The Full Circle: A Year of Shedding and Returning

January 2, 2025

I am lying in the quiet basement of an apartment building, the world upstairs still muffled and asleep. Beside me, Anton is a warm weight, his breathing a steady rhythm that anchors me to the present. Outside the window, a cold wind streams down the glass, but here, under a chunky blanket, I am tucked into a pocket of warmth.

Looking back, the timeline of my soul feels like a perfect, winding circle.

January 2024 – This time last year, we were on our way to Vietnam. We were setting out into the world, unaware of how much the coming twelve months would ask of us—and how much they would give.

And here in a present moment, on the January 1 2026 a full circle is drawing its shape. In a few days from now we will be on the new plain taking us to some of the same destinations. But the destination was never our goal, our lives are circular movements from one moment to another. Expansions and contractions - a rhythm of breathing, of life, of being…

The Year of Expansion

What followed, since January last year was a year of immense richness, a kaleidoscope of living across borders. We began in the snow of Bansko, moved into the communal warmth of Fethiye in the spring, and spent the long, salt-aired months of summer in Croatia. From the quiet pet-sitting days in France to the co-living rhythms of Spain, my life became a patchwork of memories.

Throughout it all, my focus was internal. I was learning the architecture of my own boundaries. I was finding missing pieces of myself in every new landscape, landing safely again and again.

The Winter Shedding

But as the circle began to close this past December, Denmark met me with a different energy. It was nothing I expected, but everything I needed it to be.

It was raw. It was painful. It was completely "in my face," like the wild winter wind that sweeps across the Danish coast. This recent month left a sense of destruction and a vast emptiness within me—a stripping away of the old versions of myself that I no longer needed to carry.

I see now that the pain was just the "shedding." It was beautiful, emotional, and powerful. From that empty space, I have grown something new. I have finally embraced my own strength. I’ve realised that I don’t always need to be everyone’s everything. Sometimes, I am my own "everything," and that is the most important discovery of the year.

Returning to the Start

Yesterday, as the storm raged outside, we sat in the warmth drinking coffee and knitting, eating homemade New Years Eve dinner, sweetening it up with games and sugar treats, planning our return to Vietnam and one more round of community traveling with Traveling village.

A year has passed, and yet here I am, slowly waking up to roll into a new year of travels that mirrors the last. I feel a deep peace sinking over me and a rush of joy. Life has so many shades and tastes, and yet it is all well-familiar and wanted.

The universe holds me. The earth holds me. People hold me. I hold myself.

I love the slowness of this grey morning. I love the scent of my son and the warmth coming from his side of the bed. I feel belonging in the core of my heart. We are heading back to where we started, but I am not the same person who left. The circle is complete, and I am confirmed one more time that I have a home within myself.