Facing Freedom: Solo Female Travel Two-Plus Years Five Continents

by Eryn Donnalley

Overview

One-way ticket to India.

The intentional act of re-becoming.

I left broken and came back whole.

This is my story.

Find out how I incorporated knowledge

and wisdom from around the world to find

purpose, meaning and happiness.

Navigate your own inward journey to

emotional freedom with included exercises.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781504387118
Publisher:	BalboaPress
Publication date:	09/29/2017
Pages:	364
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.81(d)

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

The Catalyst

All great change is preceded by chaos.

— Deepak Chopra

I lay on my yoga mat, flat on my back in the final resting pose, savasana, and listened to the yoga instructor speak her words of wisdom. I didn't know it then, and she couldn't have known it either, but her words were about to awaken something inside me.

I'd only recently begun going to yoga class. I was one of those people that talked about going to yoga class, thought about going to yoga, and had even purchased a pair of yoga pants on the off chance I might one day actually go to a class, but in all the years of talking and thinking about yoga, I'd never attended a class — until now. Today some battle for betterment took place inside me. The good guys, supporting growth and expansion, won a narrow victory, overpowering the bad guys, representing depression and doubt. I put on my black stretchy pants and went to a class.

So I'm lying there on my mat — I know you want to know the magical words that changed me. The yoga instructor said softly, "Taking care of yourself doesn't mean just looking after your physical health; it also means taking care of your emotional health. We have to take responsibility for our emotional health." Tears welled up in my eyes and fell quietly from the corners, one by one into my hair. We have to take responsibility for our emotional health. The phrase paused in the screen of my mind just hanging there, not willing to move forward onto the next slide of thought. This was an awakening — a tiny opening of light that entered me. I knew in that moment I had to make major adjustments in my life to foster my own emotional health and stability.

It doesn't sound all that profound, I know. You have to take responsibility for your emotional health. It sounds rather an obvious statement actually, my emotionally healthy self, looking back at my unhealthy self. But this is how awakenings often happen. You're just going through life in a malaise, walking around, not really paying attention to the patterns of behavior that brought you there or the repeated times you ignored your instincts; you simply missed all the signals life sent you along the way, which we all do with heartbreaking frequency.

Then one day, something jumps up and grabs you — a symbol, a sign, a song, a quote, a memory, blades of grass in a sidewalk crack, a commercial, a coconut floating in the water, a gecko chirping, the way a leaf floats along effortlessly in the wind. Something happens, whether simple or profound. In that moment, you're struck by something that may have been there all along, but today you see it differently. The light blinks on in your mind like the Hot Now sign at Krispy Kreme, and you know you're changed in some unfathomable way. This was one of those days. I have to take responsibility for my emotional health. No, Eryn, this doesn't mean fill the void with hot glazed donuts.

I wish I could tell you after my stretchy pants awakening, all the answers suddenly revealed themselves. That I woke up one day soon after, magically realizing I needed to turn my whole life on its head and start over, questioning almost every aspect of what I knew to be "true," and that I was instantly able to change myself and choose a different path for my life. Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that. Usually our lives have to fall apart a little bit more (or a lot) before we feel compelled to evolve ourselves.

As for me, I feared change nearly as much as death, so it took several more years and a big internal push for me to jump from the precipice of my life — a crisis of the spirit, a crack from the self I'd known, a psychological fracture possibly? Technically I was within my faculties but on the verge of something — madness or transformation. I knew not which.

I'd later come to realize this was my "dark night of the soul" experience, as described in various spiritual texts, but at the time I had no knowledge or terminology for this pivotal and painful turning point.

Offerings

I guess this would be a good time to back up and explain a bit about how I came to leave the States to begin with. You could probably guess. It all began with a divorce, which led to quitting work since my then husband and I worked together. I wasn't kicked to the curb, homeless, or jobless. It wasn't like that at all. I don't want to give you that impression. We were lucky actually, considering we were so inextricably linked in our personal and professional lives. If there is such a thing as a good divorce, then we had one.

Divorces are always terrible, and no party survives completely intact. It's as if a part of you has been surgically removed and placed in the currents of a river, an offering to the divorce gods, never to be seen again. It makes me so sad to think how we can treat each other in the times leading up to a divorce. Even when there's no hostility or major drama, there are so many months of passivity, silence, distance, and avoidance that, in hindsight, seem so confusing, cruel, and hurtful. Silence is death to a marriage. So much is said in not saying. It seems to me when we actively (or unconsciously) choose to avoid issues with our partner, we may as well start divvying up the furniture because that's the slow beginning of the end. But I still say we were lucky. There were no affairs or intentional gashes breeding animosity, and we chose to be civil and respectful in the midst of our pain. Maybe that's the best we could hope for.

Although we were both wearing our Olympic medals in the very popular divorce category and could've continued working together, deep down something told me I had to leave the company. In a way, it would've been the safer option to stay, but I felt I had to choose something different and find a new path for myself with a more creative element to it. The only problem was, with the emotion of the divorce, I couldn't throw myself into a creative endeavor. Although it had been my decision, I was still grieving terribly. Post-separation/ pre-divorce mourning left me in a desperate state without inspiration or motivation — not ideal for the creative process.

