Last summer, I went to Santa Fe, NM by myself for a week. It was the first time I'd traveled alonesince my husband was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease in 2018, began early retirement (at 55) in 2019, and was diagnosed with Parkinson's Dementia in 2021. For an entire week, I was able to remember what it felt like to be a person who was not focused on providing medication, keeping track of where my husband was/what he was doing, worrying about blood pressure dips (and the falls that come after them), etc..
I went to museums. I looked at art, sat in the park and listened to music while eating ice cream. I talked to local artisans about their work process. I sat in old churches and felt the energy of millions of prayers washing over me. And I met a lot of women who, seeing a gray-haired sister on her own, asked to join me and ended up telling me their stories.
When I came home at the end of the week, I knew I had to hold on to the rediscovered feeling of having an independent self. The first step was to start seeing a therapist; then I arranged for some help with my husband's care. I'm still working on carving out the space I need to keep living my life, but that trip to Santa Fe changed everything.
I lived for 35 years in one of the 88 cities in Los Angeles county, a hotbed of political activism, and I was a longtime community leader. When I turned 70 I picked up and moved to a town in northern California that is big enough to have all the necessities but a completely new political and social scene. Both my adult children live here, and I wanted to move while I was still young enough to make friends of my own. It was scary to leave my life behind, but it is so liberating to start fresh! I'm able to continue working remotely as much or as little as I want to, and the insane price I got for my house near the beach allowed me to buy a house here without a mortgage. After almost 30 years as a struggling widow I am moving into a manageable retirement that I never thought I would have, and I'm doing it as the person I have become.
I’ve lived in New York most of my life and every 10 years or so I feel the need to escape for a bit. After college, I spent a year teaching in Beijing. During law school, I spent a summer working and doing research in Southeast Asia. And in my 30s, I spent about three years living and working in England. Each time, it allowed me to experience a new culture at a deeper level than a tourist. I grew, and became more independent and fearless with each adventure. In each case, it was a good chance to pause, and reinvent myself a bit. And it made me appreciate New York more each time I returned. Travel gives you incredible perspective on the world and how you fit into it.
“Getting out of Dodge” - such a nice tone and feeling that has.
My hubby and I every couple months go to the big city 40 miles away from our rural area, to go hear the symphony. We stay at a nice hotel for a night or two, walk the streets, eat different and unusual foods, splurge on watching movies in the middle of the day or read to our hearts content. Yes, we can do that at home but the symphony is what makes it work - we like the music even if we know hardly anything about it. It soothes our souls, and as the conductor and other media tell us the details, we learn about it every time we go. It’s definitely better than hearing the same on the other media.
We know that music is very important for us and this way, it also gets us out of the ordinary.
I lived in/around San Francisco for over fifteen years. I'd had stints in other places, mostly paid for by my company (six months in India, three months in Ireland). But by 35, my lifelong restlessness was too strong to keep ignoring. I put everything in storage and spent a few nomadic months trying new places/communities - 6 weeks in Ubud, Bali (highly recommend), 6 weeks in London, a week at a writing retreat in Venice, a swing through the Midwest, San Francisco again, Miami, and San Antonio/Austin, and finally a couple of months in Denver.
I ended up staying in Denver for almost five years, but it was never "right" and the restlessness never disappeared (although it was put into enforced hiatus by the pandemic). Last year I moved back to my 430-person hometown in rural Iowa. It feels like a "break" from my previously scheduled life, since it's as opposite from San Francisco as it's possible to be. But San Francisco always felt like a "break" from Iowa. Who's to say what's the best place for me or best version of myself?
I'm starting to feel the nomadic urge again, even though I've been happy about this move. I think my next stop will be completely new - somewhere like Greece or Spain, which are on my bucket list. My next "break" feels like it has to happen somewhere where I have no ghosts and no expectations, and where I can explore new facets of myself without doing it in so much conversation with past versions of my life and my communities' expectations.
I love this article! It reminded me of how many times my husband and I escaped to get our heads together. There was a time when we were entangled in the net of a sociopath and couldn't see clearly. Getting away for a week and clearing our heads gave us a whole new perspective and armed us with helpful insights to solve the problem.
Another time, we spent years in another country as digital nomads with our adopted dogs, taking a huge leap in our self-awareness and self-development journey. I wrote four novels during that time and gained such valuable knowledge and insights about myself that cannot be defined by money. We truly changed during this very confined period far away from our family and friends, letting go of the daily rut and leaving behind the usual roles we played in our environment. It was such a breath of fresh air. We were able to recalibrate our lives, lose the roles we found too confining, and refocus on what truly mattered to us. These periods are a huge blessing, and I am truly grateful for them!
