My Life’s Backpack of Experiences

Reflections from the shoreline

When we enter chapters of big life change as 2024 will undoubtedly add up for me, it helps to have some grounding. When it feels like your proverbial ship sails into unknown waters, it’s comforting and confidence-building to still see a glimpse of the shoreline, of where you came from and the experiences that built what you are today.

Here on Madeira right now, I can embrace that grounding as I sit on the shore and vision on all to come. The Atlantic Ocean in front of me — a 2024 of international moves and all the packing and clearing that will happen as a result — feels both tsunami overwhelming while still comforting and confidently the exact place I need to be right now.

I remind myself I’m not traveling alone. John and I both bring a stuffed backpack of now over five decades of life experiences with us, including all the magical souls we’ve met along the way. Moving forward prompts a time for reflection and remembering those roots, the shoreline of experiences that we can draw from for strength and inspiration.

A highlight reel of what I bring in my proverbial life backpack as I enter this new chapter:

My Life’s Backpack

I am an early riser that greets the day when the time zone still sleeps.

Pre-sunrise can be my magic time of both new ideas and plowing through the to-do list.

If I give myself space.

I am a muffin-baker and giver.

Beware: unexpected baked goods may show up at your door.

I am a perpetual party host, whatever the situation.

An organized potluck or an encounter on the hiking trail.

I am filling drinks and sharing recipes.

I am the only child of immigrant parents.

Still rooted in an ancestral homeland that I now can fully explore.

I am too often focused on little micro details and miss the big picture.

And I let things build up and then fall behind.

I am working on that.

I am surrounded by an amazing network of women friends, true sisters.

Beautiful souls that make me feel like I’m embraced by a warm, supportive hug.

Even and especially if thousands of geographic miles away.

I am feeling the years and age add up and attempting to take better care of my parts.

Awkwardly embracing child’s pose, more protein, less carbs and decaf.

I am downsizing and learning to let things go, preparing for a move.

Digitizing piles of scrapbooks. Processing memories. Deciding true valuables.

I am an official empty nester and finished with my time of caring for elders.

I am a writer still sheepishly leery of making words public.

Life dances on.

I am grateful for morning coffee, friends reaching out and life’s abundance right now.

I am (increasingly) open to change.

What’s in your life backpack? How would you complete that question: “I am . . . “

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