By Pamela Edmonson

After moving to New Zealand, I experienced an exacerbation of anxiety and depression as a consequence of soul-searching. This is the journey of how I found my way back home to myself by adopting slow travel, reconnecting with nature and everything around me.

It’s always awkward when people ask why I moved to New Zealand. No doubt I’ve done a curious thing… quit a reputable job, bought a one-way ticket to a place I knew nothing about, and left everything behind.
People want to know - why? We romanticize such adventures and I won’t lie that I too have been entranced by travel stories from a young age.

But still today, I have a hard time answering the question. How do I casually weave into the conversation... that I was in a dark loop of depression? How do I, in a crowded bar, after a sip of wine, explain that I needed a drastic decision that kept me alive to keep from other drastic measures?

I’m not proud of that moment. And looking back, I understand that the two options I gave myself were gravely limited. But in that moment, shaking and tired, it was my truth. Either I end this life, or I start a new one.

And I pressed “Book flights”.

A quick note on change

Let me tell you the story of how moving to New Zealand healed me immediately and permanently.

It didn’t.

This is what the movies get wrong. True change doesn’t happen at the drop of a decision. Change is slow and miniscule and requires meticulous attention. In fact, sometimes, change feels like moving backward.

That’s what happened after I moved to New Zealand. I careened so far backward, I felt cheated by the world and cursed the mess of my soul.

Bliss with dark undertones

Newly an expat, I traveled the North Island on my own for awhile. This trait lives deep in my bones: I love being alone. When my life was uprooted in Lebanon and we moved to the States, I fell into solitude, into books and fantasy. Escapism called and I answered with every fiber of my being. As far as coping mechanisms go, it wasn’t the worst.

I zipped from one New Zealand town to the next. I breathed the sulfuric air of Rotorua and hunted for thermal pools. I meandered Hobbiton, a bucket-list item that excited me near out of my skin. I climbed Mount Maunganui, then swam in her turquoise waters.

I couldn’t remember the last time I was outside so much. The world waited to be explored but I had been indoors for years. I’d given my soul to school, then work. Digestive complications limited my outings. Trauma went unspoken, tucked away and festering.

On my own in the wild, I realized how I hungered for life. I had ample savings from my abandoned job in the pharma industry. And freedom never felt so good.

That’s when it started, I think. My mind saw some space to unleash. I could feel it happening. But the honeymoon phase delayed this reckoning, and I was drunk on the New Zealand sun.

In Wellington, I met someone: Shaun, New Zealand-born, with an easy smile and eyes blue as the Tasman Sea.

I asked if he would’ve liked to join me on the road. We assembled my meek belongings in his car and traveled the length of the country together, from the pristine tropics of Northland to the rugged cliffs of Southland.

And this is when I began to notice something odd. Shaun, although from a deeply traumatic past, had an uncanny connection to the earth. He lived in a way that made me… anxious. Slow-moving, in awe and deep presence, he had no answers to my spinning wheel of “what-if’s”. His mind was filled with something of a different nature. Where I walked with purpose, he walked to caress leaves and watch for birds.

And New Zealand had many, many birds.

It made me restless.

Shaun derailed our itinerary multiple times for mini-side adventures or an extra few hours on the beach. He laughed when I asked to see tourist hot-spots; sometimes, he straight up refused. But how else was I meant to tick items off my New Zealand to-do's? I even remember calculating how many towns I could’ve seen if I had been the designated driver. Sure, he brought me to epic places devoid of crowds. And I saw New Zealand in a way not many tourists do.

But I couldn’t bring myself to relax, even when I was in the most beautiful places I’d ever seen. Shaun’s innate serenity highlighted my lack thereof. Not to mention I had my mother in my ear, horrified by my hedonism. We went estranged for awhile because she disapproved so deeply of my life choices.

Thoroughly exhausted, Shaun and I returned to Wellington. I decided it was time to rejoin reality.

Plot Twist: Slowing down and the deterioration of my mental health

Seemingly all healed now, I settled into my new office job.

It was the first time I slowed down enough to fully process what I’d done. Even in the city, life in New Zealand is slow. Islander culture meant wearing sandals to the office and a good work-life balance. Status and prestige played no role in the hierarchy of things so I still had plenty of space to think and ponder.

The thing about an identity shift is that our monkey brains perceive it as death. I started to change, mentally, spiritually, politically. Even my body changed from a healthier diet and an outdoor lifestyle.

And this new version of me lost her ability to shove emotions away. The voice in my head, though it had always been there, amplified tenfold. Gaining perspective on my past two lives -- a turbulent childhood in Lebanon and a numb haze into adulthood in the States -- meant unwanted memories came flooding back.

