Like any other ambitious woman, I have responsibilities outside of my endeavors that take precedence to my passions. I’ve dreamed of being a mother since I was eleven years old. I’d sit and play Lauryn Hill’s Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You  and rock my doll and sing along, imagining the love I hadn’t experienced yet. Wanting it so badly that I’d began to believe it would be impossible to have that because I wanted it so much. As I’m typing this, I’m feeling victorious for the first time in a long time. That my greatest achievement grows larger and exceeds all the hopes and aspirations I’ve ever had, is an understatement. Watching my trio has broadened my understanding of existence and redefined what the world should look or feel like. Nurturing and protecting them has made me determined to make our world. That’s what inspired me to start Kamtrek. Making the world, one trek at a time. Ideally, I’d like to take them on all of my treks, but right now that’s not an option. And when I can’t take them, boy, does it hurt. There’s that exciting feeling of exploring my curiosities and then there’s the dreaded guilt that comes with leaving your pack of cubs in the lair. Either way, there’s no getting around it. They’re going to have to burgeon without me from time-to-time. It’s a part of life, I tell myself. Sensible, responsible, thought process, right? Yeah, until the guilt creeps back in under my skin. Then my imagination starts churning and I’m ready to cancel or shorten my itinerary.

Finally, thankfully, my discernment kicks in and I’m standing, feet planted on a see-saw with my heart in one hand and a train ticket in the other.

And then I remember my mother, her ambitious spirit, unapologetic brilliance and what it afforded us. Where I would be had she given up, settled in setbacks or became overcome with guilt, I don’t know. I remember why I can’t help but climb higher, it’s all I know. And it’s what my babies know and love about me. We’re told as women that we can’t have it all, but I don’t think that’s true. I know it’s not true. I have been given the gift of life four times over; my own, my firstborn’s, my second and third children’s. That’s four lifetimes in one, with the power to change and explore every day. The pangs of separation don’t go away with each trek, they just keep my eyes wide open so I can make it back home in one piece. With a heavy heart and light feet, I make it my business to make the most of each trek as I’ve paid a heavy fee, time away from my babies!

How do I tell them they can do anything that their hearts’ desire if I don’t follow my own heart? Why I was given the passion to explore is beyond me and I don’t pretend to have the divine wisdom to make sense out of it. Instead I use it as a guide to navigate and learn this big, bountiful world full of gems, dimensions and wonders and how they all play a part in understanding this life I’ve been granted. With that, I hope to gift my children with a sense of humanity that surpasses ideas and theories, that is revealing, true and wholesome. To have that sense of understanding, they have to see the whole picture, well, as much as possible.

When I get the sinking feeling of separation anxiety, I think of the lioness, somewhere in the Sahara, leaving her cubs in a lair to explore the land around them. She’s searching for food, and, more than likely, signs of predators/danger. My need for exploration isn’t that immediately consequential, but sense I’m raising children in this world, I’d prefer to know the grounds I’m walking. Paving a path of world exploration that leads to self-discovery so that they’ll know the way no matter the climate, is what I’m doing.