One of the many reasons I’ve never regretting marrying young is that we’ve always allowed each other space to be our own person. Kahlil Gibran writes, “Let there be spaces in your togetherness,” emphasizing that codependency is not a healthy foundation.

One of the ways we’ve allowed each other spaces is we occasionally take separate trips. Anthony camped and hiked in Wyoming this year with a group of church guys, and I just returned from a women’s trip to Ireland.

I follow a blogger/author online named Kristen LaValley, have for several years now. She created a trip this year through a third party company called TrovaTrip and shared it with her followers. Up to sixteen people could sign up for the scheduled trip. TrovaTrip was to handle the lodging, tour guides, group admissions, and evening restaurant reservations. The buyers managed their own flights, noon meal, and bus fare to and from the hotel.

The trip went live last June. I was at work the day that registration opened but set a timer and booked it five minutes after registration opened. You ever just know, down in your gut, that something will all work out, and so you seize your opportunity? Same. Even if it involves friends you’ve never met in real life? Still yes.

I flew to Dublin on an overnight flight Friday night and landed at noon Dublin time. Exiting the airport was a breeze. I swapped cash to euros at the airport office, picked up a public bus ticket, and the nice Irish guy told me which que to stand in for the bus to my hotel. “Eh, you want off at the Wellington stop, eh, it’s closest, yeah.” Three minutes later I boarded a green and yellow bus with my carry-on stashed underneath by the Asian driver. I sat behind four French guys “oui”ing to the driver and in front of two British girls who would not stop talking. I pinched myself a little. I was here. Still groggy from my Dramamine and NyQuil taken on the overnight flight, but I was here.

It was overcast, and the bus smelled like your average city bus, with tinges of cigarette smoke. We crawled twenty minutes through the city, lane and lane with cyclists and Fiats, when we approached an intersection with a “Garde” officer setting up cones and aggressively directing traffic. Behind him, a wave of pedestrians were rolling down the street, banners held up. At first I thought it was only several hundred people, but then they began spilling over around the corner and down the hill. Thousands of people were marching down a four line highway, holding signs with Palestine’s flag colors and “End the genocide on Palestine.” We waited for twenty minutes while endless people streamed by. There was even a sign with American President Biden, hands held up. Did they feel his hands were tied in the war between Palestine and Israel? Did it symbolize he did nothing? Did he mean he had given up? Not being a politically savvy girly, I didn’t know.

The French guys muttered impatiently, then in rough English, one said, “It goes on forever, it is infinite. There is no end to idiots in the streets today.”

Behind me: “But what if it goes on forever?” in that clipped British accent that I love. “No really, some of us have places to go, we can’t just sit here all day. Really, it could go on for hours.” By now, two local men from the back had already approached the driver, asking to be let off. He had scarcely listened to them before grunting no and waving them away.

The chatty British girl approached the driver’s seat. She was a smooth talker. “Really, we’ll be quite alright if you let us off here. We don’t mind, really. We just want to be on our way, we have places to go.” She came back to her seat. “He’s ringin’ his boss on the wireless, makin’ sure it’s alright.” Sure enough, the driver made a phone call and after indistinguishable muttering, opened the side door and let us out. We dug our luggage out of the green and yellow underbelly. I spotted a gap in the endless entourage and drug my suitcase after me. Cutting across four lanes of marching signs, I was headed the sixteen minutes to the StayCity hotel.

Along the way I popped into a sidewalk cafe, got an Americano to go, and paused over the footbridge above River Liffey. I’m for real here.

I stepped into the hotel room. The shower was running. “It’s Kristina, your room mate,” I hollered. “Ok!” My roomate and I had been texting and she had said she was going to shower. I hope I’m in the right room and it’s actually Olivia in there, I thought. Be low-key weird if it wasn’t her.

She popped out soon enough, wrapped in a towel. The “nice to meet you in real life” niceties soon exchanged, I too showered in the tiny bathroom, took a nap, and at six o’clock, Olivia and I headed downstairs to the lobby to meet the rest of the group.

There were nine women total, plus Matt our Australian tour guide. We met briefly, Kristen gifted us all chocolates, and we headed to our dinner reservations at The Church Bar and Restaurant. Live music played while we ogled the domed restaurant and ordered drinks. Tap dancing by a talented couple introduced as Eva and Oscar while we ate lamb stew. Had I really boarded a flight just 24 hours ago? Was I really hobnobbing around town with my newest batch of friends? Celtic Thunder kept singing in my mind.

