In the fall of 2012, I went on a bloggers trip with a nonprofit organization to Sri Lanka.
This trip changed my life, but not for the reasons you might think. Seeing the relief efforts on the ground in Sri Lanka was important and became a pivotal moment in my personal politics, but something else happened on that trip.
Hours and hours (and hours) bouncing around in the back of a big van in between site visits, this group of Americans started to crack.
We cried. We argued. We laughed until tears were streaming down our faces. It is absolutely one of the most formative travel experiences I’ve ever had in my life and I feel bonded to this group of people in a really specific way.
I had never recorded a group conversation like this, but I think you’ll be able to follow it even if you don’t know all the people or their backstory. Our voices are really distinct. The people in the Sri Lanka reunion are those who spent those many days and many hours with me in that van: Tony, Joy, Shawn, Allison, Darrell, and Roxy.
The conversation is unpolished and imperfect. This was not the first time we’ve all spoken together about how Sri Lanka changed our lives - but it was the first time we’d spoken about it in many years.
We jump right into the middle of the conversation, with my friend Shawn speaking about the story I share in the book: stumbling into a fire walking ceremony just a few hours after we’d landed in the beautiful country of Sri Lanka.
**You can listen to this episode BEFORE you read the book, if you want. There is only one main story (the fire walking ceremony) that might be a little confusing, but I think you’ll get the gist.**
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