Predestination or Self-Preservation?

Yellow… after a month in New Zealand, that’s still the word that keeps rising to the surface. It feels like permission now, permission to have opinions, to laugh loudly, to like things simply because they make me happy, even if no one else understands them. Yellow feels like choosing joy without apologizing for it.

I didn’t realize how far I’d buried that part of myself until I got here. I started picking out a yellow couch and a yellow bedspread, and suddenly I remembered my yellow room.

When I was twelve, my mom remarried. The whole situation was strange: he was much older, the house was cluttered with antiques, and people were constantly stopping by to buy drugs. But I had a chance to live with my mom, to have my own room, and I wasn’t going to pass that up. I wanted a normal life so badly. For the first time, I got to choose the color of my room, and I chose bright yellow. It felt like hope, like maybe things were finally shifting toward something better.

That chapter didn’t last, and eventually I was back with my grandparents. And somewhere along the way, I lost the version of myself who chose yellow. I became quiet, careful, afraid of being too much or saying the wrong thing. I built a beige life, one that was safe, digestible, unremarkable. Even in my own home, where almost no one ever visited, I chose things meant to be acceptable to everyone. Beige was fear disguised as neutrality.

But New Zealand had given me space. Space from what hurt me, space to reflect, space to feel things I’d pushed down for years. The people here are collectively kind in a way I’ve only seen in a rare individual back home. The nature is breathtaking. And with all this room, I’m slowly coming back to myself.

I find myself talking to strangers again. I’m making bold home decor choices and feeling sure of them. I want to move my body, to run, to cook, to create. I’m remembering the girl who painted her room bright yellow because she believed things could get better

My life didn’t feel yellow for a long time, and I need it to.

Yellow… After a month in New Zealand, it feels like yellow to me. What on earth does that mean? I’m going to do my best to explain this: loving the color yellow is something I had pushed so far down inside of me that I forgot it until I got here and started picking a yellow couch and yellow bedspread, and I was reminded of my yellow room. When I was twelve, my mom remarried. It was an odd marriage; he was significantly older than her, and the house was a hodgepodge of old antiques, and there was a constant flow of people coming in to buy drugs, but I had a chance to live with my mom, to have my own room, and I wasn’t going to pass up that chance. I wanted a “normal life,” and for the first time in my life, I got to paint my room any color I wanted, and I chose Bright yellow. I felt the excitement of this new chapter; it felt like hope that things would be different now.

Eventually, that dream of living with my mom ended, and I was back living with my grandparents. But moving to New Zealand has brought me back to life in ways I didn’t even realize I needed. I knew I was unhappy in my life in SC, but I realized I had completely lost myself, probably starting around the age I had a yellow room. I used to be brave and talkative, and I had lost almost all of that out of fear of saying the wrong thing or being too much. I had a boring beige house out of fear of committing to anything that felt too bold a choice; my life didn’t feel yellow at all, and I needed a change

After months of talking about moving halfway across the globe, we actually got on the damn plane

I’d never been out of the country before. While I knew in my heart we were making the right choice, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have any fear as we waited at LAX. Me, Holly, someone who had never lived anywhere outside three neighboring southern states (Tennessee, South Carolina, and North Carolina), was really moving to New Zealand with her little family of three. Neither my partner nor I had ever even crossed an international border, but here we were, taking the ultimate leap.

Now that we’ve been here a month, I find myself wondering how I actually ended up in this wonderful place. Surrounded by kind people, fresh food, and the most beautiful nature I’ve ever seen.

I originally started this journey hoping to build a safer, slower life for my family. But now I wonder if I was always predestined to end up here in the beautiful new home, writing a blog post about how a girl hopped across the pond after blowing up her life and her business. A good friend once told me she dreamed that God said he has a son waiting for her if she wanted him. In this moment, I can’t help but wonder: was God (whatever God actually is) sitting there all along, saying? “I’ve got this whole other way of life waiting for you, if you want it?

When I say we took an unusual amount of risk to get here, that’s an understatement, and I’ll have to tell that full story in another post. But the short version? I woke up one day and knew, with every single fiber of my body, that my life was no longer working.

It really did happen just like that. I woke up to a new reality that struck me to my core, like a switch had been flipped. I looked at my partner and said, “I don’t know where we’re going or how we’re getting there, but I am done with this life, and we are leaving the United States. I said it with a level of conviction that even scared me, because I know what happens once I choose a path: I will move absolute mountains to make it happen.

And thankfully, I picked a partner who is just as up for the adventure and all-in as I am.

For months, I shared with most people that we were moving to give Ryker a safer, better life, to find a healthy balance between work and family, and to embark on an exciting international adventure. I always felt comfortable being honest about my hopes and fears. I admitted how genuinely scared I was about the political climate and the gun violence happening in schools. Though I remain hopeful for change within my lifetime, I couldn’t ignore that things seemed to be getting worse, and I worry they might continue to do so before any real improvement happens.

While all of those reasons are more than true, another truth has been rising to the surface: I think I’ve always felt this pull. A pull to explore, to see the world, to meet different kinds of people, to try new foods, and to refuse to be tied down to just one version of life or identity.

Maybe there isn’t just one answer to how we got here. Maybe there are multiple layers of truth.

My life has always felt like a contradiction, a line I walked between two entirely different realities, never truly fitting into either. On one hand, I had my parents, who struggled with addiction in an environment filled with violence. On the other, I had my grandparents, who raised me for much of my childhood. They were kind and provided stability, but they were, and still are, part of a religion with heavy expectations. Because of what I had witnessed with my parents, I knew life held far more nuance than my grandparents’ conservative religious community allowed for. That awareness set me apart, leaving me feeling like an outsider among the very people I was growing up around.

