There are moments when I would give a resounding yes, and would vehemently argue that it is wiser to wait for proof and let past behaviour and experience guide my interpretation of the world.

However, I recognize the limitations this brings. If I live like this, my current experience is dictated by the size of my understanding about what it is safe to trust, and those beliefs about what is safe would be completely based upon my past experiences. I know, for example, that people will tease me on the playground and that it will hurt – I can trust this based upon past experience – but using that knowledge to guide my current decisions is a bit out of date. I know this, but I still feel nervous when I step onto a schoolyard. Past guides present, even when it is unlikely anyone is going to bully me by the jungle gym.

I understand why I feel this way; it is part of our protective mechanism as humans, part of our core need for safety. These learned experience keep us safe; because of the past, we know which plants are good to eat (that one made us sick last time) which watering hole always has water (we can trust that it will tomorrow) and which animal will hurt us (that Sabertooth had sharp teeth the last time I met him, so I am going to avoid him in the future). As much as we have evolved, we are still animals, and seeking safety is part of a very necessary and beautiful instinct for survival that all animals share.

Because of all this tendency, I know that I struggle with allowing my day to unfold without my guidance; the future feels scary because I can’t predict what it will look like. The downside to this approach is that we keep our world only as large as we can see it from where we stand – and the potential and size of our future becomes hampered simply because it is beyond our scope of understanding. If this was contained to plants and water and animals, no harm no fuss, but the brain doesn’t always do context well, and so it extends far past basic safety into our dreams…into keeping our world small and manageable, bite-sized and chewable.

I am the curious sort, and I am interested in this because there are areas in my own life where I have walked away from opportunities, and I have to ask the question ‘why’? I see people around me do the same. For me, if I am being honest, it was because of fear. Fear about what the future could look like, fear about my ability to handle what might happen..fear, guiding my choices, fear that was desperately trying to keep me safe, confined to what I know.

Children don’t own this fear; they run full bore into whatever they encounter , scraping knees, talking to strangers until we teach them otherwise. To them, the world is a big, magical, wonderous place, where anything can happen. It is amazing to watch. Eventually they learn that knees hurt when they fall, that not everyone is nice, and that bad things do happen. But how far should we let this knowledge govern us? Obviously we want to protect against major trauma as much as we can, but what about when fear governs our ability to take chances and to explore unknown opportunities? What if we let things unfold as they wanted to, trusting that even when bad things happened they were part of a bigger story and far removed from such concepts as right or wrong or good or bad? Trusting that we’ve got the tools we need to deal with anything that happens, that we have the necessary resilience, passion, persistence, bravery?

Call it faith or blind trust, whichever you prefer – I have been trying to bring this energy into my own life; and it takes great faith to live like this; a willingness to let fear arrive but not rule you, to be aware of the bad things that might happen but to welcome the good. It is scary, but ultimately I think living like this with consistency would be one of the bravest, passionate and most peaceful journeys possible – a journey filled with the deep thrum of your own voice, vision and possibility flowing in response to the great truth of our potential rather than our fear.

Love,

Jodi

Amy Thibodeau is originally from the Canadian Prairies, spent the last few years in one of the world’s greatest cities, London, UK and is spending the next year traveling around the world. She is interested in everything, but lately is mostly fixated on travel, food, art, politics, creative writing, cuddly animals and experimenting with different kinds of photography. You can find her on her personal blog Making Strange, posting to her photography project Lost and Looking, on Twitter @amythibodeau, or working as a freelance content strategist via Contentini.

Eat, Pray, Love and Safety in Women’s Solo Travel

By Amy Thibodeau – August 3, 2010

As the cinematic release of the Elizabeth Gilbert’s best selling travel memoir “Eat, Pray, Love” draws nearer it is inevitable that people will become engaged in debating not just the artistic merit of the book and movie, but also the phenomenon of women undertaking travel alone. For the record, I loved “Eat, Pray, Love” and when I turned my fairly stable life upside down a few years ago and moved from Canada to the United Kingdom, I admit to taking some solace in it during the first few rainy months of my new life. I am ambivalent about the movie, haven’t seen it and because of my relationship with the book, I don’t know if I will risk tainting my experience of Gilbert’s narrative by watching Julia Roberts be, well, Julia Roberts. Then again, maybe it will be wonderful.

But this isn’t a review of the book or film. This morning while wading through my travel Google Alerts I came across a post on The Improper written by Bruce Northam called “How Julia Roberts, Liz Gilbert Fail Women in Eat, Pray, Love”. From the title, I was expecting the post to be a critique of the ‘selling out’ of the book to Hollywood. Instead, I was surprised to find Northam taking the position that because neither the book or film explicitly warn women about the potential dangers lurking in wait for us out in the world, they have not done their duty:

The book “Eat Pray Love” issued no travel warnings; nor does the movie. Somebody needs to constantly remind women traveling alone that Halloween-night-style caution is always necessary …

When Gilbert’s cinema-ready narrative came out, my hunch was that it was going to inspire many women to pitch their troubles over the back fence and venture out to distant lands to reinvent their souls, and I’m all for that.

