/
Well friends, I did a thing. I packed up my tropicana spf 4 suntan oil and traded it in for thigh high socks, oversized knits, and even a jacket. I have made the move from fantasy crystal island to the majestic and steady mountains of Chiang Mai, and I couldn’t be happier about this decision.
I’ve been in this process for over three months. When you make a life-changing decision, it’s the before, the during, and the after—the sorting, the moving, the temporary landing, and finally, the settling into a new rhythm. Because I have been so deep in the process of “making it happen,” I haven’t had many still moments to truly process my time on the island and why I decided to move on. Until now.
I remember the precise longing. In the late summer of 2019, I stayed in a perfect little hilltop Airbnb in Greece overlooking a harbor. I melted into the dream of what it could be like to wake up every day in a place like that, to stare out at the sea each morning, sipping coffee and writing to my heart’s content. In less than six months, I would be on a flight to Thailand to live out that exact dream. For five years, I did.
When the pandemic rolled in, I was one of the lucky ones, living out the darkest of days in one of the most beautiful places I had ever seen. This was nothing other than a deep frequency reset for my entire mind-body system. I wasn’t aware until I was in it how much healing I needed. My body needed physical healing, my brain needed to empty out sixteen years of NYC living, and my soul needed even deeper levels of release—a story for another time, if only to honor the brevity of what took place.
For two years, I paused and I healed. It wasn’t a sorrowful time, but there was sorrow. There was a depth of loneliness that would shatter my heart into a hundred pieces. I would glue the pieces back together with cracks painted gold via friendships that surpassed timelines. Koh Phangan can unite you with some of the most incredible humans.
But dreams, even the most beautiful ones, have seasons.
It was wild in the last month or so of my time there to look out onto the perfect ocean view from my balcony, taking it all in, knowing that I was about to walk away from perfection. I knew I was finally full. I wasn’t sad about leaving. A little nervous stepping into the unknown, sure, as any human would be. But I truly felt that wherever I was to go in this next season of my life—and more importantly, in the next process for my soul and my work in this world—Koh Phangan was not it.
No matter the perfect view or the perfect dream villa, I felt, after a certain point, that I was moving in circles instead of spiraling upwards. The dream had served its purpose, and now the island’s energy—once a balm—felt increasingly transactional, chaotic, and draining. The constant coming and going of friends and community left me feeling like the one always holding space, rarely the recipient of that holding. I felt undernourished and burnt. A new wave of something was pouring in, and I knew my season in its current form was complete.
I didn’t share my decision to leave with many people. It felt important to keep this closing chapter quiet, to honor the completion of the cycle without getting tangled in the tricky emotions of goodbyes, which could have convinced me to stay and just “work it out.” This was a knowing I needed to follow on my own.
So I packed up the dream. The one I had longed for, fought for, and been profoundly healed by. I was full. And when you are full, you make space for the next nourishment.
Here, in the steady chill of the mountains, there is a new silence. It’s the quiet you can only hear after the ocean’s roar has faded to memory. I am unpacking my socks, my knits, and a sturdier kind of hope. The kind built not on fantasy, but on foundation. The view from my window is of towering, ancient greens, not an endless, horizon-less blue. It feels less like an escape and more like an arrival.
The dream was fulfilled. And then, gracefully, it was outgrown. And that is the most beautiful reason to begin again.
With love,
Amanda