you are in the habit
of co-depending
on people to
make up for what you think you lack

who tricked you
into believing
another person
was meant to complete you
when the most they can do is complement

-Rupi Kaur, Milk and Honey

A year and a half ago, I packed up my backpack and jetting off on my first adventure. That 5-week backpacking trip with my sister around South America changed my life. My sister and I spent these 5 weeks getting to know each other again, learning from each other and for the first time, seeing how much we had changed the past 3 years. She became my best friend again. We laughed, ate, adventured, cried, and poured our hearts out. We learned about ourselves, each other, and our place in the world as individuals, sisters, and women. After that trip, we swore to ourselves that we would embark on an annual Kwan sisters trip not only to reconnect with each other but with ourselves.

The famous anonymous quote, “We travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape us” really rings true. I don’t travel to run away from my problems. There’s no place on earth I could run to to fully get away from the baggage I left back at home. But travelling has a healing power. It doesn’t solve the problems you ran away from. No, of course not. Only you can do that. Instead, travelling gives you the space for self-reflection and the time to decide what truly is important in your life. Travelling gives you the chance to uncover the bits and pieces of yourself that were drowned out by the constant self-questioning, self-doubt, and self-pity that seem to accompany our everyday lives. 

Every self-hating question I had about why every one of my relationships failed. Every comparison I made with the people around me who seemed to have their post-grad life together. Every mind-numbing concern I had about my presence on social media. Every hard feeling I had about how different my friends had become (or in reality, how different I had become) these past years.

Every panic attack, every stressed-induced lashing out, and every frustrated yell that boiled up as deadlines approached. Every what-if scenario that played in my head throughout the day. And every person that tricked me into believing they completed me when at most all they could do was complement me (thanks for your beautiful poem, Rupi). Life back home really hits you hard.

But then when you pack up that beaten-up, tattered backpack of yours and set off on an adventure, all these voices seem to quiet down. Or at least they take a backseat. Stepping off the plane into a new environment, you’re hit with new challenges: navigating an unfamiliar place and overcoming language barriers. While all at the same time, you’re immersing yourself into a new culture, meeting new people from around the world, following leads and recommendations from people you had met along the way, and of course eating until your heart and stomach are full. No longer is your mind occupied by the self-questioning, self-doubt, and self-pity that clouded your head back home.

Now, sitting at your first meal in this new, exciting, unfamiliar place, you let out a long sigh of relief. Because you made it! And normally at a meal like this back home, your mind would fill with yesterday’s regrets and tomorrow’s worries, but instead, in this moment, you notice that your mind, while filled with excitement for tomorrow’s adventure, is much quieter. No longer are you bogged down by the seemingly over-important, nitty-gritty doubts and worries of everyday life. Here, your mind is filled with bigger questions. Questions about you. Questions about who you are and who you strive to be.

By being thousands of miles away, you stop thinking about who you are in relation to other people. You stop worrying about what you need to do to live up to someone else’s expectations, to be good enough to be someone’s girlfriend, and to be hired for your dream job. You stop zeroing in on the small details and instead think of the big picture. You start thinking just about who you are and who you strive to be.

Here, thousands of miles away, you aren’t so-and-so’s girlfriend or so-and-so’s best friend. You aren’t so-and-so’s sister or so-and-so’s roommate. You’re you. And everything you do when you’re travelling is for the betterment of you. No longer is your judgement clouded by other people’s opinions. You make decisions for you and who you strive to be. By giving yourself the freedom to wake up whenever you want, eat whatever and whenever you want, and do whatever you want in this unfamiliar place, you’ve proven to yourself that you can be whoever you want.

By getting away, you’ve given yourself the time to heal and reflect. You grow as you push your comfort zone. You learn as you make new friends, wander around the city, and try new things. And you heal as you give yourself the time you needed to self-reflect. Don’t get me wrong, there are thousands of ways to do this back home. There are hundreds of ways to do this just from your very bedroom. But something about travelling and experiencing gives me (and many other people) the push we sometimes need to begin the self-healing process. At times when I didn’t think I needed healing; well that’s when travelling cleared my head and helped me really see how much I was due for some time alone and away.

Then inevitably we return home and the self-questioning, self-doubting, and self-pitying voices seem to arise again. I returned to Boston for my final semester in September and while this was without a doubt my best semester at university, it was also filled with moments in which I had never cried so hard in my life, fought so hard in my life, and hurt so hard in my life.

I questioned what I wanted for myself in my future, who I wanted to be a part of my future, and even came close to making big life decisions based on someone else. My heart broke into what felt like a million pieces, my friends that I returned to after my year in Spain seemed distant, and my panic attacks plagued my midterms season. I overcommitted to a full course load and three jobs. I barely had time to breath let alone self-reflect. My days, while fast-paced and excited, were always filled with self-questioning, self-doubt, and self-pity. It seemed like I had forgotten all that I had learned while travelling.

So it’s hard. It’s really, really hard. The hardest part about travelling is coming home. It’s trying to apply what you learned from travelling into your life while simultaneously fighting the self-questioning, self-doubt, and self-pity. It’s again being hit with all the problems that you left behind when you packed that backpack. It’s finding your tribe again in a place that was once so familiar but feels so distant now. It’s opening yourself up to love again, knowing that your heart isn’t bulletproof.

But coming home; well now that’s when you really see the healing power of travelling. When your biggest worry while travelling is missing a train or getting your wallet stolen, you don’t see the lasting healing power of travelling. It’s when you’re again hit with the struggles of your everyday life where you truly see the healing power of travel unfold. You see yourself approaching the same problems differently. You take risks you wouldn’t have considered pre-travel. And you open yourself up again: to love, to new friendships, and to new experiences. With the bits and pieces of yourself that you discovered while out in the world, you take on life back home.

So travelling is a journey into ourselves. Travelling heals the wounds we left home to run away from, not by making them disappear but by giving us a new lens to see them through. And so while this healing can be found back home, travelling and new experiences give us the nudge we need to begin the healing process. It puts us in an environment far from the problems, not to help us run away but the see the world, the problems, and ourselves in a different light. Travelling doesn’t wash away our tendencies to worry and doubt. Nor does it shield us from heartbreak. Travelling gives us to clarity we need to face our everyday problems. Travelling helps us find the bits and pieces of us we need to grow. To grow to one day overcome these problems we’re facing back home. Travelling heals us. Adventure is out there!