I’ve been on a train to Paris for the last six hours, looking out at some of the most beautiful coastlines I’ve ever seen, and it felt like the right time to try and consolidate some of my thoughts.
The last few weeks have taken me from the UK to Sweden - where I attended a radiotherapy conference - through Italy and now on to France. A lot of ground covered. This is one of the things I always forget about travel until I’m actually in it, that so much of it is just moving from place to place, and that the in-between time gives you more than you expect. Time to think, to process, to edit photos, to post to my stories - because I like knowing that the people I love are along for it in some way, seeing it through my eyes.
Italy has been the most moving part so far. Rome, Vatican, Pompeii, Florence, Tuscany - places that predate me by thousands of years, that have existed through more history than I can hold in my mind at once. I've cried at nearly all of it (lol). I think it might just be what happens when you’re standing somewhere that refuses to be intellectualised, when you feel connected to something so much larger than yourself. And simply put, because it's been your lifelong goal to witness with your own eyes.
My boyfriend had seen some of it before, though not with enough memory to not be seeing it fresh. There’s something particularly special about experiencing a place with someone whose curiosity matches yours - whatever I don’t know, he does, and whatever he doesn’t know, I do - and whatever we're both in the dark on becomes a learning experience. I'm grateful to be sharing it all with him, and we can't wait to share with you what we have been working on here.
The clearest memory I have right now is Saint Peter’s Basilica. I’m not Catholic, or religious in any conventional sense (that’s probably a blog for another time) but I’m certain that stepping into that building changed something in me forever. It is the most beautiful space I have ever been inside. I can't encapsulate that feeling into words or even a photo, so I didn’t bother to reach for my camera.
I've noticed that this has become the pattern of the trip. Interestingly, I have put my camera down more than I have picked it up, because there are some things here I cannot do justice to and I made peace with that very early on in the trip. I'm just taking it all in as much as I can.
Before we left, a close friend of ours sent us the kindest message. He said we were "living the dream young, able-bodied, travelling the world with our person". He meant it with so much warmth, and he was right. But it landed more meaningfully than I think he intended. I'll explain...
Over the past three years of working in healthcare, I’ve asked my patients enough times which decade of their life has been their favourite to have something close to real clinical data on it. The answer is almost always the same. Their twenties. Every time.
I often witness them struggle to get on and off our treatment beds. They’ll laugh and say "don’t get old" and I’ll laugh back and say I’ll try, which we both know isn’t a realistic answer. I know my body will age. I can’t predict how, or when, or what it will and won’t be able to do. But I carry that knowledge differently now than I did before this job.
So when my friend said young and able-bodied, he wasn’t just being sweet. He was naming something I think about most days at work - putting everything I am working towards into perspective.
I’m so grateful to be returning home to an inbox full of inquiries to capture people's special moments. The biggest takeaway is that the work, the photography, it funds the life, yes, but it’s more than that - the lived experiences feed back into the work in the most inspiring ways. It’s cyclical, and the cycle feels good.
I don’t know exactly what my twenties will look like when I look back on them. But I know I am in them now, on a train from Nice to Paris, and I know what a gift that is.
