So I’ve moved to Egypt.

Crazy, right?

One country, two continents, a million reasons; not the least of them being my mother.

Not that I wanted to get away from my mother, quite the opposite — but she did inspire me to take action.

From a Private in the army, to working in a slaughterhouse outside of Compton, California, to straight out of an abusive marriage, and moving cross-country by train with two toddlers in tow, this is the woman who said such things as “believe you me” and “I’m saving it for my good house”.

In fact, all through my teenage years into adulthood, “I’m saving it for my good house” was a phrase heard repeatedly.

She would buy fancy towels or crystal glassware, then pack them away, telling everyone, “I’m saving it for my good house.” Then she would continue to use the same frayed towels and jelly jar glasses and go about her life. If there was one thing I wished for her, it was that someday, she would get her good house.

That day came a few years back, when she moved into a newer, more modern home. Or so I thought.

After decades of neglecting her house to take care of everyone else, it made more sense for her to invest in a new home, rather than spend the money to repair and modernize where she had lived the past 50 years. To celebrate, I took her shopping and bought all new furniture for her new home.

After she had settled in, I went to see her for Mother’s Day, and brought bright throw pillows and a matching blanket to liven up the space. She opened up the gift, her eyes lit up, and she said, “Oh! these are so pretty, I’m definitely saving them for my good house.”

I looked around. This place was so much nicer than where she had been. The rooms were bigger, it was more energy efficient and easier to maintain, everything was new and clean and worked! I thought, “At 74 years old Mother, I’m pretty sure this is as good as it’s going to get.”

Then it finally occurred to me, it wasn’t her lot in the neighborhood she wanted to improve, it was her lot in life. Her surroundings were nicer, but her life was the same. I had always thought of her as brave and resilient, someone who stood up for what she believed in and worked tirelessly to provide for her children, grandchildren, and by this point great-grandchildren.

Now I saw her as a woman who had unfulfilled hopes and dreams—or rather, a woman who still had hopes and dreams.

Then I looked around my life. I had a lot of nice things. I lived on a lake, drove a new BMW, stayed at the penthouse suite at the Mandarin Oriental Paris with a rooftop terrace overlooking the City of Lights, and an automated toilet that greeted me with the soft ultraviolet light of a self-sanitizing bowl. Add to it the heated seat, and a feature that washed and dried my behind at the touch of a button.

These were things I thought would make me happy. They didn’t (although the toilet came close). They numbed me. Kept me preoccupied. Kept me from feeling. I was not brave or resilient or principled or tireless, I was a spoiled brat.

It was about this time I took my first trip to Egypt. A group tour with Yasmina Ramzy, a bunch of belly dancers, and one viola player. I expected to see amazing things, make unbelievable memories. What I got was so much more.

Early in the trip, we attended an event at the “Makan”, an evening of intense music, singing and chanting. On the way there, I made the conscious decision to open myself up to the experience.

As a “belly dancer”, I had heard countless others talk about “feeling the music”, but I never had. Some days I could barely even hear the music over the steady stream of noise (doubts, fears, insecurities) that was constant in my head. But that night I felt it.

Maybe it was the jet lag, or the smoke, or the vast amount of caffeine I had consumed, but I felt the music inside my body, vibrating, making me rock and sway to the rhythms without consent. Once inside, it multiplied, until it was too big to be contained, and it broke me apart.

Years of swallowed emotions exploded out like a glitter bomb. I ended the night crying uncontrollably. Not because I was happy, or sad, or excited or scared or any one thing, but because I was everything, I was feeling.

There it was. Feeling. It’s a powerful thing. A powerful thing that leaves you vulnerable. I wasn’t sure what to do with it. The safest thing seemed to be to put it in the dance.

And so I did. At my next performance I surrendered to the music. I let it carry me, rather than trying to force my will on it. I surprised myself. I surprised a lot of people.

With new possibilities and new positivity, I stopped packing away all those emotions and did the thing my mother had been trying to do all along, I moved into my good life.

…And that noise inside my head — it’s been replaced by a steady stream of car horns and barking dogs.

Welcome to Egypt!