First thoughts once the dust settled

Day one of my first solo trip out of the U.S. and I was already regretting every impulsive feeling that had led me to that point, sitting on a mattress on the floor of a repurposed shed with no insulation and a door that didn’t shut properly in late March…in Norway. Where I planned to stay for an entire month. 

I’d planned this trip through WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) a whole month in advance, and at no point during those four weeks of anticipation did I ever feel any hesitation. I was ready to take a break from my job, ready to meet new people, ready to experience something I never had before. My first genuine relationship, which lasted five months, ended in February, and I found myself clawing at the walls trying to escape from that lingering pain and trying to re-center myself as a single person.

So my first logical thought was to leave the country completely. And spoiler alert, I did need it, it did help, and I do not regret that decision at all.

Here is a list of things that I do, in some regard, regret:

• Going to a new country and doing something I’ve never done by myself for a month instead of starting small with a two-week trip.
• More specifically, deciding that I could handle working on a farm (something I’ve never experienced) for a whole month.
• Going by myself, although this is also on my list of things I don’t regret.
• Not figuring out a way to get cellular data internationally.

When the long travel day was over and the anticipation of the trip dissipated, once my plane had landed and once I’d made it to the farm, when I was finally by myself and finally stopped moving, the weight of my decision hit me. I cried myself to sleep my first night there. The recurring thought was “I don’t think I can do this for an entire month.” 

Another spoiler alert: I didn’t do it for an entire month. And guess what? Spoiler alert again: the world didn’t end.

A little about the amazing people I lived and worked with

I can say with full confidence that if Jeroen and Femke, two other WWOOF volunteers, hadn’t been there with me, I wouldn’t have had nearly as good of a time as I did.

Jeroen and Femke were a couple in their late 20s from Holland, and we got along immediately! The three of us had so much fun together for the two weeks we stayed on the farm, taking walks and, on one of our days off, exploring Lillehammer.

Flora Nine and Eric, along with their three children, lived and worked on the farm. They were the kindest people, and Flora Nine especially did her best to make me feel as at home as possible. As the days went by I really did start to feel a little more like part of the family.

I struggled a lot with feeling disconnected at times. Being from the Netherlands originally, Flora Nine and Eric spoke Dutch, and so did Jeroen and Femke. They would have conversations at dinner in Dutch and I never could find a polite way to ask them to speak English for me. It was a difficult barrier to overcome. 

It was also harder than I anticipated to coexist with a family I had never met before. Trying to fit into their dynamics, trying not to invade too much, figuring out when I was overstaying my time in their house and when it was acceptable to go back to my little shed, feeling awkward and uncomfortable during arguments. Being alone made it even harder.

Despite the uncomfortable moments, though, I was lucky to have such a nice family to stay with.

THE GOATS! And the work…

Possibly the greatest part of my trip was the goats. 

Waking up early every morning with no days off was the worst part. The barn was only a few steps from my shed, but the cold was everywhere. My hands and nose went numb as I speared hay with the pitchfork each morning and each evening to feed the hungry, friendly, hilarious goats. 

After shoveling shit and hay for an hour in the morning, it was incredibly rewarding and somewhat relaxing to snatch up a baby goat and cuddle her for a while before heading inside for our daily breakfast of porridge (I will never forgive the U.S. for not calling oatmeal “porridge”). Relaxing wasn’t always the right word, especially when Gina and Gula, two of the older babies, decided that my jumpsuit or my hair were nice things to munch on, or that I was the perfect practice for their climbing skills—typically at the expense of a dozing baby in my arms. 

My hands were perpetually dry and rough, and I got a horrible rash from the hay after touching it without gloves ONCE. The cold air only made my skin worse. It’s funny though, I find myself missing the sweet scent of hay. And I really miss the goats, stinkiness and all. They were the funniest little creatures.

