Oh, the places you’ll go

A lot of people, including myself, are interested in strangers’ geographical synopsis. I like these because they give me clues about things we might have in common. So perhaps you will be entertained by mine?

To begin: I am from the suburbs of the beautiful city of Charleston, South Carolina. My very first move was to Erskine College in Due West, SC where I lived in a dorm room until I dropped out.

From there I went to a small hamlet in southern England to make sense of some metaphysical questions I had at a place called L’abri. It was winter and very cold and I came back with more questions than answers.

Next begins what I will call the “chaos era” of my life. This era started back home in Charleston. I made some wonderful human connections and lifelong friendships at this time. I was making the kind of decisions that today I would not make again. I was also a singer in a band called the Chimney Sweeps.

But back to geography. I saved up money while in Charleston so I could move to Kenya and teach English. I paid a company a lot of money to set up room and board and give me a position. Looking back, I think this company was probably a scam. But, when I broke my foot a week before the flight, I lost the opportunity to find out for myself.

I was disappointed and angry, but I still had the momentum to do whatever it took to get out of the country. I still wanted to see something very different than what I knew. So I found an au pair position in the countryside of southern Austria on a picturesque vineyard. I’ll tell you about this adventure later. But I will mention that it taught me how much I enjoy being alone and in nature.

After Austria, my next big move was to Florence, Italy to get TEFL certified. I was only there for a few months but it felt like a lifetime. New friends, romantic drama, my first time living alone; and still I found myself fully emerged in my "chaos era.”

After Italy, I did a little stint in New York City. I had some savings left and thought I’d try to make it work there. I could not. I left after about 6 weeks.

So then I went back to Charleston to work again at restaurants and save money so I could do another au pair gig. This time, it would be in the highly recommended city of Toulouse, France.

It really lived up to its reputation. Toulouse was wonderful. A great place for a twenty something trying to find herself and still making questionable decisions. I started teaching English there. And I found someone special, that I ended up marrying.

Well, we first tried not-getting-married. For this, I had to move to Atlanta for a month to go back and forth to the French consulate, trying to prove that France really needed me as an English teacher.

When that failed (and I saved some more money), I went back to Toulouse for my 90 day allowance and we got married! But even still, French bureaucracy got the best of me. For reasons too complicated to explain here, we still ended up moving to the US; specifically, to New York City.

We lived in Brooklyn for a couple years until we broke up, and then I stayed living in Brooklyn for another couple years. I was trying very hard during this time to get out of my “chaos era”. I matured in a lot of ways, but in others, I spiraled harder. This was the era of my introduction to all things spiritual. I explored astrology, psychic mediums, reiki, witchcraft, hypnosis, meditation, akashic records, sound baths, you name it.

Alright so now I’m thirty something and moving to San Diego, with quick stops in Iceland and Charleston before the cross country road trip even begins. I spend two years here, living by the ocean, and going back to school in the desert. I’m loving living alone, hiking constantly, and making an effort to take care of myself a bit more. In general, I make some big strides on my self-discovery tour while in southern California.

And one day I’m at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter and get an emergency call from my dad. He needs help because my mom is not well, and asks if I can move home.

So I spend the next decade in Charleston with a couple of exceptions:

A year after this call, I get accepted into a program in San Diego that I was on the waiting list for. I move back to San Diego only to realize that my gut was not on board with this life decision. And I was really working hard to build a healthy relationship with my gut and so decided to not ignore it. I moved back home a month later.

Maybe a year after that, my parents gave me the opportunity to finally finish my undergrad degree. I had become enamored with all things botany and native ecosystem related, so I went to Brevard College in North Carolina for their Environmental Sustainability program.

I spent a year in my grandparents’ former house in Brevard hiking, exploring, studying, and interning on a biodynamic medicinal herb farm.

And then I’m back in Charleston again just in time for Covid. This is when I have the opportunity to move to the most beautiful horse farm on Johns Island. This was a mostly happy time for me with my little dog and my Prius, and great nanny jobs and friends, and horses and majestic live oaks for neighbors.

This brings me now to my present experience in Crete. I expect this chapter will play out a little differently than the rest. I bought a home here and plan to make this the geographical location of all my upcoming phases and eras. I’ll still travel and spend summers in new locations. Last summer I spent a month in Switzerland, for example, and I’d love to keep doing that kind of thing.

But during that whole story that I just shared, what I wanted the most was a real home that I loved. Where I can create the life I want, doing something meaningful and connecting with the community around me.

This week as I was walking home on a gravel road between olive groves, an older Greek man in a pickup truck stopped beside me with his window rolled down. He reached over into the passenger seat and grabbed a handful of freshly picked oranges to share. I’ve never been a huge fruit person, but in that moment I just felt so grateful and abundant. And the orange was exactly what I was craving. It’s moments like this I know without a doubt that I’m here to stay.

CHARLESTON, SC

TOULOUSE, FRANCE

BROOKLYN BOTANIC GARDEN

BREVARD, NC

JOHNS ISLAND, SC

CRETE, GREECE

SAN DIEGO, CA