My Weekend on the Atchafalaya River
The hardest part about disconnecting is severing the ties that keep us tethered to the stresses of everyday life. Planning to take vacation, putting it on the calendar, telling people you’ll be offline, those are all easy tasks. When the time comes to close our laptops, put our phones on airplane mode, and snooze our email and Slack notifications, that’s when we find ourselves trying to hold on for five more minutes. That’s exactly when we need to let go. Then again, maybe that’s only a “me” problem…. The weekend before last, I found myself in a cabin clinging to a shred of WiFi emitting from a terrible hotspot when I realized, it was time to let go. Whatever I was working on was fine before I worked on it and would be fine when I got back to it on Monday.
The fam and I traveled to a fishing camp on the Atchafalaya River for a long weekend. Because of the havoc wreaked by Hurricane Laura, my Paw-Paw has been staying at this friend of a friend’s fishing camp while his house is repaired, and we wanted to visit him. It’s a secluded little oasis in the deep country of Louisiana, right on the river and without WiFi or reliable cell service. Here’s the thing, I don’t know what was more frightening: the fact that hurricane season meant that the snakes would be out and about or that the lack of ability to connect to the outside world meant that I’d be afforded the opportunity to be alone with my thoughts and feelings.
I associate the Louisiana humidity and sunshine with summers spent getting snow cones, running through sprinklers, and going to the playground with my grandmothers. It was my first time being back there since both of their passings in March and April of this year and there were…are still so many emotions and feelings of grief that I need to deal with. This disconnect, even though momentary, was so necessary to reconnect with the feelings I’ve been pushing away in order to keep the routines and regularity of my day-to-day life.
I don’t know who, but someone needs to hear this: Close your laptop, it’s time to rest, reconnect, and refuel. Here’s a few ways you can get started on letting go:
Leave home
You don’t have to go on vacation or escape to somewhere tropical to leave your regular accommodations and head somewhere less familiar. You can go to the park, take a walk, go to the backyard, it doesn’t matter! The key is, you have to get away from the spaces you frequent the most — leave your bedroom, kitchen, and living room behind and travel to a site that hasn’t seen any stress, trauma, or tragedy.
Lose the WIFI
…and the cell service, if possible. If you have the ability to connect you won’t disconnect. I truly believe that and honestly live it. If you can’t get emails you won’t know what is or isn’t happening and that’s crucial. Issues and questions can be sorted out without you if you give them the opportunity to be!
Get comfortable with silence
Sometimes during commercial breaks I find myself picking up my phone to distract my mind from my other distraction because an idle mind seems so weird in this day and age. We always have to have something going on in the background: the TV, music, conversations. I’m the MOST guilty of this. To this day, I will put the TVon while I’m working just to have some background noise that keeps me focused — it drove my friends in college wild. With all of these distractions vying for our attention, it’s vital that we turn off and tune in to the natural distractions occurring around us.
Every morning of my weekend on the river, I tried to get up before everyone else — which is hard because my dad is an early bird just like me — and go out to the beach to just sit. I’d meditate on the songs of the birds, the whispers of the wind, the “plop” sounds that fish make when they jump in and out of the water. I thought about my grandmothers a lot, the memories we made, the last things they said to me, the love of God that they showed me. The truth is: silence is not actually silent, but it is extremely cathartic and healing if we just let it be.
Journal or read
That book you keep trying to start? That reflection you keep meaning to write? That devotion you keep saying you’ll get around to? Disconnecting gives you the chance to start, and maybe finish, those things that you tend to de-prioritize.
My favorite part about the camp was finding different places to read every day. One morning, as I was reading near the shore, I read a passage in my book that set the main subject on the Atchafalaya River! It was so surreal, I felt the book come to life around me and the characters begin to materialize on the horizon of the river banks.
Take a step outside of your comfort zone
If you told me, at the beginning of this year, that I’d spend three days kicking it out in swamp country with the gators, snakes, and Indiana Jones sized bugs, I would have told you that I went backpacking ONE TIME and I didn’t intend to ever get that close to nature again. However, it’s the things that feel so outside of our character that tend to be the instances that shape us the most.
Take a chance.
Visited the grave of one of my angels. Love you forever, Nana.
I needed that weekend. If I’m honest, I need a lot more weekends like it, to heal and grow and let go. I hope you will also find time to disconnect this week, even if it’s only for a short moment.
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Yours Truly and Truly Me,
