“You see, if it had worked out the way the storybook fantasy played out in my head, I wouldn’t have met nearly as many new people as I have since you and I cut ties, each of whom has contributed in a small or huge way to my life.”— Kristin Addis, thoughtcatalog.com
“It’s strange how someone who was once my best friend became a total stranger.”— Kristin Addis, thoughtcatalog.com
“As for me, sometimes I’m so deliriously happy that I could cry. If I saw you again I would hug you, just to thank you for walking away.”— Kristin Addis, thoughtcatalog.com
“Each local experience has the potential to open your world even further, allowing space for new belief systems and ways of sharing meals, spirituality, and methods of daily life that were previously mysteries.”— Kristin Addis, thoughtcatalog.com
“One of the biggest regrets of the dying is not being true to and taking more time for themselves.”— Kristin Addis, thoughtcatalog.com
“When you know a lot about the world, you can positively and intelligently contribute to conversations about art, politics, and leisure.”— Kristin Addis, thoughtcatalog.com
“Traveling shows us that we have more similarities with people from other cultures than differences, that the world isn’t that scary after all, and that people are fundamentally good.”— Kristin Addis, thoughtcatalog.com
“Anyone who travels also understands that this world is impossibly big while being surprisingly small and interconnected all at the same time. We’re humbled by what we’ve seen, and we know full-well that we’re not the biggest fish in the sea.”— Kristin Addis, thoughtcatalog.com
“We know it’s rude to point the bottom of your feet at someone in Thailand, we understand how to shake someone’s hand in Southern Africa, and we grasp that it’s important to say, ‘Bonjour’ when entering a store in France.”— Kristin Addis, thoughtcatalog.com
“Corporations negotiate with millions and travelers do so with dollars and cents – volume is really the only difference.”— Kristin Addis, thoughtcatalog.com
“The place to find the perfect out-of-the-box thinkers, problem solvers, and movers and shakers is the arrivals hall at an international airport.”— Kristin Addis, thoughtcatalog.com
“The point of hitchhiking is not just to get a free ride, but rather because of the guarantee that it will be an experience completely out of the unknown.”— Kristin Addis, thoughtcatalog.com
“I think I’m better off spending my time in a relationship with myself, out exploring the world, becoming more in tune with the person who I will most definitely never break up with – me.”— Kristin Addis, thoughtcatalog.com
“Why can’t being single and free be as valuable and respected as the role of a mother or wife?”— Kristin Addis, thoughtcatalog.com
“When I join a local ceremony, hitchhike across a country, or learn how to ski, do I really need a counterpart there to legitimize that, to legitimize me?”— Kristin Addis, thoughtcatalog.com
“I don’t see ‘settling down’ as the end goal for my life. Maybe I’ll get married and have children and maybe I won’t.”— Kristin Addis, thoughtcatalog.com
“These days I spend more time in countries that are statically safer by a long-shot than the USA, so by leaving home I am actually decreasing the chances of something sinister happening.”— Kristin Addis, thoughtcatalog.com
“Each time I walk into a hostel I make five new friends, each time a local takes interest in why I’m alone, I get invited to a family dinner or a cool local ceremony.”— Kristin Addis, thoughtcatalog.com