Therapy, travel, and time have been my greatest teachers, but they have taught me in very different ways.

Therapy gave me language.

Travel gave me experience.

Time gave me integration.

For a long time, I believed healing happened only on a therapist’s couch, and some of it does, but not all of it. Some healing happens on roads you didn’t plan to take, in cities where no one knows your name, and in moments that force you to feel instead of overthinking.

Travel pulls me out of autopilot. It strips away roles, routines, and expectations. Somewhere between departure and arrival, when everything familiar loosens, I meet myself without labels.

I navigate unfamiliar streets. I solve problems without speaking the language. And somewhere over the last couple of years in that uncertainty, something shifted within.

Not because I wrote an epistolary book about my journey of love, loneliness, and love, or because I analyzed my way there with my trusted therapist, Tristen, but because, over time, I experienced myself differently.

Tristen once told me during a video visit that travel temporarily removes identity pressure. On my walkabouts, the labels weaken. Space opens, and in that space, I can hear what I actually want…not what is expected of me, not what keeps others comfortable, but what feels alive inside my own body.

Therapy uses words.

Travel is based on direct experience.

I’ve traveled to countless countries, each forcing my brain out of its habits and showing me there are endless ways to exist in the world. And yet, even knowing this, I still struggled. I could grasp the insight but not always embody it. I would return home and slip back into systems that asked me to stay small, smooth my edges, and make others feel good at my expense.

That’s where time came into play.

Time taught me patience with myself. It showed me that insight doesn’t instantly become behavior. That knowing and living are different skills. That integration requires repetition, reflection, and often failure.

Over time, travel sharpened my perspective. Problems that once felt enormous and unruly began to shrink. The sum of my experiences showed me the importance of living for myself.

I also saw how much of my identity had been wrapped up in holding everyone else together and keeping everyone neatly seated at the table.

Paris last year was a turning point.

Not because it was dramatic or romantic, but because it clarified something quiet and profound.

I returned to myself there.

I met the unedited version of myself.

I learned what I need and, just as importantly, what I don’t.

I came home after forty days, changed by that specific trip, remembering something therapy alone couldn’t give me: my own sense of agency, my lived experience, and the knowledge that I can move through the world, adapt, choose, and survive as myself.

Therapy helps me understand who I am.

Travel shows me who I can be.

Time teaches me how to live.

Together, they loosened the grip of old habits, softened the need to perform, and revealed how much of my identity had been built on endurance rather than truth.

Travel and time taught me this: once you see a version of yourself that is freer, more honest, more alive… you can’t unsee her. Eventually, with enough courage, patience, and lived proof, you choose her over and over again.