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I am grateful to have lived alone.

I know this experience is not for everyone, but I am glad I have had it. Both this and traveling alone have been integral to my development as a human and as a woman. I lived alone in my late twenties into my early 30s. It was a time when a lot of people I knew were coupled up and living with a partner and/or getting married and I was having a completely different experience. It was a time when I started to learn more about my own internal experience and what was right for me and instead of constantly looking to everyone else’s needs around me in a vortex of habitual behavior. It helped me learn so much about myself and what I am capable of.

It was also a deeply creative time for me. I was in the dark room a few nights a week, I would paint large canvases on the floor of my kitchen, crochet, and craft. I took pottery, and I was making a lot of jewelry for the yoga studio I was teaching at. I didn’t have a TV or much in the way of electronics besides a laptop and cell phone (and my cameras of course). It was a cozy attic type apartment that suited me perfectly and is still one of my favorite places I have lived. It was old, and lodged into the side of a hill which mean I had a great view from my third floor window. It became a place where my friends would come and “retreat” as needed.

So much happened during this time for me. My photography got accepted to several juried art shows (Fitchburg Art Museum, Worcester Art Museum, Arts Worcester, and Worcester Center for Crafts) and I showed my photographs at a local cafe art space. I taught yoga. I was a bridesmaid several times. I traveled in the U.S, Peru, Bolivia, Scotland, England, Germany, Turkey, Iceland, New Zealand, Nepal, and Bhutan. I worked full time. I ran a small jewelry business. I started selling my photographs. I did my two year shamanic apprenticeship. I dated. I started meditating more regularly. I read a lot. I healed from a cracked rib. I started experimenting with my diet and nutrition. I honed my organizational style. I learned how to be with myself. I trekked in the Himalayas. And, I decided to leave my life and travel around the world solo.

To be honest, writing this out and reflecting on this has made me realize on an even deeper level how integral this time living alone was for me. Like studying aboard in Spain before it, living alone was a departure point in my life. I am deeply grateful for the experience.

Awareness Practice: What are the departure points in your life? Those moments where, looking back, you can see they changed the course of your life? The size of these moments doesn’t matter, it’s that you can see a distinct before and after in the path of your life. Some of us have lots of these, and some of us have only a few. I think likely we all have more than we think of realize though.