Postcards from My Next Chapter — No. 1

Jamaica

This wasn’t my first trip after leaving my old life behind.

By the time we landed in Jamaica, my husband and I had already checked many shorter, closer ones off my bucket list. Several of the easier ones weren’t far enough from home to keep me from feeling tethered to the woman I used to be.

Jamaica was different. Jamaica was the honeymoon we never got after a vow renewal, a beginning, a deliberate choosing of each other and of something bigger than either of us had been brave enough to want before.

I wish I could tell you it was the perfect topical escape. It wasn’t.

We got stuck in the airport for hours on the way. Our first room had mold in it; we hadn’t even put our bags down before my hives appeared. The size of half-dollars speckled my chest and neck, and they did not match my super-cute resort-wear set. I had a reaction to a seafood dinner that I won’t describe in detail, but you can imagine the Benadryl coma that ensued. My redheaded husband got burnt slam up on day three. And to top it off, day 5 ended the trip with me blowing out my knee. Turns out people aren't kind when you are being wheeled to the front of the line at the airport.

And, yet, it was still the most peaceful I have ever been in my entire life.

It wasn’t the peaceful vacation euphoria, you know, the one that happens when you aren’t home, stuck in your normal routine. It was something deeper, something it took me a few years to really pinpoint… long after the tropical photos had been taken.

I was allowed to wear what I wanted. Lounge by the pool without explanation. Go for walks without a timeline. Just be who I wanted to be, with no guilt, no judgment, and no one making me feel like wanting things was an inconvenience.

I hadn’t realized how long I had been holding my breath. Until I let out the loudest squeal on a jet-ski!

We were out in the clearest, bluest water I had ever seen in my life. Water so beautiful it didn’t look real. It looked like it would feel like silk if you ran your hands through it. We were far from shore, out in the deep, and I was not driving.

I should have been nervous. I’m not someone who has historically done well with not being in control. Go figure. Years of surviving an unpredictable life will do that to you, you grip the wheel because letting go feels like falling.

But out there, in the deep water, not driving, I felt the safest I had ever felt.

More in control than I had felt in years, because for the first time in a long time I trusted where we were going.

I’ve thought about that jetski a hundred times since then. Not quite able to put my finger on why it felt so invigorating.

I think that’s what reinvention actually feels like when you’re finally in it. Not white-knuckling the wheel. Not steering yourself out of every storm. Trusting instead…and breathing, deeply for once. Letting the water hold you while you take in how impossibly beautiful everything is.

I spent years driving a life that was taking me somewhere I never wanted to go.

Jamaica was the first place I learned to let go of the wheel.

xoxo,

Dr. Court

Next postcard: The Florida Keys. What slowing down and turning 40 teaches you about a life that has been moving too fast.