A Discovery

I have been reading a wonderful book the past two days called, Tales of a Female Nomad, by Rita Golden Gelman. It's about a woman who, at the age of 48, decides to live as a nomad. She carries only a few possessions and just kind of goes with the flow, wherever life leads her. She tends to stay with families instead of in hotels and meets wonderful people in many different countries. Gelman said something in the beginning of her book that really spoke to me and that explained how I've been feeling (minus the anthropology student and L.A. sophisticate).

"I try to look at myself from another dimension, detached and nonjudgmental. This person is not wife, mother, daughter, writer, anthropology student, L.A. sophisticate. She is, of course, all of these things; but alone, without the attachments, she is a woman in limbo, whose identity has been buried in her roles. Away from those roles and alone, she is someone she doesn't know."

While reading her book, I've realized what I want to do and why I've been so "down" for the past few months. I love adventure. I love change. I love seeing new places and people and having new experiences. Coming back to Maryland was something that we did for our families. We figured that we "took" the kids away from them for 3 years, while living in Australia - the least we could do was live close by for this tour. There were other advantages to moving back here, of course. But, overall I think we both would have been happier to live somewhere new.

I love to travel and it's always been a dream of mine to go to another country for a while and immerse myself in their culture. Yes, I got to do that in Australia and I loved it. But, Australia isn't all that different from the States. And one country isn't enough for me. The world is so huge and there is so much to see and discover. I'm not the type of person who can live in one place for the rest of my life. I would never be happy.

So I've figured out that my passion in life is to see new places and meet new people. What I need to figure out is how I can keep that spark in me alive within the life that I live. That's what I need to work on next. One discovery at a time.