Vacation/ Pilgrimage/ A Visit Home

I just returned from a long-awaited trip to Scotland. I knew that that the journey was going to be special for me, but I had experiences and feelings I had not anticipated. I knew travelling to Scotland would be more like a spiritual pilgrimage than a vacation and yet somehow I was still shocked by how true and big that felt at certain times. I am moved to share some of what came up for me and how the growth I have done in my own personal therapy as well as what I have learned in my role as a therapist helped me.

Glencoe

But first the context - I spent some time living in Scotland in my early twenties. I lived in a tiny town called Lochearnhead with an approximate population of 300 which would increase to about 1000 during peak tourist time. I worked in a 10-bedroom hotel and I served breakfast in the morning, cleaned and changed over the bedrooms, got a break in the afternoon and then came back to serve dinner 6 days a week from about May to September. I lived in quarters that connected to the kitchen through a staircase and shared a room with another person who worked alongside me. Maybe that sounds bleak to some, but to me it was amazing.

At the end of my work abroad time I did a 14 day tour that took me across Scotland through the highlands up to the Orkney Isles, then over to the Hebridean Isles of Lewis & Harris, Skye, then back to the mainland. I got to see countless amazing sites, stone circles, buriel tombs, and ruins of villages that are 5000 years old (older than than the pyramids). At Tomb of the Eagles on Orkney I got to hold a bronze-age arrowhead in my hand and use a skateboard to pull myself into a stone-age tomb. On the Isle of Lewis & Harris I learned about feminist history of Harris Tweed and marveled at the landscapes. I had profound experiences at two historic sites in particular - the Calanais standing stones and Dun Carloway Broch. It was all I could do to drink it all in, to take moments to myself and try to store away the memory of it. Back then, we didn't have unlimited storage for photos on cell phones. We had 35mm film with 24 photos a roll. And having worked at Black's photography at 16, I can still remember it cost $13.79 for photofinishing that roll. So what I had and have are my imprinted memories.

Ring of Brodgar on Orkney

The connection with my ancestral land was healing, especially after losing my Gran who had immigrated to Canada from Dundee in the 50's and who along with other family members had fostered my knowledge and appreciation for our culture. After returning to Canada I longed for Scotland instantly. Jehangir, someone I was seeing at the time told me he was jealous of Scotland because I talked about it the way you would talk about an ex lover. Everyone told me it was a once in a lifetime trip. And I dismissed them so quickly and immediately because everything about that experience felt so right to me that I was positive that I would return.

I didn't realize that it would take me 20 years.

Returning in 2026 with my husband felt incredibly special. We booked a really similar tour to the one I had done before because there were certain sites I knew I wanted to return to and I knew there were others that my husband would love to see. After heaps of research we found a tour that hit all the constraints I had in mind. We also planned some time before and after the tour to explore other parts of Scotland I hadn't been to before so that I could have some new experiences as well.

The first thing I noticed about my trip came in the planning stages. Once we booked the tour, a rush of unbridled excitement bubbled in me. I wasn't limiting that excitement or trying to contain it like I usually would. Typically, my anxious thoughts would surreptitiously erect walls around that excitement to protect me for a myriad of reasons. But this time, I was allowing the intensity of emotion to exist without trying to control it or limit it.

Being back on Scottish soil was just as I had expected, it in many ways felt as familiar to me as the street of my childhood home, changed in those 20 years, but also strikingly the same. An unexpected treat for me is that our tour took us through my old village, when I saw we were driving up the A84 and stopping in Callandar for our first toilet break, I asked the driver if he could slow down enough as we passed by Lochearnhead for me to take a photo. He beat that by pulling over and allowing me to get off the bus and take a photo by the loch. Seeing the familiar rolling hills brought up a flutter in my chest, something light but meaningful. I remember pressing a hand against my chest, the way Kristin Neff taught me to in a workshop. I breathed into the space where my hand met my chest and took a beat there for myself to live into the moment unashamedly as the rest of the passengers sat waiting on the bus. A past version of me would have rushed this moment, in fact, there was a quiet voice in me that did ask me to rush back and not be a burden to the rest of the bus. But another, newer and louder voice inside me said - no - take your moment, they can wait. And frankly no one seemed upset, they all seemed intrigued and asked me questions about my former time in Scotland. They were curious not mad. My request had not been too much.

The emotions Scotland stirred in me were intense and at times overwhelming even if you might classify them as "good". I felt a sense of belonging, something many of us who are part of the Scottish Diaspora report feeling. The thought was not, this is my land. The thought was, I belong to this land the way the deer and the thistles and the seals belong here. I am part of the natural world and ecosystem of this land. There was something profound and peaceful in how connected and grounded I felt. My excitement and joy were palpable as we crossed the threshold of Highland Boundary Fault into the Highlands and my grief and longing were just as loud ten days later as we headed back down and out of the highlands through Fort William. A steady stream of tears trickled down my face that day as I whispered goodbye to the hills and as I said words of gratitude for all of the experiences that allowed me to return.

My husband during this looked on with concern, tried to console me, and at times looked at me with desperation and anxiety because he wanted to 'fix' or take away what appeared to him to be a painful experience. In the past I think this would have really caused some tension but what I was able to do this time was offer to him some security. I was having big emotions and I was owning my embodied experiences of those emotions but I could handle it. In many ways those feelings were a gift and I welcomed them. They showed me how meaningful Scotland is to me and how truly connected I felt to my heritage and to myself. They were not something I wanted to run from and they were not something for him to 'do' anything about. We just had to let them be. I was able to articulate this pretty well to him and could see the tension in his shoulders evaporate when he understood he didn't need to save me from this. I could fold myself into the comfort of his arms without needing to shorten or quiet my experience for him to be comfortable. His response and the space he gave me while not fully being able to understand or relate to it was also a gift. And it was a gift hard won by years of growing together, building mindfulness, and learning to communicate our feelings and needs.

When he was able to offer that space and I was able to lean into the full volume of my emotions I understood why it took me twenty years to return. What began as a bit mournful of an observation at the start of the trip - two decades to get back to Scotland turned to a grateful one. I needed that number of years to heal in ways I couldn't anticipate and to grow my bandwidth and acceptance for my emotional experiences.

There is a word in Scots Gaelic, duthchas, which is a word that describes an old concept of the bond between a person, their ancestors, and the land and how this can bring up the feeling of home.

In the coming weeks or months, whatever interval of time it takes, I will be thinking about how I can honour the feelings I experienced and bring that to my life here as well as my practice. I already have some ideas brewing in true ADHD form!

If you have ever experienced this idea of duthchas, whether for Scotland or wherever your ancestral land is, feel free to take a moment and comment.