Trip to North Carolina

 Conley Creek, at Timberlake Campground, Whittier, NC

Since I last wrote, I've traveled a bit, to Western North Carolina and the lovely Great Smoky Mountains. We spent many summer vacations there, camping, when I was a child and to think of them calls up a sense of mystery and magic that makes me feel both reverence and joy.  So it was wonderful to see them again after 37 years and the acquisition of a panic disorder and a set of phobias that have prevented me from traveling much at all.

The travel phobia thing is complicated and has a lot to do with driving and speed and mostly to do with the way other drivers behave on the road. Agoraphobia, and the panic attacks attached to it, are other issues, ones which I've worked with in a holistic way over the last decade, and which have moved to the periphery of my life.  A far periphery - for which I am deeply grateful.

I did not intend to start this blog entry with writing about phobias and panic disorder...but I'm leaving it because I know that what I've suffered is not unusual and that if I share my experience it helps both me and others who may be dealing with the same challenges. In the future, perhaps I will write more about the things that have proved useful in my own healing.

I'm still processing the trip and my experiences. It was a lovely gathering of family - all my living children, my granddaughter traveled there and met up with my sister & her children and grandchild, and my brother, all of whom live there.  And I spent two days in Asheville with one of my oldest friends from Miami, Julie, who lives there now.

And the place itself was like an old friend. Daughter Molly and I stayed with my sister on her beautiful, remote mountain. It was wonderful to see the lovely home she's created,  feel the special energy of healing and peace and Nature there. My sons and granddaughter camped at Timberlake Campground, another very special place for my family.

Owned by a high school chum of my mother's, Timberlake was the place we went year after year from its opening in 1966 on. Upon my dad's retirement, my parents spent months there, longer and longer each year.  And it's where my father died.  His ashes were sent to drift in Conley Creek. And 22 years later, my mother's went into the flowing water.  I got to finally see the memorial signs for them.

This one sits by the tree where my father sat writing (his novel...lost in the flood of the storage unit here in 2008) and working his crossword puzzles.

And these are by the creek:

Well. This was a very different post than the weaving post I intended to write!  And this seems like a good place to stop writing today.  Hopefully, it won't be another month before I tell all about my new loom!!!

)O(