Ruins of Teotihuacan while growing in Mexico 2009-2011.

Today is my second post of 12 (celebrating 12 years in biz this week) sharing my story through entrepreneurship and book writing, especially as it pertains to life, motherhood, love, growth and gratitude.

I’m calling the series ‘In love with being human’, however, this particular musing is about leaving and coming home (the new MGI spotify soundtrack titled “Home” is below).

In love with being human…

A modern-day gypsy. Take it all away and she can re-build or re-make what once was there. True freedom. It’s not a million dollars but IS those million cells that know to their very core that they can come together to create exactly what was there in that last place or space in time or BETTER. (also the makings of a true entrepreneur, from what I’ve learned).

From that first chess move, heading to France by myself at 16 and living in the country (where my local family ate ‘le pigeon’ and persuaded me to eat it too), I was choosing the path…the path of leaving and returning home where in the very leaving and returning you self-realize. I wouldn’t know it until I was 27, almost 10 years later from that first leaving that this was my path in entrepreneurship, motherhood and wifedom as well.

In love with being human…

Similar to a take off and landing, up and down dog in yoga or the pulling up and down of a weight, every experience we say yes or no to builds and is building a muscle or, better yet, a muscle memory (memory is good). When I was 16 and 21, I wasn’t as conscious of this fact as I am today. But I said yes to leaving (and returning home) and it would change me forever. It would also also continue inspiring me to leave and return home hundreds times more since.

Now, looking back, of course, I see that I was putting in many of those 10,000 hours Gladwell talks about. Input of time. Greater output for you and others from the learning. I think that’s how it goes.

In love with being human…

My consciousness at 16 “all alone in the world” in France would teeter-totter between “I’m nervous” and “I love this!” to “I don’t like this being alone business (I feel so far away)” and “It’s kind of cool that no one knows me (as I smoked the cigarettes my Mom and Dad would have never approved of).”

Back and forth, just like my trips around the world each year, since that age, I would change my mind daily (or minute to minute) about how much I loved the experience of being anonymous. But what I didn’t know then is that although I felt far from everyone, I was growing the most important closer relationship with the one person that would be the biggest part of my success.

Even during the sticky times, I did also start to get an idea or feeling that anonymity was about re-learning and about learning for the first time how to design a life experience for my truth and tastes.

I mean let’s face it ~ we’re taught that being anonymous isn’t fun. Or that people need you. That you exist to help or support them. That being alone, well, is lonely and that you should want to be in community and dig connecting with others all the time.

But what I would learn throughout all the expat living experiences from 16-35 and beyond, with or without others joining me in them, was that the very thing that allowed me to create deep connections with others was disconnecting. That what allowed me to grow an appreciation of togetherness and building communities and businesses and books was separating. We all need to separate so we can best see how the pieces fit back together again.

I teach this dance to Nolan as best I can. We go from dancing together and sleeping next to each other when Josh is on a trip to sitting on different couches for long periods of time reading our own books, having our own thoughts and evening experiences. Of course it also comes from taking trips alone when each person comes home excited to share what they’ve seen, what new friends they’ve made, what they’ve learned and/or thought about the leaving and coming home…

This deep sense of anonymity in each place from France to Madrid (more on Spain below) and many more expatriate and extended travel experiences later, I would feel anonymity tear me “down” or, better yet, tear me open and build me back up again. It’s like play doh…the more you break it apart and put it back together to create something new, the more you want to keep playing the game; the more you want to feel yourself have the experience. Like in yoga, the very duality or journey between strength and flexibility is that which creates the transformation and also what keeps you coming back for more.

In love with being human…

That’s what was happening. But I didn’t know it then. And I’m grateful for it now.

The journey at 21 living and studying in Madrid would continue to introduce me to sweet anonymity once again. This time, however, it was more constant sweet sauce; less teeter-totter. I remember feeling better-equipped at realizing that I could create the woman I wanted to be vs. allowing anything to just be. Novel thought…you can create right now vs. allowing what you don’t want to lead or push you.

I didn’t know how to say it then but if I did, this is what it’d be…I could be, do or have anything I wanted emotionally just by being anonymous (definition for “the state which allows me to be more wholly me”). I began to understand that true growth and a subtle contentment (that lasts way longer than any yoga class or martini can give) comes when you are able to hear the space between the words.

