Returning to Japan: A Journey of Rediscovery

After almost ten years, Karl and I are finally returning to Japan!

We fell in love with Japan during our visit in 2015. We promised to return as often as possible and planned to go back in 2020, but the pandemic happened. There’s a small chance Karl might get a work assignment in Japan in a few years, so we have been delaying our return in the hope of that opportunity. However, I couldn’t wait any longer. Despite the financial strain, we’re doing it now because both of us are burnt out professionally and personally and desperately need a recharge.

I don’t want to put too much pressure on this trip, but I hope it will be the quality bonding experience Karl and I need to rejuvenate us physically and spiritually. Despite our solid and enduring friendship, we’ve had a rough time for a few years. We’ve tried marriage counseling, living separately (though that was more forced than planned—it’s been good for us), and exploring alternative relationship models. However, we still can’t interact for long without driving each other crazy because our vibes are so different. I hope returning to our favorite place will help heal or at least energize our hearts and spirits so we can continue moving forward together.

Spirit Time

However, this trip wasn’t originally intended to be a ‘me and Karl’ thing. It was going to be a spiritual pilgrimage for me, but I really wanted Karl to try to come on it with me for at least part of it, and I’m glad he will be. For me, this trip is an opportunity for a personal reset and a vision quest/spiritual pilgrimage, which is partially why I’m spending 10 days in Japan alone before Karl joins me. I’ve been going through a lot of growth spiritually since my near-death experience in 2020. I now know that part of what I experienced was a spontaneous kundalini awakening, but I had never heard of that before. My family made me feel embarrassed and crazy, so it’s taken me a while to get comfortable talking about it. I have a variety of spiritual gifts that have been growing in strength ever since, and it’s become very important for me to isolate, meditate, spend time with God, Spirit, and myself, and spend time in nature and places with positive energy.

I didn’t decide to visit Japan this year until last month, and even then, I wasn’t 100% sure until I booked my flight last week. Less than two months ago, a friend suggested that I go on a vision quest and spend time in nature to help recharge my spirit after I asked for advice on how to stop emotionally monitoring other people. Emotional monitoring is when you are on constant alert and actively monitor or feel other people’s emotions to feel safe or comfortable–most common in people with unstable or traumatic childhoods like myself. I’ve only been aware of it, at least by name, for a short time, but for my own sanity and happiness, I have got to get myself to a point where I don’t worry about other people’s feelings. That’s not to say that I don’t care, but for my own health, I need to figure out how to unplug myself from the matrix and those in it enough to continue pushing forward in my own evolution and health.

I was originally just going to go camping, but it’s not a great time of year for that, and God started nudging me about Japan. The next thing I know, he’s speaking to me and through me and writing me notes telling me he wants me to come to Japan and not just at any time but now, this month, and that he specifically wanted me to leave on the 11th. This may sound like crazy talk to some of you, but I am done caring about those of you who think that way. Feel free to keep reading if you’re curious or for entertainment, but I am done hiding. 

Going with the flow instead of overplanning.

Getting to Japan was a whirlwind, but now that I’m here, I want to reflect on why and how I got here and journal my experiences as I go as much as possible. I love making videos but writing and reflection are so dear and good for my soul.

I’ve only been outside the United States only a handful of times. My first international trip was our trip to Japan in 2015. Karl and I were thinking of starting a family at the time, but I didn’t want to try until after I’d traveled to another country because I feared that wouldn’t happen if we had kids. My top three choices were Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. We chose Japan because we perceived it to be the most difficult—mostly because of the language differences. I was incredibly intimidated about visiting a place where English isn’t commonly spoken, so I spent months preparing, planning, learning Japanese, looking at maps to familiarize myself with geography, reading cultural etiquette books, and more. This trip isn’t like that trip at all. 😅

It’s currently 3 AM on June 13, 2024, in Japan. Karl and I bought our plane tickets one week ago. I booked a hotel for my first three nights only a few days ago and packed two days before my flight. The day before my flight, we discussed a vague itinerary (just which cities we’d be in) once Karl arrived. Still, I’ve intentionally made no plans for the 10 days I’m here by myself because I want to treat this part of my trip as a vision quest or, as I like to call it, a ‘spirit vacation,’ AKA vacation with spirit/God.

