Author: Well Worth Being

I have a passion for holistic health and non-prescriptive self development. I believe in an integrated patient-centred approach to personal transformation and will take each individual on a journey to their unique place of innate health using a variety of modalities including Craniosacral Therapy, Integral Coaching, TIME Meditation, Transformational Yoga, nutrition education and personal psychology. I am also a qualified Mountain Guide which I can combine with other therapies on guided trails. Our bodies are the vessels of our current existence and have an innate intelligence that we simply have to get in touch with in order to live well. Each body has its own stories; my job is to listen – to hear its stories as clearly as possible – and to respond effectively. Through bodywork and coaching sessions and I can re-establish the dialogue between your body and its inherent health and guide you to the best version of you that you can be.

Ten: Toto, are we Home?

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I bought a sari when I travelled through India about a decade ago. I have bought many over the years. They are draped throughout my home as a love sonnet to India and a symphony of remembrance to my paternal grandmother who was born here. But this particular sari is different. Pure slippery silk in the deep cobalt blue you would see in a stained glass window, and woven with pure silver thread, I bought it whilst dating a man I loved. He had spoken of marriage and this was my intended wedding drip. Unable to find it for several years, it was only when packing up my house for this trip that I rediscovered it. I follow the trail of crumbs to find out why.

I depart Sri Lanka in a state of blissful calm having forged more meaningful relationships in a month than I could imagine possible in several years. This maiden visit was not, as I initially believed, eight years overdue but exactly on cue. It contains me. It infuses me. It recodes my DNA. If India inspires my grit, Sri Lanka has been my grace.

The drive from Galle Fort to Colombo International is as slow and mellow as is manic the drive from Chennai airport to Auroville. Psychedelic daydream. Un curated. The hazy persimmon sun hangs between palm fronds tracking the trajectory of the day. A goat runs across the road; its frantic herder throws herself between cars to beat it back in formation. The once comforting and familiar smells assault my nostrils. Human filth molests my eyes. We almost hit a calf. The car lurches. An entire herd takes up a lane on the highway, lumbering, oblivious. Time warps … both linear and spiral … both vertical and multi-dimensional. The sun is swallowed by horizontal smog resting on rooftops. The journey is long; the drive spasmodic. A fairground dis-traction. 

Paving the road to relocate to Auroville has been twelve years in the making and, as my son leaves home—allowing me to create this transition—Auroville is a human experiment in its demise. ‘Paving’ has become a swear word. Trees are massacred to make way for roads, housing, a city of people ready to populate this foreign utopia. I am unsure this still feels like home. But I am suspended in the liminal space between places, external and internal, and I tread tentatively to feel into who I am as a reflection of that.

If Sri Lanka gave me comfort in structured travel, all of my plans for India strangle me. I bite the SriPada white string off my wrist; even that feels like a garrotte. My AuADHD brain causes literal writhing and groaning as I ruminate night and day … sleepless, delirious. It tears open my capacity for worship at the alter of my introspection. Not having been allowed to develop and apply interoception as a child, it is still a struggle in my 50s to discern wants from needs. And as I find myself occasionally still defending my need to travel, I recognise that the intensive course I have sequenced this entire trip around is a decoy to justify taking time out for Me.

Manifestation is directly correlated with what I currently put my energy into, so resistance simply manifests that which I resist. And yet here I sit on that very cusp I fear the most, wanting to change everything about my next few months and paralysed by my fear of making the wrong decision. I’m not afraid of going into the unknown. What I fear most is the not stepping into the unknown … the terrifying prospect of choosing inertia over movement … the feeling into the pause when I have to choose whether to step forward or not … the insatiable courage and curiosity. 

I have spent my life in service to everyone else’s agendas—mother, husband, son—and bulldozed my way through more than the RDA of studies in support of the work I do for others. So, doing anything out of obligation rather than desire has this week become my main gear shift process and priority; a fragile time of subtle recalibration—not wanting to overcompensate and shift too far in the opposite direction … maintaining poise whilst tuning into the silence that still has something to say.

Awareness is, however, only one wing of the bird. I often fly in circles.

I reorientate to—and in—the surrounding forest, looping to begin with so I don’t mistake one red dirt road with another, and then gradually broadening my forays. I reach out to touch the trees. A Mimosa frond closes over my finger; a forest friend reaching back. In the seed of everything is its destruction—a plant, a city, a person, a dogma. As I orientate to my environment I orientate to my Self. It too has the seed of its departure. I take a familiar path. It leads to an unfamiliar field. Am I lost? I wonder. I wander. Everything looks the same. Everything looks different. A creature lurches in the bush; the smell of lemongrass floods my senses. India is a land of distinction and dichotomy. A labyrinthine mystery.

Defined as ‘excellence that sets someone or something apart from others’, the word distinction mocks my equanimity. My son’s six Matric distinctions prove his competency. Confident he will be just fine on his own, one final push and I am solo. Confident I will be too. I pass a sign to Surrender and understand that this is always the very first step in the process of manifestation. It is only in attuning to and creating appropriate conditions that the unfoldment and formation of the foetus can occur. When I open up to what I seek, what I seek will find me. Cows barricade the road. I’ve learned to honk my squeaky e-cycle horn at everyone and everything. Wide-eyed diva eyelashes gaze back. I drive around them. Some things do just need a wide berth. 

Whilst it is seemingly obvious that it’s impossible to survive without also thriving, it’s questionable whether thriving is a feasible notion without the fulcrum of surviving. I regularly throw myself over this tipping point. The love, the hate, the everything in between. When struggle becomes synonymous with productivity and achievement, travel teaches me how to regularly come back to centre. Not permanently; just to feel into the equipoise before the next swing of the pendulum. Expansion and contraction—this is the harmonious interplay of integrating Equanimity.

My itinerary lies frayed on my laptop screen. I piece it together with pliers and superglue, the prescriptive picture on the box no longer the one I am creating. There is another waiting to take shape—I am both creator and student, instructor and imbecile. Struggle is both a personal and universal lack of acceptance. It’s impossible to evolve AND be resistant. Change is like getting caught up in a wave—if I tense up, the force will use my defiance to pummel me; if I loosen, however, I can tap into the water’s power to pop out. To find air. To breathe again.

Sunrise cycles bring a deep bow of gratitude to my father for inspiring the early morning worshiper in me as the colours of Pongal are laid out on dawn-drenched doorsteps in honour of the hope of abundance … that may never come for some. And I reorientate too to the perception of abundance; the value placed on it, and its very nature. My e-cycle eats my trouser leg. I stop to eat another mango. Permission spills out here. I drink it with my morning coffee. I dress it like a Pongal bullock and dance around a Pongal pot dressed in a sari of possibility. I merge temporarily with the me who was here twelve years ago and I slip timelines … and everything I imagine these next three months to be, fall to shreds in the throes of trance.

I listen to Joseph Goldstein on mindfulness. Would he fail me, I wonder, if he knew I listen whilst running in the forest. I overtake a couple on their e-cycles. My body is strong since Chinese cupping and Moxibustion but my gut goes into crisis as it no longer holds anything. The couple return the challenge. I up my game, drawing on reserve fuel, motivating purification as my being busts open and shatters apart less integrous cells that can then be expelled from my body. Healing only fully happens when the system is empty.

I am empty. And full. Both And.

I make coconut shell espresso cups for my new Aeropress and learn face yoga; I drink copious amounts of Marc’s Coffees and invite Chun to facilitate a tea ceremony beside the koi pond at 4 East Coast Home, my new digs; Yashi’s serves up my favourite coconut cappuccinos and Mohanam prepares special thalis I consume whilst writing content for their new sustainable business website. I don’t skip a day without fresh fruits and green coconuts and I am resetting my system physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. Travel—and India specifically—has the capacity to both shatter my heart into pieces and break it wide open.

