Finding Love With Strangers

After a competitive track-and-field career and a decade-long journey building a nation-wide fitness business, I felt like a slave to myself and the world. As I was untangling myself to find freedom, my actions kept tightening the chains until I had to break free from it all. A forty-three month nomadic journey started that would change me forever. Travelling around foreign countries for three and a half years, I met many people that impacted my life, but in a way, I was also impacted by many people who I didn’t meet. A variety of strangers all taught me a very valuable lesson—we don’t need to wait for validation to feel love. I never thanked or validated them, but they were extremely important to me. They didn’t even know I needed help, they didn’t know my story, but somehow someone was always there to help me when I needed it most. They didn’t try to impact me, but they did. They won’t ever be able to measure how much more love was brought into the world by their actions, but it was. They don’t know they are significant to me, but they are. Each of these lessons brought me back to a place of love and helped me finally find true freedom. When we come from a place of love, we are all always that “stranger” who is impacting the world far more than we will ever know. Join my journey as I reflect on the lessons taught by these strangers throughout my travels.