Travel to America to attend the birth of my granddaughter!

Rhonda Muir Start Date: Jan 17, 2025 - End Date: May 16, 2025
  • United States of America

My Travel Story

by: Rhonda Muir Start Date: Jan 17, 2025 - End Date: May 16, 2025
As I explained in the wee video I posted here, I desperately want to go back to America this summer to be with my youngest daughter when she has her first daughter. Without sharing personal details, it's hard to describe all the reasons why this new person in our family is such a blessing. We all have some very hard years behind us, my grown children and me, due to the abusive, fearful relationship with their father. The one constant in our lives through all those hard years and in the long recovery after (still going on) has been and still is our love and support for each other, our closeness as a family.

I've gone into a bit more detail about how I ended up living so far away from my beloved family on our website, Orkneyology.com, which I've linked to below. It's a bit like the selkie stories that my husband Tom Muir tells. The selkie is a seal in the sea and a human on the land. Selkie stories tend to be sad, since often the selkie woman grows to love her land-life ... but always she yearns for the sea.

I made my choice between worlds nine years ago - to head for Scotland and my island husband - metaphorically, "the sea", because it felt like going home for the first time in my life. To move to Orkney, I had to leave behind me everything I'd ever loved in the first 50 years of my life: beautiful farmland and wooded hills of Western New York, all of my favorite sounds and smells that change so sweetly with the seasons, and especially, the people I love.

I do try to travel back to America twice a year, though sometimes that can't happen. I'm due for a hip replacement soon, and I will need at least a couple of months to recoup before I go. Because of this, summer is the earliest I can go this year, and maybe the only trip this year. But it has to happen. I promised.

I had to learn to accept help from others in the bad old days long ago. There was no choice. I discovered that accepting the love of kind people is both humbling and immensely touching. If you decide to help me to get back to my family at this time, you have my sincere gratitude. Thank you.
  • United States of America

Updates

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  • Everybody Loves A Buddo!

    Everybody Loves a Buddo!
    This is the Skara Brae Buddo, found in the Neolithic village of Skara Brae in the Orkney Islands. He's a human figure (or at least that's what we guess) carved out of ancient whalebone. Buddo resides in the wonderful Stromness Museum near our home.
    "Buddo" is a loving term of endearment in Orcadian dialect, roughly equivalent to friend, and with more intimate connotations as well. To be called someone's buddo is an honor. I would so love to have a bit of a hand from a few new buddos! Thank you so much.
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