Phoenix Diaries: The Year I Let Things End
A year of travel, grief, unexpected joy, and learning what I no longer need to carry.
Phoenix Diaries
Personal stories of transformation, heartbreak, and rebuilding from ground zero.
I’m writing this in December, in Toronto, with a mug of tea I keep forgetting to drink.
The year is spread out in front of me like a table I’ve finally cleared.
Receipts. Postcards. A few emotional bruises I forgot to name at the time.
This isn’t a highlight reel.
It’s an inventory.
What stayed.
What burned.
What I carried across borders before my body noticed.
January — Fire
Chiang Mai, Thailand
I started the year twelve hours ahead of everyone I loved, six months into separation, in a city where I didn’t speak the language, and my body gave up before my heart did.
Chiang Mai cracked me open.
I was sick. Properly sick.
The kind that turns time syrupy and days into a blur of ceiling fans, electrolytes, and negotiations with the universe, I absolutely did not win.
Exhausted in a way that felt cellular.
Like my bones had filed a formal complaint.
I remember thinking, “This is too much”, and realizing there was no one to say it to.
No familiar voice. No soft landing.
Just me, a bed, and a very aggressive tropical flu.
There was a monk.
A conversation that landed like a stone in water.
Something about suffering that didn’t comfort me at all.
Good.
I didn’t need comfort. I needed truth.
Some days I stayed horizontal.
Other days, I dragged myself out anyway.
Temples. Quiet courtyards. The kindness of strangers who smiled like they knew I was living in the upside-down.
One morning, I watched the sun come up over the mountains.
Sick and hollowed out, Chiang Mai was beautiful.
I spent most of January alone, darker than I’d been willing to admit, and too tired to pretend otherwise.
And somehow, I knew I was meant to be there.
Not for healing.
For sitting in it and letting the fire do its job.
What I carried forward: the understanding that darkness can be medicinal.
What I left in the fire: the idea that healing should be gentle or impressive.
February — Water
Madeira, Portugal
Vietnam didn’t happen.
Portugal did.
I landed in Madeira and felt my nervous system unclench like it had been holding its breath since at least last spring. Possibly longer. Hard to say.
I woke up to the Atlantic.
I went to sleep watching the sun clock out over the water from my balcony.
Every night.
Like a gift I didn’t earn, or return. I tried, but the island refused.
Rainbows kept appearing.
Not once. Twice in a day.
The kind that stops you mid-step and makes you look up, properly, like the world is trying to get your attention in the gentlest way possible.
I danced again.
For fun.
Ate an irresponsible amount of custard tarts.
Sat in the sun and let joy sit beside me without asking it to justify itself.
I met people who felt familiar in the way that matters.
Some of them are still in my life.
We’ve met again since, in other places, other versions of ourselves, still laughing at the same things.
Madeira reminded me that play is not a reward.
It’s how I start to come back to myself.
What I carried forward: joy without apology.
What I left behind: bracing, shock, and the belief that I had to earn ease.
March — Roots and Return
England → Canada
England held me.
Friends saw me without asking for an update, a plan, or a brave face.
We talked. We didn’t talk.
Both counted.
Then I went back to Canada.
Back to the house.
Back to the life I was dismantling while still living inside it.
There’s a particular cruelty in returning to the place where you were hurt, being told you shouldn’t be there, and knowing you still have to be functional inside it anyway.
I remember wondering, quietly, “Where do I belong now?”
The house was still mine.
I still owned it.
And I was navigating it carefully, like a guest in my own life, while the person who hurt me played the victim and withheld kindness like it was a bargaining chip.
Grief didn’t announce itself.
It just pulled up a chair and stayed.
That month taught me something I won’t unlearn.
When people show you who they are, believe them.
What I carried forward: the clarity that belonging starts with self-trust.
What I left behind: mistaking familiarity for safety.
April to July — Ash
Canada
There’s no romance here.
Boxes.
Lawyers.
Banks.
Realtors.
Storage units that smelled like dust and endings.
I sold my house. Packed up eighteen years of life. I experienced exhaustion as I have never felt before.
Got a haircut that took more than hair.
I didn’t live in my own home while trying to sell it.
Drove back and forth. Negotiated with professionals and an ex-husband who wasn’t cruel, but wasn’t kind either—a strangely efficient purgatory.
There were sleepless nights.
Stress eating. Not eating.
Holding it together with tea and spite.
And then, in May, something small happened.
I started writing.
Quietly. Without announcing it.
A Substack. Submissions. Sending words into the void.
The void wrote back.
People responded. Editors replied.
I won a travel writing scholarship. Had work published.
It landed quietly.
Like a door that had been waiting for me to notice it was already open.
What I carried forward: proof that I can hold hard things and still create.
What I left behind: waiting to feel ready before claiming space.
