The Friday unwind 011: Words for long journeys and igniting my fiery side

Location: Quintana Roo. fire, safe passage, a scorpio moon emerging with her heat.

Fridays are for unwinding. Inward journeys, outward wanderings, departing flights to nowhere but good memories — all are welcome here. Take all the space you need. In this series, unwind and unravel with me into a daydream, into a place that feels like a Friday spent elsewhere.

---

Welcome to the Life Is In Love With Me newsletter if you’re new. If you’re a regular recipient of these reminders of love, welcome back! 🌹🥭🌹🥭🌹🥭

Happy Friday. How will we unwind this hour? Peppermint or cardamon? I’ll be sipping mine in a hammock this week because I have waited so patiently for this unwind, and the golden hour is too pretty to waste inside. Whatever tasks are complete for the week are complete, anything outstanding, is for next week’s thoughts and can’t share space in the now. Let’s agree to close the week gentle, soft eyes and quiet minds.

Thank you to all of the new pen pals who responded to last week’s letter about Callaloo via email. You all made my mornings with your generous reflections. Thank you, you reinforced what I’ve known and stated - we are in beautiful company. I am extending that invitation into this week too. Feel free to comment, email or message me any responses to this week’s letter.

This week I shared an affirmation that I wanted to bring into this letter. It also was repeated to me a few times away from Substack in my daily life and so I feel it is a synchronicity. ICYMI:

I have everything I need. Love reaches me everywhere I am.

I have everything I need. Love reaches me everywhere I am.

I have everything I need. Love reaches me everywhere I am.

I have everything I need. Love reaches me everywhere I am.

I have everything I need. Love reaches me everywhere I am.

And so it is.

I hope you enjoy this week’s letter.

Photo Credit: Manga Verde

---

I sometimes boast that the longest bus journey I have taken is a 20-hour cross-state one from San Cristóbal de las Casas to Tulum in Mexico. I don’t even need to tell you how much of a trip that was because you know. Just like I knew when I booked it a night before departure that despite the 17-hour schedule, a Mexican bus would never adhere to that. There were stops along the way of course, loads of crumbs and limited water intake, loads more stares as I did my stretches and yoga asanas wherever we could pause, and a shift in me that always happens when I’m about to embark on something new, hurtling towards it through the 5am sky.

I had no qualms about jumping on an ADO bus, even for such an extended seated time, because I was a backpacking 20-something, less than a year into my nomadic travels and adamant that life was waiting for me on the other side of those 20 hours. Mexico is truly huge and sometimes you have to be on the ground, travelling through the regions and different accents and airs to really get it. Also, I suddenly wanted to leave the mountains. Nothing was going to keep me there while sea level warmth called me to come down. A quick sojourn through Quintana Roo, starting in Tulum and ending, perhaps, in Belize, was the month-long plan.

Between my Aries Venus and my Scorpio moon, I want what I want and I’ll go get it while you’re sleeping and wake you up with your herbal tea and the declared thing in my other hand. I find this quality to be the thing that makes nomadic travel as an introvert and a lover girl a little spicier. The number of times I have made a decision from pure desire. I write this letter and memories rush in of me, mind racing while sitting quietly in the back of a cab rushing to get to some bus terminal because I have had an idea - despite time, the odds, and the ‘schedule’. The unignorable and the unreasonable often tugs from within and I’ve learned that I like it.

I think this is because I am gut-driven. I travel with my gut-instinct, or my innate intuition because anything else has had its consequences. I am here to learn and honour my inner knowing while correcting any impulse to do the opposite. I travel with my gut in the sense of what ripples me into speaking before my mind can intervene. Like a good meal that draws sounds out of you before you can quieten them. Or a laughter that bursts out before you can hold it by the wrist, pull it back in. I try my best to live and travel from this same center, can you feel it as I tell it to you? It’s right there, where you place your hand to steady the loose emotions moving up and down from heart to gut. This is the space that has urgently fueled some of my journeys.

