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A Family's Love
Our Journey as the Wanderin’ Berrys
by Licia Berry, the mom, wife and shamama
www.berrytrip.us
December 23, 2007
my family celebrated our 3-year “New Life”
anniversary; it has been three years since we left
all we knew in our outer life and began a journey to
reclaim what we had forgotten in our inner life.
Reflecting on these last three years and where we
are as a family, I see that my fears that when we
stopped traveling and settled that we’d forget what
we learned on our odyssey were unfounded. It is the
daily practice of being in each other’s presence and
being PRESENT that assures me; yes, we are all
changing and shifting, which is appropriate. But
the core is still there. The love, the respect, the
balance of work and play, and inner and outer life
are intact.
"SO WHY DID YOU ALL DO THIS?”
This
is a pretty frequent question that we were asked as we met people on the road.
Inevitably, folks would see our kids running around during “school hours”,
or see us around the RV, expecting a retired couple.
We are apparently not the “norm” for motor home travel.
We loved it when folks asked us this question, because then we had an
open invitation to tell them
our story!
We
had a beautiful home in Asheville North Carolina, a highly desirable mountain
town dubbed the “Paris of the South”. We
lived in a 1916 farmhouse on 2 acres of rolling land with historic oaks and
heirloom rose gardens. Peter had
just received a promotion in his work for Toshiba, and I had an
energy work practice in downtown Asheville.
The kids were attending the best public school in town, Isaac
Dickson Elementary, where I was the PTO president for two years and Peter
was an active volunteer. We grew organic fruits and vegetables on our land, and
had a delightful community of friends. From the outside, our life looked really
good, and in many ways it was. Below is
our sweet old house.
But
on the inside, there were subtle messages that something was out of balance.
Pete was very caught
up in the status of his job, chasing down a dream of success that never quite
seemed to materialize. He was encouraged to give up everything for his job, and
we were losing him. We loved our home and land, but it took so much work to
maintain it. We spent every available dollar on repairs and renovations. We
spent every available moment working on the gardens or the house or the yard,
and when we didn’t we felt guilty like we really should be! We were losing
touch with each other and growing apart.
We had dreamed of having family time together at this home place, but what we
created was that there was always something that needed to be done, so we did
not get to hang out much together unless we were all working!
Our sweet children expressed their disappointment in different ways, but
Pete and I were so caught up in the maintenance of the “dream” that we kept
pushing along.
Around September
of 2003, I began getting more urgent signals that a
change was coming. In my healing/counseling work, I
am accustomed to receiving intuitive messages. I
had been getting messages of the imbalance in our
lives for a few years, but did not want to listen to
them! Now, I felt the imbalance more acutely, so I
started to listen. The message was simple…”Let
Go.” But let go of what?
In October of
2003, I attended a Greg Levoy workshop (of
"Callings" fame), where the axe-falling question was
asked, "If you are standing at a crossroads, what is
written on the two signs?" This question was such a
gift to me, because I saw the vision so clearly; it
seared into my brain and my heart fell. I was
standing at a point in my life where I felt I had to
choose between my deep, true life and spiritual path
or my precious husband, Peter.
I made the choice
to plunge forward and shared with Pete that night
what I had seen; it was a very hard thing to do.
I shared my concerns and the truth that was brought
to light and he was blown away. What a blessing
that he was able to see that I wasn't attacking him,
but sharing my grief that we were moving apart in
our relationship. You can read about his reaction
here.
After some serious soul searching and late
night/early morning conversations together, we
decided that there was indeed something that needed
to change. We realized that we needed to
re-examine our priorities and look at where we had
gotten off track. Our utter devotion early in our
20-year relationship was to each other and to our
family; we had such a profound awareness that love
was all that mattered, and that the details of life
were the gravy. What happened to our lives that we
had forgotten this simple truth? It was here that
we realized what we needed to do. We needed to
radically change our lives and make up for some lost
family/love time!
SO, over a few
weeks of intense surrender, we saw where we needed
to release our attachments and our fears. My
beautiful office downtown was the first casualty.
Oh, so painful to let that go! But the bliss and
clarity that came after I did this was too much to
ignore. Peter got the message soon after to let go
of his job with Toshiba, as well. His ego put up a
fight for all of about 5 minutes, then deeper sense
took over. We kept breathing and releasing,
breathing and releasing, and we were exquisitely
guided as to what old aspect of our lives to let go
of. We felt as if giant, compassionate hands were
holding us up and leading us in the direction we
needed to go to save our family. Then, we
realized that it wasn’t just about changing our
work. In the still of one very powerful morning, we
were told to let go of our home.
