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The author,
Skye Thomas is available for life coaching.
Therapeutic Driving
with the Radio On
From the time I bought my first car, I have had a love of driving. In my next life, I want to be a racecar driver. I thought I might get to it this time, but doesn’t look like it. Whenever I am experiencing dramas or stress in my life, I have always found peace and answers to the questions that plague me while I drive. I find night driving to be especially therapeutic. I can remember driving around for hours playing Lionel Richie’s Stuck On You over and over again one dark winter night while trying to get over breaking up with my college sweetheart. Other times, my spirit guides would talk with me answering my questions about life and what direction I ought to go in next. Driving is great therapy.
Remember when families used to pile up together in the station wagon for a nice long
Sunday drive? Maybe somewhere in those drives was the glue that holds the family
unit together like Family Game Nights and old photo albums. When I want to connect
with one of my kids, I take them with me to run errands. As we drive around from
point to point, we both stare out the window singing along with the radio and eventually
we begin talking about everything and nothing. Somewhere between the passersby on
the street and the song lyrics we find common ground to laugh together or to discuss
some thought rattling through one of our heads. I couldn’t tell you how many times
I was daydreaming about something while driving down the road only to have one of
my kids immediately bring up the subject and want to have an in-
During this summer, we took a road trip down to the Redwoods and decided to take
the scenic route along Highway 101 for a change. It was an amazingly beautiful drive
especially in a convertible while singing along together to great music. The sun
shone down on us as we sang along with Melissa Etheridge’s new CD Lucky. There’s
a line in the title track where she says, “I want to see how lucky Lucky can be.
I want to ride with my Angel and live shockingly. I want to drive to the edge and
into the sea. I want to see how lucky Lucky can be.” The entire CD is very upbeat
happy music about feeling good and feeling strong in who you are. If anyone’s depressed
and needs a pick-
Other times, I listen to mixes that I have put together of songs that trigger my more spiritual side. As I sing along driving under the full moon, I will talk with my angels about love and life and what it is they want from me. How can I best serve humanity? How can I give the world a taste of what this feels like to be in such a deep connection with them? They tell me of books they want me to write and of speeches I will give. They titled my autobiography on one such drive. It’s a great title too, I never would have thought of it. Sometimes, when I used to commute an hour each way to and from work, I would be worrying about money problems or politics at work or some other topic and the angels would suddenly make their presence known to me by showing me a sign that we had agreed on between us. Just knowing they were there listening to me as I worried was reassuring. Other times, I would want to just enjoy the music or the morning comedy show put on by my favorite DJs. The angels would come and insist that we have a meeting right then and there. Perhaps they knew I was a captive audience? Doesn’t matter, they were always right and they always left me feeling great about where my life would be going next.
My favorite will always be long drives in nature though. Stop and go city driving doesn’t really do it. You have to lose yourself in the beauty of the rolling hills or the patchwork of the farming country. You have to see the moon shimmering off of a lake. There is just something magical about it all. Sometimes I think that I should just get a Winnebago and a laptop computer with a dish tacked on so that I could be on a perpetual road trip until the day I die. But I do love the feeling of coming home when the road trip is done and the healing has begun to process through my heart. I could probably write a whole other article about the wonderful feeling of ‘coming home’ that one gets after a long trip. Sometimes when I was commuting and the day was long and there was road construction or some other delay, it could feel great to arrive at home just having been gone since breakfast!
I have never really learned to meditate and I don’t know that I want to anymore. I get the same thing from long drives and from music. I get closer to God while driving through a twisting turning mountain pass road with the top down then I do while sitting in church. It’s not that I don’t love my church, it’s just that they don’t let me pick the music and sing as loud as I want!
Copyright 2004, Skye Thomas, Tomorrow’s Edge