Closure and ... it's my birthday!

This blog has needed closure since returning home almost 3 weeks now and I woke up this morning thinking I would finally get to it because it's my birthday. 

It's timely my trip should culminate with this type of annual event. I often spend my birthdays thinking about the birth year ahead and I start it today armed with the insights my trip to South America has enabled.  "Armed" because I am a stronger, more purposeful person than I was when I left.  Even as I begin my job search, consider alternative careers, and try to plot my next move... literally.

Indeed, despite this current uncertainty, I feel more clearsighted than ever. I have internalized so much from my 6 months in South America - from the people I met, the experiences I had - that every day I feel myself drawing fortitude from it. It is like a piece of the puzzle about who I really am has fallen into place, and now I really know. 

The tatoo I committed (for eternity:) to my inner wrist in San Martin de los Andes is meant to (forever:) remind me of that. It's of a bird taking flight and finally, in the last stage, soaring.  So yes, with this trip, I opened my wings and soared.  Though the bird is actually about what I gained from that experience and how it's changed me.  How doing something that felt so scary at first became one of the best things I've ever done. How momentarily stepping away from the self image that I had created in NYC allowed me to discover I was something more.

(The tatoos sits right around where my watch would go so with the flick of a wrist  at some mind-numbing meeting I can take a look at it and remember.)

So I end this blog on that note and with that embrace 37 and every single other year to come... fully aware of how precious every single year... every day... really is. And keen on making the most of every moment of it!

Till the next blog then...!

Always,
Karen