Have you ever gone on a trip to escape, only to discover it was never about the place at all?

I arrived in Italy full of energy… well, I thought so anyway.
Naples had filled me with that rush of possibility, as it does when you arrive somewhere totally new — cobblestones, chaos, and coffee.

After thousands of steps around Naples and Pompeii, my feet ached but I felt alive.

Then I reached Puglia. The skies shifted, clouds rolled in, and I was uncomfortable.
A wave of tiredness hit me.

Do you notice the full moon? Ever since I began travelling to India at nineteen, the full moon has been a monthly marking of events. Sometimes quiet, but sometimes it shines a light on everything that needs to be faced.

This time, I’d been so busy I hadn’t even noticed it waxing. The feelings I’d been suppressing for weeks, maybe months, started bubbling up.

And that’s how life is, hey? You’re just pootling along and then… bang!

I thought Italy was going to be all about turquoise waters, Aperol spritz, and yummy foods — not another of my well-known meltdowns!

Maybe you know that feeling too? When you get that break you so needed, only for life to hold up a mirror you weren’t quite ready to look into.

That’s the thing about travel — it doesn’t just show us the world, it shows us ourselves.

When You Need to Stop…

That morning I opened an email from home, and my stomach dropped.

Due to the unprofessionalism of others, I found myself in an unforeseen predicament that forced me to turn my attention to decisions about my future that I guess, in all honesty, I had been delaying.

For the past two years, I’ve been travelling, moving around, and living within my means — house sitting, pet sitting, and staying with friends and family. With my house and job waiting in the wings ready for my return – a safety net.

I’m not sure about you? What do you do when you are faced with a big decision or an unforeseen situation that demands a decision?

Well, the first phase is that my heart races and I get super anxious. When I go into that mode, I tend to freeze. I can’t regulate quickly enough; my head fogs with overthinking and panic. I can’t think straight.

But what I’ve realised now is that it’s okay to react this way. This is my way, and it’s not going to change.

What has changed in these past two years is that now I can remind myself: this feeling will pass.

Then comes phase two of my meltdown: calling my friends.
And there it is again, guilt and shame for reaching out, for “needing.”
But that’s who I am. Vocal. I need my friends.

It’s funny — people often talk about independence as the goal, but I’ve learned that connection is what keeps us upright.  The women and friends who’ve held space for me on this journey have been my anchor.

And that, to me, is the heart of Community & Connection, learning that asking for support isn’t weakness, it’s wisdom.

These decisions were about money — how I want to make it and what it means to me. Money has always been tangled up with control and freedom.

For me, money has never been about possessions; it’s been about mobility — the ability to choose, to travel, to be free. And now it felt threatened.

But underneath all that, the real issue wasn’t money.
It was what it represented. My work. My home.
My next chapter.

The Reckoning

Meltdown meant finally facing the decisions I’d been avoiding.
When I left my life, my job, and my home, I had the safety net of returning to both.
But that life wasn’t me anymore. You know that feeling when you’ve simply outgrown something?

After two years away, I still didn’t feel ready. Honestly, I felt traumatised by even the thought of returning to my safe but exhausting job, and everything that stable life demanded just to stay afloat.

So, there I was in Puglia, rain pouring, wondering whether to go back to a career I felt no longer served me, and whether to return to my home or sell it, the one place that had always been my anchor.

My home is my heart. The longest I’ve ever lived anywhere. The place my son and I, my sidekick, had built a life after becoming a single-parent family. I could see him on the roof watching the moon, hanging off the washing line, laughing in the kitchen.
I texted him, he’s my wiser other brain sometimes.

His words stopped me in my tracks:
“We can make a new home.”

Just like that, something inside me released.
Sometimes, it only takes one loving voice to remind you that endings can also be beginnings.

The Messy Middle

It was messy. Forty-eight hours of soul-searching, restlessness, and a sleepless night. I was huddled up on the bed, nerves shot, mind spinning. But I knew this rhythm. This was transformation, not collapse.

It’s never tidy. It’s raw, human, unfiltered. But it’s mine. I’m sure many of you know this process too — the moment when everything feels like it’s breaking, but deep down you sense something new is forming.

Slowly, the clouds started to lift, both literally and metaphorically.

Connection, conversation, and honesty helped to relieve the pressure that had built up. Calm returned. Decisions began to form. The light was beginning to appear again, like those first orange shades before sunrise.

That’s what Transformational Travel & Reinvention looks like sometimes, not a postcard moment, but a reckoning in disguise.

Italy, in all its beauty and imperfection, became my mirror, showing me that clarity isn’t something you find; it’s something that finds you when you finally stop running.

The Release

I left Puglia behind and literally drove out from under the clouds. The sky opened before me. Blue, wide, and full of unspoken promise.

I got lost in Salerno, driving down the wrong streets until an old man appeared from nowhere, laughing and taking my car keys as if to say, breathe, ragazza. Somehow, that small human kindness felt like a metaphor for everything: surrender, and life will take your keys when you need it to.

Later, as I sat with an Aperol Spritz, I felt myself begin to relax.

It was all okay. Of course it was.

And sitting on the ferry on the way to Amalfi, I marvelled as the coastline stretched out like a heartbeat — jagged peaks, sudden drops, unexpected beauty.

Then, on our return to Salerno, I saw it….the full moon rising: pink, gentle and beautiful.

In that moment, I knew. It was never about money or work. It was about identity. About shedding the old skin to make room for who I was becoming.
Uncomfortable? Absolutely. But necessary.

Sometimes it’s only when everything feels like it’s collapsing that life can finally rearrange itself into something new.

Have you ever had a moment that almost broke you, but set you free?

🦋 Download the Midlife Dream Map to start mapping your next chapter once the light returns.