On June 30, 2008, I stood outside the Cairo Airport chain-smoking Marlboro ultra-lights for so long I almost missed my flight.
I’d been given an ultimatum by the NGO I’d worked for until a few months before — use my repatriation package (flight home, shipping container) by the end of the month or forfeit it. I hadn’t been able to decide whether to move back to the U.S., or go somewhere else, or stay put. I was paralyzed by grief from a traumatic loss, relentless insomnia and crippling anxiety, fueled for months by an excess of various intoxicants. I was a wreck.
I finally got on the plane, found an apartment in Brooklyn and a great therapist, and started a long process of self-inquiry and healing.
What led me to move to Egypt in the first place in 2005 was a classic blend of aversion (running away from relationships I couldn’t handle at home) and striving (for the professional success and financial security available overseas). For a decade after moving home I investigated all of that. I made peace with the people I’d been running from (especially my mother) and accessed a reserve of self-worth deeper than what came from my career, enabling me to take a huge leap of faith and leave it in 2012. After struggling for years I got sober in 2015. Then I fell in love, coincidentally with a man of Egyptian decent. We just got back from our first trip to Egypt together — both our first times back since 2008. Between long days with his extended family I reconnected with old friends and retraced old footsteps, this time with stable, sober feet and a clear, present mind.
Integrating that painful period of my past with my partner was profoundly healing. That makes sense: much of the research around trauma recovery shows that integration — rather than release or pushing away — of traumatic memories and experiences is the deepest and most powerful form of coming into wholeness. I can recall that version of myself chain-smoking outside the airport with compassion, knowing that her experience traversing that darkness strengthens my ability to support others going through hard times. And when I find myself back in the darkness, I now know with certainty that it will pass.