August — Air
San Francisco and England again
San Francisco felt like walking into a room and realizing you were meant to be there.
A travel writing conference.
A scholarship that said yes before I could talk myself out of it.
I walked into rooms I’d only ever imagined myself in.
Writers. Editors. Conversations that felt slightly unreal, like I’d wandered onto the wrong set and no one had noticed yet.
It scared the shit out of me.
In a good way.
I met people who spoke my language.
Curious. Engaged. Deep in the work.
I won a writing contest.
Felt something settle in my chest.
Recognition. Quiet and steady.
This wasn’t a fluke.
Air Canada stranded me, perfect timing for an airline strike.
I adapted. Stayed longer. Didn’t spiral.
A personal best.
Then England again.
Friends. Familiar streets.
A rhythm I didn’t have to earn.
I didn’t know where this road was going.
I just knew I was already on it.
What I carried forward: the willingness to step into rooms before certainty arrives.
What I left behind: waiting to be invited to claim what already fits.
September — Fracture
Canada
I came “home” briefly.
The plan was simple.
Repack. Sort myself out. Get my footing.
Then head back into the world again.
I got diverted to Ottawa instead.
Spent a night in an airport that felt like a pause I hadn’t asked for.
I saw family.
One relationship ended.
It was a family connection that had been teetering for years.
One I’d always felt uneasy around.
The kind you manage carefully, swallow often, and call normal because you’re supposed to.
It happened in private.
Loud in the moment.
Final in the way you feel before you understand it.
At the time, it felt like another blow to a life I was already repairing by hand.
Another ending when I was running low on tolerance for them.
Now I see it differently.
Some endings aren’t losses.
They’re exits.
Sometimes, leaving family isn’t cruelty or failure.
Sometimes it’s survival.
2025 had a way of asking that question again and again.
What stays? What drains? What finally gets released?
What I carried forward: the right to choose my own peace.
What I left behind: relationships that required me to disappear to keep them intact.
October — Stone
Ireland
Ireland was solitude.
A whole month alone.
My birthday. Forty-six.
I walked the land that made me.
Let the weather have its way with me.
It did. Repeatedly.
I wrote with pen and paper, like it was 1994.
Dreams. Wants. Half-formed ideas.
Ink on pages that didn’t care if I finished the thought.
Time stretched.
Days widened.
Nothing asked me to hurry.
Somewhere in the quiet, I remembered who I was before life got loud.
Before everything needed a timeline or a point.
What I carried forward: solitude as intelligence.
What I left behind: urgency dressed up as ambition.
November — Becoming
Bordeaux
Bordeaux felt generous.
Pastries every day.
A city that rewarded wandering.
I met new people.
Started creative writing again.
A book. A film script. Short stories that didn’t ask for permission.
Somewhere between a café table and a quiet evening, I said it out loud.
Nothing collapsed.
The world carried on.
I realized I’m living my best life.
Not a glossy one.
A real one. Still tender in places. Still mine.
What I carried forward: naming myself without qualifiers.
What I left behind: waiting for someone else to hand me the title.
December — Integration
England & Canada
England again. Then “home”.
England arrived first.
Christmas lights. Cold air. Old friends who know my history without needing a recap.
Festive dinners that stretched late.
Christmas markets.
Dancing in the forest like nobody was keeping time.
The kind of joy that sneaks up on you when you’re not trying to heal anything.
There were new people too.
Unexpected meetings. Conversations that felt like beginnings, not networking.
The quiet excitement of realizing your world is still expanding.
Then “home”.
Not home in the old sense.
More like a series of rooms where people know my laugh.
I came back to see family and friends.
Tried to see everyone in a very short window, like a human pop-up shop.
There was great excitement about visiting my storage unit.
Actual joy.
Clothes shopping, but make it unhinged.
I’d been rotating the same few outfits for three months and suddenly had options again. Thrilling stuff.
I ate well.
Long meals with friends.
Stories retold. New ones started.
Quiet evenings too.
Snow falling.
Winter doing what winter does best. Making everything smaller and quieter and easier to hear yourself think.
I repacked. Again.
This time with intention.
Next year starts in Spain.
That still feels a bit unreal, in the best way.
December felt like a gentle closing.
Saying goodbye properly.
Letting the past know it could stay there.
I didn’t rebuild the old life.
I composted it.
I’m stepping into the new year on my own terms.
About me.
Curious. Unburdened. Ready.
What I carried forward: the ability to land without needing to arrive finished.
What I left behind: the version of my life that required explanation to be valid.
What Goes Forward
I’m not taking everything with me.
What I’m carrying:
My voice
My curiosity
My capacity for joy without apology
What I’m leaving in the fire:
Proving
Performing
Shrinking to keep others comfortable
This year didn’t give me all the answers, but it did give me myself back.
And for that I am grateful.