Getting Spiritual and Naked in the Netherlands!

Let me tell you something about the Netherlands, and I'm going to tell it to you straight, the way my grandmother used to tell me things, which is to say loudly and while holding a casserole dish. The Dutch have it figured out. They really do. I've been to a lot of places in my forty years on this big spinning rock - I've gotten naked in more countries than most people have visited with their clothes on - but there's something about the Netherlands that cracked me open like a soft-boiled egg. And not just because I spent twelve days there wearing approximately the same amount of fabric as a newborn hamster. I went to the Netherlands looking for tulips. I came back looking for the meaning of life. That's not an exaggeration, although I exaggerate constantly, so I understand why you'd be suspicious. My ex-boyfriend Trevor - and we'll get to Trevor, oh, we'll get to Trevor - once told me I "round up emotionally." Which is rich coming from a man who rounded down financially every single time we split a check. But I digress. I always digress. Digressing is basically my cardio. Here's the thing nobody tells you about nude living, especially the spiritual kind: it's not really about being naked. I know, I know, I wrote a whole book series about being naked and now I'm telling you it's not about that. Stay with me. Being naked is just the doorway. It's the welcome mat. What's on the other side of that door is a whole big beautiful mess of self-acceptance, and the Dutch - bless their tall, sturdy, bicycle-riding hearts - built an entire culture around walking through that door like it's no big deal. Because to them, it isn't. I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, where we express spirituality by buying expensive rain jackets and standing in forests feeling things. I'm a Seattle girl through and through, even out here in the suburbs with my Volvo XC60 - which, by the way, is the finest nudist's automobile ever engineered by the careful hands of Sweden, and I will be explaining exactly why at some length later, whether you want me to or not. So when I tell you the Netherlands rearranged my insides, understand that this is a woman who already thought she was pretty enlightened. I'd done the saunas. I'd done the beaches. I'd done a sunrise yoga session in Croatia where a seagull stole a man's entire breakfast croissant right off his bare stomach and I laughed so hard I pulled something in my soul. But the Dutch? The Dutch took me to school.