I missed the first day of eighth grade to sit in a courtroom alongside my grandparents while they fought for full custody of my sister and me. I loved my mom and dad, and I still do. But even as a thirteen-year-old, I knew my best chance at a normal, functional life was to end the endless back-and-forth and live with my grandparents full-time. Up until that day, my life had been a series of shifts depending on whether my parents were together, apart, or with new partners. Some months were more stable than others, but drugs and violence were a constant backdrop. It always ended the same way: a phone call from me, begging my grandparents to come get me. My grandparents’ door was always open, and looking back, I know how lucky I was to have people who welcomed me home every single time.

From that day in court onward, I was no longer living two separate lives. Instead, I was fully immersed in the religion and lifestyle my grandparents had chosen. Don’t get me wrong, my grandparents are wonderful people, as were many members of their church. But living in that world meant being judged more times than I can count. I wasn’t allowed to wear nail polish or listen to “secular” music. There was heavy pressure to stay pure and save myself for marriage, alongside a terrifying end-times theology that kept you in a constant state of waiting for persecution. It was a staggering amount of weight to carry at such a young age. All I ever wanted was to be good enough, so I followed the rules as closely to the book as I could. Yet, I almost always felt like I was missing the mark.

On paper, I was thriving: I had friends, played sports, and stayed involved. Inside, I was drowning in sadness. I was so desperate to be seen as “good,” largely because I carried the shame of my parents’ choices as if they were my own, that I habitually abandoned myself and my own needs to keep everyone else happy. I was deeply codependent, though I didn’t have words for it then. No one in my life had ever taught me to consider my own feelings, only how to manage the emotional well-being of everyone around me. Unsurprisingly, that weight eventually became too heavy because it was never mine to carry in the first place.

So high school ended, and I enrolled in the small university most of my high school graduating class went to. I made it through three semesters and three major changes before I had a sudden realization: this wasn’t the fresh start I had hoped for. It was high school all over again, only on a slightly bigger scale; it came with the same people and the same expectations.

So I left and went to hair school. Not because I had some lifelong dream of doing hair, but because I needed a way to take care of myself. I wanted options.

That choice changed everything. For the first time, I started meeting people outside my familiar bubble, and I stumbled into a third reality, one that existed right between the two extremes I’d known my whole life. I realized that being outside the religion didn’t automatically mean a life of chaos and drugs. There was a whole world full of kind, grounded people who were walking their own spiritual paths and living life on their own terms. And for the very first time, I gave myself permission to start asking questions I had spent my entire life ignoring.

Asking those questions transformed me completely. I traded my strict religious beliefs for an open spirituality, one that welcomes doubt, honors nuance, and trusts that intuition is a powerful gift from whatever higher power exists. Replacing fear with curiosity opened a whole new world.

My political views shifted, too. I realized I don’t care about getting rich or keeping score on paper; I want my political views to reflect basic humanity. I want to align with policies that keep families fed, protect the earth, uphold human rights, and acknowledge that socioeconomic factors deeply shape people’s lives.

I traded the obsession with being skinny and pretty for the truth that outward beauty means nothing if your heart is ugly. I traded the propaganda that “America is the best” for a genuine curiosity about world cultures. And I traded the desperation to be understood by the family I was born into for the quiet strength of my own little family unit, alongside the chosen family we are building along the way.

I will never stop hoping to be fully known by the people who have loved me the longest. The only difference now is that I am no longer willing to water myself down to fit into their world.

In a way, I think moving abroad was a path that was always waiting for me, an option written into my story long before I ever packed a bag. It was there in every trip I took within the United States, leaving each one saying. “I could see a life here.” It was there through twelve years of doing hair, lighting up every single time a client told me about traveling or living abroad. And it was there in the movie Eat Pray Love, which I watched on repeat, always walking away with that same quiet certainty: I’m going to do that one day.

The dream had always been simmering in the background, but Donald Trump’s re-election was what finally set everything in motion. Not immediately, but just over a year after he took office, I reached a breaking point, a heavy, undeniable feeling that I simply couldn’t be there anymore. for three election cycles I had watched what this man had done to our country, how he had divived families with his retoric one of which was definitly mine, i watched as he incited a horrifying inserection lost power anyway and some how found his way back into power, I could have never imagined that he would be reelected after January 6th infact i was sitting at a table in Arkansas for a friends 40th birthday surrounded by some of the most intelligent and kind woman I have ever had the opportunity to meet and the upcoming election came up. Everyone was chatting about what they thought might happen in the upcoming election. I listened, and someone asked what I thought, and I answered what I truly believed in my heart: “He would never be reelected.” The American people were too smart for that; they had seen the damage. Part of me wanted to stay and fight the administration’s policies however I could. But then I looked at my sweet boy Ryker and realized I couldn’t be the kind of mother I wanted to be for him in that environment. That realization sparked my conversation with my partner, Bradley, and began our journey across the globe.

The cliché quote “this new life is going to cost you your old one” had never been truer than it was for me in this move. It cost me my home, my business, my car, my savings, my family’s support. There is responsibility in knowing I broke my family’s heart to pursue this life. Everyday holds a

There is responsibility in knowing I broke my family by questioning the unwritten rules about what we believed as a family and how we did things and it would have been easier for everyone including myself if i had just stayed in the lane that was picked for me. Every day holds a quiet kind of hurt as I choose a life that feels true and authentic to my family and me. But it’s also filled with wonder and joy, and, well, I’m just grateful to be feeling something at all. This new chapter comes with the acceptance that I will never fully recover from what I lost along the way in building the life we have now. But I’m pretty damn sure it’s worth it.