I don’t need red sequin shoes. I don’t need a false guru. All I need is the heels on my feet and the capacity to swiftly tap them together three times. And I am home; not to a physical space but a place within myself I no longer want to escape.

Nine: From Blisters to Bliss

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I stare at the words on my laptop screen, images stare back at me. Like a 3D puzzle, it makes sense only when I stop trying to see what I know … surrender to what the image knows of me. I discern the bigger picture when my eyes learn the images in a different code. Everything I require requires something from me.

Arrival in Galle at Le Bella Inn 1912 is to a celebrity welcome. Procrastination terrifies me so, with my precrastination skills, I made this reservation four months ago. Exalted as the very first person to book a room here, it is presumed that my lucky charm energy resulted in subsequent non-stop bookings, including a dozen from South Africa where the owner has recently toured. Within five minutes I have his oath to assist me with a long term visa extension next time I am in Sri Lanka. Wise action is the path to manifestation.

For me, the first thing to do on arrival anywhere is to walk. But a sign outside proclaims that life starts after coffee. The 19-year-old waiter brings me real coffee; his t-shirt tells me that dreams only work if you do. Manifest is a verb. So, the second thing I do is walk … compelled to keep walking until my feet have drawn the maps on my body and my soul starts to recognise the terrain. Competency building to find my vibe; to dispel my demons into the cobbled roads. The difference with aging as I travel is that my inner elements require a little longer to find resonance with the outer; I need a little longer to calibrate; to integrate. If I don’t immediately do the thing I fear, I get locked in the inertia of it. A cobra recoils into its basket, its flute-playing master closes the lid. Imprisoned. The gun metal ocean tones reflect the rows of cannons of this once heavily defended island. Gun fire shoots me back to the 5-year-old desecrated by her molester on the cannon at the not so defended Durban Library.

An ancient on a bicycle delivers coconuts to Tap House across the road. LKR200 he states. Tapping into the distinction between tourist and traveller I follow the trail to the source, encouraged now to leave the confined bastion of Galle Fort and venture to the street markets. The mania of the city always calms me; slows my stride; brings me closest to my core. Traffic that makes no sense; people and dogs slipstream in flow. I join the harmonic discord. Brightly embellished fishing vessels and cats devouring discarded tails counterpoise the stench of death at the fish market. I follow a cow across a traffic circle. Vehicles mirror me. Fruits and vegetables with knobs and spikes and colours never seen in Cape Town’s aisles of homogenised produce. And king coconuts for LKR100. I get two. One young for ‘drinking’ and one mature for ‘eating, drinking’. I stroll the streets and back through the sally port still eating the flesh on arrival back at the Tap House: Cool King Coconut LKR450 affirms my mini adventure that stretches me into the edges and keeps me real. What ‘feels right’ is simply what feels familiar. When’s it’s uncomfortable—when it burns—that’s when it matters.

Forged in the fire; more beautiful for the fire; I find equilibrium in the water. But first a run—the fire of dynamic meditation to release the kundalini energy to cleanse my emotional body. I do four laps of the fort walls; each re-turn to the lighthouse exhibits another sublime perspective of the rising sun. I have my skipping rope. It strobe-lights the view and I zone out as my entire being becomes a part of my sensory experience and my cells vibrate with joy. Whereas I once I adhered to following my blisters, I now surrender to Joseph Campbell’s true adage and follow my bliss. Exorcising self sabotage is not a once-off event. Magick is a process; practice makes practice.

Writing too takes practice. The foetal heart is formed as it travels in contraction over the brain to nestle in a knot of chambers in its slotted cage in its chest. I write with my heart brain. I write until the writing writes me. Reconstructed. The Tetris Effect. 

Imagine a city where the culture isn’t about sitting down to eat or drink; where the main purpose of walking isn’t to shop. Imagine reverting to tribal culture being genuine progress, where people connect and engage over music, dance, shared experience. Where you can be normal even without an addiction. Conversations can often sound something like back and forth WhatsApp exchanges—threads frayed, only randomly matching. Glimmers of a stitch.

When I travel my body reprograms my brain with felt senses and shifts my approach from top down to bottom up. Sensory signals or guesses; I get to choose which side of the scales to place each experience. It is only with the heart brain that one can ultimately fully comprehend. Cognitive dissonance lingers in a dark skull box. The blueprint knows where to inspire and where to protect. Denied ecstasy … also disillusionment. I feel.

I stare out the taxi window en route to Colombo Airport; words look back. Forests and hanging fruits. Fecund. Phallic. Feral I am. The wanting to stay taints the wanting to go. Gratitude. Grit. The wanting. The waiting. The pause. Breathe. The driver straddles the lanes. Neti neti.

Waiting at the airport for the international flight to Chennai, the tension of the opposites waits with me. I attempt to connect the dots back to who I was when I arrived at this place a month ago. Deer-eyed. Interrogated. The Circle of Zen is not always a simple brush stroke. This cycle that has brought me back to the same place is an explosion and collapse of rainbows and black holes. Order, chaos and everything in between. Each new day a new me. Travel creates the earth’s tarot cards that give direction based not on cardinal points but on the ever-churning and spiralling internal highways that never get me lost. Because I can never be lost. Because I am always right here. Where are you?

After a month in Sri Lanka, I will have to re-orientate my being around my old lover; India … to feel if her devotion is strong enough to hold me. Usually when I’m anxious I shop online. The only thing available to me is an upgrade. “Gulp!” I don’t want to leave but know that I must … it is only in the leaving that I will be able to return. Sri Lanka has chipped away at my heart and snuck inside. If you look real close you will notice the chains are broken.

Eight: STaY WEiRD

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I don’t only walk to preserve my budget. I walk to get lost. To see things the driver obstructs; to hear things the engine exiles. Humming birds and porcupine quills. I walk fast; my feet attempting to keep pace with my brain. Both, therefore, get lost fast too. I don’t only get lost of my own volition; I get lost following the erroneous lefts and rights, mismatched hands and words, often both unwittingly pointing me in directions I am loathe to explore. My internal maps plot emotional puzzles poured out of the box onto muddy roads, and I hold both the anxiety of not knowing and the wisdom of where I am.

I spiral the town. A tuk tuk driver has passed me several times on the 10km walk to cover a 4km distance trying to find my way to the Wewurukannala Vihara Temple. “Get in. No money, I help you”, he says, and drives me left where the last hand indicated right. Giant Buddhas and the tunnels of hell. Formidable trolls and grotesque monsters. Torturers and demons. I run from Dante’s Inferno into the den of the temple elephant fighting its chained feet in its own version of hell. Punishment can sometimes come without crime. Movement is not always a choice.

Pushing into physical, emotional, mental and psychic (sweet) pain is the system’s means of purification and it is with this knowing that I follow my path. The roaming map of cardinal points and dotted lines is redundant. To plot the sights I have to find meaning in the terrain. It’s never this OR that. No absolutes. It’s only ever both AND that. Travelling expands me into the dynamic landscapes of the outer and the inner and gives me prompts to live into. It shifts my perspectives and changes my reality, stretches me to shed the ego system in favour of the eco system that informs my knowing rather than my known.

INJF, 29/11, Enneagram 4. I have attached to labels that work for me to shed the ones maliciously given. I struggle with my tangled mind and restless body over liquid marzipan dressed up as a regular flat white, at Dots Co-working Surf Cafe. I’ve been avoiding the coffee spots here. Because it’s Ceylon. It’s all about tea. Opportunistic to a fault, though, any market here is swiftly seized; entrepreneurship aroused by Europeans clamouring door-to-door for real espresso. If Hiriketiya is the goldmine of coffee lovers, Dots is the golden goose and the coffee costs its weight in gold.

