Day 16, 17, and 18 of the 37 Day Challenge:
Yesterday I finished reading The Pull of the Moon by Elizabeth Berg. This was a truly wonderful book to read. The woman in the novel, Nan, ran away from home at the age of 50. She decided to take a road trip by herself, without her husband of 25 years, without her daughter who was in college, and without any friends, she just took this trip on her own for a few weeks. Some parts of the book are absolutely breath taking. Berg writes with a true, authentic voice, says what many people may think, have thought, and experienced. She says at one point in a letter to her husband about her trip, "I know my own luck. I know how rare it is for a person to be able to do this. And I know more and more what I'm doing it for. I feel a kind of strength starting to happen that is wholly legitimate, that is not some trapping I wear until it falls off. It is as though the thing has roots, and seeks the sun with its face turned toward it. And I know I never would have found it without leaving." I think that people can do little things for themselves daily so they do not take such a drastic measure as to go on a road trip by themselves for almost a month like Nan in the novel did. Sometimes we have to leave ourselves to find our own true authentic self. When I'm in nature, write, paint, read, teach, help others, I come out of myself and leave "me" behind, and in that I find myself.