Two Suitcases, One Delusional Wish, and a Year I'll Never Regret

A year ago I put everything I owned into a storage unit in Wisconsin, bought a one-way ticket to Lisbon, and left with two suitcases and a delusional wish that there was something more for me out there. I also left because I had no idea who I was outside of my marriage and my teaching job, and I just quit both.

I had no plan. Not a five-year plan, not even a five-month plan. My only plan was to travel to countries I'd dreamed of going to, work on healing myself, and figure out what was next for me.

I had zero evidence this was going to work. No job lined up, no visa figured out, no version of my life that made sense on paper. The only thing I had was a 50-pound suitcase limit.

Here's what the past year actually looked like.

Five countries over seven months. Grocery shopping in languages I didn’t know, eating gelato every chance I got, finding my love for weight lifting again, and meeting some incredible people.  It also looked like building a business from coffee shops and co-working spaces I found by wandering into them because I didn't know where else to go, nights I cried in my Airbnb because I was still healing and questioning everything, and mornings I sat outside with actual ocean air and thought, oh, this is why I did it.

A year later, I'm not the same person who packed those two suitcases.

I built Sol Flow VA into something real, with clients I actually love working with.  I have a business that runs because I built the systems, not because I'm white-knuckling it every day. I'm also building a life in Portugal that I don't have to escape to on vacation, because I live here now. The life I used to think only happened to other people is just my life now.

I didn't have it figured out. I just kept showing up — for the hard days, for the doubt, for the version of myself I was still getting to know — and somewhere in the middle of all that showing up, a business happened.

So if you're standing in your own version of not knowing right now, whether it’s a job you're not sure about, a relationship you're questioning, or a life that doesn't match anyone's plan, you don't need the five-year version of the answer. You just need the one-way ticket.

You need to be willing to bet on yourself before you have any of it. The same bet you'd make on your business before it had a single client, a single testimonial, a single reason to believe it would work. Today I have a life I actually built, including a business that only exists because I bet on it before it had earned the right to.

A year ago I didn't know who I was outside of my marriage and my classroom. Now I do. And she's someone I actually like.