STaY WEiRD demands the wall behind Hiriketiya Beach. Last night’s storm has brought the cold river to the ocean. I swim in pockets of remembered waterfalls and ride the waves. Bodysurfing; floating; buoyant. It often takes complete isolation from the regular distortions and distractions of daily life to sit with Me; to not turn away from the things that haunt and hurt; to allow those too to dissolve and discharge. I merge.

Having compensated for so long around ADHD and narcolepsy, perched on that cross-over spectrum with autism, has been a struggle to some degree but mostly a blessing. It has caused me to almost lose or take my life; has gotten me into a whole lot of risk taking, and resulted in some radical burnout episodes. Yet it has also forced me to up my game in motherhood; driven me to all kinds of personal, financial, health and study achievements, and encouraged an immense amount of courage to bubble up from my depths. It is my superpower.

As with maps, labels and identities do not a human being make. They give a guideline to better understanding. Integration is the full access key to cohesion. The terrain is in a constant state of dynamic change as other factors come into play and change the landscape; as new developments get constructed, as new roads get build, as old ones grow over or go into disrepair or are totally demolished. Being is also a verb.

Men with hoes dig and sandbag; the beach collapses like I do into the river in flood. Sun beds teeter on the edge. Always alert, evaluating, deliberating, I show them where to dig a channel to let the water out. Diversions are sometimes required. I linger at the beach, perched on a rock at the far end where my eyes can soften and settle on the hazy palm-encrusted crescent panorama of sea, surfers, sun worshipers, and that spray-painted wall on the very edge of the surreal.

When I travel I don’t have the same drains on my energy. My attention, intention and energy are (hyper)focused on making things good in the world. I feel a great call to go where my work is most needed and valued. I give of my gifts, my skills, my experience and logical thinking. I give of my heart and my commitment. There’s a sense of symbioses that pulls on my year’s word, Equanimity. My work changes lives. It is egotistical to feel insufficient. Arrogance and humility are upside down. I treat a young foreigner. I ‘see’ violation. “It’s not your fault”, I say. She weeps. “It’s not your fault”, I repeat. #metoo

‘It is the intentions, the capacities for choice rather than the total configuration of traits which defines the person.’ — Amelie Rorty

I recognise the irony in how inconspicuous I feel in a place I am so different and yet in Hiriketiya Bay where there are so many people who look ‘like me’, I get that uncomfortable edge of standing out. I micro-dose on public exposure and retreat to the containment of my homestay where writing and meditation are my closest allies and comfort. Detecting a tendency to be infatuated with being the outlier; the weird one; the pioneer who many only understand in hindsight, it can also find me fatigued. I have lapses justifying myself; I play myself down; lose focus trying to conceal myself. The pendulum is my kryptonite; it swings too high. Vertiginous.

The inner parts, both real and also not true, are identities to observe and let go … parts that need befriending not battling. I hold it all in dualistic dynamism: the anxiety with the joy; the isolation with the connection; the contraction with the expansion. The true warrior transmutes conflict into dance and thus the battle ends. Building courage is like building a muscle. I am not fit like I have previously been, but I am strong. I have lost inches of physical matter and, since the cells hold memories, the secreted physical waste drains emotional and mental sludge too.

Hot bitter coffee juxtaposed with warm mango and coconut flesh. My body takes it all and condenses it into a concise and accessible mingling of tastes and textures that create my human experience. I greedily assimilate, remaking all that dwells beneath my skin. I want to change my name to days of the week. Every day is a poem; a metaphor; a waymarker with no final destination. And my body is the poet.

My last day in Hiriketiya brings symbolic showers, an apt affirmation of renewal as I wander to the Bay for a final swim. The ocean is my church. I lie on my back and gaze at the clouds; gentle rain anoints my face.

Next stop, Galle Fort.

Seven: Amniotic Floating

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Places leave imprints on the soul. Like lovers, we exchange DNA and leave a part of ourselves in each other. Like attracts like so, just as consumption of any substance creates a resonance for more, so too do these places I traverse set up the frequency of return. Since arriving at Mama Lanka’s bosom, my eyes no longer strain for familiar comfort, my ears find solace in the sounds. 

But it’s not about seeing anything new but rather seeing everything anew.

The words composure and sangfroid are common synonyms of equanimity. While all three words mean ‘evenness of mind under stress’, equanimity suggests a mind only rarely disturbed under great strain. Stress tears the gloopy untransformed caterpillar from its chrysalis; it cracks the shell from the inside, killing the unformed baby bird.

A friend told me not to worry too much about my food addiction, that I would find connections to fill that void. I feel fed through my senses. How right she was. Our fears simply show us what we are searching for.

A mongoose scuttles across the road. A smudge of baby bird yolk on its snout. And I’m on the move again. Belching exhausts,, burning plastic … potholes big enough to devour a small person. City life layered between rice paddies. Coconut groves. Dogs sleep in doorways to keep cool and across roads to keep warm … and politely keep watch at food stalls. Hope lives. A gormless looking water buffalo lifts an opportunistic egret into a marsh. Horns are honked as greeting. Hairy brown coconut shells on spikes pierce the earth to scare marauding crows. Scalps on sticks. A dog run free still choked by its owners chain. Freedom wears a cosh.

Each day of travel breathes change into me, like the changing landscapes I am tugged through by growling grumbling tuk tuks. The earth turns slowly, the tuk driver freewheels; gains little momentum. Captain Jack Sparrow glowers at me from the fabric ceiling. Are we there yet?

If Vipassana was solitary confinement, and Kandy was fast track freedom into the frenetic, Hiriketiya is the equilibrium, the poise. Like the literal rows of surfers on every wave the bay can conjure, it is the place that balances the familiar on both sides of the spectrum. Arrival at Sand Dollar House is like coming home; it even has a dog called Bella. No belching smoke, no burning plastic … and the opinionated peacocks have enough to say to override the discordant ice-cream truck … mostly. It is a beautifully considered space for quiet introspection away from the carnage of resort-style escapades yet, a short walk away for swims and … yes … runs.

Like bubbles rising up through honey, calibration needs to breathe. And to run is my best form of breathwork. Movement, I have come to reflect on, isn’t a diversion. It’s a purification … it’s pure liberation. My teacher says I must “run first, then class”. “Purify physical body to unlock trapped kundalini energy”, he adds. He gets me. One of the few, he accepts my all.

Running the bays in the early morning avoids heat and gives a glimpse into the behind-the-scenes local vibes, while the throngs of tourists on surf holidays are sleeping off their cocktails. I have the beach almost entirely to myself. As an indication I’m on the right map, I see an actual sign Connect the Dots to Dots Co-working space and surf cafe … I get my laptop and go for coffee. The dog has taken the best seat in the house.

My runs are short; they take long. The view refocuses me, the sunrise blinds me, and I drop for expansive moments into the magnitude of connection. A vicious dog stops me in my tracks, grabs my leg and tries to bite me. White with a black head, it reminds me of the bird at Vipassana, content with its shadow part that still remains … a reminder of work to be done. Done with fighting, I sternly grab the scruff of his neck and look him square in the eye. “NO!” I declare. He listens better than a few men I know and runs off on his way.

In the months before my departure, anxiety sat on my shoulder and coaxed me into researching, plotting and planning; it collaborated with my intuition around what I felt I needed and would need as I progressed. A structured itinerary to provide the containment for the journey to flow. Every place I chose has dosed me with the medicine I need.

To affirm and highlight this wise inner voice, Saturday night brings waking through the night to club music. And chanting. At 1am the music is throttled. The chanting remains; no liquor licence required for sustainable living. Fireflies surround my bed like glow-in-the-dark stars. Am I dreaming the whole thing?

Blue Beach beckons like sirens. I hear the call and walk the 2km to a tiny fisherman’s’ bay. And, like sirens, it thrashes me over jagged sea-urchin-encrusted rocks. I bleed. Bloodletting is clearly still my medicine. But, if you’ve read my previous updates, you now know the way to remove a leech is simple—just a squirt of salt water. I immerse my being in an entire bay. The waterfalls all run here and all the metaphorical leeches that cling are cleansed away.

