Hey everyone! You might have noticed that we have been neglecting this blog. Well, a lot of things have been happening and sometimes life gets in the way of plans. We’ll be adding some blog posts of our travels from May – September, but likely a little abbreviatedly. We hope to post more promptly after our trips in the future. You can visit our home page to see the most up-to-date travel plans, as well as a log of where we’ve been.

TL/DR: We changed some of our plans due to Wei-Wei taking mental-health-related medical leave from work. She went back to Calgary in early July and Jonny stayed in Vancouver until August. We cancelled our summer in NYC in favour of going back to Calgary to regroup and recover. We’re starting travelling again now in October 2023.

WW: Well hi! It’s been a few months. A lot has happened, so let’s talk about it real quick.

Okay, so travelling has been difficult. I’ve hinted at it a bit throughout the last few blog posts, but things reached a breaking point in June/July.

From January through March, our living situation was a revolving door whirlwind of change. We were guests in different loved ones’ homes for 2 weeks at a time for 2 months straight, and while we loved spending so much time with people we loved, there was a significant buildup of suppressed feelings, unmet emotional needs, and not enough time or space to process any of it.

From March through June, I oscillated between two states: hiding my depression to “act normal” around other people, and feeling overwhelmingly depressed and withdrawn. By the end of June, we were back in Vancouver from my parents visiting Calgary (and meeting Jonny and his family, which went swimmingly by the way!) and the subsequent crash from holding myself together for their entire visit was the worst it had ever been.

So in early July, we were faced with a choice. The first option was to muscle through and fulfill our plans to go to New York in August, then go to Montreal in the fall, and hope that the change in scenery and seeing old friends would draw me out of social isolation enough to turn things around. The second option was to go back to Calgary, seek therapy and medical care, and go on medical leave from work to focus on stability and healing.

Guess what! I chose the second option. I spent July to September in Calgary at Don & Sheila’s and went on medical leave from work. Jonny stayed in Vancouver until our lease ended at the end of July, went to NYC for Hustle Congress, back to Vancouver for VSDF, and returned home to Calgary mid-August.

I think we chose correctly and I don’t regret it. It’s important to recognise when suppressing what you’re feeling isn’t working anymore, even when it blows up your carefully laid plans. I’ve said from the start that I wanted to be honest about everything. Every time someone asks me about how travelling is going and about how jealous they are that we’re living the dream, it’s hard for me not to punch a hole in the rose-coloured vision I see them project on our life. It’s hard and it can suck and it requires a lot of emotional work to stay healthy.

I’m so grateful to Don & Sheila for being my safe landing spot for me to regroup and recover and heal. It was the best possible situation for me: they provided stability and support, but also independence and autonomy to work through everything I needed to work through. Their home in Calgary is really the closest thing I have to a home in Canada now and I’m so grateful. Thank you. I love you both!

So, what’s next? Well, we’ve both officially quit our jobs and are now travelling full-time! Also, we’re in Montréal now! We’ll be here for the next 3 weeks until October 20, then we’re in NYC for 3 weeks until November 9. Then, we’ll be back in Calgary for Diwali, then heading to La Paz again from November 13-25. Then… December 1st, 2023, we’re on a one-way flight to Bangkok, Thailand. And so the Asia leg of our trip will begin very soon!

I hope it won’t be several months before you hear from us again. Thanks for reading. We love you.