans kids, I took advantage of the opportunity to take a much needed vacation—a little R and R from the last 9 months of my life’s chaos. In my younger years, I had been to California many times; a cross country flight was routine for me. My companion on the journey, however, was a rookie traveler—new to the Western states and a first time flyer. For hours I silently watched him stare out the window in awe of the vast, changing landscape, snapping oodles of pictures and short videos to document the experience. And for the first time in my life, I realized that this time, I was paying attention, too. The journey of my own life, from educator and career woman, to stay at home mother, to a now single, working mother pursuing a much different life path, coincided metaphorically with those changing landscapes we passed over and that I had always taken for granted.