Being small and afraid. Pain in my belly. Sensitized skin, victim to the poor choices of my depression.

It started on the bus. Just per any other day, I rode home from work. Before we reached the fringe of the city, dread flared in my stomach. Tingles raced up my arms. An unsettling fog overtook my brain. I raced for the exit, exploding out of my bones until the bus rolled to a stop and I stumbled out the door.

A panic attack. The first of my new, third life and the beginning of my mental health deterioration.

A Panic Attack of Two Hours

I knew something bad was happening and I didn’t know what to do about it. I was so wound up that I spent my evenings on the couch, staring out the window, chewing my lip. Shaun, busy building his business at the time, had to remind me of mundane things like seeing a friend or watching the sunset.

But I was a cyclone of turmoil. My inner voice dealt lashings of criticism on the minute. In every way, I wasn’t enough. My confidence fled and I deeply felt its loss. Self-doubt mutated into self-hatred.

But I was fine. I refused to admit otherwise until one day, I had a series of panic attacks which lasted two hours. In public. Shame, in oily stickiness, heralded the dark night of my soul.

Everything changed after that day. Anxiety shadowed my every move. I developed a bad case of agoraphobia. Not only was I terrified of buses, but of any situation that made me feel trapped: cars, meeting rooms, houses. Even the shops were too much.

I loved living in Wellington but suddenly it was a waking nightmare. I felt disconnected from everything. I never saw friends. I barely left home.

Research states that most mental illness manifests in our mid-twenties. So it would seem my reckoning had finally come.

And after cursing every god imaginable, I relented. Something needed to change.

My introduction to slow travel

It started in our backyard. Shaun forced me into his car and drove aimlessly around Wellington. He had intimate knowledge of the city, its rolling hills, soaring sea cliffs, and endless shores.

He imposed on me his own coping mechanism: reconnecting with nature.

For months, we did this.

At first, I was silent. Then, I would cry.

Later, I learned this is quite common for those ill-practiced with presence. Getting out of our heads for the first time feels like waking up. Transcendent enough to trigger tears. And I had years and years of unshed tears.

Shaun and I invested in an SUV large enough to fit a bed. And we took to the road. We parked along beaches and fell asleep to the sound of the tide. I lied awake and listened to rain patter the roof. We rose with sunrise and the birds.

I witnessed nature in a way I hadn’t before. Her changing colors from night to day, clouds morphing shapes. 

It awakened wonder and enchantment, and for the first time in years, creativity bloomed within. I bought a camera. I took up writing again. And I began documenting my experiences.

How slow travel helped with my mental health

Slow travel is the experience of moving slowly to enable enriching experiences and deepen our connection to the world.

It’s the ability to sit on a beach without needing a book or a beer. It’s going on a hike to breathe the forest air instead of getting to the other side. It’s immersing in culture and understanding various ways of life.

Below I have collated six themes of slow travel that make it ambrosia to a troubled mind.

1) Connecting to nature 

Humans are three-dimensional beings not meant for being indoors. Fast living twists us up so tight, it makes us physically sick.

And nature is serene, so serene. Even the waves and storms.

For me, observing nature shone a light on a strange phenomenon. How could I be such a mess when the trees swayed gently in the breeze and the mountain stood so still? How could my internal be so opposite to the external?

The earth bestowed her wisdom on me to nurture calm within. Because here’s the truth of things: safety comes from within. It can’t be sought externally.

When we carry the stillness of the mountain inside, we’re safe everywhere we go.

We all know slow travel is better for the environment. But reconnecting with the outdoors, befriending birds and flowers, makes it personal.

Nature is vital to good health. We’re creatures of grass and sunlight, and should be doing more to remind ourselves of that.

2) Accessing the present moment

Although it terrifies many, there’s magic in slowing down.

So often, we lose ourselves into a screen, living other lives. We lose the practice of enjoyment and enoughness, no longer grounded in our reality.

I said earlier that I love being alone, and although that comes with incredible strength, I can’t deny I was addicted to my escapism. I read books while life passed me by. I plugged into my music and went elsewhere, closing off from the city and the people around me.

Virtually, I was hiding from myself.

And while I’m not vilifying alone time, or books, or music… we need balance.

We need to get out of our heads and drop into our bodies. To practice noticing our inner voices with grace and compassion.

To know that there’s just as much magic and poetry in this world as there is in the stories.

Slow living enables us to access presence. And in the words of Eckhart Tolle, we are always safe in the present moment.

3) Connecting to people, everywhere

Slow travel enables space to seek people’s stories and reconnect with humanity.

