I didn’t grow up dreaming about stamps in a passport.
I grew up in a small town where the world felt very far away, where leaving the state was a big deal, let alone leaving the country. Travel wasn’t something people around me talked about. It wasn’t something anyone around me talked about wanting. It just… wasn’t.
At nineteen, almost by accident, that changed.
I went on a trip to Mexico, an all-inclusive resort, the kind of place designed to keep you comfortably insulated from the country you’re visiting. But even there, something cracked open. I met people from places I didn’t even know existed at the time. Different languages. Different accents. Different lives. I won’t pretend I understood any of it fully, I didn’t. Some of that curiosity was rooted in ignorance. But it was also rooted in wonder.
When I came home, I was on fire.
Not with a perfectly formed plan, but with a feeling I couldn’t shake, there is more out there than this. More people. More stories. More ways to live.
I was determined to find a way to travel the world. And then, like it often does, life stepped in.
I got married. I settled into a version of adulthood that looked right from the outside. A house. Stability. Routine. I tried, earnestly, to fit my curiosity and restlessness into that life. We traveled when we could. I attempted to be content with “enough.”
But a few years in, I realized something quietly devastating, this wasn’t the life I was meant to live. Not because of a lack of effort or love, but because I was slowly disappearing inside it. I don’t dwell on that chapter, but it matters. Because recognizing that truth, admitting it, was the first brave decision I made for myself.
Eventually, I made the second.
I booked a one way flight to Beijing.
No backup plan. No safety net. Just a suitcase, a teaching contract, and the belief that if I didn’t go then, I never would. I moved to China to teach English, and in doing so, I accidentally educated myself in ways no classroom ever could.
That one decision rewired my life.
China gave me something I didn’t even know I was missing, context. Perspective. Humility. I learned what it meant to be the outsider. To be the one who didn’t speak the language. To rely on kindness, patience, and human connection to get through a normal day. I learned that people are rarely what headlines reduce them to, and almost never what stereotypes suggest.
I built friendships that spanned continents. I shared meals with people whose lives looked nothing like mine. I learned to listen more than I spoke. And somewhere along the way, the world stopped feeling abstract and started feeling deeply, achingly personal.
It was also there, halfway across the world, that I met my now husband, Max. Proof, if I ever needed it, that life doesn’t reward careful plans nearly as much as it rewards brave ones.
When I eventually began writing about travel, I realized something quickly, I wasn’t interested in lists. Or rankings. Or the “top ten things to do before you die.”
I was interested in people.
The woman who runs a family hotel and remembers every guest’s name.
The guide whose pride in their hometown can’t be scripted.
The quiet rituals, the unpolished moments, the stories that never make it into brochures.
Travel changed my life because of the humans at the center of it. Not the landmarks.
Human centered storytelling matters to me because I’ve lived on both sides of the tourist divide. I’ve been the visitor who didn’t understand, and the foreigner hoping to be understood. I know how powerful it is when someone takes the time to tell their story honestly. And how much is lost when we reduce places to aesthetics instead of experiences.
This is why I write the way I do.
Why I travel the way I do.
Why I plan trips the way I do.
I believe travel should create connection, not consumption. That knowing the story behind a place changes how we move through it. That when we understand the people who live there, work there, and love there, we travel with more respect, more curiosity, and more care.
My life didn’t change because I saw the world.
It changed because I met it.
And everything I do now, every story I tell, every trip I plan—comes back to that simple truth.
