Taipei | October 2019

I awoke before the sun and made my way to the deserted city streets. The heat and humidity languidly crept across the pavement, eager to overtake the city. I've spent hundreds of mornings just like this. These early hours in foreign countries belong to me and the street sweepers as we wait for the world to wake around us. Soft yellow light. Bird songs not yet drowned out by traffic or tour groups. The hopeful, optimistic promise of a new day. Taiwan marks the thirtieth country I've visited. Thirty countries. Thirty places where my lungs have tasted the air and my feet have felt the soil. Thirty lives lived across cities and small towns. Thirty times falling in love with the oceans and the architecture and the small dogs and children that play at my feet. More than thirty cuisines that nourished my body and kept my heart beating. Thirty sources of water that quenched my soul, ensuring I would not drown.

My heart has loved and been broken these thirty times. My entire being has been lost and found again these thirty times. What a lifetime I have lived. What adventure. What peace. What beauty. Growing up I never thought I would see another country, let alone the five continents I've explored and re-explored again. I never thought there would be money or time or the confidence required to take such leaps. But slowly, measuredly, I built myself up into a woman who swims in every ocean she can find. A woman who knows simple words in over ten languages and who can navigate every metro system throughout Asia. A woman who leads with curiosity, letting people show her who they are before she makes that decision for them. A woman who has discovered when to put down the phone and turn the music off because certain moments of silence are the most beautiful gifts this world can ever give. A woman who embraces her solitude yet loves the tiny, beautiful moments of meeting new friends in modest cafes or grand mountain tops.

Sometimes I wonder if I can keep going at this pace. I will have made seven separate international trips in 2019 alone... It's expensive but worth the sacrifice. It's tiring but the scars and lines on my body make me beautiful. It can be utterly terrifying, but is simultaneously the very thing that keeps my blood pumping and able to move forward in this world. I don't know what the future while bring; how many more 12-hour flights and jet lagged nights I have left within me. So until something else changes my path, I will just keep going. I'll keep booking, keep packing, keep traveling until this desire to see and feel and bleed and drink and love is finally filled to the brim.