This morning I am grateful more than ever to be alive with all my limbs intact. On my recent trip to Trinidad I had a great time with one of my closest friends.  I ate shark for the first time, swam in waters where I could see Sharks swimming in the distance, woke up to roosters and enjoyed the beautiful scenery.  On the way back from one of the best days in Trinidad on a highway where the speed limit is 80 miles per hour, our car was hit and we spun around and hit a railing in the process. For a second I thought we were about to flip over. But luckily we didn’t.

When something happens so quickly and puts your life at risk, it is good to keep reminding yourself to be grateful. I cannot say that I had an epiphany of any sort. There was no point during exiting the car to frantic screams of “Get out of the car there’s a gas leak!,” where I felt an epiphany. I did not have an epiphany when I was tending to my wounds or when I was shaking that night from shock. But when I got back to my natural New York City habitat I felt a difference. It was in the way I saw the world. My surroundings are less of an oversight to  me now.

This, however, is also a side effect of a good vacation. I loathe when I get back from a vacation and people urge me not to dive back into my projects to quickly. Vacations should not be seen as an escape from your daily life. Humans are not animals trapped in cages just waiting for that week or two when they finally get to be free and happy. The purpose of a vacation is to rejuvenate.  It is to inspire you to come back to the life you have been living and show up for it. A vacation is the pause button; it is the intermission to an amazing show, because regardless of how amazing the show may be, after 3 hours of sitting down, your butt will hurt, your mouth will feel the dryness and your bladder will want to relieve itself. That is a vacation.

Vacations do not serve to take you away from a horrible life and bring you back only to realize that it is worse than you envisioned it while you were gone.  If a vacation makes you feel that way, you should consider moving to the country you visited or quitting the job you dread getting back to.

I am refreshed, grateful to be alive and ready to write, sing and dance. I will be moving closer to the people I love in October. My new home will be equipped with love, my own meditation corner/mini garden and a space for music and art. It was difficult at first for me to move away from my neighborhood as it is home to my childhood and family. However, one must go where there is love waiting for them.  And Brooklyn (not Bushwick or Williamsburg) is where I feel the love at the moment.

We are not animals waiting to come out of our cages.  We are migrating energies and we must go where the love takes us.