We’ve been back for over two weeks already … although I can’t say ‘back home’ as the term ‘home’ requires a fair amount of redefining right now. The old adage, ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’ does not ring true in my case. Less hostile perhaps but not fonder. What absence has done, however, is give me clarity as a person free from attachment and therefore free of influence from other people, where I am, or what I am doing. I have come back with a stronger sense of being.

All those who accused me of needing to run away to India to find myself were way off. I didn’t need to find myself since I never lost who I am. We never do you know. We always maintain exactly who we are but access different parts of self at different stages of our life, adapting and changing to different circumstances.

As suspected, the memories of India have blurred and faded and even looking at the photographs feels more like looking at someone else’s holiday, bar the gorgeous boy with long blond curls who looks very familiar. I don’t. India was the mountain I had to climb to get to ‘the other side’ and the person in the photographs who looks a bit like me is the person I lost touch with only days after touching down on home ground. The smile has faded too. But the strength and the courage and the feeling that I can do anything that I set my mind to … that’s still there. I may not have climbed the mountain to find myself but I have come down off the mountain with a far greater sense of self. I conquered fears and stereotypes and I created a whole new part of myself.

In a moment of missing his dad while we were in Bahrain, my son insisted on buying a book about a little boy whose dad wasn’t around and he imagined him to be on the moon. In trying to explain the moral of the story, I asked, “If you had to imagine where your dad was right now, where would he be?” “On Mars,” was his quick response. Hmm, just a coincidence? As I grow up … and just grow … I look for some element of change or growth in my partner. But, just because he’s not ready, doesn’t mean I need to wait; we’re all on our own timetables and have to evolve at our own pace. I know we still have stuff to work out but that will have to be in our next life. And what about the child, you ask. Well, he’ll be just fine.

As Darwin once said: “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor is it the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.”