Woman’s Soul Journey
by Katie Sulkowski
How many of us don’t take the time to recharge, to listen to our inner guide that speaks to us in soft manners but pounds in our hearts underneath the daily grind? Why do we under-value time off to just be⎯or make time to be like a kid again? As my friend, Nicole and I packed up and departed our R&R vacation at the beach, we were not tired, but our bodies had just settled in to a new slower rhythm. We had made promises to the moon in certain slant of light that opened doors which cannot be closed. This, our Chopin-esque Awakening. To keep it alive, we brought back special souvenirs⎯what may not look to be important, but as I learned later, they are enough to change us.
Since when did that spirit-centric life seem unimportant or not as important? In need of a restorative getaway for not too expensive, we chose Tybee Island off the coast of Savannah, GA. It had the right combination. Easy access, we could get in the car and go, great hotel rates on the beach before peak season, and plenty to do and see in nearby-Savannah. There we followed our noses exploring the hidden treasures of Savannah’s historic district, an old port and a beautiful 15-minute drive from Tybee.
I recommend 3 things for a truly restorative weekend women’s getaway:
Do what you love. For me, it is sipping a bold Americano on the beach at 11:00 a.m. after I’ve slept in and moseyed on down the beach to my favorite café, Surfside Café, and taking it to the beach to watch the waves pursue me in the young daylight.
Take an adventure. Nicole and I went for a bike ride to the Tybee Lighthouse. It wasn’t planned; we didn’t even know there was a historic lighthouse on the island! At Surfside Café, the owner, Monty asked what we planned to do and our shrugged shoulders and giddy smiles gave us away that we had no fixed itinerary. Well, he exclaimed, you must take a bike ride around the island. He helped us where the best local place was to rent bikes, and to let the owner, Dave, know he sent us over. Fat Tires was our next destination after morning coffees and a breakfast of the world’s best mini cinnamon rolls on the beach.
Read a book together. This is not the most obvious one. In fact, this one also took us both by surprise. Nicole brought the book Captivating by John and Stacy Eldridge (Thomas Nelson, 2005). She asked if she could read a passage to me while laying on our beach mats, a steady wind whipping through our hair. Of course! I responded, nothing delights the kid in me more than being read to as was a favorite past time of my youth. Only this time, I was a grown woman, single, looking to my North Star for the next direction, and hoping with intensity that the next and only star-crossed love of my life is soon arriving. Captivating, I had heard before, was such a book to ignite the heart longing for true love, the kind of Tristan and Isolde.
For me love is synonymous with the beach. It is a Paradisiacal place where I’ve fallen in love many times in my lifetime. Long ago, I met a young man there, and conversations of ambiguous nature were whispered in the moonlight. Reaching back to the beginning, the beach also holds my first memory of love, as a little girl no more than 2 or 3, waking up for the first time to the yellow beach and slender strip of royal and teal blue, running full blast into the ocean falling in love with this rainbow pouring over me. I still feel this way to this day.
Reading from Captivating to one another, short excerpts or whole chapters, whatever way the spirit leads, is a subtly transforming experience. It is affirming and healing in its truth as it poured over my ears and eyelids, shoulders and body with the warm sun rays stroking down my limbs from a vast blue sky. So did the truth weave into our hearts with the salt and the sea those three days as we two friends read and listened, stopped and shared our stories what the words reminded us of. In this organic, trusting and surrendering way, we co-created a trip of healing for our bodies, our hearts and souls. Like Jonah’s whale, the sea swallowed the blockages that serve us no more, only in their ability to serve as stepping stones to a new transformative perspective. There, within the seascape from the mollusks to the grains of sand to the wood swing on the dunes, to the tides of people coming and going with the change of hour life infuses everything.
Change. Sometimes to invoke change we know we need, we need to change positions⎯get up and move! See the world from a new angle, a new light, in a new planetary wind path, through the gentleness of a new friend’s smile to come guide us through these waters. Giving myself the gift of travel, excursion, child-like play at the beach, I reconnect with a very elemental core of my being⎯my childhood⎯where I spent hundreds of hours in meditation on the beach. And when I am in the midst of turbulent change⎯what I need is the gingerly stroke of Mother Nature. The model of gentle change like silver stars migrating across a night sky, or the waxing of the ivory moon, or a school of lavender and tan pelicans crossing my viewfinder in flight. Simple beauty relaxes me. Enough where I let go and my defenses come undone. What I know goes and takes a hike or a very long swim and leaves me alone⎯the me I came to greet at the water’s edge upon arrival as she reconnects with the beauty of the sea, and finds her way back inward to the wholesome, eternal youth who is journeying the surface of this planet, but more, the hardscrabble of this life and knows when it’s time to take refuge at the beaches of her heart, the waves whistling, "Follow your bliss."
In a couple short days, confidence too returns and I am awake to the change arising in me. I’ve dusted off and let my true voice out to play in the fresh air and met the good hot sun. We’re gaining shiny, new energy again to take back with us to our home-home. That place outside of Paradise, where we must ask to be loved. That is OK.
Deep longing is part of the grace given to Eve to drive her to the River of Life.
What that means in the book, is archetypal Eve is filled with a drive and longing that no thing, no one can “slake her thirst” but relationship with the One. Her oneness with everything, the seascape, eternal love and desire from which she was created. And this same longing drives us to each of our rivers, wherever, whomever they may be.
To soothe a friend, Nicole sweetly helped re-make a memory at the beach to replace the older one. But I realize, all experiences are part of my rainbow and they are special and can exist. In the moment, the only feeling to feel standing in front of Nature’s sunrise is: I am greatly loved and lovable. I am the dawn and dusk of life, that beautiful rainbow of hope and promise what the day will bring. On this, my latest trip to Tybee, the unexpected happened: I fell in love with me.
In the dusk of things, the greatest souvenir we can take back into our world with us is not a what, not book or perfect shaped-shell, or the colorful pictures we may take. Rather, the greatest souvenir are the echoes of our dreams we claim to value, for they are enough to transform us.
For more information about Tybee:
Ocean Plaza Beach Resort – oceanplaza.com (912) 786-7777 Free beach parking for guests. Also has a great brunch at their famous Dolphin Reef Restaurant. 15th ST. and Ocean Front, Tybee Island, GA 31328
CSidesurf Café – www.csidesurf.com (912) 786-9312
Fat Tire Bikes – fattirebikestybee.com (912) 786-4013 For rates, visit their website. Open 10:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m. daily; free delivery and pickup. Also serving Fat Tire beer.
Savannah Historic District many great sites and restaurants.
For the best pecan pie in the entire universe, go to locally owned River House Seafood and Bakery on the riverfront, also featured on TV Food Network’s Food Finds. For the full menu visit riverhouseseafoodcom.
2009 Katie Sulkowski
