Life can be shit. An open letter to the universe.

Life can be shit. And not just the kind of ‘person jumping the queue in front of you kind of shit’, but the soul-crushing, heart-breaking kind. It sneaks up. Things can be going ok, and then - boom. The shit happens and takes every piece of you along with it.

And when it does - life is never the same. Maybe that’s ok. It wouldn’t be right for things to carry on as they were anyway.

The shit I’m talking about in my case, is my Mum. The Bowie-loving, always-smiling, travel-loving Mum that made me who I am today. She was also pretty sassy and often a tad stroppy, and I’m happily embracing those traits too.

Everyone reacts very differently when shit happens. For me, shortly after Mum died, I erratically decided to move from the UK to Singapore - leaving an incredible job and team, family and my long-term (then boyfriend-now husband) for something very different, very far away.

Something in me needed a big change. I couldn’t face being around people that knew what I was going through. I needed a totally new environment and space to be a bit incognito and reset on my terms.

I was lucky to make some incredible friends in Singapore who helped to make me ready, after 2 years, to come back to Europe with a clearer mind, and a much better sense of how to exist.

Mum has been gone for 5 years today. Five long years of feeling weird. Sad, naturally. Angry, obviously. But mostly weird. The weird feeling won’t go away. But I have learned to thrive, dream, and live alongside it a little bit more every day.

I set up Retire & Roam to help anyone else that’s had shit things happen to them feel a bit less weird and a bit more ok. It’s for anyone who needs to find their space to escape, to achieve their travel dreams and never regret a thing.

Cheers to living amongst the weirdness, and most of all, cheers to Mum.

Kiarna x