Val in her empty house

How I Feel After Selling It All To Travel The World

Yes, I did it.  Exactly six weeks after getting back from a three-month sojourn to Asia, I came back home and decided to do what many other travel bloggers and nomads have already had the courage to do.  I sold just about every item I owned, so that I, too, could travel the world.  When I was in the midst of the “biggest garage sale on earth”, I couldn’t help but tell my story.  So many people, as they grabbed up all of my stuff, would comment, “I don’t think that’s something I could ever do.  I could never get rid of my stuff.”

It’s funny because I once thought the same thing.  When I had this dream, at the beginning, as I looked around at all the things I had surrounded myself with, I wondered if I could actually do it.  Cooking and giving dinner parties had been one of my favorite activities and I had it all.  Over 200 cookbooks, the grinder for grinding wheat to make bread, spoons made of seashells, vintage cocktail glasses, enough kitchen gadgets to make Kitchen Kaboodle jealous.  How would I part with all of it?

Then one night I watched the movie “Up”.  Somehow, the movie got stuck on the part where the old man is having to throw all of his beloved “stuff” out of the house, so it will go up again.  I watched this scene three times before I realized it had stuck on this part.  I had to laugh as I realized it was a divine message, that if I wanted my dreams to come true, I would have to get rid of all my “stuff”.

Then, I went on my three-month journey.  Guess what?  I never once thought of my “stuff.”  In fact, I realized that to become the person that I want to be in life, I would also need to get rid of my emotional “stuff.”  You know all that heaviness that we like to carry around because we are convinced that someone didn’t treat us right or “stuff” from painful memories, and expectations, and, “Wow!”, I realized that here I was without my “stuff”, and I was still carrying a lot of stuff.  So, I did a lot of work on myself.  I lightened up.  I went to healers.  I opened my heart.  I danced.  A lot.  I painted.  I let go of all the “stuff”, and boy, did it feel so great to feel so light on the earth.

And so a few weekends ago, I felt like getting rid of the physical stuff was more symbolic than anything.  It was time.  I was ready.  And you know what?  I didn’t feel any sadness.  It wasn’t hard to let go of my things because I realized that they weren’t really mine to let go of.  These “things” were mine to borrow for a while, and now it was time to let them go.  Just like the emotional “things” I had held onto.  All of those stories were things that had happened to me.  And they all made me who I am today.  But it was time to let go of them.  Because it’s time to create a new story.  And that story is my dream.

Val Dawson