On uprooting and replanting

Five years ago today, on 17 August 2021, I landed on a continent I had never set foot on. I arrived in the Netherlands with an ironclad vision of what my new life would look like, not yet fully understanding just how much of myself would have to unravel before I could take root.

That day, my parents and I made the five-and-a-half-hour drive to Chicago O’Hare to board our flight to Amsterdam. For both my parents and me, it was only our second time leaving the United States—their last international trip being their honeymoon in Mexico, and mine, a six-day excursion in Costa Rica with my high school Spanish class.

The agenda was entirely in my hands. I typed up a scrappy Google Doc listing all the time blocks for the immigration appointments I had scheduled, move-in preparations, and an array of touristy activities to check off.

Up until that point, it felt like I had taken care of everything myself, and to a certain degree, I had. I became a legal expert in the Dutch student visa immigration process and coordinated all the necessary documents on time.

Acting as my own representative, I reported to my parents which documents they needed to collect, laid out the requirements for which details needed to be evident on them, and advised them on how to properly sign them. My dad, in fear that he might do it wrong, also delegated the task of writing the Guarantor Declaration letter on his behalf to me.

By the time we boarded the flight, there was nothing left to sort out. I had done it all. This instilled an unwavering sense of capability within me. At the same time, I held pernicious resentment toward the lack of assistance.

My inability to identify this emotion at the time soured that first week in Amsterdam, as well as the only time I’ve had with my parents abroad—they haven’t been able to visit me overseas since I moved.

Our bickering reached a breaking point. It was only when my mom handed me a bouquet of sunflowers—a gentle, unspoken peace offering—that we were finally able to talk through the underlying pain.

All of us were coping with the major change in different ways. I neglected to see the ways in which they had supported me.

It was, after all, their unwavering support that enabled and empowered me to navigate the process on my own. I was raised by parents who are unwavering in their pride being anchored to their daughters’ happiness and independence. Without that, I’m not sure I would be where I am today.

Admittedly, I am only making a majority of these reflections as I write now. The day before the anniversary of my moving abroad, I took a walk along the Tejo River here in Lisbon at sunset and called my dad.

“Five years,” he said in awe. “It’s hard to believe it’s been that long.” Though it had. In a flash, my mind shuffled through a myriad of partial memories: the countless moments of joy I’ve experienced, the prolonged heartache that characterized my first semester, the people who have come into my life. An overwhelming amount of gratitude washed over me, my eyes welling with tears.

It has been five years, and my parents haven’t been able to see or know me in this element. At that moment, I wished they could be there walking alongside me by the river with the Ponte 25 de Abril commanding the skyline. After one and a half years in this city, I still never tire of that view.

My favorite version of myself exists here. New soil gave me the space to shed my self-limiting beliefs and existential stagnation. I proved to myself that I can uproot and replant my life wherever I feel most called to. I live with a deep, abiding freedom; there is no aspiration of mine to which I believe I can’t make reality.

I know this through the experience of my own suffering, my greatest teacher. In its relentlessness, I was forced to sit with every consequence of my decision. What was supposed to be a joyous act of liberation instead revealed to me the facade of control and the nature of life itself: where growth exists, there is a quiet breaking.

It comes in waves, and it will shake you to your core. As surely as it subsides, so too does it return. Nothing could change the emotional weight and realities of transition as they ran their course, except how I chose to weather them.

I have come to know this kind of resilience not as a science, but as an art and a lifelong practice—one that I will forever remain a humble student of. My first real lesson in that practice came early.

As I was beginning revisions for my first exam period, my first serious boyfriend broke up with me. Simultaneously, I was living in student housing that I was absolutely miserable in.

I spent every day living in anxiety, bracing for one of my thirteen roommates to throw a spontaneous party that would bleed into the early hours of the morning—music blaring so violently it sounded across campus, rendering even the highest-quality earplugs completely useless.

To make matters worse, simply trying to hold everyone to our existing rule—a basic two-day notice before hosting large parties—made me a target. The tension and pointed hostility became so suffocating that I avoided the common spaces entirely, quietly surviving off whatever I could make using the mini-fridge and cutlery in my bedroom.

I wasn’t sleeping, had just lost my closest confidant in the city through the breakup, and was struggling to maintain my own punishing academic standards within a rigid, foreign education system. Under the weight of exhaustion, I came dangerously close to undoing it all.

Resigned to leaving, I packed up my life and drafted a list of things to sell. I would slip into the room of the one roommate I still trusted just to break down each night. We spent those evenings scouring the internet for new housing, but against the brutal reality of the Amsterdam market, every search quickly felt futile.

Exposing myself to that kind of vulnerability invited not only sympathy, but real support into my life. That honesty was the catalyst that led two friends who were dating to offer me one of their studio apartments while I searched for more permanent housing.

Slowly, my world began to open up. The ache that once consumed me gave way to subtle moments of felt belonging. I allowed myself to be seen, and met others in their own similarly messy realities.

Such connections pulled me out of my own head, pacifying the voice that told me I was alone in my tumultuous feelings. Listening to my friends’ stories, I realized that this isolating trick of the mind—the belief that our pain is uniquely ours and entirely unrelatable—is a lie. In fact, there is nothing more universal than the human experience of uncertainty and fear.

It would have been easy to go numb and float through the motions, but instead, I leaned into the tide. Having cut off my own escape route, I resolved to focus on actively building my life right where I was.

There is a certain irony in how close I came to leaving, considering that abandoning my given life was exactly how I got there. While I have never regretted the move since, it would be dishonest to ignore how much of it stemmed from a deep discontent driven by an inability to picture a fulfilling life where I was. Moving wasn’t just about chasing a higher calling; I was, in part, outrunning my fears.

The thing about your mind, however, is that it follows you wherever you go. There is no geographic cure for the things we are afraid to face. We cannot control the chaos around us, but we can choose how we carry ourselves within it.

Instead of booking a flight back home, I unpacked the heavy truth of where I was. I chose the messy reality. I chose my community. And for the first time, I chose to trust myself to stand with both feet on the ground.