In the earlier article ‘Welcome to Holland,’ Emily Perl Kingsley writes about when life doesn’t turn out like you expected it would. Does that concept resonate with you? I think many of us had ideals or hopes in our minds about how our lives/careers/relationships would be in the future, then life intervened and took us down another path.

Perl-Kingsley compares Italy to where we thought we were going in life, but instead, we ended up in Holland. For me, I was in Italy (as shown above in the Isle of Capri, Italy) with my late husband and our firstborn daughter, but also in terms of my life in many senses. I had an amazing husband, a great job, two beautiful healthy daughters, and lived in a nice community. What else could a person ask for? But life intervened…