Travel and Transformation

I’m about to go on a much-anticipated solo trip to a Greek island – a gift to myself for

A younger, straight-haired me on a ferry to a Greek island, 2014

having made it through cancer treatment one year ago. I’ve booked a studio apartment with a sea view, near a 14th-century Venetian port, and only a short walk from the beach.

In a previous post, I shared a (very unflattering) picture I drew of myself on a beach in Greece. This was my amateur attempt to capture the image I conjured in my head during guided imagery practice, on some of the darkest days of my treatment.

I envisioned myself healthy and strong, under the golden Greek sun, wearing a simple cotton dress and sandals, with long, straight hair. A year later, I feel healthy and strong, and I’ve packed the dress and sandals in my suitcase. The weather is looking promising, and instead of long, straight hair, to my delight, my mane is short and wavy.

While I’m excited about this trip, I’m also a little scared. After a harrowing year of illness and recovery, I’m taking myself out of the ‘known’. It’s only for a week, and I've been to Greece before, so it’s not exactly a daring adventure. But I don’t feel like the same me who went on adventurous journeys when I was younger.

I certainly don’t look the same: not only is my hair different, but I express an audible "oof" when I bend down to zip up my suitcase, as my knees creek and ache. As I pull on a swimsuit to make sure it still fits, I see tiny blue dots tattooed on my hips, reminders of the radiotherapy I had 3 years ago. And of course the floppy dark-brown waves that frame my face are totally unfamiliar.

Denise and I freshman year at university, in my dorm room, where we shared our dreams of travel

Losing and Finding My Essential Self

Who is this ‘me’ I’m taking on vacation? Who is this woman, with her sensible shoes and elastic waistbands, her 53-year-old, menopausal body and untamed wavy hair? She’s not the teenager who met Denise at university and talked late into the night about our shared dreams of travel and adventure.

I’ve often thought of travel as a way to leave my ordinary self behind and to slip into a different sense of self. This time, though, I’m not even sure who the ordinary ‘me’ is. I’ve changed so much that all the labels I might attach to myself seem jumbled and unclear.

Travel writer and philosopher Pico Iyer writes, in his essay ‘Why We Travel’: “We travel ... in search of both self and anonymity … people cannot put a name or tag to us. And precisely because we are clarified in this way, and freed of inessential labels, we have the opportunity to come into contact with more essential parts of ourselves ...”

Iyer reminds me that losing the self is one of the things that makes travel so exciting and desirable, and why I always wanted to do it. When I travel, even the bad experiences are memorable – often more memorable than the good ones.

So as the non-essential aspects of me – how I look, what I wear, the roles I play in life – have been stripped away, my essential self has come into clearer focus. While my experience with illness has been frightening, it has, like travel, distilled me down to my essential parts.

As my hair and body have morphed and changed, I have come to recognize that something deep inside of me remains reliably unchanged. This essential ‘me’ is the voice that comes through in my journal entries, which I wrote early in the mornings on some of the darkest days of treatment. And it is the ‘me’ who sat during meditation on those days – a quiet, comforting presence that often brought me to tears with her depth of compassion for what I was going through.

As the non-essential aspects of me – how I look, the roles I play in life – have been stripped away, my essential self has come into clearer focus.

I think this essential 'me' was also the one who nudged me outside my comfort zone when I was young and scared and desperately longing to travel. She taught me that I can be terrified but move forward into the unknown anyway.

Packing Light

The transformative beauty of Greece

Since I’ve decided to take only a carry-on bag on my holiday – and discount airlines in Europe are notoriously stingy with their luggage allowance – I only have room for the bare essentials. So I’ll take the essential ‘me’ and some essential belongings in a small bag to a Greek island and drink a toast to who I have become, while recognizing that even this new ‘me’ is in flux, transforming and becoming with each new experience.