More than a year ago, I left my Melbourne home and began a journey that covered miles of road and uncharted inner territory.
When I left Melbourne, I felt supported by most of my friends. My family perceived my exit from life in the suburbs as taking the opportunity to fulfil a long cherished heart wish. I knew only that the drive within to take this next step was one I could no longer ignore – the knocking at the doors in my head and my heart became strident screams of desperation.
The only relief from the building internal pressure was to surrender to the need to leave behind everyone and everything and venture into the unknown. When I finally left for destinations unknown, I almost raced towards the embrace of uncertainty, though I quivered within at what I was about to embark on.
One year on, charting the peaks and troughs of my journey through this blog, I say yes to life in a way that I have been hesitant, yet desirous of, for many years.
Relocation Shock
My recent trip to Tasmania, prompted by a housesitting commitment, left me feeling like Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz landing in Kansas. The sudden dislocation from the life I created on the road was overlayed with a new routine, more animals to care for than I could poke a stick at, and a persistent dream-like quality to my days.
I felt a similar shock once before when a letter from the education department advised our address meant my son could only access two of the less than desirable high schools in our city. Within three weeks we moved house and enrolled him in the high school I had long known he was destined for. The suddenness of the move jarred my sense of order in the world. My term for it is relocation shock and it took six weeks to accept the changes in our location and my son’s educational trajectory.
In Tasmania, I had committed to house sitting a property that backed onto native forest on the island’s western coast. Seven chooks, three cats, and one dog (plus a partridge in a pear tree) were my responsibility for the next four and a half weeks. Initially I recall walking around the beautiful home I was staying in and marvelling at how unreal my life felt. In the week leading up to the house sit I had travelled a lot of miles, both figuratively and literally: from the end of one peninsula, then across Melbourne to another peninsula, then across the watery miles of Bass Strait.
During that time, I connected with friends and family and revisited poems I had written thirty years ago and renewed my wonder at where life brought opportunities that I could not have predicted. Where once I feared the unpredictability of life, now I embraced opportunities – grabbing greedily with both hands, edging out any discomfort I felt. Here, in Tasmania, in someone else’s home, with their animals and their lifestyle at my fingertips, there was a dreamlike quality to my life: I was no longer in Kansas.
Strahan had its own rhythm, and I learned a new dance to match its pace. I settled into a routine of feeding chooks, cats and the small papillon twice daily. I walked the dog around mid-morning, frequently stopping for a coffee at the local pub. Days later, I felt the shock wearing off as I sat at my laptop. Inside the world of writing, I could find my focus, connect with my touchstone of life, and revel in the experience of living in the lush greenery of Tasmania’s temperate rainforest. The air was clean, and the silence resounded heavily.
To ease the possibility of loneliness during the house-sit, the homeowner introduced me to the locals at venues around the harbour, suggested I join the newly formed book club, and showed me how to order fresh baked sourdough bread from the local baker. She gave me contact details for her friend who would assist in all manner of maintenance should her home require it – a connection I came to rely on for both animal advice and local knowledge.
Time has a different pace in a town like Strahan. It meanders, ebbs like the tide, creates space for contemplation and refocusing on what truly matters. I spent days walking, writing, and eventually spending time with the locals at coffee dates or lunches out. Many times, I made coffee and simply sat and stared at the forest surrounding the house, relaxing into the silence around me.
Sometimes I listened to the storms within about what happens next and where to go after this house sit. Eventually those storms quieted and the silence within and without embraced me. Surprisingly, while in Strahan, I was offered house sits in Tasmania in 2025, and even more on the mainland. Though I use my gut and my heart to guide my decisions, I have yet to fully let go and dance with life as she takes me deeper into the journey of listening and learning. She has a way of gently, yet persistently, reminding me that I need only listen to the whispering within to know what the next step is.
Following my heart over the last year has been both terrifying and rewarding.
Learning to navigate life on the road as a solo female has pushed me to change my self-talk about what I can and cannot do. Trusting my instincts has led to encounters with people I would never have met if I had stayed inside the walls of the life I built.
I have learned that home is not a physical place with walls and a roof. I can be at home within. I let go of material possessions that burdened me with their cost and the significance I gave them. What a gift of liberation! I discovered I need to communicate more clearly when it comes to boundaries. And underneath each event, each unfolding of life, there is an almost imperceptible heartbeat, a limitless perfection, if only I could completely let go and embrace it with all my heart. As a work in progress, I know I have further to go, and I am not shying away from the polishing life provides through each experience.
Strahan is a peaceful harbourside town filled with characters who will live in my memory. My experience there gave me breathing space to reflect on my road journey – inadvertently facilitating a life inventory amidst living with another’s animals and borrowing their lifestyle. I am back on the mainland now. Though I have returned to the familiar landscapes and people, the changes in my interior landscape provide a new lens through which to view life.
Whatever capacity I once had for embracing uncertainty when I started this journey has now bloomed into a newfound willingness to say yes to life. Today, I quietly marvel at life’s unceasing perfection as it embraces me, teaching me about my inner world and offering endless opportunities for growth, joy and peace.
(published on Ko-Fi 6th September 2024)
Christine Writer 