"Travel far enough you meet yourself"

"I keep my ideals, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.

Whoever is happy will make others happy too."

-Anne Frank, Born June 12, 1929, Died 1945 at Bergen-Belsen Concentration camp, Germany

After I've known someone a while, I feel compelled to tell them stories of my "past life" but also of today. Because I adore stories, the people in those stories are most compelling. When you share who you are, it allows others to open up the chapters they've maybe been too scared to otherwise do.

The places I've lived, the generous strangers who have opened up their hearts and home to me when I hadn't any other place to retreat. In my heart,where I once felt solid remorse, I now feel re-assurance and confidence regarding my stories. The sometimes confusion I see in people's faces is a reminder of how scared we all are of  re-telling and re-living stories that arouse such a response. The  words of our stories aren't news to us. We know them all by heart. See,  I'm not shocked when I remember trauma. I am not caught off guard when I think of watching my mother slowly take her life away from everyone who loved her. Seeing pictures of the body I once was housed in isn't pleasant, but, It's all fact. It's real. If I never looked back on those chapters I would absolutely never be where I am today. The phone calls to teenage girls in crisis never could have happened because I never could have fully understood. When we hide away from ourselves, our stories, we are keeping that growth from the world. Never use your past as a crutch, but instead as a tool to never allow suffering to occur without opportunity to promote change. . progress.

 A very expensive therapist once told me that in order to get over something tough, you must first go THROUGH it. Like a damn soldier. . .

In a quick bit, let me tell you what I know to also be fact:

 All stories weren't created equal. The characters (people-- real, living, breathing people) aren't always who we'd hoped for (and sometimes they are overwhelmingly MORE than we could have hoped for). Sometimes endings aren't happy and new beginnings don't establish themselves when we feel it's time. We have to keep on keepin' on.....and find what we're searching for exactly when it's ready to be found.

When I was in third grade I remember learning about Anne Frank. My mom rented the movie for me after I finished the book (and also supplied me with endless white chocolate covered oreos while watching) and I remember not being able to sleep that same night. It couldn't be real. No one really let's girls like Anne die because she believed differently, right? It couldn't be. Ever since that time, I have wondered about Anne, about her family, about all the Jewish families who went through those gruesome, untouchable years.

I developed a love for maps the day my grandfather's interest was shown to me and I realized it would give me something to talk to him about. I was close to 12 years old. Ironically, reading a map is as impossible for me as parallel parking, eating cheese on a hamburger, and not kissing a dog when I met it on the streets. I love the idea that you can look at a picture of all the places people live with one glance. . like a reminder that we are all in this living thing together. . only from different latitude and longitudes. 

I love experiencing new places, cultures and people. However, I decided years ago that I would travel to Europe and learn first hand what the Holocaust was really about...not as a vacation/pleasure trip..but as a way to understand myself and my perceptions about people, life, and stories that make me uncomfortable. Open myself up to experience the reality of deep, treacherous stories that belong to millions affected by World War 2.  Because....

"Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it." -George Santayana

I turned 30 this past October and decided it would be the year of my solo traveling. Alarming as it was to my friends and my dad, I knew it was something I had to do. I needed to find the strength and confidence to push through my insecurities and go after something that was invaluable to me. So, I booked my flights and created a map of the things I wanted to do...and just did it. 

Last week, I traveled to Berlin, Germany and then to Krakow, Poland with no proper understanding of the languages, the layout of the cities, or what the hell I was getting in to. I planned the best I could with a couple of weeks notice, but let's remember who I am and how I: run in to walls, have no sense of direction, and generally live inside my head (that is full of ridiculous tales of animals skating, talking, and wearing dresses). It was a pretty big feat to put myself through.. But alas! Besides being robbed (stole from my purse that was sitting in my room while I was outside in hall, no one attacked me or anything dramatic) I gathered up the bits and pieces of confidence I didn't even know I possessed and i MADE it. I developed friendships with precious humans. I walked a million miles a day, learning and exploring. I met and pet lots of dogs. I ate basically zero German or Polish food because, let's be honest, I am 5 and that is just asking too much of me. (ha) I was completed capable of depending on myself for every single thing i needed. Encouragement when I felt completely homesick for familiarity. Laughter when I just wanted someone to talk to and tell about the things I saw each day. Empowerment when I felt completed lost (physically and emotionally) because I didn't want to leave my room and be alone among groups of young people, enjoying each other's company, while I ate alone. I purposely wanted to be challenged in all of these ways, and somehow, I managed and had an exceptionally wonderful time doing it. 

