Wanderlust O'ahu 2015

Well ladies and gents, I'm back in Calgary. I summoned the courage to say goodbye to tropical paradise, leave the North Shore behind and come back home to winter. And to be honest, it feels good to be back home. The kind of goodness that comes from being home with the people you love after having an amazing trip full of personal growth and experience and wonder.

I spent 4 nights in Waikiki, traveling around O'ahu on my own, then headed up to the fabled north shore, and Turtle Bay Resort for the yoga festival Wanderlust. If you have never been to Wanderlust or a yoga retreat, please take my advice on this, and make plans to go to one now. Even if you've never done a single downward dog in your life. Even if it's not located somewhere as beautiful as Hawaii. You will open your heart and bring in so much goodness to your life.

This was my first true vacation taken all on my lonesome, and just after my 27th birthday (on Feb 17th) it absolutely could not have come at a better point. The photo above is from my first morning in Hawaii at sunrise, I rolled myself out of my hostel bed, and headed down to the beach, wrapped in my own thoughts, breathing the fresh sea air. As I watched the clouds go from grey to red and gold, I contemplated being at a turning point in my life. This 27th year of my life will see me finishing up Grad School, Kevin finishing Medical school. He will head to Medicine Hat for residency and I will make the career choices that will set the tone for my future. And although I hate to focus in on age as a number, but there is certainly something about knowing 30 is right around the corner that makes you sit and think hard about your life.

So a trip by myself, at this cornerstone point in my life, was exactly what I wanted and needed. And I promised myself, there on that beach, to make this trip a celebration of me. To embrace the experience to its fullest.  To savor the solitude, and to in the lonely moments to grow as an individual.

And while I was raised as a Catholic, and I don't know what I am right now, I found more time for spirituality on this trip than I have in the last several years. Spirituality that took on many forms. By traveling alone, you are blessed with the ability to sit and contemplate yourself and the world whenever you feel the inner call to do so. Whether it be in the sandalwood scented silence of a Japanese Buddhist temple, or amid 400 other yogis in the rain and the mud at Wanderlust.

Traveling alone has so many rewards, although it can be lonely at times. So also important on this trip was to be open to form new relationships. And in that openness you might even find yourself blessed with the seeds of a new friendship. In an example of how truly small this world is, the girl who pitched her tent next to mine happened to be from right back home in Calgary. And somehow, in addition to having shared roots, we found we had many other things in common as well. So I get to take a little bit of my trip home with me, and hopefully in Alberta's fertile soil grow that friendship further.

Over the next several days I'll be sharing all of my trip on the blogs. So please come on back for more. In the mean time, I have a tonne of laundry to do, sleep to catch up on, photos to print and blogs to write.

From the depths of my heart,

Namaste!