Little girls dreams do come true.
When I was little,
Every time someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grow up,
My answer was globe trotter.
There was never any question in my mind,
None whatsoever.
That's what I wanted to be.
I even asked my dad how I could get a white passport.
I devoured every adventure book out there.
When Enid Blyton became too boring,
I got onto stuff like Thor Heyerdahl and Jules Verne.
At the grand age of eight,
I was determined to build my own kon-tiki and sail to Easter Island.
I also wanted to build my own nautilus and sail the seven seas forever.
The moon?
But of course,
I'd go there next and I'd already earmarked the North Pole for my first exhibition and El Dorado was going to be next.
The people around me found my enthusiasm endearing,
But things changed as I got older.
Suddenly,
Enthusiasm gave way to annoyance and even anger.
Stop sticking your head in the clouds and come back down to earth.
Now,
Now,
Remember where you're from and keep your feet on the ground,
Girl.
And slowly,
The little girl decided to keep all the excitement to herself and act normal to the outside world.
Slowly,
The little girl died.
She raised her head one last time,
When at sixteen,
I was determined to become a telecommunications officer at sea.
Travelling the seven seas was once more my ultimate plan.
But the little girl got her final terminal blow,
When she was rejected for being female and wearing glasses.
A lethal combination that cut off her career at sea there and then in the 1980s.
Her death struggle was accelerated when all of her alternative career choices – pilot,
Archaeologist,
Photographer – were met with derision and contempt by the career officers at school.
Once again,
The little girl was told to get her head out of the clouds and keep her feet on the ground and was offered a job as a bank clerk instead.
As well as being female,
My parents' luck of money was now also held against me.
All of my career choices would have cost too much to finance and were also not eligible for public funding,
As the chances of a female completing the training were regarded as very low.
The government thought that all females get themselves pregnant at nineteen and waste government money.
So nobody ever invested in real careers for women.
You had to have your own funds or get a real job.
And still the little girl died a hard death.
After leaving school,
I decided to backpack across Europe for a while to work through my frustration.
I wasn't willing to die behind a desk.
And once I met my husband in the UK,
The travels continued as we gigged all over the place with our own rock-and-roll bands.
The little girl was still having fun and traveling.
Not globe-trotting,
But criss-crossing Europe.
A great consolidation prize.
But then life once more served the little girl lemons.
My gigging days came to an end when my husband got severely ill.
I suddenly was the sole provider.
So I did the sensible thing and took a job as financial translator for one of the big four.
The little girl put on her big girl pants and grew up.
She got her head out of the clouds and became sensible.
She sacrificed her happiness for the money to pay the bills.
I branched out and started my own translation aid in Jin-C.
I was doing well,
Earning good money.
I had more money than at any other time in my life.
But the price was high.
It cost the little girl her happiness,
Her soul.
Years went by and she tried to keep a tiny spark of herself alive by becoming an energy healer and discovering her spirituality.
And slowly,
Oh so slowly,
She started to recover little bits of herself here and there.
And slowly but surely her old dream of traveling the world started to resurface.
She started thinking about booking trips to Nepal and Machu Picchu.
She started reading travel blogs and dreaming again.
But something was still holding her back.
She was convincing herself that she needed to earn more money and that she couldn't afford to take too much time of work.
She kept putting off her dream.
She'd become scared of her own dream.
Europe was safe and it was enough,
She told herself.
But then something happened that changed everything.
The little girl was invited to Sedona on a retreat and the old dream was back in a heartbeat.
It had never been dead at all,
Just buried and then the pretense of adulthood.
So she got her Esther and bought a plane ticket.
Her adult self told her that she was being stupid,
That she hasn't got enough time and certainly not enough money to travel in comfort for six weeks.
But then the little girl saw her chance,
Rose up like the almighty warrior as she really is and finally defeated her adult self that had suppressed her all these long years.
She remembered how time and money were never an issue in the old days,
How she and hubby used to travel all over Europe on nothing much more than love and fresh air,
How she always used to backpack with nothing more than an inter-rail ticket to her name.
And she remembered that time and money have nothing to do with it.
You have to make the conscious decision to go and the rest will fall into place.
I was so glad to see the little girl again after such a long time.
I embraced her fully and welcomed her back into my life.
And now I've just returned from a six-week backpacking trip through the USA,
New York,
New Orleans,
Los Angeles,
Sedona,
Austin and Oklahoma City.
Travelling solo like I used to as the adventurous life-loving teenager,
Leaving Europe for the first time.
I finally am a globetrotter.
So little girl's dreams really do come true,
Even if it sometimes takes a while.
