Lesson 1: The Cross-Country Road Trip That Was Sparked by the Coronavirus Outbreak

I’m writing this post just shy of two weeks since the beginning of this journey. The cross-country road trip I hadn’t planned for. The one that made itself the seemingly only viable option thanks to the unwanted coronavirus visitor.

This story, like many others, is starting in the middle because to go to “the beginning” is truly an ambiguous request. The beginning of what, exactly? The day the outbreak started? The day we decided it was time to leave? The day we initially booked this trip, which included airfare, NOT a car and trailer type of thing?

To get an understanding of why we made the decisions we did along this trip or just to get a sense of my perspective throughout it, I’ll give you some “icebreaker tidbits” about myself.

I have a background in immunology and microbial pathogenesis from grad school. In undergrad, I worked towards a pre-med program as a neuroscience and eastern religion double major. Back then, my hodge-podge background really didn’t mean much to the classically trained medical professional and having to figure out how to explain myself in a 30-second elevator pitch took up way too much time than I can ever get back. Luckily, times have changed.

I also am a yoga teacher, a scientist turned writer, and someone who’s quite experienced in the last minute changes, challenges, opportunities, and “oh shit!’s” of life. At the very least my own.

All of this should help you get a good understanding of how in a situation that is fear and panic-driven, I’ve been able to have moments where I was clear-minded, focused, and even calm.

Hello/Goodbye/Hello Again, Portland!

Let’s start with the explanation of the title, shall we? This was meant to be the way the trip originally went.

It went from “Hello, Portland!” to “Goodbye and see you soon!” and finally, “Hello again!” But once the coronavirus or COVID-19 hit U.S. shores, it was a downward domino effect soon after.

It was Monday, March 9th when the numbers came through and things had gotten worse on the east coast where we were residing with our family. I’ve personally been going through what spiritual and astrology followers would call “the Saturn Return” and working on peeling away at my many personal beliefs, thoughts, and patterns. Some Westerners would even put this in the category of “quarter-life crisis” but it’s pretty much the same thing.

Ego work you could say. This includes experiencing moments of confusion, fatigue, deep contemplation, and overwhelming feelings of stress, loss, and fear. Fear has a certain je ne sais quoi when it comes to its grip on us.

As humans, we come into this world and are molded from the get-go by our societies, families, social circles, schools, governments, and media. Little by little, we absorb the words we hear as our own and we begin to believe the crazy thoughts running through our minds. If we are good enough. If our bodies are good enough. If our work is good enough. If we are good enough lovers. Good enough parents. Good enough friends.

When you begin your own spiritual or personal journey to learn who you are in your totality, you soon learn that there never was a time and never will be, when you weren’t/aren’t/won’t be good enough. The words make sense intellectually, but internally, it’s hard to reprogram the habits written in your bones and the emotional scars.

It takes more patience than your mind is willing to give and your heart is willing to break open to, to face yourself as you are.

This is the kind of vulnerable place I was in when I heard that the coronavirus was causing mass upheaval in airports and in the toilet paper aisles. As a scientist, I understood the first scenario, but was puzzled and even slightly humored by the second one. What did toilet paper have anything to do with a virus that caused respiratory problems?

I wasn’t prepared mentally or emotionally to make such a hasty decision. I remember thinking that if I slept on the idea that somehow I’d have more clarity about the decision the next day.

I didn’t.

And the decision to leave and plan my cross-country move was lurching ever closer. We literally had less than a week to decide what to do. I faced an incredible amount of internal resistance early on because, truthfully, I couldn’t have imagined things could get so bad, so quickly.

Or that our government’s response would be so disorganized, frantic, and reactive to say the least. I didn’t think that people wouldn’t take basic precautions. Or that containing the spread of the virus would get so out of hand that stores and businesses everywhere would be shutting down.

But I wasn’t alone. I had a very insightful and intuitive partner, my fiance, whose words of encouragement reminded me that we must continue to lean into the unknown.

And now, that unknown, that untimely moment of having to leave, drop everything and go, it was here.

OK, So What’s the New Plan?