At the farm, everything was seen as a resource. Flora Nine used goat milk to make all sorts of cheeses, and I had the pleasure of trying some of them. Flora Nine said that the first milk after a goat gives birth is the thickest, so when one of the female goats had her baby while I was there, Flora Nine used her milk to make pudding.

They had one male goat for breeding, and damn did he have some great hair and a great personality! At three to four months old, the male goats are slaughtered for meat. That fact was hard for me to come to terms with, but I did end up trying some goat meat in a stew. We also made some delicious meals from the pigs they had last season.

I saw life and death together in one day. Watching a goat give birth for the first time was an incredible experience. A little gross, but fascinating how right away the babies are already trying to stand on wobbly legs. 

Another goat gave birth on the same day but her baby didn’t make it because of how she was positioned in the womb. I had to hold back tears seeing her lifeless body on the ground, but Flora Nine was much more unfazed. She even said “We can still use her for meat and furs.” From an outsider’s point of view, it seemed so cold and callous. But as a farmer I suppose you need to be prepared for unfortunate but inevitable circumstances like death.

Being alone

Going on this trip alone showed me that I take many things for granted: having someone to bounce ideas off of, having someone to relate to when I’m feeling lost or confused or overwhelmed, not feeling awkward in public settings. Emphasis on not feeling awkward in public settings. When I made it to the part of my trip where I was completely alone in Lillehammer and then in Oslo, I was giving myself pep talks in the mirror to convince myself to go out to dinner!

Thank god those pep talks worked, because I would’ve missed out on some delicious food. After the first dinner alone, the next few were significantly easier. I am learning to enjoy my own company and feel more comfortable by myself in a crowd of people. You start to see that everyone is just living their own lives and that someone eating alone isn’t a strange anomaly that everyone stares at. Frankly, no one cares. Once you come to terms with that and once you stop caring, you are free.

During the week I spent in Lillehammer and Oslo, I did things that I was so proud of. I navigated my way around the city, stopped strangers on the street to ask questions, ate alone, walked for hours alone, and booked hotels and made last-minute travel plans alone.

It took being on my own in a new country for me to realize that I can accomplish so much more than I give myself credit for. That I’ve been putting myself down when really I should be celebrating my independence and my ability to overcome stressful situations. 

When I landed back in the U.S. and took the time to process everything and reflect, I could genuinely say that I was proud of myself.

Taking back control

Remember how I said the world didn’t end when I shortened my trip? Well, I meant it.

I am a chronic people-pleaser; I tend to stay in situations where I’m unhappy if it means I’m not disappointing or upsetting anyone. Finally, I decided to say to hell with that on this trip.

Jeroen and Femke helped me make the decision to leave the farm earlier than planned. They made a simple, excellent point: Why stay at a place where you’re unhappy just for the sake of making someone else happy? I was under no legal obligation to stay at the farm. And it came down to the fact that I had different expectations for my trip. I got what I could, what I needed, from the farm. It was time to move on, and I could feel it.

So I left. There is so much power in that statement. Anxiety too, thinking back to how I felt while admitting to Flora Nine that I didn’t think I could last the whole month. I felt the weight of her disappointment heavy in my chest, but at the same time I felt lighter. I did something to make me happy, and I felt powerful. I felt in control—control that I had been scrambling for since my break-up.

Hiking and snow-shoeing through the mountains, starting fires, singing to music with Jeroen and Femke while we dragged branches into piles, trying new foods, sharing American sweets with the kids, huddling under the blankets to watch Bridgerton on Femke’s phone, befriending goats…all those moments chipped away at my uncertainty and led me back to the control panel of my life.

Maybe I didn’t need to travel across continents to find myself again. Maybe I did. All I know is that I did find myself. I found healing in the nature all around me, in the after-dinner cups of coffee, in the times when I just felt like crying, in the spontaneous, deep conversations with new friends, in feeling out of place and out of my element, even in kneeing myself in the face on the trampoline.

All of it, the “good” and the “bad,” made my trip to Norway worth every single second.