We all don't have to go travel on our own to establish that everything we need is already deep down inside of us. Everyone has their own path to self-discovery and actualizing their ability to kick insecurities ass. But, whatever it may be, you have to do it. Every single day. A trip reminds me that i CAN but doesn't take away from having to DO it. Everyday we are creating our stories, chapter by chapter, experience by experience. Even when we don't understand. Even when it seems the entire world knows and sees struggle but turns its head. We push forward. We learn how to do that by reading and learning from the stories before ours. We establish a desire to love by learning of the pain and complete devastation other people experience in each chapter of their story. Yearning to stop the hurt, undo the fears, and never let atrocities of the past happen again when there's prevention through love, acceptance and understanding. Everyone represented on beautiful world maps (ooh how I love those maps!) is trying to keep their head above water and survive...and find joy in something. For me, travel teaches me this 100,000,000 times, over and over. We have a choice: help each other/ourselves or hurt each other/ourselves. We are in this together, even when division and hate seem stronger and more painful than electric fences (Auschwitz concentration camp reference)....it's up to us to create peace. Every, single day.

 

Because ultimately, having people to love is truly healing. 

"We have to go into the despair and go beyond it, by working and doing for somebody else, by using it for something else."

"Just as despair can come to one only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings."

- Elie Wiesel, Auschwitz survivor (passed away in 2016)

<3,

Cortney

Because there's no substitute for time

One day in 1948, an amateur Swiss mountaineer and naturalist, George de Mestral, went on a nature walk with his dog through a field of hitchhiking bur plants. He and his dog returned home covered with burs. With an intense curiosity, Mestral went to his microscope and inspected one of the many burs stuck to his pants. He saw numerous small hooks that enabled the seed-bearing bur to cling so tenaciously to the tiny loops in the fabric of his pants. George de Mestral raised his head from the microscope and smiled thinking, "I will design a unique, two-sided fastener, one side with stiff hooks like the burs and the other side with soft loops like the fabric of my pants. I will call my invention Velcro® a combination of the words velour and crochet. It will rival the zipper in it's ability to fasten."

If it weren't for those pesky burs that have been uncomfortably present on anyone's clothing who has ever spent time outdoors, we'd not have the invention of velcro. Velcro! What an idea.

 I spend my days teaching older folks who have succumb to a disability or acute illness how to compensate, adapt and return to living functionally. Everyone has a different perspective of what that means. I love the idea of making life easier so each and every one of my patients can return to a life that is full of dignity, quality, and meaning. But, wouldn't you know, that before these adaptations and strategies for increasing the ease of a difficult transition can be made, things have to be hard. Really, really hard. Scary, in fact. Hopeless, if you will.

In order for something as purposeful as velcro to be dreamed upon, there first had to be a struggle. . a reason for change.  Cockleburs. Those wretched seeds have attached and relentlessly held on to my mis-matched socks as if they were an invited guest that I would be dismayed to see leave.

Circa 1997, I was the most awkward human being that had ever existed, up until that point. Seriously, ask anyone (especially my older brother). I carried around my little boom box with attached microphone and begged my dad to make videos of me  (while wearing my LA Gear light up shoes, gymnastics leotards, and a hair do we won't talk about) so I could send them to Good Morning America, and somehow, that would lead me to meeting and starting a band with Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen. 

Bitterness, resentment and unmasked dismay come across each lobe of my brain (maybe only the frontal, but let's be dramatic for a moment) when I recognize the struggles that I spend time tending to (or trying to compensate for). Instead of thinking of a solution, a change, a better way to overcome and move forward, I tend to create a task list of ways to turn non-sense, negative thoughts in to party guests of which love to surround me with their company. It's only natural, you know, because our brains must have activity, something to maintain them. I've heard that (some) people enjoy watching scary movies/books because when your mind experiences fear, there is no other emotion able to squeeze in alongside that fear. I'll attest to that same principle with regards to being around dogs/animals who aren't snakes takes away the possibility to accompany sadness. 

The burs of our minds most assuredly spend time attaching, relentlessly,  to the places we are most vulnerable. Jealousy towards another, fears of unfaithfulness, dishonesty in all varieties, and un-explainable anxiety are those pesky attachments that live inside our dear brains and won't let go until a compensatory strategy to override them has been developed. Just like our barnacled friends in nature (Xanthium---aka burs), until we've created a strategy to make something beneficial out of something dreadful and seemingly useless, it will remain. 

"You're not a tree. If you don't like something, move. Change."

When I/we choose to resist changing ways of doing/being because we aren't comfortable with vulnerability, we choose to continue hosting parties for pesky burs that serve us a purpose for only so long. Can I tell you how many times in my 30 years I have been questioned as to why I won't/can't change a difficult habit? No. I can't tell you because I come from a gene pool who only knows of stubbornness as a way of living. So, it's quite possibly unfathomable the amount of time I have spent taking the hard road because it's certainly in my DNA and that's entirely too much biology to discuss and unravel. 

I can tell you this: the most amazing, wonderful, self-less, and loving human beings and experiences I've come in contact with have happened because something in side of me decided to become tougher than the circumstances that seemed damn near impossible to walk through, over, in to and around (ending that sentence in a list of prepositions is going to be me overcoming the anxiety of incorrect grammar). I keep learning that no matter what or who happens, I'm always here. I have to keep taking care of me because I might could help change someone's negative and scared mind....just as so many precious people continue to change mine.

Happiest of weeks,

Cortney