People are clamoring for The Story.

(Ok, maybe it’s not a clamor, more like a dull roar).

Those close to me can’t believe I haven’t posted about it yet. Anyone who knows me well or even follows my writing career knows it. I’ve written about it, I’ve been interviewed about it, I’ve blogged on several websites about it. But I guess my friends are right. It needs be told here, too.

So here goes. And before I forget, have a nice weekend. Next week will be chock-full of seasonal posts. You gotta love October.

The Story is how I have arrived and survived up to this point. The Story is the reason for that slow-simmering happiness deep down in my (I’m sorry) Seat of Self. The Story is the reason why nothing bothers me, not toxicity, not arguments, not rejection, not traffic jams, not lost wallets, stuck lids, mold or mildew (when I was a columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer, I received a lot of mail worried about my “anger issues.” It’s just writing, folks, and nothing could be further from the truth. Feigned anger is just…funnier).

The decision to leave my family and home in 2018 to travel to Iceland was made haphazardly (and I’m pretty sure drunkenly) at my kitchen counter. My husband had been gone for seven months, and I was just lost. Floundering, numb, just staggering through life like one of those zombies in post-apocalyptic America. No direction, no purpose. I had retired from teaching, so I didn’t even have that as a distraction.

I was an empty shell.

And I was mired. I knew I was down in that muck somewhere, but I had no idea how to reach in and pull myself back. I had tried everything: alcohol, food, sleeping pills, intense (bordering on obsessive) workouts, but nothing had succeeded in penetrating deeply enough. Where the hell am I? I wondered every day how I could once again find that girl whose nickname in high school was “Sunshine.” The girl who loved jumping in leaves, playing in the snow, swimming in the ocean.

On that sunny day in May of 2018, I was flipping through a magazine at my kitchen counter and looking out of my door at the same view I had been looking at for twenty years. I hated the view. I hated the tourists laughing on their way to the ice-cream parlor, I hated the surfers with surfboards under their arms, I hated the beachgoers laden with beach chairs and coolers, making their pilgrimage past my house to the Promised Land of the Atlantic Ocean.

Who could hate such things? So much hate. I knew I needed to get away, out of my town, out of my house, out of my head.

Then, at the bottom right of the page, my eyes stopped at an tiny obscure ad asking for adventure women to ride horses in the Icelandic highlands. The trip was in four weeks, and there was one spot left. I called. I took the spot. I paid.

I told my sons. I’m going.

The trip itself is not The Story. The trip itself changed my life, the women I met changed my life, the horses I rode changed my life, but The Story itself deals with five minutes on a slow ride through the Highlands. And completely true is what happened to me on the side of that Icelandic glacier, and I don’t care who doesn’t believe it, because as sure as I breathe, it happened. The following is adapted from my memoir’s manuscript:

On the third day of the trip, as my riding group navigated through rough Icelandic terrain, my horse Máni decided to race at top speed to keep up with the guide’s horse in front of us. He was galloping, I think, unless there is something faster than galloping, and I could hear the shouts of other guides behind me, instructing me on how to slow him down. Far from being an expert equestrian, I could feel myself starting to slide out of the saddle, and thoughts of my mortality flashed through my mind.

“I’m going to fall off of this horse and die,” I thought, the image of my three grown sons at my funeral so clear I could hear the church music. “I’m going to orphan my sons,” and I pictured my body being flown back to the United States. Strangely, I couldn’t help but wonder what horrifying frock my family would dress me in for my funeral, and I swore to God that if he got me out of this, I would add a codicil to my will that I was to be buried in my Nicole Miller sheath. I was having these thoughts, not like in a funny Carol Burnett sketch kind of way, but in the real metaphysical way, when you truly feel like you have made a mistake that will result in your death.

Then, in one split-second, it happened. My head cleared, and the tight, oily, viscous ball of fear that I had nursed and protected for twenty-five years burst open in my chest. The fear spilled out all over that volcanic patch of land, and as I looked up into that Icelandic sky, I knew my life would never be the same. My heart and mind relaxed, and my body followed. I pressed my knees against Máni’s flanks, gained control of my arms and the reins, and got him under control.

The person I became that week would have been unrecognizable to anyone who had known me before. With no fear, anger, worry or guilt to navigate around, my heart was able for the first time in my life to beat, pulse and operate from a place of joy and bliss. I remember getting very quiet that week, but my travel sisters remember differently. They remember laughter and chatter and singing.

I sang?

So I did not die that day; rather, I found life. And when I returned home, as I began to exist from a place of pure joy and gratitude for the first time in my life, all good things began to happen. I was careful to avoid those who I felt would pollute my happiness, so out went the dysfunctional. Out went the hateful. Out went the greedy, the pretentious, the vapid. I protected my happiness, huddled around it to shield it from perpetrators. How could I possibly explain it to others if I didn’t understand it myself?  

Corny, right? Like, serious corn. Scrape the corn off the cob into a bowl, and cream it, cover it with corn bread and bake at 350 degrees kind of corn. I agree. I abhor corn, and melodrama, and maudlin. I’m pragmatic, a journalist at heart. I mean, when I hear other people worrying about contracting an incurable disease, I just think how much writing material it would give me. That’s pragmatism. But this thing happened to me. In those highlands, I opened my heart for the first time in my life, and love crawled in. Gratitude. Acceptance. Bounty, riches, grace.

And that’s The Story.