permission to begin again
Hola from Madrid,
After placing all my belongings in storage in February 2023 and spending over two years living out of a suitcase, I’m currently flirting with the idea of choosing my next geographical base.
As much as I adored living in London, after seven years of the city’s thrilling intensity, I felt painfully lonely (I hadn’t even heard of skin hunger until then), utterly burnt out, and could sense the city pushing me out through a series of endings, closures, and strange complications. One night, while lying on the wooden floor and feeling particularly depleted, I asked myself: “If I died in a year’s time, what would I regret not doing?” The answer came immediately. Ten days later, I boarded a flight to Tokyo with no plans. Little did I know, I had just entered my nomadic era.
As right as the flux of the past few years has felt, I’ve also come to realise there’s a part of me that yearns for grounding—for a home base and a sense of community.
Ever since turning thirty, I’ve become convinced that it’s the people who make a place, and that the quality of our lives is deeply tied to the quality of our relationships. But nurturing close, meaningful connections is difficult when you're in Korea one month and Indonesia the next. So I’ve been toying with the idea of settling somewhere that might allow me to gently lay down some roots.
In the past, I’ve always moved spontaneously—arriving in cities I’d never set foot in, suitcase in hand, knowing no one and wondering: What on earth have I just done? (Any fellow Sag relate?) But for the first time, I’m approaching this decision with a little more intention. I’ve been giving myself a couple of weeks to feel Madrid by living like a local going about their ordinary life: grocery shopping at Supercor, wandering through my barrio, and meeting friends for a tinto de verano (with a local twist—they add un poquito de vermouth here).
So far, living in Spain has felt refreshingly… dare I say it, easy? After spending 2024 in Asia not knowing what people around me were saying 99% of the time, it’s felt like a superpower to understand every bit of chisme the old ladies share while sitting en el metro. Having grown up in Mexico, I find Madrileños not only share our warm and passionate Latin fire but also a deep attachment to friends and family. I’ve only been here for a month and already have three friends inviting me to stay at their homes if I need to. This, dear reader, is absolutely precious to me.
While I’ve been weighing places based on work–life balance, ease (I paid my dues during the “extra challenging” London chapter and feel I’ve graduated now—thank you, truly), and how much they value community-building (i.e. the external factors), I’m also being called to turn inward. To get radically honest about which patterns need to shift in order to create the kind of reality I’m longing for.
I’ve been reflecting on the lives I built in Mexico, Paris, Austin, LA, London, and Tokyo as a mirror of the blueprints I carry with me—noticing the common threads that continue to reappear. I’ve been asking myself what still feels aligned (keep box), and what has expired (transform box).
How can I show up in a way that brings me closer to what I yearn for? What have I been reflexively saying no to that now needs a yes—and vice versa? What might shift if I told myself different stories about living alone, or being far from family? In what ways am I standing in the way of what I want? What uncomfortable experiences might I need to lean into to create alternative outcomes? (Dios por favor, let it not be running.)
After all, new beginnings call for disruption.
They demand daring to be someone you’ve never been before—choosing behaviours that feel unfamiliar and risking the vulnerability of a baby animal discovering the world for the first time.
A new life doesn’t automatically materialise by swapping jobs, relationships, or cities (believe me, I’ve tried). If left unexamined, we tend to recreate familiar dynamics, situations, and atmospheres (albeit with different faces) wherever we go. Like a projector, we cast the film we carry inside onto whichever wall we stand beside.
While some beginnings are bold, grand and logistically demanding (involving packing boxes, assembling IKEA furniture, and learning the names of a new team of colleagues), others—the most profound ones—can be deceptively quiet, discreet, almost imperceptible to the naked eye.
If we truly desire change, it can only arise from looking within (sorry, no shortcuts—or rather, this is the shortcut). Taking responsibility for our lives and recognising how we’ve been complicit in creating both the beautiful and the difficult can be both confronting and exhilarating. It invites us to claim our power as creative beings, capable of transforming our world without needing to alter a single “big” thing in our external environment.
Throughout our lives, we’re continuously invited to reinvent ourselves—to stay curious, aligned, and alive. As part of nature, we’re never static; we exist in a constant state of becoming, holding within us the potential to embody a kaleidoscope of selves. At any moment, there is nothing stopping us from choosing to be entirely different from who we were yesterday. I find this kind of miraculous. How lucky we are to play with the vast richness that lives within us.
The truth is, we’re always standing at the threshold of a new story, and we can begin again whenever we choose. After all, a fresh chapter commences in the ordinary moments of daily life, in the routines we follow, and in the subtle shift of swapping our habitual choices, thoughts, actions, and conversations (with ourselves and others) for unfamiliar ones. We need only step a little “off character” to bring forth a different storyline.
Often, we crave change but resist the discomfort required to leave our familiar, uncomfortable comfort zones. The irony is, we’re already living in the very discomfort we try to avoid. Isn’t that how it always goes? Whatever we attempt to run from, we usually find ourselves running straight towards it—or right alongside it.
Thus, dear reader, if you find yourself starting over—I’m thrilled for you. This is a sacred time, a moment to decide what you truly wish to create in this next chapter. Commit to embodying that vision, allowing it to alter you in whatever ways are required for it to emerge from the inside out.
All the courage you may require is already within you, patiently waiting to support your journey.
You have full permission to begin again. Who do you want to be?
Here’s to beginnings, and all the beauty yet to be written by you x
con amor,
jeanine ♡✧˚
PS. this substack is best enjoyed alongside this —a little treat for my fellow millennials.