A Widow's Ride

“There are no mistakes in life,

only lessons. There is no such thing as a negative experience, only

opportunities to grow, learn and advance along the road of self-mastery.

From struggle comes strength. Even pain can be a wonderful teacher”

(Robin Sharma)

Well, I made it through week one without any catastrophic event.  However, I already had some ups and downs on this journey.  This process had allowed me to step back and acknowledge those lessons and to learned from them.

• As odd as this may sound but I was so excited about finally be able to strip down to nothing when crawling into my sleeping bag on the first night of camping.  After wearing multi-layered riding clothes and being in other people’s company, my body was starting to feel a little bit claustrophobic. However, it was a bit nippy that night but as I was taught, it’s a good thing to be naked in the sleeping bag so your body heat will keep you warm.  All was well until I starting panicking about whether or not I could do this solo.  I felt so lost without Russ.  Then I started to get critical with myself. Reminding myself that I have gone camping so many time solo and this time is not any different from before.   By this time, I tried to compensate my panic attack (my first ever) by trying to be prepared for any worst case scenarios such as a bear, natural disaster or other misdeed. While this was going on in my head, I decided to put on some clothes in case I needed to get out of the tent to walk around.  All of the sudden, I started to relax quite a bit and fell right back to sleep.  I was kind of surprised by this.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate wearing clothes but at first I couldn’t understand how this action brought comfort to me.   The only conclusion I could make from this is that I felt exposed and needed to feel some protection around me.

• On the second night of camping, I was able to sleep through the night wearing some basic clothes.  However, when I woke up I discovered that it has rained overnight.  I asked a fellow camper when did it rain.  He said it was around 4:30 am and was surprised that I didn’t hear it since it was a quite a downpour.  You may be asking why don’t I wear them during the night, well they’re a bit uncomfortable to wear all the time.  Kind of the same situation as wearing clothes all the time, the ears feel suffocated.  Plus, they’re hard and press into my ears when I lay on my side at night.  By the way, there are advantages and disadvantages of being deaf.  The advantage is that I can turn off my ears anytime I want to.  Russ used to tease about the day we got married is the day that he stopped snoring.  However, the disadvantage is that I miss out some soothing noises such as the sound of rain pattering on top of the tent.

• Most of the first week has been with wonderful companies of friends and other motorcycle riders.  However, I need to learn to make some alone time for myself to process my thoughts and feelings.  This week had a significance meaning for me since it would have been our fourth wedding anniversary.  At first I thought it would be good to be constantly busy but I feel that I haven’t properly grieved for my loss.

All in all, it has been off to a good start and looking forward to all of the wonderful experiences whether they’re up or down but that parts of life.   Onward to the next lesson in life.