In addition to working, I now had a brand new list of to-do’s that needed to be addressed prior to leaving in four days. That is how long we gave ourselves to finish up some work assignments, pack up all our scattered belongings from my family’s home, book the hotels in each city, find a Uhaul (this part is a story in and of itself!), cancel payment for the current storage, find new storage, drive half-way across the country in one packed car to Colorado, jump-start my car in the storage unit, get it serviced, find a missing Uhaul trailer, pack it, drive two cars and a trailer through what ended up being a four-season driving experience, unpack at the significantly smaller storage unit, return the trailer, unpack at the Airbnb, and not get sick. Whew!

This was our third full cross-country road trip, and most likely the last for a long while.

It also ended up being the best road trip we’ve ever been on. And this is during the whole chaos and commotion. As everything seemed to fall away around us, the path that we were supposed to take began to fall into place. Difficult decisions were made, such as leaving our beloved cat with my family due to Airbnb restrictions in our first accommodation.

On the outside, this whole “cross-country road trip move”, seemed far fetched, last minute, and even bizarre to some of our family members. Leaving, now? During the whole pandemonium? Were we crazy?

I thought the same thing a few times as I steadily packed all my belongings with a heavy knot clogging up my chest and burrowing into the depths of my belly.

To be honest, if I wasn’t a digital nomad who’s been moving around from one place to the next since grad school, or had been brushing up on my study of human psychology and spirituality, I would probably have stayed.

I wouldn’t have questioned what I was giving up in this moment of change. The comforts of my childhood home were all here. From the outside, I was already home. But deep inside, I was yearning to get West.

Having spent the last few years working on myself using resources ranging in topics such as psychology, neuroscience, yoga, astrology, spirituality, and physics I knew that it was time to finally put into practice what every advice book on practically any life topic suggests: lean into the unknown.

Leaning Into the Unknown Doesn’t Have to Feel Shitty

Goodbyes are usually hard for most people, myself included. Abruptness has a unique way of making the farewells and see you soons somehow easier and yet more painful at the same time.

While positivity is an important part of the self-discovery journey, to think it must be a constant companion is a one-sided view on life. And life is certainly multi-dimensional.

During the past 3 months that I spent in my family home, I had experienced some of the most triggering moments of my life. It was exactly like stepping back into the past and experiencing everything you ever wanted to run away from all over again. While a part of me wanted things to be different and wanted to believe that a positive outlook could help melt the strain of certain family relationships — in my case, it wasn’t enough.

Over the years, as I’ve traveled from coast to coast and to a number of European countries, I had always envisioned that I’d be this blissfully happy digital nomad. That somehow, these new places and experiences would burn away all my problems from the past. And that if I wasn’t in a triggering environment, one filled with old memories, then I could be free from the trigger. I could somehow be able to be a new version of myself. That it would be easier.

Well, I’ve come to recognize that this view is partly deluded.

Travel shouldn’t be something you do to “get away/ run away” from your life. I personally needed to live through this realization, to fully come to terms with it. Travel should be something you do to step more fully into your life. And only you will know the difference.

For me, Portland always felt like home. Where I could take a deep sigh and have enough room for my ribs to fully expand without clenching them again for fear… of something or other.

__________

We packed the car the night before since we had a 12-hour drive ahead of us. This was going to be day 1 of 5 days of driving, not counting the day we spent packing our belongings mid-way through the trip. I woke up feeling tense and unsettled because of the arguments that had ensued after some difficult conversations the night before. I sat down with my fiance and my family (including our sweet cat) to say our goodbyes. The choice had been made and with everything reserved and ready for our arrival, all we had to do was drive. And so we did.

I remember my fiance taking the wheel the first few hours of the drive because driving away from my home wasn’t easy. Leaving our past behind never is. It’s terribly painful and confusing.

Most of us don’t grow up in a world that supports choosing the option of the unknown. So, while we may hear victorious stories of others and of how they made it through the unknown, we rarely hear of what it was like in the midst of this dense fog.

The world around me was being turned upside down, and here I was traversing through its landscape as though I was invincible. The days that followed we managed to get Eckhart Tolle’s audiobook The Power of Now through our library and I cannot begin to tell you how incredible a resource it was during the upcoming days as more people got sick, and restrictions began to tighten. There was no manual for driving cross-country during a pandemic, so we followed our gut and began to loosen the grip of control we had about how things were going to look like in the end. And each day that we drove the unknown became more familiar. More normal. The new normal.

Continue the journey with me in part 2 …