Wanderlust Chronicles: Das Rapé

"The midnight sky is the road I'm takin' Head high up in the clouds"

I know most of you agree that nothing changes us like cross-cultural opportunities and travel. Here’s the first in a series of stories I plan to share about things I’ve experienced away from home. Thanks for reading!

When I got to Germany I had been married twelve years. I had the idea to move to the idyllic location as our last chance. The beautiful, family focused society of Germany was surely wholesome enough to fix my American family that yelled at each other. I hoped it was the American pace and the materialism that robbed my family of its soul. I realize, especially now, that this was a pretty risky move - selling it all in Texas and moving into a tiny flat together in Germany, in a town where I knew no one - especially if one stopped to consider the strong fact that my husband was not nice to me. Doors kept opening though. The German passport came through, the house sold and all of a sudden I was on the other side of the planet with a guy I met when I was 20.

I had only now started to look and think back to that time. I wondered if my favorite thing about my husband when I met him was that he was something to tell my sorority and friends at home what I was doing after college, and what that meant for me now. Years ago, we had worked together, stopped drinking together, graduated and found jobs in the same tough market at the same time, together. We acquired the mortgage and the baby. Currently, I felt more linked than in love. As the pandemic turned everything over, I found myself dropping every link I could - the house, the cars, the expectations - just to see what was left when the connection wasn’t yoked.

What I had come to know through this experience and others - the grief and excitement, the huge joys and tired tears of moving, COVID, a new baby, you name it - was that I was too much for this man. The summer before our move, we had dutifully attended weekly marriage coun$esling se$$ions, where we were to share our “wants and needs.” We spent the summer separated, and I brought the words of my needs with descriptions of what they looked like in action bulleted below, “security. dignity. intimacy.” My husband, after reflection, shared, “I need Lilly to keep it below a seven.”

If there is anything I am used to, it is this sentiment. I am always, whether I want to be or not, the top level of energy in the room, just a bit too much, at least. I spoke too much in class. I was too loud for Girl Scout meetings. Even in performing where I was safe and praised for this gift of energy, I received notes on how I can keep it more contained. I’ve been told all my life of what a huge baby I was, over 10 pounds at birth to my mother’s five foot two frame, in a labor that took over 24 hours and was two weeks past my due date. In pictures, my Mom is beaming with her baby as I am just busting out of her arms. I don’t recall sitting on laps or being held growing up, maybe because I felt bigger than my Mom at such a young age, and my Dad traveled often for work. The theme continued, as I was uncontrollable in high school and college when I was bored, and unmanageable in my entry level jobs.

Most of us at my college, especially the sorority girls, were graduating engaged senior year - something I would not even know how to deal with if my daughter was in the situation today. Given the options, I had done well with my pick for a husband. Now I was 37, and I wasn’t in Lubbock, Texas anymore. These days, I felt more like a woman, a budding matriarch and a mother to an eight-year-old girl. The marriage was not growing at the same rate as me. I wanted soul. I wanted healthy conflict and deep conversations. I wanted a magical thread between me and another person that said, even in our highest level of frustrations with each other, we would not yell “Fuck you” in the street. I read books and went to therapy and sought all the solutions to make this so. It seemed the more my life blossomed with authenticity and possibility, the more my husband withdrew. The more I wanted to slow down and savor connection, the faster he wanted to move. It wasn’t until we were up in the serenity of the German mountains, where all life is cured, that I could see him for how he was. Instead of Germany being the missing piece in our family, it was the mirror that reflected how much we had grown apart. We would never be nice if we weren’t nice here. The great idea in Lubbock may have run its course.

The reason I had moved had failed, but I was still living in Freiburg, Germany, and it was going to be a bitch to get home. When I turned the focus to only myself, I had a great peace of being in a beautiful place and an excitement for life. I had accomplished a move in a way that was even better than doing it with a partner by my side, I had accomplished this move despite my partner. I grieved deeply for my marriage every day while making sure to delight myself with something at the same time. Delighting myself with what to do in my beautiful new town was an assignment, and antidote to the pain of losing my marriage. Life was in a painful slow motion as I had no idea what would happen next, but it was beautiful. Just the steps from my front door mat to the elevator would take your breath away on vacation. Be happy here now was a battle cry and act of resistance.

I had moved to Germany for peaceful family values, but I found myself in a town with a bold activist college culture as well. In 1900, Freiburg was the first German university to accept female students. In the 1970s, environmental activists came from around the world to protest the building of a nuclear power plant in the town and won, cementing Freiburg as an epicenter for global environmental activism. In our day to day lives, we walked through marches and demonstrations against war, for women’s rights and for the environment every week. Outside of my daughter’s school, activists glued themselves to the streets to protest food waste. The energy of the town was alive with souls who wanted change and sought higher consciousness. I loved these people and their energy. I wanted to open my soul, demonstrate with them and hold hands in solidarity. After years of living in the Southern states of America where my outspoken heart was told to keep the peace and go with the status quo, I felt seen and happy to be in a town where a free world is dreamt of and fought for.

In Dallas, I was the one to go to the protests. I carried signs and flags in marches and I tried to regularly stand up for what was right. I was labeled a hippie by my peers, the loud mouth who bucked the regime. It was in Freiburg that I learned I am not a hippie as historically described, connotated with dropping out and laziness. I am a radical. I am an activist in life and motion. I shared the energy of my new town of Freiburg, where people camped on the streets as a way to dedicate their lives to the fighting of climate change. I enjoyed seeking a different path and standing for something. As lost as I felt in my own family at the time, I felt home in the energy of this community. I felt part of the spirit of my city like I never had in Dallas. My nuclear family fell apart but I had family in my sisters and brothers in town who stood up for and demanded justice, passing me something to bang on. I wasn’t too much here but right at home.

The radicals of Freiburg not only sought change but also higher consciousness. Incense was sold on the street during my daily commute. As I laid down the weight of the effort I had poured into marriage, I found myself with a lot of free time in a town that actively pursued the kinds of weird shit I like to do. I was no longer living in Germany with the plan to save my family, but there for a reason. I chose to follow the highest purpose of individual growth and meaning. In that pursuit, I was on fire. Sound baths, yoga classes and chanting nights were around every corner. Without the connection to my husband anymore, I felt like I was here on my own. Five thousand miles away from anyone else I knew, I chose not to look at my life as lonely. There was plenty to do.

That’s how I got shamanic tobacco from the Amazon shot up my nose.