After a bout of food poisoning in Mexico, I had a new connection with travel. Not long after that, I began my journey through Quintana Roo. I visited Chichén Itzá, where I impulsively jumped in a mini-van to start my plan of seeing the Seven Wonders of the World. I had never described myself as fiery but I am. Not in the sense of being reactive, but in allowing myself to not dismiss desire. Fiery women will know, I mean like an oil lamp, like an initiator, lover of the life force (would life in the dark even be living?).

There are a thousand tiny stories from this journey. All of them a testament to the fact that the fire led me to safe passage to the very things I needed in that moment. I met up with a friend in Tulum who had also left the mountains, I had some more (shorter) bus journeys, I faced fears, I celebrated my birthday with stranger-friends I met in a bar a few hours before, I sat in a circle, smoked something, shared something, laughed so much, returned the next day to rent a bike I could barely ride but did so giddily, I journaled for too long in the grass, I had to force myself to return back to my studio in the mountains, I made my fiery vision mean something.

I may continue to seek out the remaining five Wonders of the World that I have left or I may happen upon my own sacred spots. The trip was born out of a fire to see for myself.

Words for long journeys and fiery visions:

~ I believe in living slowly and immediately. I advocate for a slow life because life feels fuller when savoured daily. I advocate for living immediately because life is in love with you, yes. But it will not wait for you. Go with it. If you like the invitation, don’t be shy about it. Trust the language of the body when it wants to warm the throat with the response ‘yes’.

~ Curiosity is a knowing in disguise. It’s quite deceptive then, how young it makes you feel even though curiosity is born from magnetism, which is being in tune with your bodily intelligence, which is ultimate wisdom. So the body knows, the mind, raging with questions, wants to catch up and your soul is along for the ride.

~ Trust the fire. My journeying through Quintana Roo led me to Tulum and then Valladolid and then to Bacalar to dash to the Mexican, Belizean border one February afternoon, where I’ve now settled for a while to live in love. Trust the fire.

~ How to hold intentionality with fire. I don’t know. You either got it or you don’t. Indulge yourself still.

~ Recently I’ve been pulled to breath of fire as morning breathwork. It is described as passive inhales and forced, rapid exhales. This is about the abdominals. It is to be your own source capable of igniting the self.

~ Once, a friend of mine, outstretched on a blanket under the violet sunset sky, reminded me of the blessing of being at the beach when there is bonfire. Here we had all the elements communing together. Fire is not an element many of us think we have access to. I was raised in a city, so maybe a gas stove was my closest fire source, the incense sticks possibly the next option. I think of fire as heat. Spice. Inflammation. Ignition that roars into existence. Maybe it is found in your own silent breath on an icy morning or the heat on your skin as the sun places itself on you. Fire is there if you need it.

~ Burn without burning out. The recent Scorpio full moon taught me to learn the flame of myself. It’s wiser to sip water readily to not have to gulp it down at once.

Prompts

What can fire do for you right now?

Are you a fiery person? Take space to journal or think about when you discovered your relationship with this trait.

---

Thank you, so much, for being here.

Below I share some more writings that I hope you will enjoy.

An Origin Story: Food Poisoning In Mexico Turned Me Nomadic

The Friday unwind 006: A Final Pep Talk Before My Year Of Audacity

A story about quitting my job to write

Musings on Black nomadism (pt 1)

The Friday unwind 004: When there is nothing to become

Love,

Amara Amaryah

~ 🌹🥭 For a while, I’ve reduced annual paid subscriptions to $48.88 (from $88). I am preparing to show up with my paid readers in a new way and in the meantime I’d love to grow and increase the paid support for this space. Paid readers receive 111 daily affirmations and a travel backstory upon subscription. I’m so grateful to my paid readers who have already chosen to fund this newsletter. A paid subscription supports my vision in keeping these letters and discussions on love free and accessible for all. I call this generosity repaying generosity. If you’d like, you can read more about it here. 

~ If you’re interested in furthering your approach to rest and inner-listening, The Intuition School* offers mindful, land-respecting, and intentionally curated retreats in Costa Rica. Black women and non-binary individuals are invited to join to be guided to deeper self-loving. Feel free to reach out to me if you are curious to learn more!

*This post contains an affiliate link which means I receive a commission from any purchases made. I deeply admire the work and integrity of this small Black-owned business and wouldn’t recommend it to you without that assurance.