Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
A third of my life ago I flew away.
I moved alone to a foreign country where I didn’t have a
job lined up, didn’t speak the language well, and knew not a single person.
Some people said it was a brave thing to do. Others thought it was unwise, bordering on insane. Why would I leave a perfectly good life as an actress in New York? Why would I give up a hard-to-get Manhattan apartment with a (partial) view of the Hudson?
It was neither brave nor crazy. What even my friends did not realize was how desperate I felt, how lost.
I arrived in Rome without any particular direction. All I had was a goal and a fierce determination to try and change my life, to begin again where no one knew me. In the Eternal City, I hoped to find something lasting—a sense of permanence, a sense of belonging.
A home.
