Things got worse before they got better.

The last time I traveled to Europe, I was 21 years old, studying abroad in London. I still look back on the experience as one of the happiest periods of time in my life, yet I hadn’t been back in almost a decade. I kept waiting for an engraved invitation.

I’d look at couples who took trips and blamed not having a boyfriend as the issue. Disclaimer: for a long time, I viewed this as the root cause of nearly every problem I had in my life.

I finally received my engraved invitation to Europe in May, in the form of a trip to Croatia to celebrate one of my dearest friends getting married. I backed out less than a week before the trip because of work. I let fear, excuses and anxiety get in the way of yet another experience, and I seriously let down someone I loved.

In case it’s not already blatantly obvious, being single was never the problem- the problem was, and had always been, me. The golden opportunity to go abroad I had been waiting 9 years on had c...

Going to Italy alone was one of my life’s greatest acts of self-love. It took a million different decisions and mishaps and mistakes to bring me to this opportunity, but to say being in Italy changed me is an understatement. If you swipe you can see the exact second I committed to pursuing my dreams. I took this picture on May 14, 2021, at the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas. My grandma had passed away 3 days before, and I didn’t even cry until I found myself on the Wynn floor that morning, deeply unhappy with where I was at in my life. In my grief, I felt like I had accomplished nothing meaningful. Here I was, 30 years old, still having never been in a real relationship, making great money but still feeling deprived and really confused around how I felt about alcohol. I had made so many positive changes to my life in the previous 2.5 years, only to find it still wasn’t enough. I started to meditate, then began to pray, and then I cried harder than I have ever cried in my entire life. I howled...