"Expansion brings Life"

               

It has taken me a week to really process the layers of my recent trip to WY. All around it was an incredible trip but like any trip, there are always ups and downs and layers. Many words to describe the experience.

This trip truly could not be described in one word. 

For me personally it really started prior to this, when a year ago I  was in WY for the first time and on a wilderness trip as a participant. One of my goals for that trip was to learn and to ultimately feel more confident in the wilderness. Back in 2020, being out in the wilderness guiding was a distant dream and being back in WY not even really on my radar. 

Life has a way of throwing surprises at us though. Fast forward to this trip and driving through the small town of Laramie and I noticed it felt a bit surreal. This time I had the responsibility of facilitator/guide and yet like most of the times in my life somehow I knew I would learn more than I would ever share. 

Another thing that struck me about this trip is how I was living out of something I often share with others and that is the encouragement to focus more on process than outcome. I had no idea what the outcome would be in the days to come but I knew that I could already celebrate my process of saying “yes” and showing up, especially given that 24 hours prior to boarding the plane I was not sure of my readiness to be out in the wilderness. Truth is, life had hit me hard on Tuesday morning and while I was confident in my decision, there also was still a bit of fear in the possible unknown. Deep down though I made the decision to trust my gut and my heart and my gut and heart were leading me to the wilderness and to follow through on my "yes". 

I also was aware and could celebrate the reality that I was letting my co-facilitator and friend into the space I was in. The space of being there and ready to lead while also being fatigued from the prior days.

To allow someone into your internal world is not always an easy thing, yet there is so much                                                           healing that can occur when we have safe people we allow into the spaces of our hearts. Then to have her trust in my decision making was a game changer. Often people in leadership can fall into questioning when others are not at 100%. Chelsea never did this. Every step of the way she trusted me and my decision making. It gifted me personally and professionally reminded me that perhaps we need more leaders like this that will allow people to check-in with their own hearts and then trust that deep within that person knows. 

All this was happening before we even had made it into the wilderness or into our cozy yet chilly tents. Later that day we did get to camp and then hours after that I woke up at almost 2AM. Well, I guess I cannot say really woke up, because lets' be real, I had not ever fallen asleep, so it was more like I got up to go outside. because unlike sleep, I was succeeding with hydration. As I opened the tent to venture outside, the cold air and high wind hit me, and I heard the crunch, crunch as I walked. Snow was falling. While incredibly beautiful it was also freakin cold! I thought about the individuals in tents yards from ours and hoped they were sleeping. Somehow I knew they probably weren’t. My brain jumped to the morning and how we would alter plans for the coming days to match our goals and therapeutic programming. When I got back to the tent, my friend and I started brainstorming. She was as awake as I was. In that moment, I was not figuring things out alone. As a therapist I do not always get to work alongside others so the times I do have this it is a tremendous gift. Together I believe we made better decisions than we would have alone and it helped with the workload. 

Over the coming days and as the weather slowly shifted and programming continued, the trip continued to be powerful in so many ways. So much could be shared and as I boarded the plane out of Denver I realized how truly full my heart was from it all. The word ready had come up in various ways for me during the trip and I left knowing that even though I had doubts around my readiness, that I truly was ready for this trip. 

I also realized I was leaving with many snapshots of the trip but was taking away one particularly significant image from a mountain where I looked down below and saw three lakes with trees and life around them. One of the participants shared with me how each lake didn’t need to be small but in fact, the opposite was true that the lake being there brought life. That expansion brings life. It does not rob from another but provides more. As a person who sees parallels between nature and life, this stuck with me. It reminded me that there is room in this world for more. We do not have to remain small or hidden but truly can exist and bring life to what is around us.