However, women and men, unfortunately, still need to endure different rules while on the road …

Although not a guide, “Eat Pray Love,” once canonized, might have supplied prologue and epilogue warnings about the realities of traveling alone — and when not to do it.

via How Julia Roberts, Liz Gilbert Fail Women in ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ | TheImproper, The Cutting Edge in Arts & Entertainment.

I have had amazing experiences traveling alone; and the response I’ve had to sharing those experiences has been humbling – and mostly from women who have either had similar life affirming solo trips or others who are tentatively dipping their toes in the idea that they too can be allowed to explore the world on their own terms.

Can and do bad things happen in the world? Yes. Are women often on the receiving end of violence perpetrated by men (and incidentally most violence against women in North America is done to them by a man they know personally, not a complete stranger)? Yes. Does this mean that we should live our lives with “Halloween-night-style caution”? Hell no!

Living fully in the world requires some care, especially if you are a woman. I don’t dispute that this level of caution and awareness needs to be ramped up when you put yourself in situations that are unfamiliar, as when you travel. We are constantly bombarded with imagery to remind us of the danger we are in as women; in Canada and the United States women are raped, beaten and murdered with regularity – we watch it on the news every night. We hear about our sisters in other countries who are subjected to horrors like genital mutilation in the name of chastity and who live in places where they could be stoned to death if they are even suspected of adultery. And whenever we turn on a movie or a television show, we get to watch this all play out over and over again; “Law and Order SVU” is a show almost entirely devoted to creating entertainment out of the sexual torture and murder of women and their children.

I don’t think women need another reminder of how at risk we are at the beginning of a book, which is clearly not a travel guide style collection of how-to points and best practices, but was written with the intention of inspiring women to follow their passions out into the world, even if that world is just a short walk from where they live their daily lives.

In his article, Northam talks about a woman named Aubrey Sacco who disappeared while traveling as though the horrific truth of her vanishing in Nepal should frighten us into immobility. I’ve got news for you Northam: most of us already know a woman who has had violence enacted against her. We are already aware of our peril and we don’t really need you, Elizabeth Gilbert or Julia Roberts to remind us.

When we choose to embrace the world, we do it in the face of danger, not in blatant ignorance that it exists. And I for one am tired of well-meaning men reminding me that I should live my life in fear. If you want to write a critical blog post about how dangerous it can be for women to travel alone, you might want to widen your focus just a little bit. The problem isn’t the film or book version of “Eat, Pray, Love” and it certainly isn’t Elizabeth Gilbert and Julia Roberts, but a world that takes the easy way out by telling women to tread lightly with fear in their hearts, rather than dealing with the prevalent systemic issues that perpetuate and encourage violence against women in the first place.

Image Credit: Eat, Pray, Love Publicity Still

By Amy Thibodeau www.atrampabroad.com

“Well done is better than well said.” – Benjamin Franklin

Here’s the quote from the back of our new packaging…I wrote it about 23 seconds before we went to print (I felt the flavour of what we had was not quite right! Nothing like a last minute change to keep things exciting..and once it is gone to print, it is too late too change it! Thankfully, I still love it.

“Nature is the very essence of beauty, and we are the very essence of nature. But nature needs care to reach its potential. It needs balance. It needs clean water. Sunshine. Air. Nutrients, rich with the energy of the earth. It needs love, passion, hope, exuberance.
Exuberance is beauty, and we are exuberance.”

What do you think?

XO to all you lovely ladies (and gents) out there!

Feeling the love,

Have a bubble bath, get a pedicure, chill out to some of your favourite tunes, read your latest novel (or magazine). These might seem like small insignificant things, but in this day and age with all the hustle and bustle, taking time to slow down and focus on you is important. So try your best to treat yourself everyday, for this is a crucial step to becoming the best, most exuberant person you can be!

Join the Exuberance Movement!

“Stuff your eyes with wonder . . . live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.” – Ray Bradbury

“If you look at what you have in life, you’ll always have more. If you look at what you don’t have in life, you’ll never have enough.” – Oprah Winfrey

Did you know that people are most attracted to people who are animated in their face, voice and body? That is what Paul Ekman says, professor of psychology at the University of California Medical School, San Francisco, as stated in Allure magazine. All the more reason to express yourself fully! So quit hiding and show the world what you’ve got!

“Remember happiness doesn’t depend upon who you are or what you have; it depends solely on what you think.” – Dale Carnegie