facing your fears

My husband and I recently celebrated our 16th wedding anniversary. As a result of this and our recent holiday, I have been doing a lot of reminiscing lately.

17 years ago when I first met my future husband, I had not been in a plane. It was my BIGGEST  fear. My future husband (Nig), on the other hand, loved flying and he loved travelling to different places. He was like a man on a mission, determined to get me over my fear of flying.

Three months after we met, Nig took me on my first flight, a little one, from Sydney to Brisbane. There were lots of prep talks beforehand from Nig and his family. 'It was just like sitting at home in your arm chair', they told me. Now, as I said, this was my BIGGEST  fear. I was REALLY, REALLY  SCARED. To help me, not be too freaked out on the plane, I went to the doctor and got some medication to help me relax. I was 28 and had never flown before and I was PETRIFIED.  I also visualized myself sitting in the plane, calm and relaxed.

That first flight went OK. Nig said that it was actually quite a bumpy flight. Mmmmm maybe this flying thing isn't too bad after all, I thought. The flight home was a bit better, but still a bit bumpy at times.

Fueled with his first success Nig then wanted to take me on a bigger flight and it was only three months after the last one. You'd think we had plenty of money, but we didn't. I was teaching at the time and Nig was working and living with his parents, so we both had money to burn, or so we thought.

So the second flight was to Fiji and this time I became hooked on flying. We had a smooth flight and I relaxed and actually enjoyed it.

Three months later ( nine months after we met) we were married. For our honeymoon we went to New Zealand. We hired a campervan and travelled around the south island of New Zealand. I now felt like quite the traveller.

Three months after our wedding we went back to Fiji.

Three months after that we went to, I was happily pregnant with our first baby and the flying stopped for quite a few years. We moved a couple of times and bought our first home. We had another baby, sold our first home, bought some land and moved again. We built a new home. There was no spare money for flying and expensive holidays.

At times I look back and think of the money we wasted spent on all those holidays in the first year that Nig and I were together. Four flights and four holidays in one year, plus a wedding. It was an expensive year. BUT it was also the year I CONQUERED MY BIGGEST FEAR. It was the year we had a lot of fun as we travelled around and got to know each other. It was the year I married my best friend.

Celebrating our 16th wedding anniversary was one of the reasons we took our boys to New Zealand and hired a campervan. We did a lot of reminiscing and showed our boys where we went. We also took them snow boarding for the first time, they had a jet boat ride and we took them to some natural, thermal hot pools. Our boys are getting older, they are now 11 and 14. My husband (the adventurer) wanted to take our boys on their first overseas holiday. We wanted to have some time to connect as a family and to create some wonderful family memories. You don't have to go overseas to do this, but this is what WE wanted to do.

Now our boys have got the travel bug. They are dreaming about where they would like to go next, overseas of course. Looks like we'd better start saving.

I am so.... happy that I faced my fear, my biggest fear that I had. It was holding me back from doing things I wanted to do. It was holding me back from living the life that I wanted to live.

However this is now a thing of the past. Flying is now my preferred method of travel. Who would have thought?

These photos were taken of the entrance to the domestic terminal, at the airport in Sydney, from our motel room the day before our flight.