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Sometimes You Come Home Different We leave, experience somewhere new, take photos, make memories, and eventually return home. But sometimes the trip ends and something inside us does not return to the way it was before. Why can someone spend a week somewhere new and return to normal, while someone else comes home questioning their entire life? Maybe travel itself does not change us. Maybe it simply removes enough of the familiar that we can finally notice things we were too a

When people picture moving to southern Thailand, they may imagine turquoise water, tropical beaches, limestone cliffs, warm weather, and a slower pace of life. But choosing somewhere to live is different from choosing somewhere to vacation. Beautiful scenery matters, but so do healthcare, internet reliability, transportation, shopping, housing, infrastructure, and how easy it is to handle everyday life. Two places that consistently come up when researching where to live in so

Maybe the goal isn't to prove your old life was wrong. Maybe it is simply to recognize that it served you for a season.

Moving Abroad Is About More Than Choosing a Country When you are planning to move abroad its easy to focus on the exciting parts, better weather, beautiful scenery, lower costs, or a slower lifestyle. But deciding whether to move abroad requires thinking about what everyday life will actually look like. Before researching visas, apartments, or plane tickets, there are some bigger questions worth asking yourself first. These questions aren’t meant to talk you out of moving, th

When you imagine moving abroad, it is easy to picture the extraordinary moments. The beaches. Weekend trips. New food. Beautiful scenery. Exploring a place that still feels unfamiliar. But if we actually move abroad, most of our life won't be made up of extraordinary moments. Eventually, there will just be Tuesdays. We will wake up, work, make dinner, buy groceries, clean the house, run errands, take care of our cats, and figure out what to do with the rest of the evening. An

All of the photos in this post we took in Thailand and they are unedited and highlight some less than desirable areas/issues. It is incredibly easy to romanticize a new place. Search almost any destination online and you will find beautiful beaches, charming streets, incredible food, mountain views, luxury hotels, and carefully edited videos showing what life could look like there. The problem is that most of what we see online is a highlight reel. Vacation photos rarely show

When you read or watch enough content about moving abroad, eventually you hear some version of: “If you aren’t happy at home, you won’t be happy abroad.” Or: “You can’t run away from your problems.” There is some truth in that. Moving to another country will not suddenly erase every insecurity, relationship problem, financial worry, or internal struggle you have. You are still you when the plane lands. But I also think this advice gets repeated so often that we sometimes acce

Moving abroad can sound romantic when you picture beaches, new cultures, a lower cost of living, or a slower pace of life. But the reality is that moving abroad also means uncertainty. It can mean leaving family behind, navigating another language, figuring out healthcare, changing the way you earn money, and learning how to complete ordinary tasks all over again. So how do you decide whether it is actually worth the risk?

Moving abroad can sound simple when you reduce it to packing your belongings and booking a flight. In reality, there are dozens of practical details that can affect whether a destination will work for your everyday life. Some factors may be easy to overlook while you are imagining beaches, better weather, or a lower cost of living. Visa restrictions, healthcare access, taxes, transportation, internet quality, and even the time difference from home can have a major impact on y

How to Make a Life-Changing Decision Halfway through our trip to Asia, my husband and I took a long-tail boat over to Ao Nang. We spent the day getting tattoos, exploring the main strip, and trying to find the night market. We wandered through shops and smoothie stands while taking in the beautiful scenery, but we never actually made it to the market. As we sat on a bench near the ocean, I told my husband, “I like that I can’t be on autopilot here.” A curious look formed on h

What happens when your beliefs, choices and dreams no longer fit the expectations of your family, hometown, or country? There is a certain comfort in following the path laid out for us. It keeps the people around us comfortable, too. But what happens when that path no longer feels like your own? Choosing an authentic life can be freeing, but it can also create conflict, loneliness, and loss. In life, we often feel pressure to follow a familiar path: adopt the beliefs we were

How much of who we are is shaped by where we live? In my latest post, I explore how our surroundings influence our values, habits, stress, and sense of identity—and whether moving somewhere new allows us to become someone different or return to who we have always been. Read “Who Are We Without the Familiar?” on Beyond Familiar Shores. 🌊

Before Thailand Before I ever thought about traveling to Thailand, I thought my life was following the path it was supposed to follow. I worked, paid bills, planned for the future and assumed that the lifestyle around me was just the way life worked. Like a lot of people, I spent most of my time focused on responsibilities and routines. I dreamed about travel but wasn’t even sure I would ever be able to. Then one trip changed the way I viewed my entire life. My husband and I

One of the biggest challenges of planning a move is figuring out where to go. Over the past 9 months, we’ve spent countless hours researching different destinations, comparing costs, reading expat experiences, and imagining what daily life might look like in each place. After months of research, three locations have consistently risen to the top of our list: Florida Puerto Rico Thailand Each offers something different, and each comes with its own challenges. Here’s how they c