Well, I left my job (as editor in chief of a magazine) , my husband (of 16 years), and our home in Connecticut to run away to an island (Martha’s vineyard) for a two month “sabbatical” (and to work on my first cookbook) that turned into four months and (after a brief return home and an official separation) turned into 16 years and counting. Oh and I was 1 year sober when I pulled this “geographic” stunt. They always say geographics don’t work because, you know, wherever you are, there you are. But despite toting my baggage with me to my new home, it didn’t hold it against me. It welcomed me like the weary traveler I was and gave me the space and comfort to unpack it all.
I spent all of January and a wee bit of Feb in Moab, Utah. Last year I did the same thing, only in 29 Palms, Calif. I chose both locations for their proximity to US National Parks. Last year, a lot of people came to visit me because there's a major airport in Palm Spring, but only one very adventurous friend made the journey to Moab and I spent the first three weeks entirely alone. It. Was. Great. I bug out because Seattle gets so very dark in the winters, it's hard on me, I love it here but the days do collapse come November and I can become quite depressed. I enjoyed Joshua Tree so much, but I was completely enchanted by Moab. I also... finished the manuscript for my book while I was there. I had no household chores, which are difficult to leave behind when you stay home to work, I had no company, and the city was probably 3/4 shutterered. I feel like I fell in love while I was there.
I grew up the daughter of a diplomat, which meant that we moved every 3-4 years. I thought there was something fundamentally damaged about me for wanting to keep
that pace when I grew up, so I tried my best to settle down in Chicago for 10 years. I grew a lot but it also made me realize that there is nothing “wrong” with people who are more inclined to being perpetual nomads. After 2 very difficult and lackluster years in Brooklyn, I’m moving on. Though it’s true that you can’t run away from yourself, it is also true that yourself sometimes needs other soils to thrive and heal.
I travel for work so I make a point to create a new Dodge out of Dodge when I feel burned out or overwhelmed. I take a room at the Freehand Hotel in downtown Chicago. It's dirt cheap and filled with young European travelers, construction workers from other cities and a fun mix of other oddballs. The rooms are small, dimly lit and have a makeshift desk in the corner with a tiny chair. I grab coffee when I check in and write through new eyes, inspired by knowing that Maya Angelou always kept a hotel room in her hometown just for writing. If I manage to write anything worth a damn, I reward myself with a cocktail. Then I sleep like the dead and head home with a rejuvenated perspective.
During the pandemic summer of '20, we lived out of our '89 VW Westy with our 10-year-old daughter and dog. Drove from Cali to Jersey, then up to Maine, then back with a final stretch through wildfires. Took very little and didn't miss much. A break from lockdown in more ways than one!
A perk of my job as a college professor is that I have the opportunity to travel abroad once a year with students and at least one co-teacher. I’ve been traveling to London for three weeks each January since 2020 (skipping 2021). I have my own tiny studio apartment, a city and country at my doorstep, and three weeks away from my kids, partner, home, and office. It is the best part of my year, and I am not ashamed to say so. I feel the most alive and “myself” during those three weeks away.
Out of Dodge right now…came to bustling NYC from sleepy Florida for an “art break.” Seeing great or even not so great art always opens new creative channels, so I try to get here at least once a year. I’ve been seeing some great art by women, especially in the “Making Their Mark” show at the Shah Garg Foundation, but what has surprised and touched me the most has been the casual conversations I’ve had with strangers on the subway and museum guards. And people are always claiming New Yorkers are unfriendly. Not so!
"No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man." --
Heraclitus
I'm famous for blowing up my life, which always includes a geographic move to the furthest place I can possibly go. But a hard lesson: See Heraclitus, above! We can never return unchanged.
Great topic, Sari, and I love that you used travel to nurse a broken heart -- brilliant! My big escape was a month in Burma in 1999. I traveled on a religious visa (one of the few ways to get into that country at the time) and spent the month in silence at a meditation retreat. My accommodations were a one-room kuti (hut) on the grounds of a 16th-century Buddhist monastery perched on cliffs high above the Irrawaddy River. I went home changed.
Last summer, I went to Santa Fe, NM by myself for a week. It was the first time I'd traveled alonesince my husband was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease in 2018, began early retirement (at 55) in 2019, and was diagnosed with Parkinson's Dementia in 2021. For an entire week, I was able to remember what it felt like to be a person who was not focused on providing medication, keeping track of where my husband was/what he was doing, worrying about blood pressure dips (and the falls that come after them), etc..