For the last few years, I’ve channeled various dates to treat as special ‘Spirit Dates’ where I try to keep my schedule open and let God and Spirit guide me and talk to me throughout the day. They are almost always incredibly magical days of self-discovery and understanding. Last August, I went on my first solo vacation. It was also a spirit vacation to give me time to meditate, reflect, and explore, and was absolutely amazing. I’ve shared some of my stories from it with my spiritual TikTok community, but hopefully, I’ll have more time for writing this year and can start to share those here as well. This is my second official Spirit Vacation. I’m going to plan things as I go loosely, but I want to keep my time open to whatever possibilities the universe wants to open up for me, so I’m going to do my best to just go with the flow each day based on my intuition, how I’m feeling, and what naturally pops up.

Intention

Whenever engaging in meditation, a vision quest, a psychedelic experience, prayer, or any other sort of spiritual experience, it’s best to set an intention, even if that intention is just being open to whatever the universe or God most wants to help you with. I’m open to what the universe thinks is in my best interest, but I am hoping to gain insight into one or more of the following:

• I’d like insight into where to go, both literally and directionally with my life. 
• I need help identifying the relationships in my life that need to end and the courage and wisdom of how best to do so.
• I want to figure out how to safely release my anger and pain without hurting others, including myself.
• I want to spend some time reconnecting with nature and the spiritual realm. Japan has beautiful energy and lovely spiritual traditions. I was once told that the Japanese are like ‘the elders’ metaphorically speaking and my intuition tells me there are some important insights here for me to discover, especially in regard to how different Japanese and American culture and society think and function.
• I hope Karl and I will feel mentally, emotionally, and physically recharged and that this trip will also help soothe and enlighten Karl’s spirit.

Timeline

• June 6th: Booked Airfare
• June 8th: Booked a hotel for my first three nights
• June 11th: Nonstop flight from Atlanta, GA to Tokyo, Japan (arrived on June 12th Japan time)
• June 22nd: Karl Arrives
• July 5th: We fly back to Atlanta, GA together

Reconnecting with My Faith

It’s intimidating to talk about God and spirit these days. So many people are triggered by the word ‘God’ because of religious trauma, and while I know that God goes by many names and has many forms, that’s the word I prefer to use most of the time, and I stubbornly will not let anyone take it from me. I had an incredibly special and close relationship with God and nature when I was young. I intuitively knew, understood, and recognized so many things that others in my life did not, so I kept my thoughts and feelings to myself to fit in and be accepted. Over time, and after a lot of trauma, my spiritual experiences and memories faded. Still, my near-death experience and the other bizarre psychic experiences I had in 2020 put me on a journey of reflection and discovery that helped me rediscover and open those parts of myself that I had hidden and forgotten.

Reconnecting with Myself

It’s been difficult to open up to myself and my loved ones about how much of myself I’ve kept hidden over the years to feel safe and accepted. I’ve been obsessed with masks ever since I can remember, and it makes so much sense now–I’ve been wearing countless masks my entire life. I feel bad because honesty is incredibly important to me, but I wasn’t consciously dishonest. I just hadn’t connected the dots between those two concepts yet, and I felt like I had to protect parts of myself so they could continue to exist and quietly evolve.

I keep trying to give myself grace, but it’s hard when part of me feels like I’m coming out to all the people in my life and telling them, ‘Hey, I’m sorry I’m not the person you thought I was, or that you wanted me to be. I’m actually ___, ____, and ____. Do you still want me in your life? Will you believe me when I tell you who I am?’ I don’t like labels, which is part of why I never wanted to assign myself or give people labels for me, but in the past few years, I’ve felt the need to bridge understanding and communication by adopting some–at least tentatively until I decide what fits me best.

Before I dive into some of my labels here or in a future blog post, let me first express my frustrations with society’s desire to decide what other people’s labels are instead of allowing those people to tell society who and what they are. It’s like visiting a foreign country, Japan in this instance, and telling the natives that THEIR country is called Japan when its real name is Nippon. Or when someone tells someone they feel or believe something and the person they’re talking to responds with ‘no you’re not, or you’re wrong.’ Now, there are always exceptions, but in my opinion, especially as someone who’s fairly intelligent and emotionally evolved, I think people know who they are better than other people know them because THEY ARE THAT PERSON/THING. This is so ridiculous I can’t even find the words for it.

