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And so maybe the reality is that is life feels uncomfortable and confusing, we know we’re doing it right. I was elated, relieved, partially skin-satiated in anticipating my journey to the beach. Making the arrangements, preparing the time. CVS to buy water and overdue dental floss, thinking about the relief my body would feel in being submerged in salty ocean water.

Dark wet hair dripping down my back, a cooling felt all the way down into the marrow of my bones. Cells parting ways for comfort, acquiescing to the anointed cleansing of all the heat that had accumulated over the past few years, feeling held within a holding pattern of the city. Unable to move North or South for fear of being reminded of what I had lost-relationships, familiarity, thinking I knew how the future was going to go. Not wanting to have the connection to myself and my life now go slipping through my fingers.

This trip would signify a liquid baptismal rebirth. Christening a new internal direction.

I felt fear rise up as I approached the station, the residual reminder in those moments of venturing forth that all we have is what we are carrying. A cab to assuage the pieces of me that always feel best when being able to sit by the window and observe the view. Gave the driver a $3 cash tip and one credit card pull to pay the $8.60 fare, wanting him and I to both feel paid in full.

He had waited 5 minutes, held the door open when I got there.

I stepped out onto 10am city heat rising up from tired pavement, moved underneath Saturday scaffolding, alongside street noise and into the station. And then fear gave way to disappointment when my ears realized the announcement overhead was meant for them. The one about the tracks being serviced, the train not running and instead, an underground blue line t ride to a bus back to the northbound train departing at 10:41am when it was already 10:06. Pleading parts of me below the disappointment wondering what this would mean for the day, our expectations, our future. Pieces of me wondering if surrender into life as it was actually unfolding to be, different than planned, was part of the answer.

Still scheming, my feet prescribed movement, back up over the red brick city sidewalk hill, map in my hands and sun on my head and the landscape around me-one train station ahead and one behind-seeming to exist more like an object of obstacle than one of facilitation in reaching my desired destination. The man with large paper grocery bags in each hand, his enlarged brown eyes behind his glasses, soft. As if they were 2 compassionate saucers, willing to help hold the weary pieces of my own heart.

He said I looked lost, helped me think about the best way. He asked me where I was from, as if he knew it wasn’t here. His eyes landing on my clavicle, or maybe just below-to the sterling silver cross and small round piece of turquoise hanging quietly around my neck. An embrace that always feels like home. I wanted to say out West, or a little bit of everywhere, and I wondered if he’d understand.

I ended up back at the station, thinking I’d follow the tracks down the length of the opposite split, but they shared the same starting location. The place under repair. Fate and I then decided to go on a day where the journey felt more straightforward, more clearly mapped and maybe even the diversions, more expected.

The walk back home provided the space for contemplation, around the way the universe seems to have of steering us towards the stuck places, perpetually being broken open by the moments that allow us to sidle up closer to ourselves. To our own compassionate & wise inner Mother and Marrakeech woman connecting us more deeply to Self, reminding us who we already are. Infusing ourselves with the same confidence that seems to flow through us when we know there are people in the world who love us, the way that has of somehow making us brave, making the solo steps feel less lonely.

Success then seems to reside less in ending up where we intended to when we started, and more in the vagabond pieces of ourselves remembering that we are good enough, traveling on our own, alongside wherever it is that we arrive.