The Eat, Pray, Love Effect: Reentry is hard to do
| San Diego
The hardest part of an Eat, Pray, Love style for a family may be reentry 鈥� the stationary lives these families left behind, says writer David Elliot Cohen who took a year off with his wife and three kids in 1996 and wrote 鈥淥ne Year Off: Leaving It All Behind for a Round-the-World Journey with Our Children.鈥�
鈥淎ll the banalities and the real-life stuff comes back. And it鈥檚 tedious,鈥� says Mr. Cohen.
Rainer Jenss, who with his wife and two sons for a year, says coming back to life in Nyack, N.Y. was 鈥渁 bit depressing. When you leave like that, for so long, your identity gets washed away. I was no longer 鈥榲ice president.鈥� I came back and realized I had to reconstruct my life,鈥� he says.
Dee Andrews, who travelled for a year with her husband Scott and two daughters, says when she came back and moved into a house she and Scott bought on the Internet while in Spain, she realized her idea of home had changed. 鈥淚 looked at that differently, that it was just a house, it doesn鈥檛 have to be perfect and it doesn鈥檛 have to be forever,鈥� she says. 鈥淚 feel like we have kept the sensibility of a pared-down life.鈥�
At the end of , says Craig James, his wife, Dani, was especially sad and emotional. Before the trip, Dani wanted her family to be put into unfamiliar situations and environments in order to stretch themselves. So Dani, more than anyone else in her family, says Craig, 鈥渞eally understood what this moment in our lives meant. She knew that a chapter was ending and it would never be like that again. When we came back, it鈥檚 not like everything was different. In fact, things were remarkably the same.鈥�
But the changes revealed themselves over time, especially in how open-minded they had all become about the world and themselves.
鈥淢y children are better citizens now because of our trip, and when they talk of future plans, it always includes travel,鈥� says Craig. 鈥淢y daughter is going to El Salvador this summer to do a public service project and I might not have let her go if we hadn鈥檛 had this experience,鈥� says Craig. 鈥淏ut now I know it鈥檚 a good thing, not something to be afraid of.鈥�
