Who I Is.

I am a Permanent Resident of the United States of America but am a British citizen who was born in Germany.
Now in my 39^th year on this planet, I am still struggling with 2 life questions:

1. How do you know where you are supposed to be/settle [when you grow up]?! (Or are you even supposed to?!)
2. At what point and why did mankind decide we all had to work for a living? Such an unfortunate stage of our evolution.

My earliest childhood memories are of time spent traveling around Germany in a VW Campervan.

My Dad was in the Royal Navy for many years and while he was based in Germany, I arrived in to this world in a British Consulate hospital in Kiel, in the Schleswig-Holstein region of Northern Germany. When I was around 18 months old, my parents, older brother and I moved to the UK. When I was five years old, however, my parents took my brothers and I back to Germany on an epic 3 week camping tour that would later prove to be the catalyst and absolute, deep-rooted source of my Wanderlust, of my Fernweh, my Sehnsucht. Of all the amazing German words which have no literal English translation that describe my unrelenting yearning to go and be somewhere else. My life-long angst about trying to find my purpose in life. And my utter fear of not figuring all of this shit out before my time is up!

At the time, my parents wouldn’t have given a second thought to how these experiences would influence my life. We were simply living life and taking family holidays. But the memories of driving through the German countryside, of King Ludwig II’s fairytale Neuschwanstein Castle, of Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest, of collecting a beermat or postcard at every town to glue in my daily journal [which we were made to write, Thank you Mum & Dad!], even though I was five years old, are, to this day, some of the most emotive experiences of my life.  That family holiday in 1986 100% led me to where I am today.

I grew up in a small town in the south of England. At 18, while most of my friends were selecting their University courses based on future job aspirations, I was pouring through prospectuses seeking out a degree that would send me abroad. No joke.

Some of my first words as a baby were German and my love of the language continued as I grew up. When I realized that I could take a business degree and pair it with German in order to do a study abroad program, I was all over it. Almost all of the programs, however, only offered a six-month stint abroad, but I unearthed the jackpot. I found the one University in the country that was offering a dual-degree: two years in England, two years in Germany. TWO YEARS!!! Without a doubt, that was the one for me. I was very fortunate that my parents fully supported this decision and always encouraged us to go after whatever we wanted to do.

Those four years of my life were exactly what my soul needed.

I moved to Regensburg, Germany at 19 years old and instantly fell in love with my new life, which was a perfect mix of beer-filled fun (Oktoberfest!!), super-hard business classes in German and plenty of travel. Fifteen years after my first visit with my parents, I was able to take myself back to Neuschwanstein Castle. (The castle that I had obsessed over for years and had selected as my final oral exam topic for my German class in school and learned every little detail about its history.) A few of us would hop on a train at the weekends and go wherever someone wanted to – Munich, Nuremberg, Frankfurt, Salzburg, Vienna, Prague. I would walk around every city in awe of the architecture, the history, the culture. I. Just. Loved. It.

How did that adventure take me to America? Well....almost immediately after moving to Germany, I met a guy. He was from Boulder, Colorado and was also doing a study abroad program. Long story short, after moving back to our respective countries and after almost a decade of maintaining some semblance of a long-distance relationship and multiple long-haul flights from London to Denver, and not forgetting a nine-month agonizing visa application process, I moved out to the States to be with him. Even longer story short, fourteen months later, life with him fell apart.

For me, every element of my journey in life is just another part of my story. I can't regret anything I've done or any decision I've made because it has all made me who I am today. While that period in my life was tough as hell and left me feeling like I was back at square one, on many levels, I made the tough decision to stay Stateside, alone.


And so began the next chapter of my life.