Every trip holds a unique experience. Some are meant to bring us joy, others to relax and recharge. Some trips teach us lessons, and a few have a specific purpose. Then there are the trips that change us on a molecular level. The type where you know with utter certainty you came home a different person than when you left. These trips often leave you with more questions than answers, and longing for change. 

Happy New Year! 2025 was quite the year. Whether you experienced challenges or successes, it feels like, as a collective, we were all ready to let it go. A new year is a clean slate. A fresh start for whatever intentions are most important to you. Even though January 1st marked the beginning of a new calendar year, those of us in the northern hemisphere are deep in winter, which is meant to be a slower season. So if you’re not quite feeling ready to jump into a new set of goals and ambitions, give yourself a little grace. Enjoy the slower season and the darker days. Use this time to reflect on how you want to feel and what is truly important for you to focus your energy on this year. 

Liz Gilbert’s memoir, Eat Pray Love, took the world by storm when it was published in 2006. Selling over 10 million copies, the book was featured in Oprah’s Book Club and eventually made into a film starring Julia Roberts, which received equal acclaim. It has become a sort of Bible for young, single women seeking to find their place in the world. Women who feel lost, incomplete, or perhaps, uninspired. The impact this story has had is so profound that Bali became a sensation nearly overnight, facing issues with over-tourism and commercialization that it had not previously experienced. There’s just something about Liz’s journey, and the beautiful way she shares it, that has had millions in a chokehold for almost twenty years now.

Travel was a significant part of my life before the pandemic. Working as a freelancer, I’ve had the privilege of taking my “office” with me, and I took full advantage of that luxury. The pandemic was one of several challenging years, and travel stopped for me months before the world shut down. While I’d like to say that I could fuel that part of me in other ways, it just didn’t seem the same. Coming back to travel in 2024 felt like coming home again.

There’s a scene in Eat Pray Love when Liz is in Italy visiting the Augusteum. She explains the origin of these ancient ruins and talks about how the city has built itself above it over time.

It’s one of the simplest things, sitting in what she considers the “quietest and loneliest” part of Rome. But that brief experience had an impact on the way she started to see things. It was a pivotal moment in finally letting go of the relationship she had with David. It didn’t make the experience - the heartbreak - any less painful but it allowed her to take the first step to move forward. This is the beauty, and the privilege, of travel. It takes us outside our routines and self-imposed bubbles where nothing changes and opens our eyes to looking at life differently. This world is so much bigger than the next promotion or moving in with a partner. If we allow ourselves to look outside the world we limit ourselves to, there’s so much more to be discovered about ourselves, the people in our lives, the challenges we’re working through, and the people around us.