It Took Me 7 Years to Leave the Country. Here’s Why.

Leaving wasn’t the breakthrough - feeling ready to leave was.

Margherita pizza at the original Sorbillo by Sabrina Ahmed

As I slipped on the damp cobbles for the third time and mumbled to myself,

“Fck, I'm in Naples - I could actually injure myself here. Go slower!”

I realised that pretty much summed up the last seven years.

So far so good. Still one day to go...

The honest reason I haven’t travelled

I didn’t leave the country for seven years.

Not because I couldn’t.

But because I finally didn’t need to.

The past seven years have been filled with burnout, loss, trauma, health collapses, grief, and holding too much - sometimes all at once.

During these life phases, the weight of living doesn’t just slow you down.

It grounds you. Sometimes literally.

But seven years - really?

Why though?

The long answer I don’t usually say out loud

The Uber driver on the way to Gatwick asked me why it had been so long (they couldn't believe it), as others have too.

Hmm. Do I give them the long or short answer?

The short version:

“Oh, things got so busy, the pandemic, you know…?” (…trailing off with embarrassment.)

The long version:

I did an MSc while working full-time.

I moved house during lockdown to an unfamiliar part of town.

I lost my dad to cancer and COVID.

I lost aspects of my health, with new diagnoses almost annually.

I walked away from parts of my family who abused or never understood me.

I endured workplace bullying and politics that made me question it all.

I navigated chronic pain, and a body that’s still trying to reset.

And I built a business - a coaching side hustle I’ve kept going for four years now.

You can tell why I usually stick to the short version.

People don't know what to say.

Why I stopped using travel to escape

I stopped chasing fancy solutions and started creating tiny, repeatable ones.

Routines that stabilised me.

A home that felt safe.

Foods that didn’t wreck me.

A corner of the sofa where Bob (the cat) curled up on cue.

Light. Temperature. Structure. Silence. Calm.

This wasn’t “self-care.”

It was a slow, patchwork rebuild of a system that had crashed too many times.

I didn’t need plane tickets - I needed regulation.

And my all-or-nothing brain picked one over the other to keep things simple.

So no, I didn’t just forget to travel.

I didn’t fall out of love with holidays.

I was surviving.

And in the past, travel was an escape for me.

A way to feel something new and forget the life I didn’t want to face.

But you can't outrun your deeper needs forever.

Wherever you go, there you are.

Support doesn’t always look how you expect

I didn’t plan to build a new system.

But slowly - almost without noticing - I did.

Support, for me, hasn’t always meant people.

It’s looked like structure and comfort.

• Knowing when and where to eat

• Turning down plans I had no capacity for

• Noticing which foods fuel me and which ones tip me over

• Moving my body by working with it, not against

• Rebuilding trust in my own timing

• Napping instead of problem-solving

• Reaching out when it mattered, not just when expected

Sometimes support is the absence of pressure.

• The power to say “not now” without guilt.

It’s why I’ve spent the past month writing about support in all its shapes and forms.

Because most of us were never taught how to ask for what actually helps.

Instead, we keep pedalling down the wrong road.

No wonder we feel lost.

Safety first: A new way to build resilience

When you’ve lived with unpredictability and adversity for a while, you don’t just “bounce back.” (Ick.)

You become hypervigilant.

Rest stops feeling safe.

It starts feeling like something you have to earn.

You don’t even know what baseline feels like anymore.

There’s no single solution for this, but there is a different approach.

Through a neuroscience lens, I notice I’ve been shaping a life around predictive safety.

This is the idea your brain and body are constantly predicting what’s next based on your past experiences and current context.

And if you can change the signals - through rhythm, routine, environment, boundaries, even self-talk - you calm the predicted threat response before it spirals.

One of the strongest predictors of resilient outcomes?

Perceived control - feeling like you can influence your environment and how you respond to it.

That’s what I’d been building without realising it:

• Stacking small decisions that told my nervous system, “We’re OK now.”

And when your system believes you’re safe, you don’t need so many fixes.

You access focus. Presence. Creativity.

View of Naples from Mount Vesuvius by Sabrina Ahmed

The proof I needed for the shift: I made it to Naples

On Friday, I ate a pizza bigger than my head.

(I’m not even that into pizza, but here, it’s practically law.)

Yesterday, I walked down from Castel Sant’Elmo in the rain.

Today, I climbed Vesuvius.

Not brave. Not healed.

Just there.

Tired, but regulated enough to let the moment happen.

It’s not glamorous.

But it’s a milestone.

A quiet win for curiosity, capacity, and self-trust.

Because rest, when you’ve been surviving this long, isn’t a reward.

It’s a reckoning.

Reflective prompt:

• What’s one signal to add to your day that tells your nervous system: “You’re safe now”?

That might be a habit, a person, a ritual, a boundary, or a break.

You don’t have to fix everything.

Just build one signal that reminds your system:

• We’re not surviving anymore. We’re learning how to live again.

Key takeaways

This trip didn’t mark the end of something.

It marked a seismic shift:

• From pushing through to listening.

• From managing crises to creating capacity.

• From resistance to allowing.

I didn’t go away to find myself.

I went because, for the first time in years, I trusted I could leave without everything falling apart.

And I had a birthday while I was here.

Not exactly a wild one, but probably the most honest I’ve ever had.

That is the kind of support I didn’t even know I was building, until I finally felt it take hold.

Maybe that’s the quiet power of real resilience.

Not forcing rest.

Not chasing comfort.

But knowing you’ve created enough safety - internally and externally - to actually receive it.

Listen, I still falter.

My health is a work in progress.

The business is slower than I’d like, but I’m shifting, learning, and building momentum.

And whatever happens, I’m always looking up.

(And yes, that’s also a height joke - I’m a pretty small human.)

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P.S. If this resonated…what kind of quiet support have you built for yourself, especially when no one else sees it?

And what would rest look like if you didn’t have to earn it?

Drop a note in the comments, or just let it sit with you for now.