Recently, I was opening up with a family member about how I technically fall into a lot of labels under LGBT+, including ‘trans’ because I’m genderfluid/two-spirit, and that family member commented (I could tell they felt slightly uncomfortable, possibly confused, but were trying to be supportive) along the lines of ‘well don’t most people these days.’ What their actual intention and meaning were is unclear, but to me, it seemed they were trying to imply that my understanding of myself or self-identified labels was wrong. I love my family; most of them mean well. But do you have any idea how frustrating it is to try to tell your friends and family who you are and for them to be like ‘no you’re not, you’re wrong, you don’t know what you’re talking about, you’re confused, or that isn’t real.’?

Another issue is when people mislabel you, for instance, some of my family, especially my dad seem to be absolutely convinced that I’m a Democrat because I went to art school and think differently from them. I don’t identify with any political party, especially Democrat or Republication but they can’t comprehend that and have often bullied, threatened, or dismissed me because of it. I’ve barely seen or spoken to my dad for the last two years because of one such experience. I love him but it makes me sad to see people so trapped in the matrix and blinded by the fear-mongering of the media and politics that they allow their own lives and family to be suffer.

I recently told some of my family that I think it would be best for me to move away and start over. I don’t feel accepted by our family. My family seems to only see and remember what they want to see and perceive. They keep unconsciously trying to force me into a mold of what they want and what would make them most comfortable. We love each other but I’m tired of suppressing myself in order to fit in at their table. I want to truly know to the best of my ability the people I love that are closest to me but there are very few people in my life that seem interested in knowing themselves let alone me. I want to exist and blossom fully in my own being. It’s my hope that after some time apart, perhaps their hearts and minds might open, but I’m bracing myself to just cut all my ties if I need to. Life is too precious. I saw a quote last year that said ‘you can’t talk butterfly language to caterpillar people’ and I’ve been thinking a lot about why people just move away in order to start over, and then ideally return and reconnect later on. Too often I don’t think the people in our lives will give us the room we need to grow. 

God once told me I needed to be repotted into more fertile soil so I could continue to grow. I thought he was talking about a geographic move (Alabama to Ohio), but now I also realize he was talking about the mental constructs that we and others place around ourselves that limit our growth. I often feel like a potted plant whose roots are all knotted up and have no place to expand.

Sadly, I’ve suspected my entire life that I’m ‘too much, too passionate, and too different’ from my family for them to be comfortable, and they have told me so quite often, especially over the last four years. I’m tired of worrying about their comfort more than my own. I’m tired of worrying about society’s comfort more than my own, and the implication of how many people are suppressing themselves to fit into a collective that isn’t worth fitting into is a cycle that feels me with great sadness and frustration.

Karl and I have agreed that if ever given the opportunity, we’d volunteer to leave the planet and go colonize a different one. I don’t want to give up on Earth; I don’t want to give up on my home, and I don’t want to give up on my family and community but that’s how I feel right now. While on my flight to Japan yesterday, I was playfully thinking about what it would be like if I didn’t return to the USA. I think I could walk away and give up everything, but that’s not what I really want at this time. I also sadly don’t have the means to just go on an international walk-about though the prospect sounds amazing.

There’s part of me that would love to help forge a more inclusive and supportive community in Alabama, the USA, and even the world. But…I keep reminding myself to have faith in God and divine timing and to trust in the process (life). Instead of exhausting myself with worry and stress about the problems of the world I am trying to remind myself that if I just give up my need to try to control or fix things and allow things to unfold naturally that God will guide me and others in the right direction. For me, true faith means trusting that we are all part of a process or plan that is in constant motion. If we allow ourselves to flow with grace we will be guided where we need to be. If we are brave enough to lead by example that will give courage to others to be able to do the same. Imagine how much better this planet would be if we all trusted in something larger than ourselves and allowed ourselves to be guided by grace. Over the last decade I’ve learned that the best thing I can do for the universe is to work on becoming the best version of myself and to be brave enough to share as much of that journey with others as I can so they know they’re not alone and have more courage to embrace their own unique journeys.

Here’s hoping my vision quest in Japan yields lots of fruit and gives me the time and distance I need to put things in perspective.

Thanks for reading and for following my journey. The writings on this site are, first and foremost, for me and are mostly written in a stream-of-consciousness style, so if there’s something you’re curious about, let me know. 

Love,

Carol