It’s December 6. While I was traveling a couple of weeks ago, I found out that’s the day the Dutch celebrate Christmas. The day I arrived was the day they turned on the Christmas lights. It felt meant to be.

Today, I got updated Ancestry DNA results – that put the Netherlands smack in the center of two overlapping circles, my own Venn Diagram of genealogy. So, I’m celebrating some Dutch heritage, and feeling festive.

This week, I’ve been watching cheesy Christmas movies, eating chocolate-covered raisins, and meditating for 40-50 minutes a day. Last year, I was doing two of those things. I’ll let you guess which ones.

Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be putting up a series of posts about my trip. I’m feeling an apprehension that I haven’t felt before about posting. Sure, I felt a twinge about the sex books, but this trip feels bigger than that.

I could whitewash it. But as they say, if you’re going to lie, you’d better hope you have a good memory. I don’t, which is why I write everything down. So I’d rather tell the truth than try to keep my story straight.

I went to the Netherlands because what I wanted to do is illegal in the U.S. That makes some people uncomfortable.

I don’t want to put a disclaimer up about my content, but I do want to invite you, if you choose to keep scrolling when those posts start coming, to keep an open heart and to stay curious. It’s been a phrase that has been coming up in my life for 3/4 of a year now – that invitation to stay curious.

It’s a lot easier said than done. I often get judgemental, indignant, and hurt before I remember the part about curiosity. So go ahead and feel those other things, too. But remember the curiosity.