When we aren’t chasing tourist hotspots, there’s more time to meander little towns and chat with locals. This cultivates a sense of community, one of the long lost keys to wellbeing.

It snuck up on me, how healing it was to talk to people. As a writer, I hunger for stories anyway. 

Across the sea, a young Balinese man serves coffee and sends his earnings back home to his wife and three children. Over the hill, a delinquent found his love for cooking and now serves the best barbecue in town.

As they trickled in, I developed deeper understanding of humanity.

Sometimes I think we forget we’re all human. We romanticize, sometimes disparage, what is foreign or faraway. We think our differences run so deep, in language, skin color, and belief systems.

Yet we walk the same. Laugh the same. Fear the same.

For a long time, I thought I was the only person terrified of a bus and waged wars with villains in my head. But seeking stories from many different people across the globe showed me that I’m not alone. I learned just how many have lived a troubled life and thrive despite of it.

We can go even deeper. Through these intimate relations with humanity, we realize the universe is a kind place. This is crucial to feel safer in the world. To know that if I had a panic attack in public, people will help. To know I was never alone.

4) Immersing in other cultures and letting go of Western ideals

Slowing down on our travels, letting go of productivity and checklists, paves the way for cultural immersion. Exposed to different cultures, we realize there are many ways to live a life.

Raised in Lebanon, I understood early on that Western culture is just that… a culture. But it is such a dominant one that it’s become normalized. Isolation, disconnect from our community, working into exhaustion… normalized.

But as we move across the world, encountering new values, this belief system begins to dismantle.

It was revolutionary when my inner criticism began to quiet. I didn’t need to work around the clock. I didn’t need to lose twenty pounds. I didn’t need a flash car or a million-dollar house to be worthy. I didn’t need to look, speak, and act a certain way to be loved.

I re-adopted the values from my childhood: community, hospitality. Art. Food. Sunshine.

And this happened slowly, so very slowly. I thrashed against this change, my brain convinced I would die from it.

I’m still not all the way there. But my toxic ideals are weakening. And one day, the choice not to torture myself any longer will come like breathing.

5) Belonging everywhere

Adopting the above philosophies culminated into an epiphany so loud, it shook the very core of me.

And the simple fact is this.

When we fall in love with the natural world... celebrate our differences... recognize that people are good and the universe is a safe place… we start to understand everything is connected.

Home isn’t just our four walls. Home is everywhere.

Home is the streets of Wellington City. Home is my local cafe and the pub where I meet my friends. Home is the road that links me to the next town and all the strangers gathered on the bus.

With this etched across my heart, I could walk the streets and feel safe again. I could enjoy the bus ride home. I felt camaraderie with bustling strangers. I felt welcomed everywhere I went.

Slow living cultivates a sense of gentleness and compassion. The war leaves us and love returns.

I can’t speak for everyone but I was never very good at love. I certainly didn’t love myself.

But this realization unlocked something inside and a kaleidoscope of color flooded out of me. Love is the most healing thing of all, and I spend every day loving something fiercely to keep the practice alive. My plants, my partner, my work.

Everything is connected and home is everywhere.

6) Gratitude

The final by-product of slow travel sneaked up on me. Gratitude is a tricky beast, though everyone will tell you otherwise.

With perspective on some of my hardest years, I recognize now that the most toxic belief of all was my lack of enoughness. I didn’t have enough. I wasn’t enough.

But when we humble ourselves and realign our values, things don’t seem so scarce anymore. Slow travel awakens us to the abundance in the world. There are too many things to see, to do, to buy, to eat. It would be impossible to gulp it all down, and we shouldn’t try to.

Slow travel means adopting that sense of enoughness, which nurtures the seeds of gratitude.

And gratitude enables fundamental shifts in the psyche. I no longer feel like I’m constantly in the wrong place, doing the wrong things.

As Shaun puts it, “We live like kings and queens.”

Joy bloomed for the in-between moments, the small things, like a cup of tea or perfectly stitched prose. It secured me in my relationships and my body. It opened a new plane for creativity, the mind no longer caged by resentment.

Gratitude deepened all the things slow travel taught me.

In truth, I’m not 100% healed. I’m not sure there is such a thing. Anxiety still flares from time to time, and my inner voices get a bit loud. But underneath everything is a deep sense of slowness, guided by compassion and love for the earth beneath my feet.

I’m still addicted to escapism. And I still plan long itineraries around the world. But only at a leisurely pace. Only to reconnect with nature and all her children. I stopped chasing the loud and now nurture the quiet, deep within. And I hope to reach others who may heal from such living, in New Zealand and beyond.

Pamela Edmondson | www.nutbrownrose.com | www.instagram.com/nutbrownrose_