I went to museums. I looked at art, sat in the park and listened to music while eating ice cream. I talked to local artisans about their work process. I sat in old churches and felt the energy of millions of prayers washing over me. And I met a lot of women who, seeing a gray-haired sister on her own, asked to join me and ended up telling me their stories.
When I came home at the end of the week, I knew I had to hold on to the rediscovered feeling of having an independent self. The first step was to start seeing a therapist; then I arranged for some help with my husband's care. I'm still working on carving out the space I need to keep living my life, but that trip to Santa Fe changed everything.
I lived for 35 years in one of the 88 cities in Los Angeles county, a hotbed of political activism, and I was a longtime community leader. When I turned 70 I picked up and moved to a town in northern California that is big enough to have all the necessities but a completely new political and social scene. Both my adult children live here, and I wanted to move while I was still young enough to make friends of my own. It was scary to leave my life behind, but it is so liberating to start fresh! I'm able to continue working remotely as much or as little as I want to, and the insane price I got for my house near the beach allowed me to buy a house here without a mortgage. After almost 30 years as a struggling widow I am moving into a manageable retirement that I never thought I would have, and I'm doing it as the person I have become.
I JUST returned from a trip to San Miguel de Allende Mexico. Here are some thoughts that came to me:
Dogs in Mexico
Have their own lives
They are not pushed around
in strollers
They have their own friends
Thoughts and journeys
Walking the streets
With quiet pride
My sleep alone in Mexico
Is so different
Night is not the ending
The door closing
Like the first night with a new lover
I’m buzzing and don’t want sleep
Who is this new lover?
It’s me
I’ve lived in New York most of my life and every 10 years or so I feel the need to escape for a bit. After college, I spent a year teaching in Beijing. During law school, I spent a summer working and doing research in Southeast Asia. And in my 30s, I spent about three years living and working in England. Each time, it allowed me to experience a new culture at a deeper level than a tourist. I grew, and became more independent and fearless with each adventure. In each case, it was a good chance to pause, and reinvent myself a bit. And it made me appreciate New York more each time I returned. Travel gives you incredible perspective on the world and how you fit into it.
“Getting out of Dodge” - such a nice tone and feeling that has.
My hubby and I every couple months go to the big city 40 miles away from our rural area, to go hear the symphony. We stay at a nice hotel for a night or two, walk the streets, eat different and unusual foods, splurge on watching movies in the middle of the day or read to our hearts content. Yes, we can do that at home but the symphony is what makes it work - we like the music even if we know hardly anything about it. It soothes our souls, and as the conductor and other media tell us the details, we learn about it every time we go. It’s definitely better than hearing the same on the other media.
We know that music is very important for us and this way, it also gets us out of the ordinary.
I lived in/around San Francisco for over fifteen years. I'd had stints in other places, mostly paid for by my company (six months in India, three months in Ireland). But by 35, my lifelong restlessness was too strong to keep ignoring. I put everything in storage and spent a few nomadic months trying new places/communities - 6 weeks in Ubud, Bali (highly recommend), 6 weeks in London, a week at a writing retreat in Venice, a swing through the Midwest, San Francisco again, Miami, and San Antonio/Austin, and finally a couple of months in Denver.
I ended up staying in Denver for almost five years, but it was never "right" and the restlessness never disappeared (although it was put into enforced hiatus by the pandemic). Last year I moved back to my 430-person hometown in rural Iowa. It feels like a "break" from my previously scheduled life, since it's as opposite from San Francisco as it's possible to be. But San Francisco always felt like a "break" from Iowa. Who's to say what's the best place for me or best version of myself?
I'm starting to feel the nomadic urge again, even though I've been happy about this move. I think my next stop will be completely new - somewhere like Greece or Spain, which are on my bucket list. My next "break" feels like it has to happen somewhere where I have no ghosts and no expectations, and where I can explore new facets of myself without doing it in so much conversation with past versions of my life and my communities' expectations.
I love this article! It reminded me of how many times my husband and I escaped to get our heads together. There was a time when we were entangled in the net of a sociopath and couldn't see clearly. Getting away for a week and clearing our heads gave us a whole new perspective and armed us with helpful insights to solve the problem.
