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Over 30 flights this year, most of them longer than 8 hours, and I’ve come to understand the importance of health & fitness in a way that I never would have living a “normal life.” In my normal life I only took about 8 intercontinental flights per year. Nevertheless, between my more than 30 flights, my anemia episodes, and my midday collapse while alone in Los Angles, I’ve been paying much closer attention to my health these days. The more I fly, for 20-30 hours, the more I realize that back strength is imperative, provoking blood circulation is mandatory and eating healthfully makes a world of difference. Healthy travel doesn’t happen on accident, so let’s explore a plan for your food, fitness and comfort that will - at first - take some practice but will quickly become second nature once you feel the benefits of floating off your flights and into your destiny. You too business and first class!

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1. Food:   Eat well, eat often. 

2. Fitness:   Get up and move. That also means exercises too.

3. Comfort:   Use what you have, to get the rest you need.

 Solo travel isn’t always easy -- especially for women. And most married women may not want to travel alone. I get it. You’ve finally found your match, so doesn’t that mean you have a built-in travel partner for life? But truth be told: my marriage is better because I continue to travel alone.Thanks to solo travel, these traits shine brighter within myself and my marriage:

• Strength
• Peace
• Confidence
• Gratitude

StrengthShortly after I got married, I went on a yoga retreat in Thailand alone. As the plane began to bump over the Bay of Bengal, I was filled with dread. I hate turbulence. My husband always holds my hand and reminds me to breathe when planes hit bumpy air.He wasn’t there to do either. My heart was racing, and I felt I’d made a huge mistake doing this solo. I’d always traveled alone before -- but now I finally had someone to come with me. What was I thinking leaving the hubby at home? I forced myself to gulp air and slowly breathe it out. As I attempted to practice deep inhales and long exhales, the turbulence subsided. I was fine. I had gotten through it.I realized I was still me, still a strong person independent of my husband who was capable and could get through situations that scared me. Just because I’d gotten used to having someone around didn’t mean I couldn’t do things alone anymore.
 

As a kid I dreamed of growing up to be a natural blonde, in college I hoped to pass as Persian, and it wasn’t until my mid-twenties that I started proudly identifying as Chicana, Latina, Latinx. Now, I find inspiration and community in this part of my identity, but the Latina bloom definitely came late. 

In my second year of college I accidentally took a Chicana Studies class, mislabeled, in my angsty opinion, as a Literature class. I read Gloria Anzaldúa for the first time and I learned about La Malinche. 

For those who don’t know it, the story goes that during the Spanish conquest, La Malinche, an Aztec (Mexica) woman, originally named Malintzin, was given as a slave to Hernán Cortés. She was multilingual, and because she spoke Spanish, she quickly became a trusted advisor and interpreter for the Spanish conquistadors. The records show she was greatly respected and even referred to as a noble Spanish woman or a Doña. She is often considered the ultimate traitor, but also the mother of the first mestizo. She is, at least symbolically, the creator of a new people.

* * *

About five years after meeting la Malinche, I was living in San Francisco, but prepping to move to Spain. I was feeling liberated knowing I’d leave the continent soon, so I w a s   d a t i n g. One night after a happy hour for work and a particularly nice conversation with my Lyft driver, I decided it would be a great idea to ask him out through the “lost item” function on the App, later that night. He immediately messaged me on my personal number and agreed we had a great conversation about the didgeridoo. On our first date I answered, “I’m Chicana,” for the first time. The “guess-where-I’m-from-game” was no longer fun, and fuck it, I was leaving!

I admired the colorful, crumbling buildings lining the streets of Old Havana as I chattered away in Spanish to my taxi driver. “¿Eres Española?”  he asked me. Stunned -- I laughed. He must be joking! Did the taxi drive think I was from Spain? 

And then it hit me. After 15 years of blood, sweat and lágrimas, a Cuban local thought my language skills were so on point that I was actually a native Spanish speaker. This was one of the proudest moments I’ve had. All the hard work had been worth it. But this journey, though life changing, hadn’t been easy.