One woman, a music box, and ride named Reba: Why I’m taking a road trip as a plus size midlife woman.
This is not Eat. Pray. Love.
I am not Liz Gilbert.
I am most certainly not Liz Gilbert as played by Julia Roberts.
Let me also clarify and say I am not Diane Lane in Under the Tuscan Sun. I am not any stunningly beautiful yet remarkably cute woman on path of self-discover that takes her to beautiful international destinations while learning life lessons and, of course, falling desperately in love.
I am none of those things, and yet I am a woman who is about to take a three-week road trip in the hopes of reconnecting to herself. That being said…
As I write this, a plastic patio chair is pressing marks into my smooshy thighs.
Around 10 days ago, I fell off a curb and this fall has left me walking like a fat, off balance pirate. (Arrrgh, mate.)
Stress and exhaustion from the last few months have made my hair thinner and some of the grey strands in my silver crown had broken off, leaving me with hair that frames my face akin to Christopher Lloyd playing Doc Brown in Back to the Future.
In short, your girl here is a lot less Julia Roberts and Dianne Lane and more… Kathy Bates in Fried Green Tomatoes.
Kathy Bates as Evelyn, driving through the Winn Dixie parking lot and first being cut off by a duo of spandex-wearing sassy young women… and then (maybe slightly manically) smashing her foot on the brake and the gas and plowing headfirst into their car.
"Face it, lady. We're younger and faster,” they taunt…
Towanda. Evelyn whispers to herself. Overcome by the spirit of fierce greatness.
"Face it, girls, I'm older and I have more insurance!”
TOWANDA, BITCHES!
I will fall in love with nobody during this trip. I will not buy a villa or swirl pasta around my fork for days straight.I will aim to see as many sunrises as I can.But there will be no soft-filtered, romanticized “journey of the self” here.
I will head out from Orlando. Make some stops. Hit Chicago for a change of vehicle, and meander my way back to Las Vegas. All in about there weeks time.
Have a piqued your interest? Keep reading.
The Big Why.
In order for you to have the proper understanding of why I’m taking this road trip, you need some context. Let me back this up. Last August, my book released. A book I’d spent years working on and for which the writing and editing process was the equivalent of ten years of therapy. I invested $40,000 dollars of my own savings on book marketing and promotions. The whole shebang. And, at the same time, my dad was dying. Well, he died. Book released the second week of August, and within two weeks from that date, he had passed. I knew, in the moment, I could feel that this was some Circle of Life kind of shit. The book had a lot to do with healing the relationship I had to my dad and, although it felt like everything was crumbling, did a “Jesus take the wheel” kind of thing and let things play out as they needed to.
In the months after dad passed, I stepped away from life and work to grieve.
I was struggling with the loss…
I was reckoning with the shame I felt over the money I spent on my own book launch, having believed in what I was doing so fiercely that I went ALL IN for my dream. (Some would say this was brave and, I might agree with them – but I still felt shame regardless.) I was embarrassed that it didn’t “sell” as well as I had wanted to , which I attribute a lot to the faltering sense of ambition I experienced knowing my father was passing – I couldn’t find it in my soul to show up to “sell” my book while feeling the sadness I did.
Again, these are all very understandable things and, if I had to, I would make the choices I made all over again. I would never have traded the time I was able to spend with him in person before he passed for ANYTHING. No damn money. No book. None of that was more important than holding his hand at Tanglewood while listening to the symphony and squeezing it a bit too tight. Or making him BBQ potato salad. Or the few minutes of total stillness we felt together pulled over on the side of that Berkshire road, sitting on a wooden bench that overlooked the field with the sun shining down on us both.
My values were clear in this case. But it doesn’t mean it they weren’t hard to wrestle with.
And then came October 7th.
Social media (which I already had an increasingly fraught relationship with) became even less appealing to me. As a Jewish woman who supports Israel, social media became a landmine for me. Every day, if I spoke out about my beliefs, I’d receive threats and hateful messages. I lost thousands of followers over the course of two days. And I watched as the “fat community” that I had been on the fringes of for years, went full “From the river to the sea” equating fat justice and queer advocacy to the conflict in the middle east. Hundreds of white plus size women (many younger, with piercings and blue hair) flooded my comments saying vile, hateful things. I deleted. Deleted. Culling away the remnant of the fat community online that I had spent so many years supporting. All of a sudden, my value system became crystal clear.
I had a thought. There were dozens of reasons someone could not like me. Hell, I’d written a book for of reasons someone could judge me or disapprove of my choices. If someone wanted to not like me for being Jewish and anti-Hamas? I was OK with that. Bring it. You are welcome to not like me. I know who I am and I don’t need you to approve of my choices. Forged in the fire of my book release, my dad passing, and being tested as a Jew online, I the years of soul work and recent layers of pressure had unearthed something beautifully indescribable in me. Something I’d never had before – values. A personal value system that told me who I was, what I cared about, and what could fall away. A personal value system that would allow me to stand clear in the face of adversity.