The next day, after a proper breakfast of chocolate croissant, beans and eggs, sausage and bacon, we trotted around the city with another tour guide, John. John was probably in his sixties, retired from PR work, and now did tour guides around his hometown. Ireland has a storied and bloodied political history, with uprisings, revolts, and a strong political compass of independence. John told us many stories as we visited monuments and historic landmarks.

The statue of Molly, based on a folk song, evoked a strong internal response from me. While a fictional character only, she is made of brass, pushes a cart of fish, and wears a low cut dress to symbolize her nightlife activities. Molly’s breasts are shiny because someone started a rumor that rubbing her breasts brought 7 years, 7months, 7days, 7seconds of good luck. We approached her as a group of young males was passing by. They each placed a hand on her breast, cheezed for a photo, and moved along. I was incensed. Out of all the male statues we had passed, none of them were rubbed shiny or sexualized in any way. Society continues to hold a double standard that it’s ok to treat women differently than men, but if a war statue had a shiny crotch, amendments would be made. Poor Molested Molly. #freemolly

Old doors like this always remind me of two things: The Secret Garden and “Death is only an old door set in a garden wall” by Nancy Byrd Turner.

I peered through a stone wall build circa Vikings era and trotted past the Dublin Castle. On our own for two hours over lunch time, I was craving some alone time. I shopped in a big department store, bought a pair of chunky gold earrings and an umbrella, and was headed to a bookstore. Passing a woman who looked homeless, her coin bucket mostly empty, a man in a green coat approached her about the same time I did. They both looked strung out. From the look in her eyes, the woman was in another dimension. He threw one coin in, clunk, then asked, “And how much for youuu?” There was a brief moment when I thought of Molly, frozen in bronze but alive in a million bodies. The woman threw her head back and laughed a long soulless laugh. The man moved on.

Also at Trinity College, we viewed the Book of Kells. To me, it felt touristy and overstated, but several of the women in our group were moved to tears when they saw it. It’s a Latin Gospel canon lavishly illustrated, estimated to have been written near AD 800 and as such, one of the oldest books in the world. The awareness that Christ was alive and beloved then by the monks who handwrote it and is alive and beloved now was a worshipful moment for them.

At Trinity College campus, John informed us it was the first Protestant university of Ireland, and that if you were a Catholic who wanted to attend there, you had to get a pass from your church leader or risk consequences. I was reminded of my personal background and how competing worlds of thought are afraid of one another’s points of view, lest it corrupt. And so we isolate and segregate for fear of change, huddled over our narrowmindedness thinly disguised as religious fervor.

At the Guiness storehouse, another tourist trap that was fun to say I did it, but I wouldn’t do it again. I chugged my Guiness like the best of ’em and it sat thick as rye bread in my gut.

We had free time again in the evening prior to dinner. I walked alone the half hour to St. Stephen’s Green, a lush paradise of swans, ducks, and green lawn. I was eating my macaron on a park bench when I when a dark haired man walked up. He sat down on the same bench. A pit formed in my gut. “Too close” I thought. He doesn’t need to sit that close. I was just grabbing my bags when he flashed a bright smile and tried his best pickup lines. “Erm, excuse me, when you were walking earlier, I couldn’t help but notice you…” I got up and walked quickly away while he was still talking. Outside the park, I ducked into a confectioners shop, took deep breaths, got my bearings, made sure I wasn’t being followed. In my entire trip, it was the only time I felt uncomfortable, and I didn’t delay acting on my gut.

Finally, our last full day in Ireland. We took a public transit train out to the fishing town of Howth, and it was my favorite part of the entire trip. Took a boat out to see some islands, saw a seal on a sandy island beach, and I felt very seasick. Then we walked above the ocean on a Howth Cliff Walk. At one point, I couldn’t see anyone else. It was just me, the wind, the ocean, and God. I worshipped then with all my heart.

This post does not cover the countless conversations, micro moments, and new bridges spanned. Each woman walked into the trip carrying a lifetime of story and complexities, which I don’t feel free to share. But I am richer because of Dublin, and because of each of the eight other women I was privileged to meet. ❤️