This Moment, Not the Map
On staying, travel, and choosing presence while it still exists
Since I started traveling three years ago, it has become a way to stay moving, to find belonging within myself. So, with every opportunity I get, I book a trip. Surgery, no problem, head to Belize. Celebrate my birthday, okay, let’s go to Peru. Mental health reprieve, off to Southeast Asia. These trips aren’t just trips, though. They offer me refuge from loneliness. They give me movement when I find myself sitting still for too long. They feel like the only way I know how to stay emotionally and mentally alive.
During the last couple of years, I’ve also become accustomed to booking a trip during the holidays, rotating with the kids’ dad. This year was no exception. I was sure they would go somewhere because their dad had just returned from a long trip to Kenya.
Seeing an opportunity to maintain my momentum on my newly started Geography of Connection project, I began thinking about where I could go. So, I started my search.
The most important criterion: it had to give me an opportunity to see women saying yes to themselves in their everyday lives. I’ve spent the better portion of my life saying yes to everyone else and I am only now learning how to say yes to myself. Once I found a spot that seemed perfect—Guatemala—going slow didn’t feel like an option.
So I promptly booked my flight and lodging.
That is, until the kids told me they weren’t going anywhere with their dad after the holidays. Immediately, my internal dialogue started running non-stop. My fingers flew across the keyboard: Are you sure he won’t change his mind? How do you feel if I go to Guatemala and leave you sitting alone in the Airbnb? Will you be around to visit or will I be sitting alone in the Airbnb, forgetting to eat and staying in bed all day?
Finally, the decision became clear. I canceled Guatemala.
Travel has given me freedom, yes. It has also given me distance. Swapping holidays around the tree with video chats. Pictures without me in the frame.
Canceling Guatemala wasn’t easy. It felt like setting down a version of myself I’ve fought hard to claim: the woman who books the trip, follows the idea, chooses the adventure, says yes to herself even when it rearranges everything.
And no matter how much I’ve changed over the last three years, and how many countries I’ve carried myself through, there’s still a part of me learning how to choose myself without feeling like I’m choosing away from them.
Staying home may not have been my original plan—but maybe that’s the point. Guatemala will still be there. But this exact version of my kids, at this exact moment in time, won’t be.