I still remember sitting on my living room floor as a child, with National Geographic magazines and the atlas spread out like treasure maps.

I traced my fingers around the continents as I listened to music and sang along in languages I could not speak or understand. As I daydreamed about different places that made my eyes spark with excitement, I sensed how much bigger my world could be, and how life could take shapes I still could not fully understand.

Through those yellow-bordered pages, I saw that the world mattered, and it was grander than my own reality. That belief has never left me. That conviction and curiosity became my compass.

Years passed, and I found my way to learn to speak the languages I used to sing as a little girl without knowing the words. Now I could make friends with the visitors who came to my town, speak their language, and show them the place in a way they would never have found on their own. Early on, I discovered that I could guide myself toward the bigger world I wanted, and I could guide others, too.

That conviction only grew. And soon I left to find the places I dreamed about as a child.

As I landed in a country with a language that was not mine, surrounded by a culture I could not fully understand, and could feel the challenges of the smallest of tasks, like buying medicine for cramps during a difficult time of the month (in a time when we did not have Google Translate or AI on our phones to help!). I found a way to create community, and that became the gateway to building a life that was not in my atlases or even my wildest dreams before.

In fact, a life that would belong in the dreams of many. Lived well.

I built a career. I earned the titles. Found stability. Had all the things we are told to want and to have. The relationship. The friends. The career. The location. The hobbies. The travels. And everything in between.

It all seemed like a dream, and at times, it was.

In the midst of it all, returning home from a day of work, I stared through the window as the snow fell over the mountains. I had never once taken that view for granted.

But I felt that the clouds that gathered were not just outside. They had turned my heart grey in the knowing that I might have borrowed other people’s dreams along the way.

I knew the feeling was real. Yet I chose not to listen to it. How could someone question a life that was the dream of anyone who could ever dream?

But whenever we ignore the whispers we hear in our calm and quiet moments, life starts showing what no longer belongs. What does not make any sense.

Then, little by little, step by step, everything fell apart.

The love was lost. The career stopped making sense. The places didn’t feel like home anymore. It was no longer just my heart that had turned grey. Everything around me had lost its colors. I was right back at that window, watching the snow fall, as everything I had built fell apart.

My soul was restless, and my mind without answers. Through the agony that only pivotal moments of life bring, I chose the discomfort to know even less.

I left because life broke me open, and I had to find out what was underneath.

Getting even more lost before I could find myself again. Feeling small and fragile but trusting that I would see places and meet people again that could awaken my old and inner compass towards the life I could not picture yet. Learning to see beyond what I knew so I could expand my life by chipping away the layers that were not truly mine.

Alone again, I landed in countries where I knew no one, had no backup plan, and built something real every single time, every single day.

Every single day. New bed. New shower. New foods. New hair products (and the challenge to find the right one for my curly hair!). New friends. New activities. New plans. No plans. Sometimes, finding temporary comfort in a well-known high-end hotel chain location, seeking a little familiarity and certainty. Taking a bath and accidentally watching an entire season of Emily in Paris without the will to switch channels because the remote control felt too far away.

Everything and nothing felt possible every single day. Months and months. One excruciatingly painful or otherworldly exciting day at a time.

Finding that there are many ways to live. Finding myself in the difference and also in the sameness.

That journey didn’t just change me. It moved me, literally, into yet another life in a place where I had to start from scratch all over again. Yet again.

The hardest part wasn’t starting over. It was deciding I was allowed to.

Expanding out of my own limitations and borders, again, to realize, again, that there is power in places and in the people who surround us. That the location I choose has the power to enrich my life or to shrink it.

Now my life moves with my citizenships in South America, North America, and Europe. The borders that used to feel like walls now feel like doorways.

I know exactly what it feels like to want a different life and not be sure you are allowed to want it.

Building a life abroad isn’t easy. But when the agony of not belonging anywhere transforms into the freedom of belonging everywhere, we see horizons beyond what most do.

My life was not broken.

It had outgrown the container.

A plant that outgrows its pot doesn’t need fixing.

It needs a bigger place to grow.