Travel as Therapy

Image credit: Eleni Kalorkoti

I intended to keep this blog positive and only post things that gave me joy. I needed a space to focus on the light instead of the tire fire that was 2017.

At first glance, this post may not fit the description. This essay opens with the death of the author’s  5 year-old son. In the aftermath, he and his wife process the trauma in radically different ways: she chooses to confront it head-on while he seeks solace in distraction. In need of a change, they decide to take a month-long road trip across the country with their two other sons. Over thousands of miles in the car, the author’s family is able to celebrate his son’s lost life and process their grief together.

There are so many emotions packed into this narrative: grief, anger, love, and an ocean of sadness. But what continues to blow me away is the indomitable nature of the human spirit.  Being a human is hard, and there are so many instances where we experience a grief so painful that we fear we may not recover. And yet, over time, we can metabolize that pain and move keep moving forward.

Read: “Road to Recovery,” The New York Times