Or just give yourself the space to really feel into the hell yes’s and hell no’s of your life (your holy, awesome ONE life).

What is it that I really wanted? What did I want to be, do and show? Who was I separate from it all and from everyone? The ages of 16 and 21 in the various countries shined a light on the answers and on a business years later, really, that would help others do the same. Find answers to similar questions. Then express them.

It was in Madrid when I remember officially falling in love with travel.

With the strength a young woman finds within.

With the lightness you feel when shedding past legacies or little voices that may have said “you should” or “you’re bound to live out x or y.”

Five years after that first experience of eating “le pigeon” when I didn’t know I was eating “le pigeon”, I knew.

In love with being human…

Over the last 12 years in business (and through two more expatriate experiences and being gone for several years), I’ve consciously searched out moments, trips, people, times and spaces that made me feel “alone.” Don’t tell the motherhood police, but “searching out” the experience of motherhood and becoming a mother was the whopper of all “alone” or anonymous experiences (more on that and Holland below). Unlike other trips, this was a trip I have made only once so far to the dismay of my large Latin family.

In love with being human…

I started my business at 27 and kept the leaving and returning home going. I left from San Francisco and Los Angeles and wouldn’t return until recently.

Sitting on a balcony in Mexico while on vacation, the eternal gypsy, turned to him and asked “What about moving overseas? Amsterdam, maybe? Looks like a great place…we could ride bikes to a from work and travel every weekend.”

So we did.

So I did.

The mantra/momtra: So I will…or is it I SO will?

I and we traveled every month to places like Cambodia, Thailand, Russia and Sweden while I worked from wherever we were. A life and a lifestyle it was.

Again, it was in that clearing and space of less noise that I could hear once again what it was that she wanted. Ten years after that first anonymous experience, I could now see that very anonymity helped my design business…research actually says that creativity grows when you live and travel overseas. A curious bit.

It was also in that space, that I grew that baby I mentioned earlier.

After four years, I came home from Holland with a baby boy and an even larger desire for my version of big business. And talk about the being the mother of your own re-invention. Those first two years of having a baby AND growing a business was a going and a coming that has also taught me about self and what she’s capable of.  

This new “we” then moved to Mexico. I moved a business, a now four-year-old babe and a budding writing career. And I was always and in all ways grateful for all of it.

Grateful knowing I would know not a soul beyond my man and my little man…

Grateful knowing I would once again get lost in the city and also find my way…

Grateful knowing I would get lost in myself and find even more me of me to shape, shift, mold and share.

This time, the anonymity invited me to flow into writing my first book. Something I had wanted to do since I was a well-branded, emotional teenager. As I dove deeper into experiencing who I was in this capacity, I was using the same tool or filter. And it was through this new yet familiar anonymity and space to create another extension that I could extend more to my family; that I could be more of the wife and mother I wanted to be.

Now fully conscious of the ebb and flow, I saw how at every turn, we create what we want to be a part of (even when we don’t think we can or when we don't think we are). I was once again grateful; grateful specifically for what I had asked my husband a year or so earlier ~ “So, babe, what do you think about moving to Argentina or Mexico for a couple years? Have Nolan go even deeper into the language and all of us experience something new?”

I was grateful for his answer.

So we did.

Today, the leaving and coming home still continues and is simply part of the framework and way I create, both in family and in the branding business as well as Walking Momtra, helping women everyday get clear on their own identity in business and in life.

We grow in the uncomfortable times.

We grow in the process of birthing and growing our creativity and our beloved businesses that are a direct extension of us.

We may feel alone, maybe even anonymous the whole way, however, we connect to self in those moments.

Travel may not be your way but finding your version of anonymity that helps you reach for stars you were meant to reach…now that’s a coming home.

It’s a coming home to yourself.

And it’s this kind of coming home that makes you feel rich, in or out of business, in or out of a relationship, with or without a baby, with or without that perfect body or perfect relationship with your parents.

To want more of you first is to find what you’ve also been wanting in others.

So, in the end, which do I value most, the leaving or coming home?

I’m not sure. But I do know this ~ if you love whom you’ve found yourself to be when no one is watching and/or when it feels like the whole strange and foreign world is, you’re good.

To read the first "In Love with Being Human" post ~ https://michelleghilotti.com/blog/its-called-in-love-with-being-human/

For the new MGI "Home" playlist: Get Into iiT: Home, Fall '13