To Battle 'Inner Emptiness,' Mom Goes on a Two-Year Trek Around the World

Yahoo Parenting ^ | 3/24/2015 | Erin Zammett Ruddy

[qam1]

In her breathtaking new memoir, Phenomenal: A Hesitant Adventurer’s Search for Wonder in the Natural World published Tuesday, Leigh Ann Henion, 37, writes of the birth of her 5-year-old son Archer: “I love and marvel over him as if he were my own heart pushed into the world and, still beating, set on top of my chest. Yet I cannot help but mourn the loss of something I can’t quite place. I have an inner emptiness—literal and figurative—that I’ve never felt before.”

What follows is a raw, sometimes gut-wrenching account of the dark and lonely place Henion finds herself in as she cares for a colicky, wakeful baby. Eventually Henion, a travel writer, realizes the only way out of her identity crisis is to leave her home in Boone, North Carolina and venture out into the world that once provided her so much peace and purpose. So shortly after Archer’s first birthday, Henion embarks — sometimes alone, sometimes with her husband — on a two-year trek around the world (with some stops home in between).....

[qam1]

Example 32,530,543,167 of how Liberals are just selfish vile human beings who are just so full of themselves

[BenLurkin]

Is this Yahoo’s idea of parenting — repeatedly abandoning your child?

[RushIsMyTeddyBear]

Sounds like she has postpartum depression and needs help. Pronto.

[RushIsMyTeddyBear]

Sounds like she never ‘bonded’ with the kid to begin with.

[sten]

so... what happened to her son while she was finding herself?

[Farmer Dean]

So the responsibilities of everyday life overwhelmed her,and she dumps her family.
And these people want to rule the world?

[Kit cat]

BINGO!!!!!!!

[Pollster1]

Only a liberal would think it was okay to leave a 5 y/o child for large chunks of time adding up to two years, literally to find herself. I found myself as soon as my first child was born. I’m a parent, and that has been my most important and most urgent role from then and continuing until all of my kids are grown. It’s one thing to leave a child in order to go and defend the country from evil (a bit disconcerting with evil in charge of our White House but still a great choice), but it’s entirely different to abandon a young child for shallow and selfish reasons.

[BenLurkin]

They evidently have plenty of money.

[Tax-chick]

Having actually read the article, I don’t see anything bad in what she did. Over two years, she went on several trips of about a week’s duration each. What’s the big deal?

[BenLurkin]

[LostInBayport]

“I love and marvel over him as if he were my own heart pushed into the world and, still beating, set on top of my chest. Yet I cannot help but mourn the loss of something I can’t quite place. I have an inner emptiness—literal and figurative—that I’ve never felt before.”

[Yaelle]

Sick. It changes the permanent personality of your child to do that. Selfish and just wrong.

[MeshugeMikey]

[Farmer Dean]

She knew that if she bonded with her child,then she would have to sacrifice her needs for his.THAT is unacceptable to a self-centered witch like her.

[jtal]

Fecisti nos ad te et inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te.

[BenLurkin]

You...read the article....why....{sputter}...that’s....harrumph!

[wardaddy]

She’s an App State teacher

Boone is weird mix of hippies,academia, rich vacation home folks and serious hillbilly stock

It’s always been wacky but in recent years the school has grown so much it’s become more Southern prep college

Prettier girls etc

Asheville is the new Boone

Larger freakier and strident progressives

And huge huge lesbican population

I travel to both frequently

[dfwgator]

Sounds like she never ‘bonded’ with the kid to begin with.

She likes him as a friend.

[Farmer Dean]

Plenty of money,and a bad case of arrested development.