One Life One Encounter

When people imagine traveling the world for a year, they picture sunsets over the Amalfi Coast, sunrises over ancient temples in Cambodia, and afternoons spent journaling from sun-drenched terraces overlooking Las Ramblas, sangria in hand.

Our version, however, started with below-freezing temperatures in rural Germany — in a farmhouse with no heat, no running water, and an enthusiastic host who thought “rustic” was a personality trait. We learned that our breath could freeze mid-sentence and that “volunteering abroad” sometimes translates to “character building in the form of mild frostbite.”

From there, we traipsed through Poland — drinking vodka with locals to stay warm and numb the tears after a day spent at Auschwitz. Drunk off ten kinds of pierogis, we strutted confidently into the Warsaw airport… only to discover that our actual flight was leaving from another airport an hour away. We spent more than our daily budget on that taxi ride, and I cursed myself, my husband, and the cruel redundancy of two airports in one city.

In Spain, we learned that “farm to table” could mean “pick oranges all morning, juice them by hand all afternoon, and spend the evening peeling sticky pulp off your arms.” But tasting Valencia orange juice seconds after it’s picked? Worth it.

We learned to put ourselves out there — talking to strangers in Croatian hostels, sharing slapdash dinners made from whatever the mini-market had left, and somehow meeting those same travelers again months later in Vietnam.

At the time, I thought I was learning about the world.
In hindsight, I was really learning about myself.

When I think back, some of the most important lessons weren’t about the world — though I did learn that people are innately kind, that generosity rarely depends on wealth, that we are small in the grand scheme of things.
The deeper lessons were about myself — and the truth is, I didn’t recognize them right away.

When we came home, I told myself I’d been changed by travel — and in some ways, I had. But I also slipped back into old rhythms with unsettling ease. Jobs, commutes, grocery lists. I thought I was “reintegrating.” Really, I was just reverting.

The road had planted something in me — tiny, unassuming seeds — but it would be years before I saw what had started to grow. Maybe because I was too busy trying to be “normal” again. Or maybe because the growth required more undoing than I was ready for.

I used to think healing happened in the big, cinematic moments — like standing barefoot on a Balinese beach or watching the sun rise over Cappadocia.
But the truth is, most of it happens later — quietly, inconveniently, somewhere between doing laundry and making another cup of coffee.

Sometimes the lessons take their time.

It wasn’t until much later — after another marriage, another unraveling, another round of starting over — that I began to see what had really been taking shape all along.

Looking back, I can see the patterns so clearly now.
How much I craved control — as if managing logistics (and my husband’s moods) could somehow guarantee safety. How I needed to be the easy one, the agreeable one, the one who “made things work.” How I built my worth on how much I could hold for everyone else.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but that year on the road wasn’t just a test of endurance or a study in wanderlust — it was a slow unraveling of everything I thought made me safe.

I learned that I needed control to feel secure.
If I could plan every detail, manage every budget, anticipate every outcome — maybe nothing could fall apart. I wore control like armor, not realizing how heavy it had become.

On the road, though, control is an illusion. Trains are late. Wi-Fi fails. You get lost, you get rained on, and somehow the world keeps moving.
I started to see that my need to orchestrate everything was really a fear of uncertainty — and that uncertainty was exactly where growth lived.

I learned that I equated being loved with being useful.
People-pleasing was my native language — anticipating needs, smoothing edges, making myself smaller so others could be comfortable. Traveling with a partner amplified that pattern. I took on every invisible task because I didn’t know how not to.

It wasn’t until much later that I understood: when you bend too far to be loved, you forget what standing tall feels like.

And money — God, money was its own kind of mirror.
I obsessed over every euro, convinced that one wrong splurge on a train ticket would derail my future. I kept spreadsheets like my life depended on it. Meanwhile, we were living on $3 bottles of wine and calling it “cultural immersion.”

That scarcity mindset had roots far deeper than I realized. I worried endlessly about what a year “off” would do to my 401(k), my future, my sense of security — only to discover that things tend to work out when you’re actually living, not projecting.

It took me years to see that it wasn’t about the money at all.
It was about trust — that there would be enough, that I was enough, even if the math didn’t always add up.

Coming home was its own kind of reckoning.
We moved back to San Diego because I was chasing something familiar — the illusion that “home” could anchor me again. But you can’t go home the same. The streets were the same, but I wasn’t.

The life I’d left behind no longer fit, like trying to step into clothes that had shrunk in the wash. That’s the thing about growth — it doesn’t ask for permission. It expands you, quietly, until comfort no longer feels like safety, but confinement.

Home, I’ve learned, isn’t always a place.
Sometimes it’s a moment — the way sunlight hits the water in Lisbon, the sound of a call to prayer echoing over Istanbul, the laughter of strangers who feel like friends for a night.
Sometimes home is simply the feeling of being fully present in your own skin, no matter where you stand.

I also had to acknowledge that being a “productive member of society” doesn’t always mean clocking in or checking boxes.
Sometimes it means dismantling everything you thought you knew about success and asking: Who am I when I’m not being measured?

The road cracked me open, but it was the life that followed — the ordinary, unglamorous, day-after-day kind of living — that helped me grow into the space it made.

I used to crave certainty — the steady paycheck, the five-year plan, the tidy answers that made sense on paper.
But the truth is, life rarely makes sense on paper.

Growth happens in the mess — in missed flights, in sticky orange juice dripping down your arm in a Spanish orchard, in the laughter that bubbles up when you realize you’ve accidentally eaten gelato for every meal of the day.

That’s what the road taught me: to trust the unfolding.
To believe that I can be both lost and exactly where I need to be.
To stop confusing peace with predictability.

That’s what the road gave me — not clarity, but curiosity.
Not peace, but permission.

It took me a decade to realize that “finding yourself” isn’t a one-time thing.
It’s messy and circular and sometimes looks like booking another one-way ticket just to see what might unfold.

Because maybe the lessons don’t arrive when we want them to.
Maybe they wait until we’re finally still enough to listen.

Maybe that’s the real gift of it all — the way life keeps circling back, offering us another chance to see what we missed the first time.

Back then, I thought the road was about getting lost;
now I see it was always about coming home.

-A