That was on
November the 9th, 2003. The first person
we told about selling our home bought it gleefully.
It never went on the market. We were then told to
let go of our possessions. We were given a vision
of the four of us as a family, standing naked on the
edge of a cliff, hand in hand. We were being asked
to strip ourselves clean. We sold our possessions,
opening our home for four weekends straight to
friends and strangers who heard about our story. It
got around Asheville pretty quickly that this family
was making this crazy, radical change in their
lives. The more we released, the clearer it became
that we were to buy a motor home and travel the
country together. The vision of where we were being
led started to take some shape. We were going to
learn how to be a family in a different way than we
had before. On December 23rd, 6 weeks
after we made the decision to release our home, we
drove out of Asheville in our recently purchased RV,
completely free. Talk about fast manifestation!
On the road, at
first it was very disorienting. There was a
lot of shock and decompression and release of old,
toxic ideas that needed to happen. We began
having what we called "Pyramid Meetings", where we
followed an internally guided structure of
meditating, check-in and family discussion ("the
Round Table"). We asked questions of our inner
guidance and discussed as a family what we had each
received. Our relationship eventually shifted into
one of four equal decision-makers, each with input
that was valued and heeded. We traveled across the
southern United States, being guided in our family
meditations where to point the immense nose of our
RV. Do we go north today? West? Sometimes we
would intuitively wind up in a place for one or two
nights; other times we were guided to stay there for
several months at a time. Sometimes we fell into
volunteer positions as campground hosts or
interpretive staff in national and state parks,
where we got the opportunity to learn even more.
We relied on
our inner guidance to tell us how long and where to
travel and it has never failed us.
We
didn't ever have a logical or rational understanding of where we were going, or
where we would wind up settling...it was all laid
out for us step by beautiful step. We just had
to be willing to show up with no agenda!
Letting go and trusting without the need to control
the outcome has resulted in a magical and healing
journey for us.
We learned that
our home is in our hearts, and that our grounding
came not from being rooted in any one physical
location, but from our connection as a family and in
ourselves. We re-learned how to be together, but in
a stronger way, reclaiming the love for each other
that we had started to forget. We protectively
refused several invitations from well-meaning folks
who thought that since we were living in a motor
home we would travel to see them; our family was on
the line, and we understood that we really needed to
be very internal and honor the process of recovery
we were experiencing together. In ALL situations
and locations, we were guided as a family to look
for the gifts in every interaction. We learned
many, many lessons, but a really big one is that we
truly make our life by our choice to be grateful for
wherever we are and that we can learn something from
every person we meet. We learned it is all about
choice.
We are being guided to speak and hold workshops all over the country
about what we did and are doing, encouraging other parents to not lose sight of holding
their families spirits dear, and how to be a family in a new way that will
support positive change happening on the planet.
I am writing a book about our experiences, encouraged by so many that we met on
the road.
Again, we are counting on Spirit to show us the way, as we have been
shown over and over that if we let go and trust, we are absolutely supported.
And that brings us to now!
We wound up in the San Luis Valley of Colorado
(through very mysterious and intuitive
circumstances-another story)! We feel that this
valley is a very good energetic match for each of
us. We love it here where the antelope running
through our property are more abundant than the cars
on the road! We feel that our physical journey
prepared us for our life here; but the most
significant travel happened in our hearts. We
healed ourselves and mended the places in our family
where the veneer of love was wearing thin. We
learned to communicate in a different way, honoring
each other as equal infinite Beings, each with gifts
to bring to the world. All four have found deep
satisfaction in creating our lives from the inside
out, rather than looking for cues from the outer
world/culture about what we are supposed to do with
our precious time here on earth. This has been a
major awakening and blessing for us. But biggest of
all, we learned that there is nothing more
important than LOVE!!!!
Blessings
to you,
the Berrys
Peter,
Licia, Jess and Aidan
We've been published!
Our
story has been included in
Life
Lessons for Mastering the Law of Attraction: 7 Essential Ingredients for
Living a Prosperous Life!
by
Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Jeanne Gabellini and Eva Gregory
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