Going Somewhere
Now that I’ve spent the semester discussing and analyzing identity of women in the novels we have read in relationship to the themes that are covered, I guess the time has come to put this narrative page to use and bring things down to a personal level. I have to say this task seems a little more daunting than analyzing aspects of identity through primarily fictional characters. It’s hard to put out a piece on your own identity. But thinking back, it is great that the women writers voiced the stories about women that they did, auto-biographical or not. In my first blog I discussed how women today have much more opportunity to share parts of their stories and identities than women of the past, and I want to go ahead and use this space to embrace that opportunity. Plus, who am I to sit here and talk about identity if I don’t tell you a bit about what makes me, me? So, here it goes folks! The character being discussed in this post is yours truly.
I was having a hard time deciding what to discuss here when I took notice of that fact that my blog with the most responses was the one titled “Don’t Look Back...Or Do”, where I included a personal snippet about moving away for a bit after high school to grow outside of where I came from and see more of the world. As some of you took notice of, I am truly passionate about this topic! What I want to share with you is how I discovered this passion, which is a big chunk of my identity, and how I hope to become the kind of woman uses it to fuel something worthwhile (I guess a little bit of accountability comes with this). I want to get out further than my hometown, broaden my horizons, be useful along the way, and share those adventures through a creative means to remind people there is more to the world than where they are. Bringing a skill with me that makes me useful on my way, and creating something with the experience are the two big factors that I want to embrace. My favorite creative way of sharing a story is through photos (They are worth 1,000 words after all. That’s a whole essay), which I will also include from my trip this past summer.
I attribute this passion for exploration outside of what I grew up in to my early love for the world of literature. It all started when I picked up my first chapter book, the good ol’ Boxcar Children. My reading of it was interrupted by having to attend evening service at church with my family. I brought it along and proceeded to dive into the story, until I received a whispered scolding from my mother and had to restore it to my shoulder bag under the pew (sorry mom). As a kid I was a bit of a recluse and even in my adult life I like time to myself with my books and my thoughts. The thing about books is that they take you somewhere and give you something new to think about. Reading them made me want to have that in real life too. I decided that I wanted to go places and soak them in. However watching my favorite photographer, Freya Dowson, sharing her adventures with an environmental purpose, reading about women in my books who played a big roles in their own adventures, and seeing women who broke out of the mother and wife shell (a confine that has personally terrified me though its expected in my family) made me realize I was missing a piece of what I needed to do.
All of this lead me to my enrollment in the TESOL program, which will allow me to travel with more of a purpose. Wherever teaching opportunities take me globally, I know I will be learning so much more from it. I’ve always been invested in my education and I hope that this way it will never end. In addition, I always want to foster creativity and storytelling through photos. All of this can seem really daunting, and sometimes it is hard to resist that pull back into my comfort zone of curling up in a chair with my books and confining my adventures to turning pages. This is where I can look at the characters in House On Mango Street, Another Brooklyn, His Favorites, etc... and realize it would be silly to discuss the fact that we have a hand in shaping our own identity, even when coming from the worst situations and not apply it to my own life in which I've been dealt a pretty decent hand.
To fight this tendency toward my comfort zone I took my first trip abroad last summer to Costa Rica and absolutely loved it. The language barriers were awkward, there were a lot of unknowns, getting transportation could be daunting and scary. But none of that could take away from the amount I learned, the people I met, and the sights I saw. I tried fruits I had never even seen. I ran into monkeys in the woods. I learned how to navigate public transportation in a city that barely has roads or traffic rules and it was terrifying, but satisfying. By the end of the trip I had realized there are so many ways to communicate even with language barriers and made some connections with people who I could hardly speak to. That was the biggest thing about this trip. The people. They can teach you so much. I hope to center my identity around being someone who fosters and shares these connections.
A project I'm currently working on is putting together a sort of album from my trip and telling a story with the photos. On this trip we definitely did a lot of exploring and observing and I haven't gotten far enough in my program to take a job yet. Once I do and can spend more time with and communicate more with those I meet, I hope I can share more stories of people and life in the places I go rather than what I just saw. My future trips will likely be more extensive as well so I can share much more! In the meantime, here's a snippet of the gallery I'm working on.This trip was a great introduction for me to get comfortable with navigating another country and I hope I was at least able to capture some of the beauty and inspire others to get out there! Hover over the pictures to learn a bit about them. This is a mere snapshot of what I hope to share in the future.