Running Away

One day you wake up, nearly an adult. 16 or 17 years here and most of it handed to you and not chosen. Your family of origin, not your choice, where you live, not your choice, the school you go to, the food in your local grocer, your language, your hair color all given to you. All the unchosen bits come together to create your life, who you are, and where you are meant to go. A whole life that for some can feel more like a random assemblage of disconnected parts than an identity.

The first time I ran away I didn't go very far. I got lost in plain sight, a song, a movie, a book, all my choosing.

The word inspiration is derived from the Latin verb inspirare which means to breathe into. In ancient contexts, it is often referred to as divine or supernatural influence, as if a deity was breathing life, or ideas into a person. It took running away for me to get inspired.

Running away gets a bad rap. It's often seen as avoidance, cowardice, or irresponsibility. Running away from something also often means you are running to something else. For me, it was the eagerness to go toward something that could breathe me into existence. My haste to life had me running from what felt like the opposite. The more life that I breathed in, the more I ran towards it, and in doing so away from something else. As babies, we learn this way. Something is hot and it burns to the touch so we learn to move away from it. A mother's embrace is warm and comforting so we push closer. To me, running away was this, a courageous act of self-preservation and growth, sometimes stepping back was the smartest way to move forward.

In time I ran further. Long walks marveling at small details in nature. Train rides to small cafes in the village. Pages of typed verse that were words all my own, hours in the darkroom looking at life emerging in black and white from the stop back in the photography lab. The further and faster I ran the more inspired I was.

Running away from home was inevitable. Choosing became irresistible. Barely 18, I chose a small basement apartment tucked into a small side street in Brooklyn. Furnished with found items, it was dark and quiet, the perfect cocoon. It wasn't much but it was all my own.

I filled that apartment with more choices. The kitchen was a darkroom where I developed film. An old Remington typewriter sat on the floor ready for me to tap out chosen words. Friends were invited to sit on corners of chairs and sofas to talk about the simple mysteries of life. Music played, and with each day I felt a life emerging. Until I didn't.

My cocoon wasn't meant to hold me indefinitely. I ran further away.

I started to travel alone in my 20s. Packing a bag was intoxicating. It was like curating a life one thing at a time. This book, those jeans, that swimsuit. All represented a feeling or a place they would emerge and fill their purpose. That's how I felt, like a person anxious to find the moments and places that would allow me to expand my newly formed wings and fly. My early trips were filled with so many questions but the certainty of moving was the loudest sound, so it drowned out any doubt. I set off for months, no firm plans just a plane and train ticket and the promise of being able to make more choices.

This time running away felt like coming home. It also felt like falling apart. The night I arrived in Italy I was exhausted and checked into my small room in a pensione and quickly fell asleep. I woke in the middle of the night. Still sleep-dazed, the unfamiliar room set me spinning. Where was I? Reality felt hazy, with nothing familiar to toggle onto it got jumbled with dreamlike thinking, bits of untethered information like dust settling loosely ready to be unsettled again with the slightest movement. That night I unraveled. The bits of identity that I thought were so solidly put together in my few years of choosing fell to the floor like razor-thin shards of glass splintering on impact, impossibly fragile. The tiny bits unrecognizable.

When a snake sheds its skin it's not just outgrowing the outer layer—it's also renewing itself. The old skin often becomes tight or damaged and shedding allows the snake to maintain its flexibility and health.

That night surrounded by the remnants of identity and reality felt long but it eventually ended. The dawn came and as the city came alive so did I. Newly inspired I left behind what I shed and didn't look back.

I have continued to run away through the years. I have continued to craft a life filled with my choices. And I have continued to fall apart, one outgrown skin at a time. I have no intention to stop running away, I may not go far to do it some days and I may travel the length of the globe to do it other days. I have no intention to stop falling apart either. Life feels lighter when you set down the pieces of you that were meant to fall off. My hope is that by running away I can in some way breathe life into others, "inspire".

Running away for me was never about trying to leave something really, it was about moving towards what felt right and true, shedding identities and places along the way that were too small to hold me as I was becoming the most complete version of myself.

Today I lead adventures and I invite women to try on running away for a week or so. I invite them to put down the outgrown skins they have been carrying but were meant to shed. And I invite them to run towards a version of themselves that feels right. I have seen magic happen when we gather this way. The truth is it was never running away at all it was just moving deeper into who we were meant to be, an arriving and a willingness to leave even this arriving if its too small to contain the multitudes we are meant to go towards.