BellaOnline Forums Religion and Spirituality Meditation 3 places you would like to visit by yourself?

Hi Susan,

I was just reading over your wonderful articles in your codependancy section, and I found the list of journal questions that contains:

List 3 places you would like to visit by yourself.

I was able to answer all the others on the list, including 3 things I like to do by myself - but this one is really boggling my mind. My first reaction is that I don't really want to visit anywhere by myself. I will visit places by myself, but it's not my preference.

I feel like visiting someplace by myself means that I'm not sharing my experience with anyone else, and that makes me sad!

What are your thoughts?

Hi Chris,

Thank you for your question! Codependency was a search word on my meditation site on April 4th so I am adapting my codependency collection to include prayers or meditations to fit into the meditation site at bella. I'm enjoying this project immensely because I get to think about each aspect again. I inserted a new topic into the collection today from a question that was emailed me last night on teens and codependency.

Actually, I was raised on a large farm on the Magothy River off the Chesapeake Bay and spent a lot of hours exploring nature. So.... there are many places I enjoy visiting by myself even to this day - for me it is time for a mini-retreat.

I get on my bike while hubby is at work and go to the Dunes Nat. Park that runs all along the North Sea.

I catch the train into Amsterdam and visit the Rijksmuseum and sketch costumes of ladies in history to use as inspiration for doll dresses (photography is not allowed).

When in America, I used to drive inland from Santa Barbara for an hour to sit at the top of a foothill at Meditation Mount in Ojai.

I love to visit the San Diego Wild Animal Park and really spend time with a special exhibit or two.

The places I visit alone give me a chance to visit with my inner self; just be quiet, think about projects I might like to do later; enjoy the scenery; meditate for awhile; move along at my own pace.

My children also have picked up the habit of going places themselves just for the reasons I mention above - and 4 of the 5 are married or in relationships.

My husband and I take lots of mini-trips here in the Netherlands and surrounding countries together and I enjoy those, also - comparing our feelings about what we are seeing, especially.

So, alone time and together time is a way I keep balanced inside <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Susan

Thank you, Susan! That definitely helps. I think it's one thing I need to work on - not being scared of doing things like that, and not going into automatic depression at the thought of going places alone!

When I was in college (a while ago now!), I lived on the coast in far-northern California, and I would go by myself to sit on big rock cliffs overlooking the ocean, and it was amazingly beautiful.

But in those days, I was very lonely and depressed (not unusal, I suspect, for a female in my early 20s!), and I think that now I might be associating those bad feelings with visiting places alone in my current life. Do you think?

Maybe I'm drawing a false connection between those two things . . . .

I'm really glad you brought this up in your articles - and I'm glad you're adding your codependancy work, as it's helpful in a lot of ways on its own. And presenting it with meditations really allows for centering - it adds some "substance" that isn't there when you just read words that you know make sense, but you have a hard time really digesting . . .

Hi Chris -

you said "and I think that now I might be associating those bad feelings with visiting places alone in my current life. Do you think?"

That sounds like something to possibly meditate on for clarity. <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Susan