A 6-week sabbatical, months after a divorce from my husband of 5 years: How a tiny Australian surf town gave me something I didn't know I needed
- After six years of working for Zillow Group as a product marketing manager, I was able to take a partially paid six-week sabbatical.
- My eligibility for the sabbatical struck in the middle of a miserable Seattle winter, and right as my five-year marriage was coming to an end.
- In January 2019, I embarked on a solo six-week trip through Australia, New Zealand, and Indonesia.
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I was newly 29 and staying in a mixed-gender hostel dorm room at a surf camp in Byron Bay, a small Australian beach town a few hours south of Brisbane. If you've ever stayed in a hostel, you know the smell. The one of unwashed clothes and leftover food. It's a smell no money-making, 29-year-old female, under normal circumstances, would willingly subject herself to.
As someone who was previously focused on marking her life accomplishments on a perfect, upward-trending line, sharing a room with 22-year-old strangers felt like a stark deviation from where I thought my life should be going. More specifically, it was not how I originally imagined spending the six-week sabbatical I earned after spending six years of my life as an employee at Zillow Group.
That's because, just a few months before leaving, when a friend recommended I visit Byron Bay, I was married. And as far as I was concerned, married people didn't vacation in hostels.
Learning to indulge in unexplored parts of myself
As I wrote down a friend's recommendation in my iPhone notes before the trip, I didn't know I was a few months away from a decision that would divide my life into two parts. I didn't know that my husband would not, in fact, be meeting me in Byron Bay or anywhere else on my journey. I didn't know that we would soon separate our lives, our friends, and our belongings. And I certainly didn't know that the trip I was planning would not be indulgent in many of the ways I had imagined, but one where I'd indulge, instead, in unexplored parts of myself.
When I touched down in Byron Bay, I was with my cousin, who, as fate would have it, was also going through her own divorce. I had just spent a few weeks solo in Bali, Melbourne, and Sydney. From there, I had planned a quick stop-over in Byron Bay before a final journey down to New Zealand, where I would end my six weeks away.
We spent the first evening walking through Byron's Saturday market. As a Seattleite, I'm no stranger to impressive local markets, but this one was different. The energy from the crashing waves, the people, and the artists made me feel light and transcendent. Local musicians filled the street corners and alleyways playing music, a built-in soundtrack to our exploration.
The next day, we paid a surf instructor to take us to waves a bit more forgiving than the ones on Main Beach. Our instructor, like many others in the area, doubled as an artist, teaching surf lessons to make extra money as he worked to build his music career. It was the first of many days we spent at The Pass - a nearby beach with a clean and protected break beloved by the locals.
It was the first of many days I challenged my definition of a successful life. I considered the internal voice urging me to create, to start my own business, and to write - and I realized sacrificing income to make these goals a reality felt important and worthwhile. It was also the first of many days I realized the mortgage and life I had unconsciously bound myself to in Seattle wouldn't allow for the space or energy to pursue my desires. I had just blindly been performing someone else's script instead of writing my own story.
A change of plans
My cousin and I spent our final evening dancing to live reggae music at Beach Hotel. As the darkness gave way to the colors of the next day, I nearly laughed out loud as I ran home. I felt a sense of happiness and peace I had never before experienced.
When it was time to board my flight to Bay of Islands in New Zealand, I had to force my body down the jetway and to my seat. I had tasted a version of life that somehow felt big, simple, and undeniably good. I chalked it up to one of life's many forms of loss.
A few days before I was supposed to get on yet another plane to continue my journey south, I stumbled across an ad for a surf camp back in Byron Bay. Something in me paused. Within 24 hours, I had rearranged my trip itinerary and booked a new flight back. It was one of the first times my solitude felt liberating. The only considerations were my own desires - and for the first time, they were mine for the taking.
So when I showed up to the hostel that smelled of unwashed clothes and leftover food, I hardly cared. I felt alive and more like myself than I had in a long time.
After my sabbatical ended, I returned to Seattle. I sold my home and started financially preparing myself to live without an income for the next year. And then, in October, I put my belongings in storage and jumped on another plane. I would go on to spend the next five months traveling in Malaysia, China, Japan, and more. While I plan to return to Seattle one day, I'm not quite sure when that will be.
It took falling out of romantic love to realize how alive our planet is, and how alive it could make me feel. That it's not just a view or a backdrop, but something we're supposed to fall in love with. And when we feel it, just like any other romance, it has the ability to rearrange our insides in a way that changes the trajectory of our lives.
