Providential

A Year Later

It has been exactly one year since I got the early morning call from my mom saying that my dad was gone. With the anniversary of his death and Father's Day coming up, I have been getting the question more often: How are you doing?

And honestly, I suppose I keep asking myself the same thing. In short, I would say I am not entirely sure. Grief is weird.

I am a reflective person, and over the last two weeks, my thoughts have kept returning to one word: providential. I first encountered it in Anne of Green Gables, one of my favorite stories growing up. In that context, it described things that happen for a reason, even when the reason is not visible yet. It is also another way people once referred to God. As I look back on the last year and a half, that word keeps coming to mind.

I planned to start a new business, but I did not expect it to happen during one of the hardest seasons of my life. About a month after I became a travel advisor, my father's health began to decline. I have thought many times about what that timing meant. It did not feel fortunate then. It felt hard.  But now I see it differently: as something provided ahead of time by someone who already knew what was coming.

Travel has always mattered to me. I love stepping into a culture that is not my own, navigating a place where I do not speak the language, and pushing past the version of myself that prefers to stay comfortable. Solo travel has done that for me in a particular way. It taught me that I could figure things out, that discomfort often leads somewhere worth going. For me travel has always been about getting away for a while, taking a breath, and coming back to myself.

Starting a business pushed me out of my comfort zone in a different way. It pulled me out of what was familiar and asked me to build something while also watching my father's health change in ways I could not control. When things at home were heavy, I had something meaningful and challenging to focus on that was mine.

The People Who Showed Up

What I did not expect was the people.

I was at a conference when I got the news. Later that evening, new friends in this industry showed up. One let me into her space so I would not have to sit by myself. Another invited me to dinner with a friend she had met through her own experience with loss. I was just beginning to grieve, and I had somehow landed in a community of people who already knew how to hold it. That was not something I planned. That was providence.

Moving Forward

And then there is travel itself.

My first big trip after losing my dad was a river cruise on the Danube. I was not sure I should go. But the time away gave me room to reflect on his illness, on what life might look like now, and on what I was still learning how to carry. All of it happened while exploring new countries and a new way of traveling, with a dear friend. It was what I needed.

Grief does not follow a schedule. It comes when it comes. But sitting still in an empty room and sitting with grief are not the same thing. Travel gave me somewhere to be while I was figuring out how to carry something heavy.

Travel has always been an escape for me. I used to think that word carried something negative. But I do not think escape is the problem. I think it depends on whether you are moving away from something or toward something. I was moving toward new places, new people, new perspectives, and feeling the loss as it came.

For me, travel and people have become important parts of how I move through grief. Not a cure. Not a distraction. A way to keep going.

So I want to ask: what does travel do for you? What do you reach for in the hard seasons of life? It is worth finding out.