What Now?
What do you want to do?
The lounge room was lit only by the moonlight coming in the window and the glow from the fire. All my children were finally sleeping and my friend Jon and I were talking in quiet tones so as not to wake them.
It was maybe 12 days after my husband died and Jon was helping me plan his birthday party that would double as a wake.
As a friend, his concern was for my well being and he asked a gentle question to bounce my vision forward. He asked what I wanted to do with my life now. I looked at him blankly, realising I had no clue. "I’m so exhausted" I said, "I think I just want to sleep."
"Okay" he replied, then after a long pause, "but imagine now you’ve gone to Bali, you’ve been massaged every day, eaten wonderful nourishing food that has been prepared for you, everything has been taken care of, the children have been looked after and you’re genuinely feeling rested… what would you like to do with your life now?"
I looked at him, trying to process his words. My mouth opened and shut again. It was like my brain was trying to change gears but didn’t know how. "Jon, I have no clue" was all I could say. But then I realised a thought was forming. "I don’t think I can stay here. I might pack up and go travelling."
I consciously chose my life for the first time
The previous weeks had been a blur and my stress levels had been so high keeping everything together that I could hardly eat. Goat’s milk and fruit were the only foods my body would allow me to swallow. I remember having this lucid moment standing in my kitchen where I realised that I was dissociating from my body and that staying in my body was a choice. If I chose to, I could actually just leave. But I had five young children who had only one parent now. Leaving was not an option.
After a lifetime of thinking "stop the planet please I want to get off" - I consciously chose my life for the first time.
So when Jon asked me that question, I already knew a vast landscape of something called "my life" stretched ahead of me, but I had been with my belovéd since I was 16. We had assumed we would grow old together. All my mental projections of "the future" had been swept off the playing board leaving a void.
I just wanted to be free
I had a strong sense that if he had left early, I was probably fated to live well into my nineties. And I felt, with the petulance of a five year old stamping her foot, that if I had to be here, it had to be good. It was on me to teach my children that death was part of the cycle of life. And to extract the maximum amount of magic from existence.
Even before his body was cold his unmistakable energy had settled around me, and around our children - with us on all the levels except the physical. People from the town we lived in - even people who didn’t normally have psychic experiences were coming to me with uncanny stories of his presence.
And so the grief was not desolate in the usual way, but I could not continue living in the life we shared without him.
All we had ever really wanted was to be free. Growing in me was a call to adventure. Camping gear became the most interesting thing I could think about. I felt it was my task to live for two and check off everything on the bucket list we had been cheated out of, starting with his dream of travelling around Australia.
We took off all the rules
I made the decision to pack up the house, homeschool the kids and begin a one way adventure with no agenda and no time limit. But in truth, there was no other decision I could have made at that time. It was the only idea that gathered energy around it. And as soon as I declared it, life began to conspire with me.
Friends helped me pack and build a camping trailer. An old man with bright blue eyes stopped me on the street to tell me it was the very best thing I could do for the children. Kind people took on indefinite care of our horses. And three months later, on the eve of Spring Equinox, we drove away into the unknown.
Just before we left I schooled my mind to two principles… firstly, No rules, and then the attitude, "there are no strangers, only friends I haven’t met yet."
I invited the magic to unfold
That adventure began with a 1000km drive north and continued for two and a half years.
Each morning I would come to consciousness from the respite of sleep, almost incredulous, taking it personally that the sun had risen yet again… and then after an interlude of coffee I would meet the day, inviting its magic to unfold. And every day it did.
I made sure we were well stocked with good food, good coffee, water and fuel. Camps 5 with its maps and info was my bible. Beyond that we didn’t plan. We always found somewhere to sleep before the sun went down and made up each day, each new direction as it came.
A lot of places we went had no phone reception. I know some people feared for our safety, imagining horror stories in the wilds of Australia, but the truth was we encountered kindness and care wherever we went.
Sometimes we hit trouble, miles from anywhere. Always within minutes, some passing truck driver or traveller stopped to render assistance. Other times we were that benevolent passing angel for someone else.
It always worked out
Despite all the dangers we were in, both real and imagined every day, despite the hurt and grief and innate resistance to life that I was carrying, it always worked out.
Because I was always In new places, I was ultra present and aware of every little signal around me. I looked for the beauty and I found it. I looked for the best in people and they showed it to me. We had amazing adventures. Really difficult things happened too. Our needs were always met. And I had a zero fucks given kind of reprieve from over thinking and over caring that allowed me to just decide something and go for it without making it mean anything.
That one way trip taught me so much and set me firmly on the path of the future - a future full of significant meetings, learning, living and revelation - that I couldn’t see at all when Jon asked me that night.
Life was conspiring with me
The reason I share this is, I had spent decades feeling that it was us-against-the-world, that no matter how hard we tried, the cards were stacked and we couldn’t win.
Our travels pulled the veil from my eyes. I learned that Life was conspiring WITH me.
Years later I would come to understand I had unwittingly been practicing alchemy, and that "the Universe" was equally having its way with me. Without even realising, I had surrendered to my intuition and was working with the structure of reality, very much on my soul’s path, one day at a time.