In this post, I made a conscious decision to speak from a place of truth and honesty, and I wrote about what an amazing transformation it’s been to come home to myself. The process started exactly 2 months ago.
Once we’ve truly accepted the challenge to be honest and true to ourselves, we also implicitly accept to take on the challenge to fulfill our heart’s desires and to be responsible for our actions for the rest of our lives.
So what happens afterwards?
What happens after you’ve made this decision to listen to your inner voice? What happens after you’ve decided to let go of any past beliefs, thoughts, and baggage that was no longer needed? Well, you become yourself, fully. With each new day, you allow yourself to begin again, to fall, to rise back up, to move forward, to fail and to see the experience as a learning lesson, to forgive and let go in an instant. A bit like a child, you become more present. And by becoming more present, you clearly see your dreams, and you walk towards them, released from any doubt as instead, you’re being guided by an inner force you never knew existed. This force is stronger than any of us, it’s a force that has the power to make us move mountains, as long as we wish to do so.
Coming back to France has been great in so many ways. I had been craving for safety, silence and quiet times. I had been needing to rest and only hang out with people I had known for years. I received all of this. For the past eight months, I’ve been able to rest, to fully reconnect with myself, to ground myself and to catch up with my family much more than I did over the last years. I’m so grateful for their support, their understanding during this time, and for what comes next. Because I recently told them I’ll be leaving again.
It feels a bit like I came back home to recharge my batteries, and now that I hold a great renewed energy, it’s time to get back on the road. Listening to my heart means acknowledging that when I made the decision to come home last year, I was totally lost in all aspects of my life. Therefore I decided then that I’d be coming home for good, but sometimes you make plans, then later you understand life had other plans for you. Coming back to France was what I needed, but not what I truly wanted. While I truly needed to be here, and I don’t regret coming back, it didn’t mean that I was meant to settle here after all, as slowly, with the months passing, I could feel my heart shrinking quietly and I found myself in the same position as I was in ten years ago.
Back in 2009, here, I had the full-time job, the cool friends, the nice apartment by the beach, and yet one night, while driving home alone, I started crying. It came out of nowhere. It usually does when your mind is quiet, as it allows for what needs to come out to do so. Deep within, I knew why I was crying. I had been ignoring this feeling for a few years already. I traveled for a few months to Australia in 2005, and this had been a life dream. I had made a promise to myself when I came back in 2006, that I’d be leaving again for some new place, as soon as I could. So that night, in my car, my heart was reminding me of that dream to go abroad again, to discover new places, to speak English on a daily basis, to live a fuller life.
And here I am ten years later. Again. The other day I drove home, and I cried. I recognized this very unique feeling. Homesickness. Just the other way round. My heart nicely told me “I know you’ve tried your best to make this place feel like home, but it’s okay if it’s not. It might be one day, but you need to focus on the Now. It’s time for you to live your life, following your desires. You hold the power and the freedom to make something great of your life again. Just follow this intuition and the rest will unfold.”
It’s so hard to admit that I need to make a life-changing decision so fast again. I’m so tired of myself, seriously! I really wish I could feel at home here, I really wish I could have settled when I came back, I wish I was buying a house. But I also know these are only wishes that would make my mind feel safe. Wishes built up from a place of fear, fear of missing out on what most people are doing. I know these wishes would make my heart suffer. I fully acknowledge that I may be different from most people of my age. At 35 years old, almost everyone has a house and children around here. They seem happy, and I am happy for them. But I am different.
I also feel like people will start seeing me as an unstable person who is just too scared to settle. But I know it’s not like that. To thrive, I need to be somewhere else. To fall in love, I need to find someone who loves moving as much as I do. I guess it’s as simple as that. I also don’t want to hurt people who are truly happy here. Why would I want to go? Is it not good enough for me here? Am I despising people? Am I too good for this place? It’s not something I can explain. It’s hard to feel understood when you have absolutely everything to be happy and yet you’re not.
So this time, I’m going to make good use of the experience I’ve got and I’ll be doing things differently. I’ve been learning a lot about the Doshas in the Ayurveda within the last couple of months with Justine, and well for those of you who have a bit of knowledge in this area, you’ll quickly guess that I’m primarily a Vata. I’ve got Pitta too just behind, so I’m Vata-Pitta. This means that I NEED to move, I am movement, I need to feel free and independent and I need to pursue creative projects from start to finish in order to feel happy and balanced. And because right now my priority is not to travel the world but to launch a project through my work, while being location independent, I’ll be heading back first to a place that I hold dearly in my heart: Portugal. Because hey, it’s got to be by the sea, and it needs to have waves too!
Since I’ve realigned myself, and since I’ve decided to make choices from the centre of my heart, I’ve felt a bit like I’ve been walking blindly. It’s a weird feeling really. When your mind makes a plan, everything is clear: you know how, when, what, who, where everything will happen. You feel safe, you see the future from a realistic, materialistic point of view. But now that I let myself be guided, it’s foggy, but it’s a nice, reassuring fog. I don’t know anything, I have no certainty. All I know for sure right now, is that I need to move, that I have a work project that I’m in love with, and that’s pretty much it. I don’t know where I’ll be living in 3 months, where I’ll be in one year, or who I will meet along the way. Another thing I know for sure, is that when you decide to let yourself be guided, you’ll be pushed out of your comfort zone.
I’ve read a lot of quotes that more or less said the same thing: you feel like everything is falling apart when it’s actually all coming together. This is where I am. After the storm, the sun. Things are coming together. And I feel so happy about it.
Since I know that I’ll be on the road most of August, and since I know that I’ll be traveling light from November onwards, my heart is happy, it’s filled up with joy, it’s singing. There are no questions, no doubts, even though I don’t know what the next six months or the next years will bring. But I’m okay with it. Totally. Trusting that it all happens for a reason and that one day, I’ll look back, and everything will make sense.
So what happens afterwards? You open your heart, you walk forward, you trust. You feel this greater power within yourself, and you know it has your back.
Thank you for reading.
Much love,
Lucie
