On Grief and Growth

As I hit ‘Send’ on my university application, I can’t help but feel really proud of myself. After all, I graduated 20 years ago from college and now, not only am now applying to graduate school programs, I am applying to graduate school programs in The Netherlands, the place we will call our home for the foreseeable future.

But this isn’t my first rodeo. In 2013 I left everything behind and headed to a little country named ‘Costa Rica’ where I spent the next five years blossoming into a new version of myself. If you ever read my last blog ‘Life is Caramel,’ you know how much I learned and how many adventures I had (both wonderful and quite challenging as well).

This time, however, I am not uprooting alone, I am doing it with my husband and my daughter.

People generally recommend shying away from making big decisions after a trauma. People who have experienced trauma know that this recommendation is bullshit. Sometimes trauma is the catalyst that finally causes one to stop playing things safely and go for what one truly wants. I have been yearning to go back to school and both Amr and I have fantasized about living a life outside of the U.S. in an environment where the value system is not quite as skewed toward extreme wealth, guns and a political climate that continues to be morally disappointing and with increasing intensity.

Is this a leap of faith? Yes. Is it scary? Hell yeah. But, as I know all too well, the illusion of safety and security, while comforting, is just that: An illusion. This truth has followed me like a shadow throughout my life, starting from when cancer took my mom when I was nine years old all the way to a couple of weeks ago when the baby, whom I was sure I would meet, was removed from my body without ever taking his first breath. This same truth, however, has also led me toward wonderful experiences, like my move to New York City after college or to Costa Rica and now to The Netherlands. The fact that I am privileged enough to have the means to do this, however, is real and something I acknowledge openly and for which I am grateful.

If the purpose of living is to intimately know the extremes of what life has to offer, then I have succeeded many times over. But I’m not done yet. Here we come, Europe.