Life right now is all about beach runs, ocean bathing and coconuts. I travel solo to get from myself what I seek from others. where I can meet myself in fullness. I don’t travel because I am brave but because if I don’t travel I will die.

Sand Dollar House is expanding and looking for longterm lets—it is the perfect space for writers, artists, therapists, surfers and free-spirited wonderers; a haven away from the hustle and bustle where you can perfect your craft whilst still having easy access to the most beautiful bays and a multitude of local and international bars, restaurants and shops. Oh how tempted I am.

You can’t stop the waves but you can learn how to surf. I am taking this purely metaphorically as I watch the surfers and feel only JoMo floating on my back in the over-salted swell, needing no balance because the water cradles me, supports me.

Every step I take is a paving stone on the road to my future, a stem cell in the placenta of my development. I am both pregnant with potential and also that potential being hatched.

Maybe I really can have it all.

Six: The Tension of Opposites

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To retreat is to pull back or withdraw. It also means haven or refuge. A retreat is not a defeat, but a commitment to adjust or rethink. It can be a noble endeavour to recoil from the outside world in order to sink deeper into one’s inside world. It can be the only safe way to develop and enhance one’s mind, heart, body and soul so as to gradually reform old habit patterns and show up for oneself in a more appropriate and supportive way.

The man I married professed to have 18 wives; claimed he didn’t know which one he would wake up to each morning. During the 15 years of marriage it was a boast; his own personal harem he’d say. During the 2 years of divorce, however, I was schizophrenic, bipolar … shamed, an outcast … abandoned by friends and family alike, I found my way by moving … down the road, up a mountain, or across the globe … anyhow and anywhere … “Can’t you just be normal?”

Stories make sense of my world. Everything comes from myth and is told in parables. Words haunt me. Memories are fulcrums that our futures are hinged upon; the seesaw that highlights the anchor point in its motion. As I write, the voices ask what’s the point, who are you to speak about your experiences, what makes you so special, no one is interested in what you have to say, go to your room, eat your food and keep quiet, don’t interrupt me. I write like  I live: scrappy. Undisciplined, I break the rules.

As someone who has had many life periods of not wanting to be here, I have developed a capacity to divert attention from feeling isolated, abandoned and generally misunderstood into copious amounts of diploma courses, research and, more recently, podcasts. I learn to live better through gaining knowledge about why I am, how I am, and how better to channel my unique gifts and superpowers into my work, my relationships and my step-by-step manoeuvres on life’s labyrinthine map. Without movement, however, this can become rumination … even stagnation.

When I checked in at CT Int’l I was overweight—and I’m not talking about my baggage. I had been overriding my body’s homeostatic drive with months of anxious buffering against the outside world, the inert emotional sludge now hanging off my dense physical frame.

Arrival at Sinharaja Kurulu Ella Eco Resort after 7 hours of potholes, downpours, dust and sensory overload is New Year’s Eve. My psyche wants refuge. I forego the trekking in the trees for washing under waterfalls. I’m not allowed to trek alone here; they say I’ll get lost. They saw me coming. My jump rope lies coiled, cobra like, at the bottom of my bag. Unused; lifeless. The snake of transformation comes instead in the form of a rescued python my host fetches me to see. It too is immobile in the bottom of a bag waiting to be set free.

As I begin to work into my word for the year—equanimity—I assess whether travel too is simply a diversion from the battles going on inside. It is, of course! And also, of course, it isn’t. It’s like water that falls over rocks, sometimes flexing around them and sometimes carving right through. Never clinging, it gains momentum, flows in and out of all spaces, and keeps moving. Structure generates its flow. And ultimately it merges with the ocean without separation. Humbled.

A word closely related to equanimity is homeostasis, which is defined as the desire for the system to return to so-called normal. How long will this recalibration take? I shame myself for trying to rush it. This is allostasis, the system’s means of achieving stability through change. But what happens when the system is constantly trying to compensate for an abnormal emotional or physical environment? The set point gets recalibrated as an abnormal normal and the system goes into a compromised state of harmony.

A black and turquoise butterfly keeps banging its head on my window. A woodpecker taps on the tree outside. I meditate, I breathe, I contort. Peace descends, strips me, leaves me naked. The tension of the inner critic takes its cue. Slithers up. It clings to me like the leeches sucking on my flesh on New Year’s Day. It lambasts me for being so unproductive, so sedentary and I have to wonder, is this hedonistic—not contributing, only experiencing? What’s normal anyhow?

I walk down to the water, modestly covered; back up not so. The cascades cleanse me; expose my feral. The river is never the same; neither am I. Water is my greatest teacher … it clings to nothing. Except my laundry. Nothing dries in humidity. My skin is moist. I haven’t eaten much since arrival—the water fast during my first week in Sri Lanka merged into mostly fruit and only the occasional vegetable. And as the physical buffering has dropped away, the emotional baggage has too. A resolution isn’t a miraculous instantaneous transformation; it is a gradual ratcheting and greasing of the cogs of change until, slowly slowly, the machine works on its own, unconsciously competent.

There is a distinction between nomad, tourist and traveller. You get nomadic travellers and travelling tourists yet there is a distinction between the three. Whilst a nomad makes a life of travelling and a tourist escapes life through travelling, a traveller slips somewhere between the two as a touristing nomad. I was mostly a tourist whilst married; I could only dream of the nomadic life. It was the tension between the opposites that exposed the traveller in me. I doubt I will ever be a typical tourist again and, as I create a map for my inner nomad to navigate, I travel.

I am mutable. I travel to be anyone I want to be—the harem, the schizophrenic, the deranged. I don’t have to be who I was yesterday. I want to change my names to days of the week. Even that feels limiting.

The jungle breathes for me now, the rivers move me. I offer my host a craniosacral session—I miss my craft—and get gifted a breadfruit curry in exchange. The days now are all about waterfalls and perfumed fruits; connection and comfort. There’s elemental alchemy here. As I plot the route and navigate the journey, it is like placing pins in a globe of the earth. Travel is an opportunity for data gathering and those pins are mirrored like acupuncture needles mapping the nadis and activating the elemental chakra bodies. The trapped energy is released to turn the wheel, and the gears lock in and ultimately drive movement.

Traveller acupuncture. The quintessential calibration tool.

Already my trip has shifted radically through meeting new friends and reconnecting with old ones. I feel into whether the re-planning is due to fear of boredom in the pauses or whether they are legitimate growth-through-travel opportunities. The adventure has begun to sweep me up and I am not resisting … it feels like doorways are stretching open and luring me across the liminal spaces of transition like a space gate.

A baby monkey hangs from the balcony loitering with intent to steal my banana. Ferns hang from high branches, hitching a ride from the undergrowth into the canopy; an umbrella for the plants and creatures beneath. Tension palpates instinct, the neuro pathways create their own patterns, building without thought or knowledge of where the pathways will lead.

I go for one last plunge. I say goodbye to the river … for now. The rocks provide the momentum for both of us. “I’ll meet you in the ocean.” I say.

Next stop Hiriketiya Bay 🐳

Five: Cleansing and Ritual

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With each departure I feel the pull to stay and the pull to go. The journey ahead is again unknown and begins with negotiating a fare with the tuk tuk driving brother of my hosts at Vegetable Garden House. “Seven or eight hours drive”, he says. I offer forty Dollars, he counters with seventy and we settle on fifty-six plus I’ll buy lunch en route.

We climb past the sparkling lake. The temperature goes in the opposite direction. Tea plantations form stairways to the moon. And Buddha stands watch above it all. The Empire turns in its tepid grave. Despite the attraction I can neither ignore or negate the shadow side. What is seen as a lake is in fact a dam for tea irrigation; a pool of pesticide run off and an unnatural pool depriving the villages and eco systems downstream.

