I have to confess, before this article, I didn’t even know what ‘ Wanderlust ’ meant!
So I Googled it, as you do, and what I discovered was a pretty accurate description of how I’ve spent most of my life.
In the last twenty two years I’ve moved no less than twenty five times!
That’s some serious Wanderlust!
Not only that, I’ve also lived in six different countries, travelled and explored more than sixteen countries, and countless more cities.
I share this with you not to brag, but because what I’ve discovered in my 22 years of wanderlust-ing, and 12+ years of working with women from around the world, is that whether we have a lust for wandering, food, sex, love or anything else, what we’re actually desiring underneath it all, is to feel truly at home in our Selves.
That’s what fuels my deep passion to inspire and empower women to EXPLORE and EMBODY the juice and truth of who they are.
My hope is that through my story, you’ll recognize threads of your own
…and together we can explore who we are as wild wild women, as deep feminine souls, and as a full embodiment of the Love that lives and breathe us all.
While my wanderlust ways have taken me to all corners of the globe and provided me with the most amazing experiences, it hasn’t always been rosy. In fact some legs of the journey were downright heart breaking.
But as I look back on my life well travelled, I realize that while I was exploring the world, I was really on the most precious journey of them all.
…The journey Home to my Self.
I think it was my Dad who originally inspired my wanderlust ways. He was an adventurer for sure.
As a young hard working entrepreneur and family man, he got his pilot license when I was a child. He bought himself a Twin Cessna 6 seater plane and away we went on our family holidays. We flew to faraway places like the middle of the Simpson Desert where we camped in tents. I spent my days bathing and fishing in hot steamy springs, dreamily chased dingo tracks, and watch the sun rise and set in colours I never knew existed.
We spent magical days in places like tropical Dunk and Fraser Island before they became popular tourist destinations. We ventured into the deep heart of Australia to the sacred Uluru (Ayers Rock). We flew to small, uninhabited islands in the Spencer Gulf where my brother and I would take off each morning to ‘explore’ the island, scouring endless white beaches for cowry shells, climbing cliffs (and getting stuck half way up!), discovering fairy penguins, saving sick rabbits and counting geckos.
After a few years my Dad traded in his plane for a boat and we went sailing for a month at a time, exploring the wild rich coast of South Australia. We fished amongst great white sharks (scary), swam with dolphins (amazing), snorkeled and dived for our dinner (delicious!).
Of course it wasn’t always smooth sailing. There were some hairy scary times, like when my dad had to do an emergency landing in a wheat field. And when the boat drifted off anchor and ran aground in the middle of the night while we were all asleep. Thank you Sea Rescue!
Through it all, I was never deterred. I LOVED our adventures and wouldn’t have had it any other way.
Hmmm…that might explain a lot!
I guess I have my Mum to thank for getting me started on my own wanderlust adventures as a young adult. When I was in a flap about subject choices for school and uni, she said,
“DON’T do what everyone else is doing, DON’T even do what you’re good at. Just do what you love!”
So I did!
Languages.
French, Italian and Spanish.
Her sage advice definitely paid off, and I got my first job overseas at the tender age of nineteen, in Spain with the Australia Tourist Commission. After a year working in beautiful Sevilla, I travelled to Morocco, then Egypt, Jordan and Israel.
As I explored the ancient temples of Egypt and Jordan, and made lifelong friendships sailing down the Nile, I remember feeling an incredible sense of freedom, and a deep, delicious appreciation for everything I discovered in each new place.
…And yet at the same time, I felt an unquenchable desire to see more, feel more, and explore more.
Wanderlust had officially set in!
From there I began working for an Australian based marketing company as a Program Manager, and pretty soon I was living and working in Five Star Hotels and Resorts in Sydney, New Zealand, Malaysia and then the Philippines.
I loved it!
Around the same time, I got my first (of many) pair of red shoes.
Coincidence? I don’t think so.
I’d joke and declare Dorothy style, “There’s no place like home!” as I tapped my heels together.
But for me ‘home’ was never a place. It was a feeling.
It was a sense of belonging. A feeling that I was at home in my own skin, in my own life…no matter where I was in the world.
It was in the Philippines that I met my husband to be. The father of my son. I didn’t hesitate to move from South East Asia to the USA. We married and returned to Australia to have a family and build our own business.
We did both.
I fell pregnant with our son, and the fine dining restaurant we created won many awards. But things got complicated. While I was pregnant I knew something was wrong.
Really wrong.
But I couldn’t put my finger on it.
What I didn’t realize was that the man I loved was in the throes of a total breakdown.
So with a restaurant to run, and a new babe in arms, I began my first ‘dark night of the soul’. Sacred initiation into the world of feeling. There was no escaping it. It was too raw and I was too vulnerable. Numbing was not an option.
I thank Goddess for my meditation teacher at the time. She taught me the power of breath and showed me how to BE with what was. To stay open and feel the pain AND the ecstasy that existed in each moment.
What a gift.
And so began my ‘yogic phase’.
I traded in my multi-award winning business to study yoga and the power of breath in depth for the next four years.
Eventually to live in an ashram (yogic spiritual community).
I still had my red shoes, but they were temporarily replaced with sensible yoga sandals, just as green juice replaced wine, and meditation replaced sex.
My time in the ashram was special. It helped me to cultivate my deep sense of devotion to Life and Love (with a capital L) for which I’m truly grateful. However looking back I see now that I was using all my spiritual practices to transcend my body so I could feel ‘peaceful’.
Sounds great right? I was all ‘love ‘n light’ for sure, but to be so, I was avoiding how I really felt.
I was ignoring the innate wisdom of my deep feminine feelings that were calling me home to the bliss of my womanly body, the power of my sexuality and the fulfillment of my unique Divine feminine expression.
I discovered Tantra and began studying with David Deida in the USA. With deep appreciation I said goodbye to the ashram, and in true wanderlust style, began my most powerful, vulnerable exploration yet. The journey home to Me. Home to the Love I am, embodied AS woman in all Her shades of light, dark and red.
These days I live in a quiet part of the world on the beachfront, with my amazing son and Divine man with whom I’ve been in a profoundly loving, fully alive and holy committed relationship for nearly six years.
I don’t think I’ll ever ‘settle down’ in one place, but I definitely feel at Home in me.
My spiritual practices have taken on a whole different purpose now. Not to transcend the body, but to be fully ALIVE in my body.Not to transcend desire, but to BE a full embodiment of that which I desire.
The power of my breath brings me so fully into the NOW that there is nothing to lust after, and nowhere to travel to.
Try it for yourself.
Your Feminine Practice:
Feel your breath as it is now. Cool air coming into the nostrils, warm air as it leaves. Notice the natural pause at the end of the in and out breath. Don’t extend it. Just allow it. Just BE in it for the brief moment it exists. Because, as OSHO says, there in that pause, is the Truth of who you are.
That’s Home.
That’s You!
From my heart to yours…
Lisa
xxx
First published in Wild Sister Magazine.
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