Another time, we spent years in another country as digital nomads with our adopted dogs, taking a huge leap in our self-awareness and self-development journey. I wrote four novels during that time and gained such valuable knowledge and insights about myself that cannot be defined by money. We truly changed during this very confined period far away from our family and friends, letting go of the daily rut and leaving behind the usual roles we played in our environment. It was such a breath of fresh air. We were able to recalibrate our lives, lose the roles we found too confining, and refocus on what truly mattered to us. These periods are a huge blessing, and I am truly grateful for them!
Well, I left my job (as editor in chief of a magazine) , my husband (of 16 years), and our home in Connecticut to run away to an island (Martha’s vineyard) for a two month “sabbatical” (and to work on my first cookbook) that turned into four months and (after a brief return home and an official separation) turned into 16 years and counting. Oh and I was 1 year sober when I pulled this “geographic” stunt. They always say geographics don’t work because, you know, wherever you are, there you are. But despite toting my baggage with me to my new home, it didn’t hold it against me. It welcomed me like the weary traveler I was and gave me the space and comfort to unpack it all.
I spent all of January and a wee bit of Feb in Moab, Utah. Last year I did the same thing, only in 29 Palms, Calif. I chose both locations for their proximity to US National Parks. Last year, a lot of people came to visit me because there's a major airport in Palm Spring, but only one very adventurous friend made the journey to Moab and I spent the first three weeks entirely alone. It. Was. Great. I bug out because Seattle gets so very dark in the winters, it's hard on me, I love it here but the days do collapse come November and I can become quite depressed. I enjoyed Joshua Tree so much, but I was completely enchanted by Moab. I also... finished the manuscript for my book while I was there. I had no household chores, which are difficult to leave behind when you stay home to work, I had no company, and the city was probably 3/4 shutterered. I feel like I fell in love while I was there.
I grew up the daughter of a diplomat, which meant that we moved every 3-4 years. I thought there was something fundamentally damaged about me for wanting to keep
that pace when I grew up, so I tried my best to settle down in Chicago for 10 years. I grew a lot but it also made me realize that there is nothing “wrong” with people who are more inclined to being perpetual nomads. After 2 very difficult and lackluster years in Brooklyn, I’m moving on. Though it’s true that you can’t run away from yourself, it is also true that yourself sometimes needs other soils to thrive and heal.
I travel for work so I make a point to create a new Dodge out of Dodge when I feel burned out or overwhelmed. I take a room at the Freehand Hotel in downtown Chicago. It's dirt cheap and filled with young European travelers, construction workers from other cities and a fun mix of other oddballs. The rooms are small, dimly lit and have a makeshift desk in the corner with a tiny chair. I grab coffee when I check in and write through new eyes, inspired by knowing that Maya Angelou always kept a hotel room in her hometown just for writing. If I manage to write anything worth a damn, I reward myself with a cocktail. Then I sleep like the dead and head home with a rejuvenated perspective.
During the pandemic summer of '20, we lived out of our '89 VW Westy with our 10-year-old daughter and dog. Drove from Cali to Jersey, then up to Maine, then back with a final stretch through wildfires. Took very little and didn't miss much. A break from lockdown in more ways than one!
A perk of my job as a college professor is that I have the opportunity to travel abroad once a year with students and at least one co-teacher. I’ve been traveling to London for three weeks each January since 2020 (skipping 2021). I have my own tiny studio apartment, a city and country at my doorstep, and three weeks away from my kids, partner, home, and office. It is the best part of my year, and I am not ashamed to say so. I feel the most alive and “myself” during those three weeks away.
Out of Dodge right now…came to bustling NYC from sleepy Florida for an “art break.” Seeing great or even not so great art always opens new creative channels, so I try to get here at least once a year. I’ve been seeing some great art by women, especially in the “Making Their Mark” show at the Shah Garg Foundation, but what has surprised and touched me the most has been the casual conversations I’ve had with strangers on the subway and museum guards. And people are always claiming New Yorkers are unfriendly. Not so!
"No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man." --
Heraclitus
I'm famous for blowing up my life, which always includes a geographic move to the furthest place I can possibly go. But a hard lesson: See Heraclitus, above! We can never return unchanged.
Great topic, Sari, and I love that you used travel to nurse a broken heart -- brilliant! My big escape was a month in Burma in 1999. I traveled on a religious visa (one of the few ways to get into that country at the time) and spent the month in silence at a meditation retreat. My accommodations were a one-room kuti (hut) on the grounds of a 16th-century Buddhist monastery perched on cliffs high above the Irrawaddy River. I went home changed.