Twenty years in the making
Twenty years is a long time, and yet it passes so quickly. Today marks two decades since I first set foot in the UK. What was meant to be a ten-month gap year became something altogether different and unexpected. If I’ve learned anything over the past couple of decades, it’s that life rarely unfolds as planned.
Back then, I was 22, restless and desperate to escape the cornfields in which I grew up surrounded by in a small town of northern Indiana. I was longing for something larger than the life I knew, and, looking back now, I can see I was also running away from the life I knew. I wanted to stretch, to test myself, to step beyond the tight boundaries I had inherited. I couldn’t have known that those ten months would become the arc of an entire adulthood, reshaping not only where I lived but how I lived, what I believed, and what I gave myself to.
Reflecting on 20 years lived
Looking back, the threads that matter most aren’t the milestones one might usually name, such as marriage, divorce, career shifts. Instead, who I am now has been shaped by slowly and steadily shedding, reshaping, and undoing things I learned as a child, as a teen, and as a young adult. The loosening of black-and-white thinking. Releasing control. Realising that love is expansive, boundless and abundant. Experiencing the relief that accompanies stepping off the tightrope and learning, instead, how to move with the flow of life. The restrictive, and quite frankly, traumatising religious doctrine of my childhood has been shed, replaced by a spiritual understanding I feel alignment with; life is not conquered but accompanied, not controlled but honoured in whatever it brings.
In this place, on this island I now call home, I’ve discovered a different kind of life from the one I left behind. One that values rest as much as work. One that prizes interdependence, not just independence. One where community can become a practice of care, not just a word. And one that sees the nuances, the grey areas that my old life refused. My life today has capacity to hold it all.
And so this milestone feels less like a celebration for me, and more like a recognition of what these twenty years have given me… the distance and experience needed to grow into someone I could not have imagined becoming at 22. And the knowledge that my growth journey continues, into a third decade here and beyond, with new lessons waiting for me around every corner.
Moving ahead with my mortal life
This Mortal Life is born of the journey of these past twenty years… the curiosity, the longing for connection to myself, to others and to nature, the desire to live fully, authentically, and then to die well. It’s a commitment to nurture myself, my community and my chosen family.
It’s a work that’s still unfolding, as am I. But I want to pause to thank all those who have joined me along the way, even if only for a moment. I’m excited to see what the next 20 years has in store for me as I continue on this exploration of life. As I continue to learn, to build community, and work towards nourishing myself and others through whatever life brings. As I live my mortal life.
