Volunteering in New Zealand: Pippa and I set up tracking boxes in Bushy Park.

High of my list of things to do when I walked away from Corporate Life two years ago was to participate in a volunteer program abroad. I knew there might not be another time in my life when I would be able to devote weeks, if not months, to such an adventure. For most of us, our employers aren't too eager (or willing) to allow us to take that kind of time off, unpaid or otherwise, and still come back to a job, let alone our same position. So when I decided to become proactively unemployed, I immediately started looking for volunteer opportunities in countries I had been wanting to spend time in.

And that's how I ended up spending four weeks in a conservation program in New Zealand. For months now, Connections for Women editor, Gerry Hogan, has been asking me to write about the experience...and for whatever reason I found it almost impossible to do so. Sometimes there are no words, no phrases or combination of sentences, that can describe an experience. Anything I put down seemed to lessen, almost cheapen, what I had gone through. Plus, this was MY experience. It was mine. Like an amazing dessert that blows your taste buds away, sometimes you just don't want to share.

But for whatever reason, on the one-year anniversary of my adventure, I started to write about it. I'm not sure if it was the nostalgia, the distance from the experience, a sudden craving for more of something similar, or what...but the words started to flow a little more each day.  Next thing I knew, I had a piece I thought Gerry would like. And she did. You can check it out in this month's Connections for Women: http://www.connectionsforwomen.com/article_details.php?article_id=204&cat=6