I was eighteen when I left everything familiar behind.
Not in the dramatic, movie-scene way where you’re brave and glowing and certain. It was quieter than that. Heavier. I carried what I could hold, documents, a few clothes, the weight of decisions that couldn’t be undone, and stepped into a country that didn’t know me, didn’t owe me anything, and wasn’t going to slow down while I caught my breath.
Starting over isn’t a moment.
It’s a series of mornings where you wake up and decide, again, that you’re still going.
The Shock of Being New at Everything
Immigrating isn’t just a change of location. It’s a dismantling.
The rules are different. The systems are unfamiliar. Even small things, like how people speak, how they line up, what’s considered polite, carry the constant reminder that you are learning from the outside.
At eighteen, I learned quickly that confidence doesn’t always come from knowing what you’re doing. Sometimes it comes from moving forward while accepting that you don’t.
I didn’t have a safety net. I didn’t have a fallback plan that involved going home if things got hard. Home, in the way people talk about it, wasn’t waiting for me anywhere.
So I adapted.
Independence as a Daily Practice
There’s a particular kind of independence that comes from immigration. It’s not loud. It’s not defiant. It’s methodical.
You learn how to fill out forms you don’t fully understand. You learn how to ask questions without revealing how lost you feel. You learn how to build a life piece by piece, even when you’re not sure what the finished picture is supposed to look like.
That independence stayed with me.
It shaped how I approach work, creativity, and responsibility. It taught me how to start without guarantees and continue without applause.
The Loneliness No One Warns You About
What people rarely talk about is the loneliness of starting over when you’re young.
Not the obvious loneliness, the kind where you’re physically alone, but the deeper one. The kind where you don’t have a shared history with the people around you. Where jokes, references, and memories float past just out of reach.
You learn to listen more than you speak. To observe. To build connections slowly and carefully.
That kind of loneliness sharpens your awareness. It makes you attentive. It teaches you to read between the lines.
Years later, those skills would show up in my art in ways I didn’t anticipate.
Starting Before You Feel Ready
Immigrating forced me into motion before I felt prepared. There was no waiting until I was confident. No pausing until I felt grounded.
You start anyway.
That lesson, started anyway, became foundational.
It’s the same principle that later carried me into motherhood, into education, into building a creative life that didn’t come with a template. Waiting for certainty is a luxury not everyone has.
Action, imperfect and sometimes uncomfortable, became my way forward.
What Starting Over Taught Me About Belonging
For a long time, I thought belonging meant fitting in seamlessly. Blending. Becoming unremarkable enough not to stand out.
But real belonging doesn’t come from disappearing. It comes from building something that reflects who you are, even when your roots are spread across multiple places.
I stopped trying to replicate a version of myself that would make sense to everyone. I started allowing my history, my accent, my perspective, my pace to exist without explanation.
That shift mattered.
How This Experience Lives Inside My Work
My art is shaped by the experience of beginning without a roadmap.
I don’t rush the process. I don’t assume there’s one correct way to do things. I respect the time it takes for something to settle, to find its footing, to become what it’s meant to be.
Working with wood and fire mirrors that experience. You respond to the material in front of you. You adjust. You don’t force an outcome that doesn’t fit.
Each piece carries that understanding: growth happens when you’re allowed to move at your own pace.
What Immigrating Ultimately Gave Me
It gave me perspective.
It gave me adaptability.
It gave me the courage to begin without certainty.
Most of all, it taught me that starting over doesn’t erase what came before—it builds on it.
The life I have now wasn’t handed to me whole. It was assembled slowly, deliberately, sometimes painfully. And that makes it honest.
A Quiet Invitation
If you’re in a season of rebuilding.
If you’re starting something new without knowing how it will turn out.
If you’re learning to trust your own ability to figure things out as you go.
This might be for you.
Not as proof that you’re doing it right.
But as reassurance that beginning without clarity is still beginning.
I didn’t arrive fully formed.
I arrived willing.
And sometimes, that’s all it takes to cross an ocean, and build a life on the other side.
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