Whilst most folk deny their shadow in favour of their light, I err on the side of the opposite. I don’t curate; I mine. I unearth diamonds under layers of coal; seeing all facets is my superpower.

We descend the stairways of rice paddies, returning to the heat of the day. Far from hell, I consume the variegated landscapes for lunch. Sense doors are gateways to my soul; the only relevance of the external is my response through the portals of sight, sound, taste, touch and smell. To find that sweet spot of reflection and integration it is important to not mistake resistance for discernment and to recognise that aversion and craving brings neither respite nor the fulfilment of desire. If pleasure cannot give life meaning then the lack of pleasure cannot take meaning away.

The dots of the puzzle can join in a multitude of ways; A to B is not always obvious. Like the precariously poised hillside stalls, adventure brings teetering between groundedness and flight.

The driver chews betel and spits russet saliva. A wave washes over my foot. He drives faster in the rain. Dogs flee. Ganesha removes no obstacles. Shiva with his cobra necktie looks indifferent. Betel alkaloids can stimulate adrenalin or euphoria … he’s not euphoric. The roads aren’t worthy of a map and the tuk tuk has the suspension of a hobbled rodeo bull, so bumpy my phone logs mileage. The journey is long, but I learn to recognise that interesting is more important than speed.

A wall of water; I arrive in the rainforest. And all is calm.

New Year’s Eve is just another Sunday. No pressure and anxiety or pretending to resolve to be a better version of myself. No contrived celebrations to shed some old me that likely will still exist tomorrow. No hedonistic and redundant rituals laying pathways of expectation and failure. No false festivities and empty intentions that negate the reality that tomorrow will be just another Monday.

Instead there is the forest and the river and the rampant wildness reminding me of life’s constant flux of endings and beginnings. Nothing is ever the same. So I chant and I meditate and I climb into bed listening to the lullaby of it all. My intention with the ending of today is to use each and every night as an opportunity to assess and recalibrate so that each and every morning is a new year, a new day and a new me … to use each and every exhale as a letting go and every inhale as an invitation to the new.

Be mindful of this moment; this moment is your life … said someone.

I wake in the still darkness, hungry … for a cold shower, for meditation and chanting, for a swim in the waterfall and for perfumed fruits and real coffee. All is satisfied in that order. And just as an added bonus, a leech attaches itself to my wrist. I want to keep it there for a while. Always fascinated by the ancient healing technique of bloodletting, it feels part of the cleansing ritual. My host sprays salt water on it and it drops to the ground. There will be more where that one came from.

It feels as though I have slipped dimensions; through a crack in the continuum … as though someone else is living my comparatively normal life back home and I have escaped the constructed reality that had me chained.

Four: The Peak of Pilgrimage

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Mercurial Gemini with a strong intellect and speed, I get myself so tied up in knots over labels and judgements; flummoxed by the dangerous new age bullshit of either being in my head OR in my body. My pilgrimage this past year has almost broken me; taken jackhammers to my psyche trying to understand where the unique intersection is between the paper doll, the shadow and the self; made me sick wasting energy justifying who and how I am … on blending two parts of myself that were never separate.

“Now, about that word authentic. It is related to the word author—and you can think of it as being the author of your own self.” — Marion Woodman

Being authentic and spiritual makes me the more real, not the less. It guides me on those internal spiralling pilgrimages down passages of grief and awakening. I touch into every part of me that is also a part of you and therefore a part of everyone and everything in the universe. I can’t hide or deny any aspect of myself. And so I write and I walk and I journey to the places most are afraid to go; places I am mostly also afraid to go.

Slightly Chilled. The name of a guest house I pass on my walk to find real coffee. Nescafe signs send me away. Coconut time. I walk to the river and put my feet in the coolness. Vegetable Garden House is Super Chilled—the family, the garden setting, the beautiful young travellers I meet over delectable Sri Lankan breakfast dishes and weird Sri Lanka coffee.

I wake before the three alarms I have set. It’s 1h40. I am dressed in full hiking gear when I climb into bed at 8pm. My fast-pack is loaded with every warm item of clothing I brought with me, including the pink shawl (the Diana I take on every pilgrimage), a kikoi, extra socks, an entire change of clothing and merino wool gloves. Geared up with head torch and rain jacket, I emerge from my room to the sight of a woman also kitted out for the climb. Her name is Cami, she’s from Paris and it’s her 32nd birthday. It’s hard to imagine I’m twenty years her senior. I feel 35 again, meeting young travellers on their first round of adventure. I get the sense I am being appraised with a measure of curiosity; they are not sure which bracket to place me in as I am the age of the mothers who are in the process of making home and being normal.

Walking this path often means walking alone. And alone isn’t about being without people but without the capacity to articulate my sense of self. Relationships fail for me because I attach to an ideal based on what the world wants from me rather than what I myself want for me; I attach to the illusion of what it promises despite knowing that intentions are generally to ‘fix’ my rabid self reliance in order to make others feel less conflicted and more comfortable with their own erroneous attachments.

Most hikers in Cape Town know the Newlands Forest 400 steps. Add another 5,100, throw in a gazillion tons of concrete, hundreds of neon lights, tea stalls, sweet stalls, Buddha statues, snack bars and innumerable walkers from as old as ancient and as young as infant. It’s a lot to take in. I have the intention to do two nights in a row up SriPada. I am delusional.

Like the star at the top of the Christmas tree, the cluster of neon lights marks the end point of the climb, where the foot of Buddha is believed to have dented the top of the hill. I am initially captivated by the continuous row of lumens lighting up the path until I recognise the reality and the altogether fabulous absurdity of it all. A monk ties a white string around my wrist with blessings for the journey and, similarly to the Camino de Santiago scallop shell, I am branded a pilgrim and given kudos for my commitment.

I navigate new pathways and pave new neurological networks. Like the silk of the spider’s web or moth’s cocoon, the white pilgrims threads create initiation networks, a semi-permanent anchor on the railings. I lay paths that others may follow, not because I know my way but so others may know it’s okay to not know. There are no solid  lines on this map. Only hyphenated. A dot-to-dot puzzle. This is my Sadhana.

People sleep where they sit. A young girl walks holding her mother’s hand; sleepwalking. A man walks barefoot; it’s his 15th time to the Peak. “Is that a spiritual thing?” asks my walking companion. “No, my boots got too heavy”, he replies, focused fully as he places each footfall tentatively on the gnarled concrete. But I feel differently. That kind of pain can only be a spiritual experience. People carry babies and toddlers, people sing to encourage each other, and the elderly use the  railings to replace worn out knees. Babies cry; some adults too. It’s an endless river in flow, night after night after night. The same yet always different.

Everything in life is pilgrimage. Nothing we do or say or love is unique. Yet, in pursuit of being individual … special … we try to carve our own way and, in doing so, fail to recognise the struggle, the value, the pull, of all the millions that came before. And without proper ritual to honour the trajectory of sameness, we ultimately get lost.

I lie awake on the second night in the shadow of SriPada imagining the thousands more trudging to the peak, and I know that as weird and whacky a pilgrimage it is, I am bound to do it again … many times. People who judge me for my atypical free-spirited escapades also follow me vicariously; afraid to step into the groundlessness of the abyss … smothering themselves instead in the illusion of hoarding for something that never comes. A guru tells me that I’m on the right path when fewer and fewer people understand me. 

I travel solo so I can disappear into a framework of existence that doesn’t require justification or proof of my being. I travel solo to untether myself from these insidious and relentless chains curtailing my capacity to simply be. I travel solo so I can re-understand myself.

Courage is my currency.

