Trip to Toronto Sept 2026

We took a quick trip up to Toronto recently to celebrate Sophie’s birthday and also for her to meet relatives she’s never met before. We spent about 5 days up in Toronto and had a wonderful time being back in Canada.

I say ‘Toronto’ as if we were there, I grew up there and its natural to say the city as the place we’ve been but we landed in Toronto and spent all our time 2 hours east in the country side at my aunt and uncles farm. It was an absolutely beautiful and peaceful time up there. The sunsets were amazing, the starry nights were dreamy, we got to sleep, Sophie met new family members who she loved spending time with more than anything. We had quiet moments to think, my thoughts were accompanied with crickets chirping at all times - which was wonderful. We had such an amazing time.

Something I’ve been thinking of more these days is my peace, and more than anything I need that in my life. I’ve had a lot of stress/anxiety/sadness in my life as a result of many different traumatic events. And I say this to name what’s happened in my life. But as a result of trauma I would seek it out, it was like the adrenaline rush created the drama I needed because I felt the drama was normal, so I would almost long for it. The pain and sadness was so normal for my teen and early adult years that I created situations for it. It also meant I went back to people and situations that would perpetually cycle through it.

Through years of therapy and working on myself, reading a ton of self help books and listening to podcasts I was able to move past this stage in my life. My mental state still has moments of falling back into the cycle but I can usually catch it before I go into the perpetual loop. Thank goodness. Peace and ease in my life is something I didn’t realize I needed and didn’t realize how good it felt having. Once the drama was gone, the people who caused the drama were gone, I was able to focus on my own life again and it had been years since I last had the chance to. We’ll be going on a few more trips like this in the upcoming months, I am so thankful for being able to travel and get away and unplug like I have been able to. I need to find tiny ways to do that in my day to day life too…