I have heard it said that what we teach and bring to the world is that which we need for ourselves first and foremost. I believe it to be true. My work being that of working to support, create and foster a sense of culture and community wherever I can, I can’t help but recognize the reality of the relevance. I am so rich and so blessed in so many ways, with so many friends around the world, yet, in moments, I feel like I am the most lonely and alone person on the planet.
My heart longs for something that feels always fleeting: a feeling of “belonging” with others that can really only come from family and culture. I see the contrast with my own reality here everywhere. The people here know who they are. They know where they come from. They have a connection to their roots, to their community, and to their families. They have roots that go back hundreds of generations that they are still in touch with every day through their religion, their songs, and their dances. Most of us in the good ol USA, simply don’t have that. Many of us don’t even know where our grandparents came from. Often our grandparents don’t even know, the chords were cut and little was revealed. As so often happens, in the name of progress, the past is steamrolled and buried.
My cultural conditioning combined with my passion for travel and exploration lends me very much to being a bit of a loner in this world. A self proclaimed, fully discovered lost, yet totally found, soul. Enlightened in many ways, and fully connected, yet always deeply longing for something that “normal” people in the most poor of places seem to have that I can’t quite touch or grasp. Something that I know I will never have, that is not mine to have and that I can only witness, borrow and admire in others.
Somehow, being a woman, single, solo and carrying the torch that I do, with the passion for experience, knowledge and wisdom that I have, I have become a citizen of a different kind of community. I am participating in the community of the entire world. I wander, I watch, I listen, I am like a ninja warrior priestess in the city of the world on a lifetime quest for understanding humanity as a participant of many cultures. I am, indeed, a global citizen. I have home, friends, community and love everywhere, and yet at the end of the day, still I am alone.
My instincts are sharp, and I know how to take care of myself and others. I can literally go anywhere in the world and feel like I can survive, thrive and find my way. I’ve been described as brave, courageous and fearless and I know it’s all true. I don’t have a lot of inhibitions. I say and do as I please, when I want and I’m grateful that I was blessed enough to be born into a culture that does grant me, if nothing else, the freedom to create myself and my life as I please. Even in my lonlieness, I wouldn’t change a thing.
Yet, in quiet moments, like now, sitting by the Malecon at sunset listening to the surf and watching the day come to a close, the tender soft place in me, as a woman, wants nothing more than the sanctuary of one good man to lean on and to take my hand.
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