This was all part of my not-so-minor freak-out that lasted about six months while trying to settle on a plan for starting over. I fiercely questioned my own decision to leave the marriage and rode the waves of sadness, anger, and regret all the way into the dark night. I was detoxing off the drug of codependency, and I resisted my inherent compulsion to find a new man. I somehow knew this was imperative at this stage in my life and something I'd never been able to do before. I was a relationship addict.

In the midst of my emptiness, side effects were severe: waking nightmares that left me sleepless and physically shaking in solitude; obsessive writing in the wee hours of the morning, trying to figure out where I'd gone wrong; heavy, frequent prayer and searching my neurotic mind endlessly for answers to why my life had dropped me off at the corner of emotionally induced starvation and despair. I was detoxing. My body and soul were withering into nothingness, and I began merging with the fibers of my mattress. Damn you, life. How could you do this to me? I'm so over living ... existing. God, just take me now! Please, just end it.

I tried at times to rally myself. I had my plan A and plan B. I was a Girl Scout; I was prepared. But none of my plans were feeling quite right, and I promised myself I wouldn't do things that didn't feel right anymore just because they made sense. I'd tell myself regularly, No, Eryn, don't fall into the trap of hamster wheel security. Search how you feel. I was extremely fortunate to have some financial flexibility and time to think while we worked to transition me out of the company, so I drifted on the raft of unknowns for a while until I figured out my future. Where do I go, what do I want, what am I doing with my life? Agggggh!

The Big Idea

In the midst of my panicked indecision, ranting madly one day on the phone to my good friend Aiden, he pitched a crazy idea. "Why don't you go to India and travel for a few months."

Screech, halt, stop ... what?

"Aiden, that's crazy!" I laughed hysterically at his ridiculous idea. I simply had no capacity to consider something so absurd. "What the hell kinda idea is that? Travel ... Who on earth steps out of their career midlife to travel? That would be completely irresponsible!"

My thoughts momentarily boomeranged out from the confinements of my narrow mind and out into the world, tiny snippets of thought flashing, I'm not strong enough to do that. I don't have the confidence or know-how to solo travel. I can't go to India by myself. That's the most ridiculous idea ever.

It was far beyond anything I would've ever conceived on my own. I never even wanted to travel like that; my dreams weren't even that big. All I ever really wanted was to live a "normal" life with a husband, house, and dog — standard ideologies of the American dream. And my idea of travel — which was really vacation, two very different terms I now understand — was flying to a Caribbean island (with a man of course) and drinking mojitos on a sunset cruise. I'd taken one trip to India a few years earlier with an organized yoga group, but that had been a complete fluke; after my stretchy pants awakening, some ethereal force changed the channel of my regularly scheduled thought program and propelled me to join that yoga retreat.

Aiden tapped the mic on his phone, intercepting my boomerang of erratic thoughts. "Eryn, you there? Where'd you go?"

"Aiden," I said in my sarcastic tone, "before today, I thought you were a pretty intelligent guy, but this is the most ridiculous idea I've ever heard. This just isn't even realistic! You should consider upping your therapy to twice a week. Call me back when you have some sensible ideas, please."

He called me again the next day, so persistent, reminding me what a unique opportunity this was — no job, no man, no house, no kids, and no responsibility for the first time in my adult life. "Ahhh, yeah, that's helpful. Thanks for reminding me of everything I don't have! Are you trying to make me cry? Seriously, I don't have time for this bullshit! I need real options here." I told him he was crazy again — and a complete ass — then hung up on him. Oh, I was really mad at him for suggesting something so preposterous.

I dismissed his idea completely.

Weeks rolled on with no new epiphanies striking me as to the perfect path moving forward, and despite my best efforts, my friend's traveling idea crept occasionally into my thoughts. I tried to consider this idea of the world, but I couldn't wrap my mind around the consideration of something so ... so crazy and seemingly irresponsible as taking an extended period of time off from my career. It was risky enough, the idea of choosing a creative path (for which I had no flowing creative energy), but to choose a traveling sabbatical? How would that time gap look on my resume, for goodness sake? That's like career suicide, jumping to my own death from the professional ladder I'd been arduously climbing for sixteen years — especially as a woman in the male-dominated construction industry. Oh, horrors no, we couldn't possibly have that! Extended leave is only permissible for birth or death. I couldn't see it then in that moment, but I was experiencing both.

Just to humor my friend, I printed out an inadequately sized 81/2 x 11 world map and laid it on my desk, leaving it there to collect dust as I swirled on madly in my melancholy mania and my tornado of indecision. My internal doubt persisted, reminding me the best course of action would be to move to a new city and jump back on the hamster wheel of big business. Keep climbing that ladder, Eryn. Everything will be better when you make it to the top. Go on now, keep going. It's the American way.

