Skip to main content

Displaced


Did I really travel solo to Romania with no lodging lined up?
And did I really stay the night at the home of my driver's family?
Did I leave the next day with a perfect stranger, and cross the border into Ukraine?
Did I really have no idea what I was doing?
Where I was going?
Who I was meeting?
Or how I would return?
Did I really end up in a college dormitory with a young woman who could only speak Russian?
And was I picked up the next day by more new people?
And did I really finally see firsthand the work of those serving refugees?
Did I really hear the stories in foreign languages?
Did I follow their gestures?
Did I receive their thanks?
Their complaints?
Their tears?
Their smiles?
Did I watch shell shocked children blossom during a day designed for them?
Did I walk the streets of Ukraine alone?
Did I really enter strangers' vehicles in foreign countries?
Did I adventure and get mistaken for a spy?
Did I meet friendly people who welcomed me into their homes?
Who fed me?
Whose children became my friends?
Did I watch fields of sunflowers streaming by as we sped back into Romania?
And did I really see the miles and miles and miles and miles of semi trucks really backed up that far at the border?
I have so many questions for myself.
And I know the answer to this wanderer's questioning will always, always, always be a fulfilled and grateful, "yes."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Next Brene Brown

The other day I told my story in depth to another new therapist that I've been seeing for a couple months now. It was shared without tears, stated without question, spoken matter of factly. After I was done filling in the details, she stopped me and said, "I understand better now. In your charts it says you had a psychotic break, and I want to be sure that you understand now that you didn't just have a psychotic break, you suffered deeply from PTSD, which lead into a state of psychosis." God, I love my new therapist. She went on to explain that as we tell our stories and start to open up about the traumas that we have suffered through, we begin to understand better and normalize tragedies that women (and men too) everywhere face. We begin to understand that there hasn't been something wrong with us, but there was a lot of wrong done to us. I said, "Yeah, Brene Brown also had a break down and look where she is now!" She is doing so much great work that im...
2 comments
Read more

Today I Could Have Been Married for More Than Half my Lifetime

  I don't know how I got there or for how long I had been standing within the frame of the door. All I know is that my arms were reaching high over my head and I was pushing against all odds, and against the weight of the crumbling building around me. There were holes in the ceiling and cracks in the walls. The whole structure was shaking, but I stood there with defiant desperation. I would not let it fall. My feet were firmly planted and every ounce of my strength was invested into a false hope of holding up what would have surely crushed me had his arm not reached in and saved me. With one strong and steady swoop I was pulled far from harm's way. In that moment, everything crumbled into a heap on the ground. My dreams, my hopes, my effort, all that I had fought so hard for, everything the building had meant to me. It all came crumbling down. I wanted to be angry, and only briefly felt an overwhelming sadness, before I realized that my life had been spared. I could have been c...
2 comments
Read more