Three: It’s a Jungle out there

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At international departures, Cape Town, a father bribes his daughter with a lollipop to “kiss uncle on the mouth”. The gateway to abuse. I’ve been there. Always having to ‘be nice’, to not offend, I still don’t always recognise it until in hindsight when boundaries have been violated and trust already fractured. It happened last year in India with an 80-year-old man I saw as a father figure, until he threw me out of his home when I denied his lascivious advances. My son called it, told me how obvious his angle was. I felt foolishly naive.

And it happened again this week in the spice garden. Well regarded and highly respected, I wanted to meet the almost 70-year-old herbal medicine doctor. At 50, his wife was run down by a train and he retreated to a cave on a barren hill where he has lived the past 17 years. Slowly slowly, sherpa style, he began by planting a simple vegetable garden to sustain himself and gradually expanded the planting, integrating his holistic medicinal knowledge. An area of regular landslides and death due to receding vegetation is now jungle once more. I caveat this with an ‘allegedly’ at the end of each statement as what followed gives me cause to doubt. I get a tour of the spice garden and a pulse reading and feel inspired to return as a volunteer to help him reach his target of adding another 8million trees to the 2million already planted. And then he hugged me and told me I would have to dedicate three hours a day to sex and that my energy was causing him to want to do things to me with his tongue. Confused, I busied myself in the herbal shop, got financially exploited for remedies I don’t trust are the real deal and fled in the getaway tuk tuk back to Kandy. Trust … boundaries … total weirdness … that’s life, although it shouldn’t have to be.

The benefit of approaching menopause is the transition from fertile body to fecund mind. I am driven more into the space of exposing sexual harassment; not remaining quiet; not protecting anyone regardless of how incredible a human they are (allegedly). Even when it still feels awkward and uncomfortable doing so, I want to work towards flicking off the ‘nice switch’ in the moment of feeling violated.

“From earth”, is the new retort to men more interested in my marital status than my birth place. I add, “my wife is taking care of my son.” A happy boundary. Despite my occasional need for a facetious push back, I have found the Sri Lankan people to be engaging, kind, helpful and super chilled. Safe I am.

Navigating a new country is like learning a new language. And Madugalle Friendly Gamily Guesthouse has become a familiar language. This is a new comfort zone. I consider canceling my trip to climb Sri Pada to stay two more nights … but there is also the tensile force pulling me to challenge myself on whether I have in fact found a new way to engage with this relentless downpour and climb 7km up 5,500 steps to almost 2,500m, a 1km ascent with a gazillion pilgrims … starting at 3am to summit for sunrise. This all sounds mad, right? 

Linda Goodman sums me up in her Sun Signs tome I discovered as a teenager when I had lost myself in the dysfunction of my family system. “Why walk when you can run?” is the single line adhered to my psyche. I use this as justification for my special kind of crazy.

One last delicious curry—green beans and sweet potatoes—at Mrs Madugalle. A walk for a final coffee at Natural Coffee Kandy. It’s still closed. And rain comes tumbling down … in drops, then sheets, then buckets. The coffee is worth it; waiting in the rain isn’t. The people are short enough for the countless umbrellas to take out an eye and the eaves drip exactly where the walkway is. I arrive home wet. Packed and as ready as I’ll be, the only thing to do is get to Vegetable Garden House in Nallthaniya, ten minutes walk to the start of the 5,500 step climb.

I’m great making choices when I have no choice. Confused the first time I heard this, I learn to let go of regrets and accept that I also have to do certain things just to know I don’t want to do them … which means often I have to just go with the (moment)um and know a fail is as good as a win. Not brave enough for the bus, not scared enough for a taxi … the tuk tuk always comes out top. I order a PickMe. I enjoy the road tripping and so far I have had super friendly humans behind the handlebars.

We stop for king coconut and tea. The road is good to begin with and then I understand better why taxis command such a high fare. The roads become potholed and corrugated and there are entire sections of wash away down the mountainside. I feel the bus may have been a stretch too far for me and am grateful for my wise choice. Eventually I hear the voices of all the bugs over the sound of the tuk tuk engine; I see waterfalls and hilltops; I see tea plantations and rice paddies beside dense trees and forest foliage; I see life. NOW we are in the jungle! The first 80km build the anticipation and I keep feeling like I must be there already but with the state of the flooding, the last 25km take as long. Huts, tea houses, shops and lodges hang precipitously from the cliffs. I see the remains of homes not lucky enough to escape the recent deluge. Four and half hours after setting out, the lush and comfy Vegetable Garden House stretches out into a field. It grounds me. No vertiginous sleeping. I commend myself on another excellent choice.

There is a fire in my chest. The doctor warned of a potential healing crisis and, if this is it, I’m going to be just fine. The past months are burning off me now and the two weeks I have been away feel endless and infinite. Before departure my body was in a condensed state of dis-ease and I developed a pathology that causes me to hold my breath. My diaphragm gets stuck; my soft centre curls in on itself … I can get to the precipice of blacking out. As with the packing process, I am paralysed by the phobia of taking up too much space. If I hold my breath will I shrink? I consider if this is why I push myself on runs and hikes. Is it the only time I fully breathe?

Tonight I practice breathing. Tonight I climb. Tonight I allow the jungle to breathe for me.

Two: Christmas Not

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Memories of Christmas Day are entangled with images of a hunk of pig flesh skewered by toothpicks securing pineapple rings and cherries. I stopped subscribing to Christmas cruelty almost twenty years ago and feel relieved to escape this insanity in Sri Lanka.

Mrs Madugalle, owner of Madugalle Friendly Family Guest House (Kandy Inn), keeps me topped up with porcelain pots of Ceylon tea and sits down to chat. I prattle away in my usual way, offering up 100 words a minute on the premise that if only 30 are understood, that’s a good result. Concerned about my lack of appetite since my water fast, she animatedly recommends an Ayurvedic doctor “only two minutes walking from my door”. What allopathic doctors, she says, couldn’t do for her in months with medicines, he cured in three sessions. I booked immediately. As a Buddhist, Christmas day is also just a Monday.

Pierced chakras and moxibustion heat down each shaft into my body and my freakish mind conjures up the Christmas roast. It’s painful … but in a good way. 
“I give you a little massage now?” With nothing more than threadbare towel and scant knickers as personal boundaries; I instantly feel regret for an offer too quickly accepted and, as my mind recreates memories, my muscles become taut at the impending experience of having a strange man’s hands all over my body. Accused of being a prude for most of my adolescence, desperate to be accepted, I dropped many vital boundaries. Perfect prey for the plucking. But this is post-Vipassana … “with a calm and equanimous mind”, I practice instead directing attention to the sensations of my body—“the reality as it is”.

The frequency at which I vibrate—physical, emotional, mental and soulful—attracts the same. If I struggle to trust, untrustworthy people will be drawn to me. As the protagonist changes so do the supporting roles; as the instruments change, so too the melody. I unravel the myth of my life to pull new threads and weave new narratives. It’s not always easy … which is why it’s called a practice.

From feet to head and hair, my entire body is slathered in ghee—ready for the oven—and my head with eucalyptus, until my chi and my trust are restored and detoxified. He’s thorough and brilliant and I feel safe in his healing hands. And that’s how I spend my first three hours of Christmas day and Boxing day—learning lessons in trust. I feel I have changed my tune.

The lotus perfume tacky in my nostrils as I gather with thousands of people at Sri Dalada Maligawa with their offerings. Babies start wailing; sweat drips off someone’s forehead onto my arm. I want to go NOW … a futile fancy. As an ADHD Duracell bunny with narcolepsy and a stroke of autism, there’s always a chance in high tension situations that I will either freak out … or nod off. The drumming begins along with a crush of bodies; a buildup that can only lead to denied expectations. Agitation … near panic; I cover my ears and close my eyes; the air is too thick to breathe. Every second seems like minutes waiting for tardy monks to open shrine doors to momentarily expose the Tooth Relic to masses intoxicated by their devotion. And, with the big reveal, the heaving horde gets propelled like peristalsis past a relic barely visible behind a large man in robes raking in bribes in exchange for enlightenment. Was it even there? Religious dogma. I am disillusioned. Forcing my way through clammy bodies, I at last burst out into the night. The storm clouds close in like primordial fluid. It’s time to contract and retreat to home base. 

