Loving and Leaving

Us nomads have to be good at loving and leaving.  At coming together and falling apart. At forming new families and then leaving them and then finding them again. It’s like healing your heart and then breaking your heart over and over and over again, but in the best of ways.  It’s like finding yourself and then losing yourself and then finding out that you were never lost at all.  It’s just different pieces of you are floating around the country…a little bit in a Ford cargo van, a little in a Sprinter van, a little bit in an overland rig, a little bit in a conversion van and then a shuttle bus and a skoolie and there’s all of the friends and all of the family and all of the pieces of you that you’ve given to people along the way. It’s heart warming and heart wrenching.

As I was driving away from pieces of my heart that I left in Wyoming yesterday, these thoughts were running through my mind, and I recorded the words you’re now reading in a voice memo on my phone to reflect on later.  I was thinking of how this family of mine, these nomads, how they make me whole but also pull me into pieces. How beautiful that is. I felt both sadness and gratitude as the pavement flew by beneath me. I didn’t want to leave those pieces of me in the rearview, but I alway know that the road must go on.

In the nomad world, we give out our stickers and we give out van tours and we give out cold drinks from the fridge, but what we’re really giving is ourselves.  We’re giving our hearts and our time and our lives and our love, and we’re getting those things back. In this way, we give and we get, and our tanks remain full.

I feel gratitude for those of you that carry pieces of my heart with you as you roll down the road, and I hope you know that I cherish the pieces of you that I carry, too.  I honor the gift that you’ve given me by leaving a little bit of yourself with me. Thank you.

Cheers to you, my friends, until we meet again in another beautiful place, beneath beautiful skies, and make beautiful memories.