Embrace the Unexpected

In 2023 I travelled to Austin, Texas — twice. The first time was in March for a 7-day rigamarole at South By Southwest Music Festival with a band I was singing and playing tambourine with at the time. We did 9 shows in 5 days… with a triple show day on day 3. Talk about busy — or obsessed — it was amazing. After a week like that, your adrenaline is pumping and you’re thinking: “ANOTHER ONE!!!” While your body is saying: “abso-freaking-not”. I’m pretty sure we all hibernated that first night back in Seattle. I for sure did. 

Before going on this trip though, I remember having a moment of intuition hit me, communicating: “Something bad is going to happen in Austin.” Upon arriving at Austin-Bergstrom Airport, we found that we had some peices of gear missing, our merch box busted, and when we got to our vacation rental, I found my guitar had been flung out of its case mid-flight and was busted open on the bottom inner corner. A few days later, our guitarist’s pedal board fritzed out on him in the middle of a show. I took these events to be the “bad things” that were meant to happen, however, they never felt quite like the doom that my intuitive thought had implied.

Fast forward to 6 months later, when I went back to Austin for a solo-business trip with a dash of horror. 

Unfortunately, the damage to our gear in March was just intuitive foreshadowing for what was going to happen to me on that second trip. Many of you know the story already, I booked a 4-night stay for a conference and on that first night was trafficked by my vacation-rental host, locked in my guest room by a woman in a pink robe. And while I'd gotten the door unlocked after pointedly telling the host that I was locked in, where she came and unlocked it with a key, I was later assaulted by a third-party "friend" of the host's, in my sleep.

I woke up the next morning, and all I wanted was to carry on with my plan. So I got to my conference on time, meeting immediately upon walking in, another attendee who would become my saving grace for the rest of my trip. There are safe-strangers in the world, and there are unsafe ones. Your intuition will always speak to them and is never wrong. 

This post is about embracing the unexpected though, where I just laid out how I completely disregarded spending any time on the situation at hand that I was in when it had just happened. I'm getting there, to the embrace. That day though, I filed a report, I left that place, and called a friend at home that same night to tell her I thought something had happened. Sometimes embracing something doesn't have to equate to immediacy, when that immediacy will disrupt your plans or your entire life. You can incorporate responsibility of an unexpected circumstance such as this, on your terms, on your own schedule. Had I of not set it down to deal with later, the precious time to engage at the conference I'd paid to be at would be lost. In responding immediately like this: "I know something just happened, but, no, I'm going to carry on and deal with this after I've followed through with my plans," is a way of diminishing the power that the experience can have on you. Immediately, you are responding with, "that was an experience". 

And about 18 months later, you know what I did? I went back. This is very much a Katniss Everdeen, "I volunteer as tribute!" act of healing your trauma and moving on -- something that no one should ever be forced to face. But I wanted to face it. I went to the same conference, booking the same flights. I had one of the worst panic attacks on my flight over, when the triggers had begun in the security line for the gates. During my stay that time, I took more breaks and retreated whenever I needed to. Moved and stretched and stood up whenever I needed to. The whole focus of healing this way is this: movement. Move the experience out of your body+psyche by embracing it. This doesn't mean to relive trauma, it just means to look at your experience so that you can move past it, and write yourself a greater story from doing so.

That very first night back in Austin, I went to the pool at my hotel and in looking up at the sky saw a crescent moon shining so bright it was as if God himself was beaming down on me. The unexpected isn't always negative. 

After that, I wore a pink robe and ordered room service. 

-B