Four months have passed since I moved into an RV full time with my lifemate, and some people have asked what that’s like.
It’s been hard to answer because life gets really FULL learning how to live this way, with barely enough time at first to think, let alone reflect. So many things need attention, and it takes time to get a flow. In some ways, the four months have felt like a year of experience – which can be exciting and intense.
There is little time for reflecting because I’m busy adapting to a life on wheels while maintaining my (remote) day job, even successfully expanding it (gratitude). It’s like learning a new language while simultaneously learning to walk again – all with the love of my life, and allowing our relationship to evolve with the changes.
It can be extra challenging when you’re in a conscious relationship. To us, that means codependent behavior and triggers don’t get bypassed (for long) and get confronted and worked out. Period. We’ve learned that incredible treasures of trauma release and other expansive experiences are one of the main reasons we incarnated here in the first place, and RV living actually helps us get used to living with the discomfort of that process, to move through it with more ease and grace.
Are we asking for trouble? Why lean in to discomfort?
Because life these days demands it if one wants to TRANSCEND endless suffering. It’s no (spiritual) secret that the pandemic is designed to push the limits of our comfort zones in order to truly grow and allow our soul purpose to expand beyond our egos’ desires. Fear, in many forms, feels ratcheted up, and I see it as an excuse to look deeper at myself and shed stubborn limiting beliefs (that are easier to see now!!) – for more freedom to live my truest life.
Then we took all that and moved it into an RV! The pure compression is at once challenging and exhilarating.
How does a relationship survive that? To use one analogy, we knew we were going surfing, so we brought our surfboards (spiritual tools to work through triggers, etc.).
What I didn’t expect:
We’ve gotten closer in ways I didn’t even know existed. New dimensions of relationship have opened up that paradoxically make us feel closer and more individually sovereign
We operate less from the outside in, and more from the inside out. In the past I would have been insecure about this – “Hey, this part of our lives doesn’t look like what I think a love relationship should look like…” – and now follow my flow. My flow never disrupts, disappoints, deters, defines, or detracts from anything, and neither does hers.
Other things I didn’t expect to experience:
Food tastes better. Even the simplest foods, like a slice of bread is rapturously delicious
We take more hikes because we park in nature a lot, but we also take more walks in unorthodox places, like random but beautiful neighborhoods
I’m more physically active overall and haven’t even thought of going to a chiropractor since we began
Getting knicks, bumps, scrapes, and minor injuries happen as I learn this new lifestyle, which is slightly complicated by chemo/ immunotherapy treatments I receive every few weeks that makes it take longer to heal those things, but I chose it all (ALL) and I open myself to receive the messages all my blessings bring (Trust in the Youniverse is huge with us)
We find charming, nearly empty coffee shops in small towns where we can work on our computers in air-conditioned comfort for a good part of the day
I’m spending more time with family, both on the phone and in person. I’ve discovered that I enjoy cooking for my parents and followed that joy, preparing meals for them they can eat throughout the week, which relieves stress for them. And I get to hang out with them more than I have in years, which has utterly *transformed* our relationship. So grateful
We $aved quite a bit taking a shuttle bus with 25 seats in it and renovating it into an RV with a full bathroom with shower, solar panels, two rooms, closets, etc. (thanks Ismael Ramon for your expertise) so we can only point to ourselves if something isn’t quite what we expected. But because we made it, we can change it too, which you can’t say about regular RVs.
Same with us. We take full responsibility for Who We Are, and that’s the biggest game-changer of all.
Note: We may have the great outdoors as our front and back yards, but we also live like the astronauts on the space station and have developed a much different relationship to bodily functions. Enough said – peace out!
Scott Ware is the publisher of Radiance Magazine.