"What we don't need in the midst of struggle is shame for being human." -- Brene Brown Do you remember back in elementary school when you were taught to make a bubble chart to brainstorm your given writing topic? Well when I started my blog, I sat on my dorm room floor and had no … Continue reading The Other Golden Rule

“Sometimes our lives have to be completely shaken up, changed and rearranged to relocate us to the place we’re meant to be.” — Adrianna Hemenway For the last few months I have written, backspaced and rewritten hundreds of words. The first time that I ever shared my writing on a public platform, I laid out … Continue reading For What’s Next

“Even in the stagnant waters, she is learning day by day: though it takes awhile to see, she is growing while she waits.” — Morgan Harper Nichols Eight months ago, I sat in the San Diego International Airport with tears streaming down my face and words flowing effortlessly as I wrote my goodbye to a … Continue reading Road to Inspiration

I always wondered what has to transpire, or inspire, for a person to refer to a place as a home. I refer to Warsaw, Indiana as a home because that is where I was raised, where my family is centered, and where I spent eighteen years building every aspect of my life and of myself. … Continue reading No Place Like Home

To be honest, there is an endless list of topics in my mind that I feel compelled to write about after my travels in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam throughout the last five days. I could write about how incredible it was that my mom traveled over twenty-four hours to come visit me or I … Continue reading In The Dark

“Sometimes you find yourself in the middle of nowhere, and sometimes in the middle of nowhere you find yourself.” -- Unknown One of the most incredible things in life are the specific moments we have engraved in our minds during the times we were the happiest. My freshman year of college, walking home from class … Continue reading Our Days

“At its best, travel should challenge our preconceptions and most cherished views, cause us to rethink our assumptions, shake us a bit and make us broader minded and more understanding.” — Arthur Frommer Before we ported in Ghana on Thursday, our Global Studies professor assigned us an adage to analyze during our four-day travel weekend. … Continue reading Worth More Than Gold

The MV World Odyssey has officially sailed over 1,470 nautical miles from our embarkation point in Hamburg, Germany to our first, officially port here in Barcelona, Spain! After sailing for the past six days, at a nice, slow pace of fourteen miles per hour, I have had a lot of time to reflect on my … Continue reading Out Of The Comfort Zone

“I am embarking on a journey around the world. I want to explore the globe and put meaning to names on the map. Wake up in a different country every week and explore with my own two feet. Make the world my classroom and its people my teachers. Get lost in foreign countries and find … Continue reading A Traveler’s Manifesto

“May you never be afraid to go out into the deep, for it is here you will grow beyond what you see.” -- Morgan Harper Nichols I fell in love with quotes at a very young age. I never got into young children series, but instead went straight into F. Scott Fitzgerald, Stephen King and … Continue reading My Own May Flowers