AUSTIN, Texas — About 20 miles from where Matthew McConaughey cheers on his beloved longhorns at The University of Texas’ football stadium, branches of towering trees rooted on both sides of the road leading to Miraval Austin Resort and Spa have grown together, mirroring arms that would catch you in a trust fall, as if to say, “You’re safe here.”
I arrive on a warm Friday in October for Making Space: A Wellness Weekend with Hoda Kotb , hosted by the departing anchor and “Today” and sponsored by Miraval. Visits to Austin, where I went to college, can make me feel wistful. I remember my freshman year in 2005, when my heart felt so full of possibility I could’ve levitated. The city also serves as the backdrop for my first real, deep relationship, when my heart loved fiercely without knowing the pain of a break.
Driving through the hill country I think of how differently my life looks at 37 than I predicted 20 years prior. I haven’t found my person. There are no kids dropping Cheerios in the back of my SUV. I wonder what the weekend will bring and what I’ll get out of it. Reflecting on it, days later, I realize it gave me what I didn’t know I needed. That’s exactly how Kotb defines wellness as “the piece that’s missing” to me in an interview prior to the event’s start. There’s “a heavy backpack and it goes everywhere with you,” Kotb says. “Little by little, it’s like you’re dropping rocks out of your backpack, and you just feel lighter.”