About Inward Ride

Vulnerability, Ketamine treatment and life choices: how Inward Ride began.

What would I do if I had been diagnosed with a terminal illness? Or if I won the lottery?

In early 2019 I experienced an incident that caused me to reach deep within myself and ask these questions. I’ve been a professional photographer for over 30 years. For longer than that, I’ve dealt with severe, treatment-resistant depression. I’ve accomplished important goals despite the illness, but my life has also been highly hampered by it.

During this incident, while visiting my family in Brazil, I reached rock bottom. I realized that I had one choice, one path alone to pursue: to live with utter loyalty to my heart’s truth, and to stop feeding the false persona of “shoulds", unconsciously erected and maintained to look good for others. The search for social conformity and approval was literally killing me.

My own answer to both questions turned out to be the same: I would go on a long, open-ended motorcycle journey – a pilgrimage of sorts in which I would live one day at a time, savoring life like an endless cup of strong coffee, with my heart fully open to the experiences and interactions with my fellow humans rather than striving to convince them of my worth. It’s also when I’m riding that I feel the most alive. So I decided not to wait…

That is when Inward Ride came into being.

The first leg of my journey began on August 15, 2019. I returned home ninety-seven days later, on November 18. The essays on my blog illustrate some of what I experienced and learned during my travels.

As with every endeavor that I have embarked on in life, my aim has been not only to heal myself, but also to share what I’ve learned with you and others. My deepest desire has been to strip away the shame and fear of vulnerability, depression, loneliness and change, and empower not only myself, but also others in the process.

I hope that my journey becomes something much bigger than just my own and can be a beacon of strength, opportunity or encouragement for countless others who are searching for something different in their lives.

With love,

Ciro