Corresponding expansion comes twice a day with a circuit of Kandy Lake where, amidst the excessive sound, plastic and carbon monoxide pollution, reside furred, scaled, finned, fanged, winged and feathered creatures, all seemingly oblivious to the madness of humanity at their threshold.

As a foreigner walking around Kandy Lake, it’s important to trust boundaries … to remain equanimous with every offer of a tuk tuk ride to somewhere I don’t want to go … to never get frustrated repeating myself and to keep an even tone after countless, “no thank you, I want to walk”, “yes, I know where I’m going”, “no, I wouldn’t like to buy gems … wood carvings … your first born …” It’s crazy out there. I politely decline an offer from Lesley “look at my Trip Advisor profile … where you want to go?” to take me any of the places he goes, tell him I’d like to enjoy my walk, and move on. Two monitor lizards, a hundred bats, five dogs and a turtle later, there he stands with the dejected look of a man being dismissed at a bar, a foreign couple shaking their heads at him and moving on. I take his number. You never know, I say, I may want to go somewhere other than around the lake and to see the hope induced mirage of ancient relics.

There’s a worm in my ear that has been boring through my brain since Vipassana. It is the sound of ice cream trucks and rickshaw hawkers playing the high-pitched tunes of programming. Combined—simultaneously—with DJs smashing out some banging beats and megaphone mantras from temples, I feel an impulse. I call Lesley; it’s time for the jungle.

I travel to re-familiarise myself with the harmonious interplay between planning and whim … knowing that one requires the other. I travel to feel into … to breathe into … to emote into … to love into … the infinitesimal galactic marriage I have with the world. I travel not to find freedom but because it is always there.

And here I am at Lal Homestay, a haven from the city, after a tuk tuk tour to Dambulla Cave Temple, a roadside health food eatery in the Ayurvedic spice garden district, the essential coconut (“eating, drinking”), and a walk (scramble) in the rain to the top of Pidurangala Rock. A young girl climbs the rock in strappy Grecian sandals; I suspect they will soon be discarded along with the multitude abandoned footwear. There’s no such thing as bad weather, only choices around how I engage with it. Travel feeds me but hiking does more; the combination is my sweet spot. A quick up and down a rock, shrouded by fresh misty air, tropical rain and lush vistas is the alchemical elixir, the perfume fruit, the lotus flower.

Still restless, I walk some more. In Sigiriya village, I stop at a signpost at a Rasta restaurant: South Africa 7493km. It doesn’t seem possible it could still be so close; it doesn’t feel it should exist at all. I am in my bubble. If no one sees me do I still exist? To make sure, I ask permission to ring the big bronze bell at the monastery. I expand my wonder-full soul with sound. 

I decide not to climb the tourist highlight, Sigiriya (Lion) Rock, because of something I read to Nic from the India photobook prior to both of us departing. On the trip to Chennai Int’l the last time we went to India, I mentioned something we hadn’t had time to do and he said, “that’s ok, Mum, because it means we have something to come back for.” This inspires me to not only return again but to do so with the budget to view Lion Rock from the sky … in a hot air ballon. Yes, that’s a real thing here. And it’s in my crystal ball calendar.

I wake at 3.30am—my body clock having over-compensated by an hour or two—to rain as strong as my desire to walk. The world is a mysterious wonder and when I wander I find the mystery in me. It’s as much a calling as a compulsion. Strong black tea is delivered at 6am and a fruit platter at 7am. And then the wet weather gear gets reinstalled for a morning walk around the Lion in lieu of the summit. Alone on a road between a waterway and a jungle, I have noted the wild elephant warnings and have decided that, if encountered, I will take the waterway and just swim for it.

The squawk of peacocks comes first. An explosion of monkeys from the undergrowth follows.  There is eerie creaking, then the loud cracking and shattering of a tree falling towards the road. The chattering and squealing monkeys line up on the treetops; front row seats at the wildlife playhouse … there’s something there, and it’s BIG! My three Fs are Fight or Flight or Figure it out. Curiosity gets the better of me. But visibility is poor enough in the downpour and, failing climbing up to join the raucous crowd, I can’t see through the density of the first row of trees to claim a sighting. There is leopard here too. What a way to go. But I’m not yet ready. I walk away … slowly, lightly … I am neither prey nor predator.

Returning to Kandy, the real benefit of choosing tuk tuk travel becomes evident with the inundation of cars turning single lane roads into triple lane highways.. It feels like we’re in a getaway tuk tuk. I’m chilled; speed is my vibe. Between bouts of swerving and weaving and extreme driving skills, we take the crucial pit stops: coconut water and sweet fruits.

Roadside, a vendor adeptly carves a mango and bags it … peel and tip still intact yet dismembered from its seed. We stop beside a lake to eat with a view. I pull the skin back and sink my teeth into perfumed flesh, drinking each segment too juicy to chew. The earth stops still for a moment for me to savour what I am living into. Samadhi.

I have discarded the maps in favour of the territory and I am still just getting to grips with the lay of the land. And as I go, I plot my way. There really is no such thing as getting lost.

One: At the Bosom of Mama Lanka

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Those who do not move do not notice their chains. Proclaimed a shrewd woman.

The foetus curls and unfurls in development; contracting and expanding in a natural state of growth. Pupating. Never static. Everything needs space to find its place, to plug into the blueprint of becoming … to emerge and retreat in flow.

My home is that place and space for me. A Bohemian sanctuary of safe retreat and recalibration, this is my womb. Like being under water, all the noises of the outside world shut out, all I hear is the d-doff-doff of the eternal Mother Heart. Foetal eyes closed tight, it’s where I find my rhythm, my momentum, my impetus and vitality. It’s how I can move once more into the world.

And when I move, I travel. 

I travel not to find myself but to discover more of who I am beneath the layers that have been pasted like papier-mâché around my feral human form. I travel to return to mother soul. I travel to find purpose … or a reason to believe that the seeking in and of itself is that purpose. Not everyone has an opus. I go out into the world as a single instrument looking to play; as a puzzle piece with connectors revealed, looking for my bigger picture.

This time I travel to find my way beyond my own mothering womb of 18 years. Against the odds I have nurtured as sacred guardian a soul that needed genesis through my own genetic coding to emerge and flourish in both my shadow and my light. He birthed me when I birthed him, synergistically growing me into the mother he required. The infinity symbol harmonises; a conductor directing and collecting. Having leapt the chasm, he travels now through a new fallopian tube. Tumbling through more primordial fluid into an eerie void, he will land with a gentle thud in the universal uterine wall, transforming it into his own womb space of transition and transformation. His own new universe. A brand new birth.

There is a tensile force in everything—I often reference Jung’s tension of the opposites—and often when I begin my travels I can get stuck in the birth canal. I work hard to break the strength of this force pulling me back into cosy womb space until I feel into the strength of the equal and opposite force pulling me forward into the absurdly lit delivery room. Doha airport proves this time to be that tipping point, stuck there as I am for a seeming eternity, nowhere to go, exhausted from labour pains.

And then, schlooop, I am corkscrewed out. Safe now at the bosom of Mama Lanka in the delivery room of my new birthing, my newly opened eyes seek out the familiar. It’s like India … but different. She is a tired mama with the ravaged features of pillage. And I can’t quite find a connection.

