Personal Journey's

[Maddie22]

Has anyone gone on a personal journey by themselves? What I am think is going somewhere that you do not know a single person. Lose all of your contact with anyone you currently know with the exception of a personal friend you can trust to relay messages back to loved ones. Then go discover yourself, exactly who you are and what you want to be for an extended period of years. Perhaps five to six.

I've been thinking about doing this somewhere out west, perhaps San Francisco or somewhere. Next year after I graduate.

Has anyone ever done this, or have any solid ideas?
feel free to pm further on this if you do have experience. Also, has anyone ever came back fully transitioned. Not that is necessarily want to do, but just a curiosity.

[Karren H]

In a way, that would be kind of cool... But I don't really need to find myself!! and it would be like running away from all my responsibilities, which I would never do....

[GaleWarning]

Here is a book about someone who did.

Soul Survivor – Paul Hawker

[Persephone]

Here is a book about someone who did.

Soul Survivor – Paul Hawker

Are you thinking of Soul Quest: A Spiritual Odyssey Through 40 Days & 40 Nights of Mountain Solitude by Paul Hawker (ISBN 1551455447) or did he write another book?

(Addendum: I think I just figured it out. He published Soul Survivor in 1998 and Soul Quest in 2007 - could be the updated and revised edition).

[linnea]

Literature is full of stories (short stories, novels, poems, etc.) of characters who go on such personal journeys. There are real humans who have done it too, but it is not easy to depart in this way and it is not necessarily a way to find one's self. After all, a great part of self stems from one's relationships (family, friends, lovers, etc.). Since many of those relationships have developed over a considerable amount of time, leaving them behind also leaves a good deal of the already established self behind. Perhaps this allows for a new self to develop; perhaps not. It won't be an entirely new self.
Going away from one's connections to some sort of very different place can be a really fruitful and enlightening and enriching experience. It may be most enriching when one returns. The paleontologist Loren Eiseley wrote this about a related type of experience:

"It is a commonplace of all religious thought, even the most primitive, that the man seeking visions and insight must go apart from his fellows and live for a time in the wilderness. If he is of the proper sort, he will return with a message. It may not be a message from the god he set out to seek, but even if he has failed in that particular, he will have had a vision or seen a marvel, and these are always worth listening to and thinking about."

Vision quests common among certain Native American groups, biblical 40-day or year excursions into the wilderness (John the Baptist, the Jews, Jesus, etc.), these are the types of searching ventures (and adventures) that can help a person know himself.

I wouldn't think that you would need six years.

[Lisa Golightly]

Couldn't do it myself... I kind of need people... My people :)

[KimberlyJo]

You feel like you can't discover who you are around the people in your life and family? Do you feel like their expectations of you are defining who you are now and the only way to break free is to cut them out?

[kay2]

Yup. I've been doing it for 53 years. I call it "living." The family and friends I grew up with in some ways encouraged me, and in some ways I allowed their views to hold me back. Rather than cut off my family, I took on the challenge of learning who I am independent of the expectations put on me by others. My best wishes to you as you live your own journey.

[Shikyo]

It really sounds like an very interesting idea, but I don't think I could do it anymore. I just could not leave my beloved wife alone anymore, before I met her I would have loved to do something similar like that. In fact, I did something rather similar, but not quite. I went to Japan for a year to learn the language and the culture for a year. I knew no one in there, but I had contact to my family and some friends over the internet, so it was not quite the same.

[Shikyo]

ria, as it seems you are the only one who has really done this, just out of curiosity I was wonder how did you do the trips? I mean did you plan them out before hand or was it more a spontaneous action? As there is a lot of included in something like that, like all your friends and family might get worried if one just disappears like that even for a week.
Knowing my relatives and friends, if I'd disappear out of no where without saying anything they'd get worried and probably even call the police if they don't here anything from me for a while. I'm sure this would be the case with most of us no matter where we live or how our relationship to our friends and relatives is.

Don't feel pressure to answer though, if you don't want to. I totally understand its a personal question, so just answer if you feel confident in it. If you prefer you can always answer to me per PM, I don't mind that neither.

[allisonrn06]

I have thought of going somewhere that nobody knows me - I think sometimes this is the only way I'll ever get out in public dressed fem. But not for any extended period of time and notalone as you describe - I would at least have to have my wonderful wife around!

[Maddie22]

Well, let me clarify a bit. I'm single no kids, and I'm graduating college next year. I'd figure this would be an ideal time to try something like this out

[Denise01]

I have gone on trips several times to the southern States, ending up in florida for 3 or 4 weeks at a time

No one knew where i was going, as well as myself, as I never make reservations. The only contact i had with home, was a telephone in the vehicle, and only one or 2 people have that number.


It has been fantastic to be able to be myself, and be totally femme for the 3 or 4 weeks i have been away, and have had absolutely no problems at all


The more i am able to go, the more i love it

Denise

:):):)