by Julia on September 3, 2010
I felt such a connection with Africa that I boarded the plane on Wednesday night with a feeling of sadness, even though I was excited to be returning to all that makes up my life here. When we touched down yesterday morning, I didn’t experience the usual sense I have of homecoming. A part of me seemed to be resisting leaving Africa and desiring that I stay where my body and soul remembered being, a land where I felt so at ease.
This feeling, asked that I connect to being present and to being here, now! And so I took the steps through arrivals, showed my passport – and Ange and I walked out into an incredibly beautiful September morning. The sun was streaking red and orange over Heathrow, the mists were rising from the ground and the air was clean and fresh. The light had that yellowy translucent glow that reminds me of first day of school, of getting up early again to catch the bus, the smell of my fresh school uniform heralding new things, better things, all the possibilities of a new beginning.
Africa has been a pause, an amazing experience that has reached something in me deep inside which will unravel and show on the outside for sure! This is the way it is, we shift on the inside and the outside changes. It is the way it is. Going within is the way we grow and transform our lives.
Running allows for a depth of meditation that means that our life can become a meditation on the move, each step leading us closer to knowing who we truly are.
I arrived home at 8am and it felt good. I had arranged to meet Fi www.runningfreemag.co.uk at 10 am to run and I couldn’t wait to see her. I so love running with her and this summer we have been apart for weeks as our lives have taken us in different directions.
There she was! We hugged each other and then set off up onto the downs, talking together as if there had been but a comma since our last conversation…
by Julia on September 2, 2010
It is 7.15pm here in Nairobi. Ange and I are setting off for the airport in 45 minutes. Later on the plane will take off – I imagine we will sleep - and in the morning we will wake up from our African dream and find ourselves in England once again.
Today has been a still day – a pause – nothing to do. We swam in the pool before breakfast, a secluded spot with the murmur of Nairobi stirring around us and then we have spent the day reading and chatting and planning for when we get home. We have been sharing our bigger dreams and plans too. We shared what we are creating and manifesting in our lives now and what we hope for. We also reflected on the journeys we have both taken since we met one another ten years ago.
We observed with hindsight how far we have travelled, the changes we have made, the dreams that we have manifested already and we can see how much stiller we both are. We reflected on how much we have healed a wound within us, that we recognized in one another and that no doubt was why we were brought together; we had a feeling of being ‘too much’ and then within that lay the paradox of fearing that we would be ‘shut down’ – and the deepest fear of all – that what we had to offer had no value.
Our core wounds hold us back and mean that our lives are limited and shaped by our adaptions rather than living with the confidence that all that is required is that we be ourselves. Ange’s and my personal journeys over the past ten years have been rich with experience and connected through our relationships with others and with each other.
When I first met Ange I was chronically injured after my career as an international runner, and yet I knew that there was unfinished business in my running and that my own running race had not reached the finish line. I was still on my journey to my own Ithaca. There was no turning back and the road required that I run down it – because this was how I would heal.
This did at times feel like madness, as to run actually hurt! But I trusted there was a way and that my inner voice could not be wrong.
I was running on the beach yesterday, feeling free from any pain, strong and fit, my feet returning to what they first knew – running barefoot in the sand in Africa. I knew that the journey that I set out on ten years ago – to learn to run again – had reached a place I dreamed of. To run free from pain, in the sun! I had shared my dreams with Ange when she accompanied me on a running holiday to Cub la Santa ten years ago – and now I see that my running journey is doing what Ange prophesied it would: ‘This is how you will teach Ju, through your running.’
