Living Rootless: 13 Years Ago Today, I Went Rootless

Thursday, September 28, 2023

13 Years Ago Today, I Went Rootless

Opelousas holy tree. Louisiana. July 2015. Credit: Mzuriana.

13 years ago today, I went rootless.

How did I get so lucky to be able to have done this?

"Lucky" is a superficial summary of how I got here. Truth is, although luck has played a prominent role, so did course-changing events that were not so luckified, the top three of which were heartbreak, the slo-mo ripples of The Great Recession, and the prosaic fact that I was of an age when my daughter, Kit, was an adult and out of the nest.

And aren't such seismic life events that which has catalyzed similar tracks?

Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert
Wild, by Cheryl Strayed

Other variables that got me out the door and into the beyond:

Being debt-free, having paid off my student loans (took me ten years) and having purposefully kept my debt load low, such as paying off my credit card charges in full each month and living below my means;
Having that dream of travel and adventure already embedded in my soul from adolescence; and
Although I had experienced poverty (and I don't use that word glibly), I was not generationally poor (which makes a difference), and ... I had privilege due to a number of variables, not the least of which was that I had been born into and raised in a white, middle-class environment.

All of which is to say: I don't take any of this for granted.

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