Stretching Toward My Light

What a trip to Saint Lucia taught me about lineage, language, and learning to see with the heart.

We don’t always see with our eyes. I know… I say it a lot.

The clearest vision, I’m learning, happens with the heart. It’s when the world slows down enough for you to notice what you’ve been carrying all along. This kind of vision doesn’t arrive like lightning; it unfolds. Sometimes, it emerges in stillness, in language, and in belonging.

That’s how it happened for me, on a recent trip that felt like more than a vacation.

I went to Saint Lucia, an island I’ve always known by name—my name! But it’s more than mine: it’s my grandmother’s name. It’s my grandfather’s name. It’s stitched into my family, into my lineage, into the language of who I am.

And Saint Lucia, Santa Lucia, is the patron saint of vision and light. She is the one who saw clearly even when the world tried to silence her. She carried light through darkness. She knew how to see beyond what was obvious. And somehow, in this place that carries her name—and mine—I remembered how to do that, too.

There’s a particular strangeness that settles in after you return home from a place that sees you.

It’s not just because the beach was beautiful, or because the food was warm, or because I had time to rest. But because, through language, through connection, through the unspoken rhythms of cultural presence, I experienced a version of myself that felt whole… fully awake... alive in my own skin.

One evening alone, I spoke Spanish and French with new friends. Imagine that—Spain and Martinique represented in this tiny space, our accents weaving across cultures like music. I didn’t feel like I was performing or translating; I just belonged. There was no effort, no code-switching, just the joy of connection in real time. I felt seen in languages that didn’t need explaining.

Then you return to your “regular” life, where even though nothing is wrong, everything feels a little too tight… and not just because of the extra rum punch and pastries!

That feeling, though, of disorientation, of a tug or ache, is the emotional echo of being seen by the world in a different way… and then returning to a life where that part of you doesn’t always have room to stretch (PS— it took me a long time to settle on that word, stretch… maybe I’ll come back to it later?). You were expanded by connection, by language, by landscape… and now the container of North Canton feels entirely too small.

It makes complete sense that in the quiet mornings, those sacred hours I reserve for writing, my thoughts drifted toward Don Quixote (my favorite book) and the Appennine Sibyl (from my favorite place in all the world).

In many ways, the setting I just left… sunlit, multilingual, textured with rhythm and gesture… mirrored both of my favorite mythic figures:

• Like Quixote, I traveled not to escape, but to reimagine. I saw the world not just as it was, but as it could be. I let belief guide me more than logic. I allowed hope to speak louder than habit.

• Like the Sibyl, I listened: accents, pauses, stories encoded in syllables. I stood at the mouth of culture, and welcomed it through language, and was changed by its cadence.

That’s what travel does, when we let it. It doesn’t just offer rest, but also remembrance. What an amazing reminder of who we are when we’re most fully alive, awakening the parts of us that don’t always get called forth in daily life.

Saint Lucy, Santa Lucia, saw with the heart. That’s the vision I’m trying to carry home.

In Saint Lucia, I was called forth.

So, if I feel strange now, it’s not because something is wrong. It’s because something has opened. The light inside me has grown.

The container just needs to grow with it.

This is the work now:

• To stay awake.

• To keep listening.

• To carry the light back.

• And to build a life wide enough to hold it.

PS— I wish a super congratulations to the brilliantly warm and welcoming staff of Secrets St. Lucia on your opening! Thank for the hospitality and peaceful time for reflection and renewal.