Dear Kayla Elizabeth,
I miss you.
It's been five full months of traveling and I'm so proud of you for every last bizarre, joyful, messy, tear-filled moment. The girl who spent 12 hours a day up a tree or wandering alone through state recreational parks took a chance with what she believed herself to be capable of, and is doing the World Race.
Thank you for believing in yourself. Thank you for taking a shot at this whole blogging thing back in October 2014, when you got an email asking you to blog 800 characters or less once a week for the next year and a half...even though you had never written before.
Thanks for trading Victoria's Secret, organic groceries, girl's nights and Chicago road trips for Walmart undies, Walmart EVERYTHING, TV dinners and countless doubles. Thank you for keeping a full time restaurant job and breaking off casual relationships, even as all your friends were graduating into careers, getting married and buying houses, because you knew in seven months you would leave it all behind.
Thank you for staying on the field through a death in the family and through Sister's brain surgery. And thanks for being willing to grow through the pain.
Here's the thing, though, darling - you're burning out. The purposes that you used to live for and the causes you champion have burned so bright for so long that they've started to burn you up. You spend too much time listening to everyone else's thoughts and problems and not enough to your own. You get mad about stupid things (ugly-crying on the floor of the Zimbabwe YMCA when they gave you a fish instead of a rice plate? What was THAT about).
You've forgotten how to share.
I miss you - the real, authentic Kayla. I miss the girl who woke up before the sun to go to hot yoga every Tuesday and Thursday mornings. The girl who refuses straws at restaurants and carries a glass jar of water like it's attached to her right hand, the girl who passes metal mugs over the counters at local coffee shoppes to get soy hazelnut lattes made in them. I miss the girl who makes her own chocolate, clay toothpaste, deodorant, and forages for spring water while spending 2 months protesting major corporations by buying strictly local.
I miss the girl who used to dance in the rain. Lately, you walk around the puddles, sometimes only laughing a few times a day.
So we are going into the wilderness. Just you and I. And I want you to bite down and hear me in this, because it's going to hurt a bit: you need to get yourself back. And like most things worth having, it's not gonna be easy, or instant. You need to turn down the voices of everyone back home, even of your readers, and turn up the volume on God's.
We're going to figure out how to recover from Greece. We're going to spend more time in nature instead of your head. We're going to peel back the layers on your cynicism and exactly why you so hate being touched; because not all hands are out to hurt you and being the little spoon in a team trampoline nap time actually kind of rocks.
For the next 24 days, we're going to focus on the stars. We're going to go without any electricity, running water and Internet, staring into the mountains instead of into blue light. Africa doesn't believe in coffee or coconut oil or grass fed butter, but it does believe in freedom. And, babe, we're gonna get some.
So find your notebook and pens, hang up the phone on family turmoil, and trust that readers will still be waiting to hear from you come March.
We've got some work to do in the wilderness, and you won't come out the same as you went in.
Let's do this.
