5 Lessons I Learned Taking the Trip
By Brooke Jean, MA, LPC
Hey Friends, I just got back from having the absolute privilege of taking a luscious week off with my partner on the beautiful island of Maui, Hawaii and here are five lessons I learned and look forward to integrating into my life.
1. There is so much power in the pause, and in taking real time away.
It’s far too easy to get sucked into the noise vortex that is life and also the larger and louder pressures of what we should be doing. Taking time away pulls us out of the throws of hustle culture, jumping relentlessly from one responsibility to another and allows space for quiet reflection, answer seeking and soul soothing. This time away becomes a beautiful container for our growth, our evolution, our magnificent transformations.
2. Travel expands us.
Doing something new and different than our ordinary lives call us to do, being in different spaces and places, eating different foods, connecting with nature, culture, history and architecture expands our consciousness. Opens up our awareness inside ourselves and beyond ourselves. Taking time away and doing something new provides information to our subconscious of what else is out there, is possible and with that brings new ideas, opportunities, heightened dreams. Its necessary to clear this space to be able to tap into your deeper parts of your brain, your creativity, your intuition, your spiritual guidance. I came up with so many business ideas while being there.There are also brain health benefits. When we’re in new places, learning a new way of doing or perhaps a new language, when we confuse our brains and bodies by being in the new, we kick our brains into neurogenesis which ultimately births new neurons (brain cells!) How cool is that?
3. Your body knows whats up and will tell you when your soul is home.
When you are in the right place for your soul, beauty will reflect within you and all around you. You’ll be in awe of it all, like when you were little. This is your reminder to follow what feels good, to do what you loved to do when you were little and chase bliss. Follow what lights you up, what brings an automatic and often cheesy smile to your face, and enlivens every cell in your being. And freaking do more of that. For fuck’s sake can we at least start with giving ourselves permission to explore, discover and follow what feels good to us and for us? Too many women and mothers I know have lost complete connection with what feels good because we have been conditioned to put everything and everyone before our own needs. As a reminder, chasing joy doesn’t only pertain to big moves like vacations, changing careers, moving to your dream locations etc., but also includes inviting daily doses of what feels good into your day- to- day. That could look like having your favorite tea in your favorite mug in your favorite corner of your home every morning before the kids wake up.
4. While there is so much pain and suffering and fucked-up-ness in our sick society right now, at which I will spend my entire lifetime healing from and making positive change in, there is also so much beauty and things to be grateful for.
This is not a bullshit, just smile through it, bypassing the real shit, notion. This is an invitation to dance between acknowledging the hard, taking intentional action, while twirling to the good, the enough-ness and basking in that as long as you can. To catch your breathe, to fill you up, to prepare you for the toggle back to the hard stuff. This delicate dance changes our brains on a neurobiological level, supports our brain/ body health, improves our mental/ emotional wellbeing, raises our energetic vibration and positions us to withstand the seasons.
5. After ten years of marriage, eighteen years of being together, I still LIKE my partner.
Not just love, of course I love him, but taking time away together brings us back to us. We remembered who we were before we added careers, kids, mortgages, fighting over who does more and never ending Mommy Mommy Daddy Daddy’s (in a five year old’s voice). We felt those feelings we had in the beginning all over again. We played, laughed, took naps and had that look in our eyes. This is so important in relationships. Its so easy to get frustrated, to miscommunicate and stop meeting each other’s needs being buried in life, but when you take time away, you remember your bigger why in relationships, in commitment and companionship and that makes all the annoyances when you come home much more manageable. We are imperfect, but we are a team building a crazy beautiful life together and have each other’s back through the messiest of messy.
