I entered the world on the East Coast, a region where the rhythm of the ocean often mirrors the restlessness of its people. My family had a tendency to move frequently, chasing new opportunities or simply responding to life’s unpredictable pulls. By the time I finally earned my high school diploma in Texas, I had already become an expert at being the new girl—the outsider parachuted into tight-knit circles where friendships seemed to have been cemented since kindergarten. My classmates carried the quiet confidence of those who belonged, while I was still trying to understand not only who everyone else was but also who I was supposed to be among them.
When I eventually enrolled at Texas A&M University, I stepped into an institution that was both vast and strangely insular—a large, spirited campus enclosed within the cocoon of a small-town culture that prized friendliness, loyalty, and an almost sacred devotion to tradition. In that environment, I shaped a version of adulthood that mirrored the expectations around me. I built a satisfying and stable life: I fell in love with a local man, married him, raised a family, nurtured a career, and followed, almost unconsciously, every instruction from the unspoken cultural syllabus that dictated how success should look.
And yet, despite my achievements and the comfort of familiarity, a subtle sense of displacement followed me everywhere. Deep down, I always felt like the transfer student who had arrived in the middle of the semester—welcome enough to be included, yet perpetually aware that I hadn’t started at the same point as everyone else. I was the one who met groupthink with quiet sarcasm, the student who rolled her eyes at the tiers of Greek life or questioned the social rituals nobody seemed to question. My curiosity sometimes unsettled others, but my need for acceptance encouraged me to master the art of blending in, disguising difference under a polite smile.
Looking back, I sometimes wonder whether a gap year—a pause between adolescence and adulthood—might have offered me time to breathe, to explore, to define myself. But such a luxury wasn’t something we could afford. I worked relentlessly to finance my education, juggling three jobs at once: one of them required me to deliver newspapers at three in the morning, navigating dark streets while most of my peers were either asleep or returning from late-night celebrations. In that routine, I learned endurance before I ever learned rest.
Decades later, I was given a second chance to create the gap I had missed. At fifty-three, I gave myself a deliberate do-over. My husband, Nigel, and I, after dedicating long careers to the oil and gas industry, decided to retire earlier than planned. We slowly realized that what we needed wasn’t a sprawling house or a fixed address, but instead a life designed around curiosity, sunlight, and freedom. So, with equal parts excitement and uncertainty, we packed up our lives and began traveling full-time, charting a path from one long-stay Airbnb to another, allowing the seasons—and our own whims—to set our direction.
Our first destination was Dubrovnik, Croatia, a city steeped in ancient stone and sea breeze. There, we learned a new form of companionship: how to be alone together, sharing silence and wonder in equal measure. From there, we moved on to Lecce, Italy, where our apartment sat just above a small café whose scent of freshly baked focaccia became our morning alarm. Seville, Spain, came next—vibrant, musical, and intoxicating. We stayed for the duration we had planned but found ourselves reluctant to leave, still drinking a little too much wine, walking home long after midnight, and chasing the kind of spontaneous joy that defies practicality. Then came Mauritius, where the air carried salt and stillness, and we discovered the restorative grace of doing absolutely nothing without the shadow of guilt. Our journey through the United Kingdom stretched us thin—eight cities in six weeks—until Ireland offered the medicine we didn’t know we needed: gentle rain, open music, and the kindness of strangers.
Each location revealed a different version of me. In Dubrovnik, I discovered the quiet power of solitude; in Lecce, the pleasure of indulgence; in Seville, the unrestrained delight of joy; and in Ireland, a sense of grace I had long forgotten. Travel, I learned, doesn’t transform your identity—it reframes it. It hands you a mirror angled differently, revealing aspects of yourself you had hidden or ignored. Perhaps that is why I keep moving forward: to meet again the person I might become in the next unknown place. Strangely, the resurgence of late-’80s and early-’90s music and fashion everywhere we went felt like a playful time warp—an ongoing reminder of where I began and how far my path had carried me.
After an entire year on the road, I came to an unexpected realization: I felt more at home abroad than I ever had in the American South. Outside the borders of the culture that had shaped me, I found a form of belonging that had never required permission. In other countries, introductions were not centered around jobs or titles. Instead of the familiar question, “So, what do you do?” people would ask, “Who are you?” or “What brings you here?” Friendships emerged more slowly, but when they did, they carried a depth and sincerity that surprised me. I began to listen more than I spoke, to ask rather than to justify—a small rebellion against a lifetime spent trying to earn my place.
Authenticity, once a risky vulnerability, became my simplest tool for connection. The more I abandoned the need to be universally liked, the easier genuine relationships became. People seemed to sense my comfort in my own skin and responded to it with warmth. Perhaps that’s why, paradoxically, I feel freer abroad than in the region I once called home. Being visibly foreign grants permission to be different, while back home, that same difference often drew puzzled looks or quiet judgment. Abroad, my distinctiveness made others curious; in Texas, it sometimes invited scrutiny. For the first time, I didn’t have to make myself smaller to be accepted—I could expand, breathe, stretch into the space around me, and still belong.
During that year of continuous travel, Nigel and I realized that we were not merely wandering; we were constructing a movable version of home. It was built not from walls and furniture we owned, but from shared meals around borrowed tables, the laughter of temporary neighbors, and moments that reconnected me with the self I had tucked away beneath years of obligation. In those impermanent settings, I reclaimed the essence of who I was before I began shaping myself according to others’ expectations.
At long last, I took the gap year I’d once thought impossible. The reward was greater than I had ever imagined. The experience taught me a truth both simple and profound: no one needs to grant you permission to begin again. Reinvention, like travel, is a choice available at any age, waiting only for the courage to set it in motion.
Sourse: https://www.businessinsider.com/retired-early-took-gap-year-travel-the-world-2025-11
