Travel has the ability to open the doorway to a new story. One that is broader, more encompassing, and more compassionate.
I am an American who worked in Austria for the last five years of my working life. While there, I met and married an Austrian (Gerhard). Before we met, each of us had visited Ireland on holiday and really liked it.
After spending our holidays there together two years in a row, we decided it was where we wanted to retire. We found a home we love on the west coast of Ireland (Dingle Peninsula, County Kerry) and moved there at the end of 2019.
Because I love to write and take photographs of what I am seeing and experiencing on my travels, I have dabbled at writing travel blogs several times over the last few years. I started one in Austria, but it didn’t seem to work once we moved to Ireland. Now I have one focused specifically on Ireland (Nourishing Ireland), but this means I can’t write about other places or themes, which feels limiting.
I have been reading the newsletter of a brilliant writer named Sharon Blackie for several years now. This summer, she announced that she was moving her newsletter (The Art of Enchantment), podcasting and community engagement to something called Substack.
I started checking Substack out and became really excited. I have found some wonderful people here who are writing interesting, thoughtful pieces about all kinds of topics. I enjoy receiving their newsletters in my email, and I love seeing the interactions they have with their growing communities.
So I have begun to think that maybe there is a place for me here, too.
I have all kinds of ideas swirling in my head about topics I would like to write about. This includes the usual photo-filled travel pieces about specific places, hotels, restaurants and food. But it also includes an exploration of the power that travel has to break down barriers between people, to dissolve fear of the other, to expand our minds and help us grow.
It includes an exploration of the power of place and the search for home. Of our connection to the land, to the flowers, trees, animals, rivers, lakes and oceans that give us life.
Above all, it includes a focus on the power of story. Our personal stories—the ones we tell ourselves over and over—mould who we are, what we think, how we interact with others and how we treat ourselves. Travel has the ability to open the doorway to a new story. One that is broader, more encompassing, and more compassionate.
If these topics interest you, I invite you to join me here.
Certainly, travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.
—Mary Ritter Beard
How it works
Travel Doorways is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and to support my work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber
Free subscribers
Free subscribers to the newsletter receive a new post in their email box every Wednesday. In addition, they can always log in to the newsletter to read other posts as they are published.
Posts might include a description of a beautiful place to explore, an overview of a special historical site, or a recommendation for a hotel or restaurant I really like. (These are real recommendations; I never accept payment from a business.)
Paid subscribers
In addition to the weekly posts, paid subscribers receive longer posts on Sundays that go into more depth about topics surrounding slow travel, finding home, personal travel experiences with life changing consequences, bios of interesting people, special reports and more. Paid subscribers also have access to the full archives.
Thank you for following along on my journey.