“We must always change, renew and rejuvenate ourselves; otherwise we harden.” Goethe

I rest like a baby, waking for only a couple of hours at a time, discouraged by my floundering sense of adventure. I just need encouragement when courage fails me. Forceps or suction cup; an intervention. So I order a PickMe scooter, ride pillion and get transported to Mount Lavina Beach where dogs shelter from noon behind ancient fisher boats and tourists don’t. The sun feels closer here. It drains the dye from their towels as fast as it paints their transparent-skin puce. My walk is short. A mirage at the end of the beach entices me with seductions of marble lobbies and cocktails; dark roast coffee and a powder room. I draw close. It is a looming relic as old and as weak now as the British Empire that built it; it is the decrepit Mount Lavinia Hotel. I often quip that when I am done with this life, I will just take a long walk into the Atlantic. Some call this dark humour; those who know me nod and smile … whilst others offer to help me in. The Mount Lavinia looks done. Poised as it is over the ebb and flow of the warm Indian Ocean, each lap of a wave beckons siren-like. Rest now, they say.

It’s important not to fight the pull but to go with it to the very depths of where it is calling; only by sinking to the very bottom is it possible to kick back up. Never struggle against a riptide they say. I surrender to the incubator—Kosgama Vipassana Meditation Centre—for an 8-day sit. I arrive in basic black. Everyone is in full white. Shadow against light.

I write volumes in my head whilst sitting cross legged, mostly in the pain of closed eyed stillness. But the words get washed from my brain like monsoon raindrops on parchment. Diana, my paternal grandmother, is always near, shrouded as I am in the shawl I bought so many years … decades … ago when I did pilgrimage to her birth town, Mussoorie, in India. It had to be pink of course as I only just realise, as a counter to all the blue knits she created while I was pickling in utero in primordial juices of undifferentiated gender. I wasn’t meant to be a girl … yet here I am – SO girl and also SO not. It was Diana who birthed me into the writer, the activist, the creative, the adventurer … the quirky crazy bohemian. The exotic in her spawned the exotic in me. She needed an ally. She didn’t knit blue for a boy; she knitted blue because blue was her favourite colour. I have her blue eyes.

The spiritual symbolism of gecko is rebirth, regeneration and renewal. They are guardians and protectors and a symbol of Diana for me. As an apt reminder of her, each evening during the discourse, a black gecko launches itself off the pitch of the hexagon hall ceiling, it’s jaws clenched around a bug too big to eat that it likely caught mid flight. Bad ass. I am transfixed as it stays there in cobra asana before disappearing. The teachings become a hum of white noise until the bell sounds. I am back. Programmed puppet. 

For eleven hours each day I disappear. I am nothing with no identity and no voice … an accumulation of atoms in noble silence—meditator number 11 in room 6A. Room 6A is a mildewy space inhabited only by spiders and geckoes down a dark dusty corridor; the light at the end pulling me towards the cold shower at 4am each day. The big-footed frog clings to the glass doorway. It too is desperate to escape the prison-like barracks I call home for a week. I hate it. And I love it because I hate it.

There is a luminous white bird that flaunts a tail double the length of its body; its head is ink black concealing its enlightenment. A pointy-eared black dog approaches, wide-eyed. My shadow still lingers. I wonder if anyone else can see it … either the shadow or the dog. A black moth loses it’s way and touches down on my head; perhaps there is moonlight there now.

In the mornings I sit at my designated table. 11. It’s at the window high above the road with dense treetops showing off large green coconuts ripe for the plucking, and dates the birds and monkeys have looted; I watch them scamper off with the spoils. I am still not hungry, my body doesn’t want food as I enter day three then day four and five of water fasting.

I watch leaves float from trees so familiar with the letting go, and a frond from a date palm only partially severed from the source of itself and dying now with the umbilical cord still attached. It changes through the hues of the robes I observe on the monks in the Dhamma Hall and on the washing lines—saffrons and subtle shades of chartreuse, and reds. The frond hangs in situ, shackled by inertia.

DDDD-DOEM! Thunder drums and the string musicians pluck the sound of rain as it assaults the earth, first like needles then like baubles. Raised roots are unable to suck it up as fast as it lands. It rises, washing the parched soil like the gallons of water I consume cleanses away the dense matter of the past two months that has barricaded me into this piñata shape. The butterfly within is almost ready to open and expand after so much contraction. 

“Waking up to who you are requires letting go of who you imagine yourself to be.” Alan Watts

It’s easy to break addiction to craving, easy too to break addiction to aversion … it’s the addiction to the peaceful place at centre that is the most difficult to expel. Sankaras get shaken to the surface and I grimace—I don’t want to see them but see them I must—then start again with calm equanimity. The pain I feel today will be the strength I feel tomorrow. Anicca anicca anicca.

A mosquito bites me three times and I spitefully murder it. Broken sila. The hall is plunged into darkness and I wonder if I have been sent to hell. Close to full moon, thousands of ants have sprouted wings and taken flight … on the wrong side of the walls of this octagonal building. Thou shalt not kill. The monk teacher has killed the thrill of lumens to enable a gentle sweeping of their confused bodies out into the free moon air. And the next day it is complete.

This course gave me exactly what I needed. The end. I can’t help but wonder if, just as one grows out of a particular therapist, I have grown out of the requirement for Vipassana courses, like a dudu blanket no longer required once the practice of sleep has been embodied.

The umbilical cord is cut.

Before you begin the journey, you own the journey.
Once you begin the journey, the journey owns you.

PickMe is the Sri Lankan taxi app that keeps the money here and gives it directly to the driver. You can book anything from a ride on the back of a scooter to an eight-seater touring bus. I used the scooters in Colombo, a car to the Vipassana centre in Kosgama and now decide the 3.5-hour drive to Kandy would have to be by tuk tuk.

First stop: green coconut. I pull out my bamboo straw to suck up the what feels like litres of soothing nectar. And the machete finale reveals there is indeed enough succulent white flesh to scoop up and take with me for the remaining tooth-rattling journey.

Tea flows and I crave coffee … sankaras are deeply rooted. “Sugar?” everyone enquires, with that drug peddling haze of desire. I try to see it as a term of endearment.

The church bells ring and I rise, zombie-like from my bed, conditioned now by the morning gong. What bliss! to settle back into slumber for a few more hours. The delightful Mrs Madugalle, proprietor of Kandy Inn (Friendly Family Guesthouse), has prepared vegetable curry for me for breakfast.
“No rice!?”, she clutches her heart, incredulous. 
“Oats porridge?” she ventures. I glibly shake my head. She slumps into the seat opposite me with a half smile, searching my face for irony. Feeling just marginally ashamed yet very much behind my conviction to no longer eat out of obligation, I counter with “simple fruit or veg is just perfect.” I watch my right hand directed upwards doing the wrist twist thing as I talk, adding an occasional sideways head nod, both knowing and having no clue what either mean. Chuckling, with the sideways nod, she settles on beans and pumpkin curry.
“With some dhal?” she adds tentatively. I nod and bow my head in gratitude for this council and opportunity to be heard in all my quirkiness around years of developing food habits that heal me.

Morning tea the British way, waiting for my breakfast, a cat approaches—black with piercing green eyes—and wanders into my room. I walk in after it to ask it to leave and find it has completely disappeared. Perhaps this too is a portal. I feel both nurtured and vulnerable; contained and adventurous … that balanced peaceful place between the aversion and the craving. Kandy Inn is nursing me with healing hands and soothing kindness.

It’s Christmas Day but really just another Monday. I have an appointment with an Ayurvedic doctor after breakfast and then I go exploring Kandy on foot. Natural Coffee Kandy and Tranquil Vegan Rose are first on my list, followed by a walk around the lake and an evening at the Tooth Relic Temple.

Part of the process of growing is to shed as much as it is to acquire. From brutal suctioned birthing into the delivery room, I am now here.

Welcome to the world, baby girl.