Embracing the Hipsy Life: Adventure Awaits

I’ve always been a Hipsy.

But when I say it, I always get the same question…what is a Hipsy?

I didn’t make up the word, though I wish I did. If you haven’t already figured it out it’s a ‘Hippie’ and a ‘Gypsy’ combined into one.

Hipsy.

In the urban dictionary, (because this word hasn’t made it to the real dictionary, YET), it means to have the qualities of both (a hippie and a gypsy) but pertaining to neither in particular. A hipsy is typically someone who wants to party, attend festivals regularly, and travel constantly.

I have done and continue to want to do all of the above, though somewhere between raising kids, stuck in a 9-5, and having to support a family, I’ve lost the Hipsy in me, and the call to find her again has been ignited.

I was born and raised in a cult. Yes, you read that correctly.

At the time I was born, the cult was called ‘The Children of God’; they eventually changed their name to ‘The Family’ and later ‘The Family International’.

Because I was raised in a cult, life was very different for me. I was homeschooled, kept in the cult communities (which they called homes), and had no contact with the outside world. I honestly didn’t even know I was different than regular kids until I was 9 years old and I met my Mother’s family for the first time.

I’ll never forget the moment I watched my cousins leave for school and I asked my Auntie where they were going so early in the morning. She told me they were going to school, and I asked her what she meant by that. My Auntie took me for a tour of my cousin’s school that day, and as I walked around and saw all the other kids in classrooms, it dawned on me. I was not normal and the life I was living was so different than other kids my age.

The cult was worldwide, so my childhood was spent moving from ‘home’ to ‘home’. I was never in one place longer than 2 years. Life to me was a consistent stream of meeting new people, moving to new places, making new friends, and adjusting to new environments.

Moving all over Asia, traveling Europe in a caravan, adventuring through India, living in the Middle East…you name it, I’ve probably been there, seen it, experienced it. It was an adventure.

When I left the cult at 21, I barely knew what the outside world was or how to survive in it. Yes, I had traveled to all these places, but I had done so living in this crazy different life. I had no idea what school or college was, what having a real job was like, what having my own money meant, what living in my own space felt like, and I’d never been around people who had done these things.

I knew nothing when I decided to leave the cult, and to add to everything, I had an 18-month-old and was 4 months pregnant, and the relationship I was in was rocky, at best.

I leaped off a mountain with no wings and had to learn to trust myself to fly.

Fly I did.

Okay, maybe as Buzz Lightyear would say, I was falling with style. But my choices were limited…it was do or die, especially with two tiny humans depending on me to make it happen.

I learned about the “real world” quickly and worked my ass off to build a life for us in the Philippines. It was truly a bittersweet life, I lived in a beautiful apartment, had full-time nannies, and had everything I wanted physically, but the job I was in took every living piece of my soul and crushed my dreams and heart. It wasn’t enough, and I knew I couldn’t do it forever; money would never be enough for the price I was paying.

Eventually, my kids and I immigrated to the US, where I restarted life yet again.

I tried to make my marriage work and build a life for us in Chicago, but some things are just inevitable and, dare I say, ‘meant to be’. My relationship came to an end, and I knew that I needed to make a clean break. It was time to let go for real, for real…I needed to leave so I could rebuild again.

My Hipsy soul knew it was the only way.

I packed up my life and my kids in my ancient Toyota Corolla and drove 20 hours to Houston, Texas. With enough money to put down a security deposit on an apartment I found online, I started again.

I built a home and a life from nothing but a dream and the sheer determination to make something great for my kids.

12 years later….I did all that I dreamed of and so much more. I lived the American Dream, bought my “white picket fence home,” and gave two incredible humans a childhood I always dreamed of.

I am truly proud of myself.

But in doing so, I had to cage the Hipsy in me and let the other side of me grow and flourish. I became something beautiful, maybe even something close to normal. On the outside, I had everything everyone said I should want and desire.

But the Hipsy I locked up didn’t go anywhere; she just watched a life from in her cage and reminded herself that one day, one day….the Hipsy in this cage would find a way to remind this new version of her was only temporary and that no matter how much she tried to become someone new….she would always be that Hipsy…Always Wandering, Never Lost.

Do not get me wrong, I love being a Mom, love that I’ve had the chance to “settle down” and build this life, but as my kids reach adulthood, and I stand on the edge of my new life, the thrill of the unknown has me excited.

The jump off this new mountain reminds me of the Hipsy who was crazy enough to believe that she would fly without wings, and the rush it felt to truly be a wild Hipsy dancing through the unknown.

I need to be free. I want to be free. My Hipsy soul craves to be free.

I’ve lived the life of “normal”, tried to convince myself that I could settle down, that it was just my crazy childhood that made me always want to be on the move, but now that I’m here on the other side, I see that the purest version of me is a Hipsy and the different versions of me I become…well that…this is all just temporary.

I am a Hipsy born to be wild. A Hipsy that needs to be free. A Hipsy never will never and can never call a place home, because to me, to my Hipsy soul, home is wherever my heart is, and my heart is always wandering, and loving every step on this dance of adventure.

A Hipsy is always wandering, A Hipsy is never lost.

She is me. I am she.

A.A.