I'd occasionally glance at it — the world — as I came and went from my apartment, surviving on my coffee and cheese toast diet, but a month went by before I actually sat down and looked at it. One day I walked by it, and ... well, it sort of whispered to me in a way, "Come over here." I was in a hurry to leave and was actually annoyed at the world for continuing to taunt me. Okay, okay, what do you want? Fine, I'll look at you!

I sat and looked at it for a while, trying unsuccessfully to imagine what the world might really look like beyond the black squiggly lines delineating borders on my flimsy piece of paper. A repetitive thought circulated in my mind like a gentle current. The world is in your hands, Eryn. How does that feel? Hmm, how does it feel? Fucking scary, that's how it feels!

One dear friend had encouraged me to choose something that made me feel good, saying that if I followed whatever that was, everything else would fall into place. I liked the concept, but I wasn't quite sure fucking scary would qualify as a "good feeling" to follow into the next stage of my life.

I considered what travel might look like — a single, white American girl on a global odyssey — but my vision blurred, and the image became fuzzy in the construction site of my mind. All I saw were orange and white barricades blocking the idea. I couldn't deny it seemed like a better plan than my current trajectory of becoming one with my mattress, but I couldn't envision such a grand plan for myself. All I saw was fear. Damn you, Aiden, for suggesting this! Grrrr.

One day I finally brought it up, jokingly, to a girlfriend. I think I wanted to hear what it sounded like if I said it out loud to someone. Plus, Hayley was from the UK and the only real friend I had at the time from another country, so I considered her more knowledgeable and unbiased. I was pretty sure all my other friends and family would view it with complete skepticism and doubt. After all, that's how I was viewing it. Why would I expect anything different from them?

Hayley didn't think it was altogether a bad idea, but she did urge me, coming from her psychotherapy background, "Identify why you'd be going. Understand what it is you want to leave behind and what you want to move toward. Make sure you're not running from anything."

"Hmmm. Uh huh, uh huh, good point," I said, contemplating her comment. "Yes, I see where you're coming from there."

"But I don't think I'd start with India," she continued. "You wouldn't catch me there — no, no. One word for you, Eryn: parasites."

Later that night, I sat down with my map again, circling country names that sounded interesting — that is to say, those with names I recognized. I must've slept through geography class; my knowledge of the world was embarrassing, to say the least. I wasn't even excited about this self-imposed exercise of circling countries. It felt like one of those tasks you give yourself when considering a new career, including even the crazy ideas you know you'll never consider, like becoming an astronaut.

My mind was a rip current of thoughts; numbed by fear, grief stricken by my failed marriage, my life in shambles, the dark night swallowing me — I could barely breathe. Currents took me back and back and back to my conversation with Hayley. I asked myself if I'd be running from anything if I left the States. I pondered and questioned myself at length, trying to dissect my intentions. Then I went through the exercise again, my mind churning madly with ideas and possibilities and fear all turning into butter, clogging the arteries of my weary soul. Security? Unknown? Security? Unknown? Take a chance on a new city unknown? Take a chance in the fucking scary world unknown?

Tears filled my eyes, and I wept at the torturous state of my own indecision, drowning in question marks. I was lost inside myself, a one-finned fish swimming in circles. The divorce would soon be final. I was alone. I had no clear direction, and my mind was in a state of exhaustion after months of this vacillation and the preceding emotional turmoil related to the marital separation. I knew it wasn't healthy for me to continue wallowing in this indecision, and I had to choose some path for myself in the very near future.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Facing Freedom Solo Female Travel Two-Plus Years Five Continents"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Eryn Donnalley.
Excerpted by permission of Balboa Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments, vii,
The Call to Write, ix,
Introduction, xi,
Part I: The Storms Before,
Chapter 1: The Catalyst, 1,
Chapter 2: Just the Past, 13,
Part II: Shedding Fear — Months One to Twelve,
Chapter 3: Jewels on the Ganges, 31,
Chapter 4: The Path to Silence, 41,
Chapter 5: I Climbed a Mountain, 55,
Chapter 6: Delhi Premonitions, 71,
Chapter 7: Narrow Minds, 74,
Chapter 8: Pocket Watches, 81,
Chapter 9: Half a Hippy, 93,
Chapter 10: Quantifying the Immeasurable, 110,
Chapter 11: Detour to Humility, 130,
Part III: Living Love — Months Thirteen to Twenty-Eight,
Chapter 12: Monastery in the Forest, 159,
Chapter 13: Raising Resonance, 177,
Chapter 14: Mirrors, 191,
Chapter 15: Facing My Freedom, 200,
Chapter 16: Facing Your Freedom, 225,
Chapter 17: Messages from Beyond, 232,
Chapter 18: Living on in Love, 244,
Chapter 19: The Siggy Effect, 251,
Chapter 20: Individuation, 262,
Chapter 21: Closing Thoughts, 272,
Part IV: Eclectic Teachings,
Chapter 22: Petals of the Lotus, 283,
Chapter 23: Tantra Concepts, 293,
Chapter 24: Vipassana Insights, 306,
Teachers, 315,
Notes and References, 317,
Suggested Reading List, 343,
About the Author, 345,