As a recovering co-dependent people pleaser and chronic self-abandoner, I’d spent a lifetime wrapping my identity around other people like Cling Wrap. Assuming other shapes, interests, ideals as needed to feel more loved, safer, and more secure. Because of this, I’d found myself at 40 with no real self-esteem and no idea of who I was on my own terms. So I set out to figure out. And by the time 2023 rolled around, I started to know who I really was for the first time. In deep, authentic ways. But what I saw, was that my LIFE itself wasn’t set up to support the version of me that had grown and evolved. It was set up to support more disordered versions of my me.
All of this is a good thing. It is a result of years of hard work and deep Soul Archaeology.
Of realizing that decades worth of patterns and choices where no longer working for me. An entire life set up that didn’t serve me – the scaffolding had to fall away.
Let’s put it this way – if you are doing a great, thorough job at having dysfunctional relationships, starting to have functional ones feels like shit at first. Your relationships may have to change (or end) in order for you to set yourself up for more functional ones.
If you’re a winner at having a disordered relationship to work and your life is set up to do this perfectly, your life has to change in order for your work/life balance to change.
This is all my way of saying, I got to the point where I had real clarity about who I was and how I wanted to experience my life and what I cared about and valued – but my life wasn’t set up to live this accordingly. That I’ve had no f*cking idea how to do.
“ This is all my way of saying, I got to the point where I had real clarity about who I was and how I wanted to experience my life and what I cared about and valued – but my life wasn’t set up to live this accordingly. That I’ve had no f*cking idea how to do.”
Fast forward to the present.
Since Fall of 2023, my life has been a series of very necessary but huge mindset shifts. My personal life. My work life. My relationship to my weight. All of it. It’s been necessary but exhausting. And since January of this year, two big things have happened.
First, I had a breakthrough regarding my purpose driven work that made me realize I wanted to (no, needed to) take a step back. I committed to finding more “traditional” work. So, for the last few months I’ve been getting back out there and job hunting. Which, for a midlife woman and one with a non-traditional resume like mine, isn’t a pretty task. (More on the reason for this work shift later.) It has tested my self-esteem to its core.
Second, my partner and I had to move. We had been renting a house (he’d been in it for nearly a decade) and the landlord wanted to sell it. Searching for a new place in an aggressive market like Vegas and getting everything packed, moved, and unpacked, has been exhausting. It’s also been bad on our (not great already) relationship. I don’t want to share much about this out of respect for him and our privacy so, for now, I will leave things at that. Here’s what I want you to know.
I’m burnt out.
I’m tired.
I’m worn out emotionally, spiritually, and physically.
I’ve been feeling trapped. Screaming on the inside. I’ve needed to breathe.
So I am hopeful this road trip will help me breathe. Recharge. Rest. Revive. And help me find my way back to myself as I am NOW and not as I’ve been in my past.
Why now? Why start in Florida?
Great question. Who picks Orlando as the start point for a cross country road trip and only gives themselves three weeks? Me.
I am beginning my trip now in Florida so that I can spend a few days with my stepmother before she heads up north for the summer. While I’m here, I’ll be getting my father’s ashes, his guitar, lots of photos, and the Sapora Family Music Box. This is family heirloom that made it to the US from Hungary when the first Sapora came to this country. It’s a beautiful music box that still plays! It passes between family members but the rule is that the box cannot fly, it can only be driven. So… I’m driving it. My father has had the Sapora Music Box for a few years. During his celebration of life, a cousin was kind enough to get me added to the rotation. I feel deeply connected to this and I am honored that the box will be in my care for a while. I will head out to start my road trip on the 10th, and spend three weeks on the road, making my way back to Vegas with stops along the way. I will bring some of my fathers stuff with me and, hopefully, clear the clutter out of my heart and head.
These are big goals, I know.
One mile at a time.
I have no expectations. I know, in my heart, this trip will be whatever it needs to be for me.
What can you expect from my content on this trip?
Great question.
I am going to do my best to commit to disconnecting a bit. That being said, here is what I intend to do.
1.Use my blog to share my thoughts, lists, and travel stuff I want to share. I’ve never done this before so, I’ll be figuring it out as I go!
2. I want to see as many sunrises as possible. I will take a photo or quick video of myself with every sunrise and do my best to share each one on social media. If not in real time, than as soon as I can.
3. I don’t intend to make lots of glamorous travel blogger content but I will do my best to get out of my comfort zone.
4.I may try to vlog. This won’t be shared in real time because my focus will be on the experience and not editing. If I do this, I will share it on YouTube.
Here is a link to my YouTube channel. This is for my Pinterest - I never use it but I know I should start so, fingers crossed I’ll be pinning away soon. And, if you are here, you probably already follow me on Instagram here.
That’s it for now. Was this blog post chaotic? Sure. I’m going for process over perfection here.
I depart for my road trip on the 10th. My next two posts will include my packing list and some of the logistics I, like places I’m stopping along the way
Phew. OK. Done for tonight. Feel free to chime in the comments here! I will reply back.
Much love.
Sarah