From Winter Boots to Feet in the Sand: The Move That Saved My Life

1. The Wind That Broke Me

I was born into winters that didn’t ask for permission.

Romanian blood in a Chicago girl’s body. I grew up with layers, with grit, with the kind of cold that made your bones ache before you even opened the door, the kind of cold that makes you tough, makes you fast, makes you numb.

Chicago teaches you how to survive, it teaches you how to carry groceries with one hand and pepper spray in the other; how to keep walking even when your face is frozen; how to dream big while dodging potholes and people who want to remind you of your limits. I loved that city—until it started to feel like it no longer loved me back. It wasn’t just the snowstorms or the early sunsets -- It was the heaviness:

Of grief.

Of memories.

Of a body that no longer moved the way it used to.

Chicago held the beginning of my story—but it started feeling like it was holding me hostage in the past. And I didn’t know how badly I needed air until I finally left.

2. Packing What the Cold Left Behind

When you grow up in a place like Chicago, you think leaving it will make you soft, but healing isn’t weakness. After the accident, after my body broke, after my strength became something I had to rebuild from scratch—I started questioning everything: my purpose, my pace, my place in the world.

I was still wearing winter boots—physically and emotionally. I was still bracing for impact, even in moments that were calm, still layering up in self-protection, even when I desperately wanted connection.

The snow outside had melted, but the frost inside hadn’t, so when the idea of California came up, it didn’t feel like running—it felt like remembering. Remembering that life could be soft, that healing didn’t always have to be earned in struggle, that I was allowed to go somewhere the sun touched the skin instead of the soul being constantly on defense.

It felt reckless. It felt radical. It felt like hope.

So I packed my car like it was an escape pod and drove toward the edge of the country—toward a coastline I hadn’t touched in years. Toward the warmth.

3. The First Time I Touched the Sand

You don’t forget the first time you let California kiss your feet.

There’s a kind of hush that comes over the soul when you step onto a beach after years of walking through slush and black ice. I remember my toes hesitating, unsure of what freedom was supposed to feel like. The sand was warm, but not aggressive; gentle, but grounding, like a memory from a past life I didn’t know I was missing.

I took my shoes off slowly, like I was peeling off my past. I walked to the edge of the ocean and stood there—not brave, not triumphant—just bare. Something inside of me exhaled.

That moment wasn’t a climax. It wasn’t cinematic. It was quieter than that.

But I’ll tell you this: it was the first time in a long time that I felt the weight start to shift.

I didn’t feel better. But I felt different. And sometimes, different is the beginning of everything.

4. What the Ocean Gave Me That Therapy Couldn’t

I had spent years learning to talk about my pain.

Therapists. Journals. Physical therapy. Books about trauma. Podcasts about purpose. And all of it helped, but the ocean did something that no worksheet could do: It held me. It mirrored me. It reminded me that my body was still allowed to float. To move. To sway without breaking. It reminded me that grief didn’t mean I had to stay stuck in the version of me that got hurt.

The ocean doesn’t ask questions, it doesn’t want you to prove your worth, it just wants you to come as you are, and breathe.

So I did.

Sometimes fully clothed, sometimes in a swimsuit I didn’t feel ready to wear, sometimes just in oversized T-shirts that made me feel safe.

But I showed up: to the water; to the sand; to the softness.

And slowly, my armor started to loosen.

5. Palm Trees and Permission

California didn’t just offer me warmth—it offered me permission; to slow down, to take up space, to feel pretty without perfection, to be spiritual without having to explain it, to be soft and strong, all at once.

The Midwest taught me how to survive. California reminded me that I was allowed to thrive.

I remember driving down PCH with the windows down, the air warm, the salt on my lips—and thinking: Maybe this is what coming back to life feels like, not dramatic… Just delicious.

Just… mine.

I didn’t have to be anyone’s definition of healed. I just had to keep waking up and choosing the sun.

6. Living Like the Sky Is Always Open

There’s something about a California sky that reprograms the way you think.

It’s open… it stretches forever, it doesn’t crouch in on you like the low ceilings of the city.

Here, I could see stars again, I could breathe without clenching my chest, I could wear sundresses in November and not apologize for how much joy that gave me.

I wasn’t fighting weather anymore, I wasn’t trudging through slush or preparing for snowmageddon or telling my joints to “tough it out.”

I was softening, and for someone whose survival once depended on being hard—on enduring—this softness was revolutionary.

California didn’t make me invincible. It made me receptive, and that changed everything.

7. My Body Was Built for This

I used to hate my body for what it couldn’t do, for how it changed after the accident, for how it struggled to keep up.

But walking barefoot on sand rewrote that story, because you can’t hate your body and be present in it at the same time.

You can’t feel the way your toes dig into warm grains, or the way your shoulders relax under a sun-soaked sky, and still believe your body is your enemy.

California made me fall in love with being alive again, and not in a fantasy way, but in a visceral, sweaty, real-woman-walking-through-Farmer’s-Markets-in-slides kind of way.

I started dressing like I deserved to be looked at again. Not for attention—but for celebration because I’d been through hell and I was still glowing.

8. The Solitude That Saved Me

People don’t talk enough about how lonely healing can be.

You lose friends. You outgrow relationships. You let go of jobs, routines, and versions of yourself that once made sense, and sometimes the loneliness feels unbearable.

California gave me solitude without sadness, it gave me sun-drenched silence.

Mornings where I walked the shoreline with my iced coffee and didn’t need to speak.

Evenings where I sat on the edge of the ocean with my journal, feeling like the main character in a story I was finally writing for me.

I didn’t always know what I was doing, I just knew that whatever this was—it was saving me one salty breeze at a time.

9. The Move That Made Me Brave

Everyone romanticizes moving to California; but it wasn’t cute, it was terrifying.

I cried in the car. I doubted myself every other hour. I worried about money, about belonging, about if I was running from something instead of toward something.

Sometimes the only way to find out who you are is to leave what you’ve always known; so I left.

I left the skyline and the snowstorms, I left the memories of my old life behind frozen windows, I left the version of me who didn’t believe she was allowed to want more; and I found myself.

Not all at once. Not perfectly. But truly. Fully. Finally.

10. Feet in the Sand, Heart on Fire

These days, I walk differently. Not because I don’t limp, but because I don’t hide.

I walk like a woman who lived through something and didn’t shrink.

I walk like a woman who let the ocean wash over her grief and let the sun stitch her back together. I walk like someone who took her winter boots off and never looked back.

I may have been born in the cold, but I was reborn in the sun.

And every time I press my feet into the sand, I remind myself: You chose this. You survived.

You rose.

11. If You’re Thinking of Leaving

This is for the woman still stuck in her winter, still looking out the window, wondering if there’s more, still dreaming of palm trees but afraid of what she’ll lose if she leaves.

I see you. I was you.

And I won’t lie—leaving is hard, starting over is scary, but sometimes the scariest thing is staying where your soul can’t grow, and if your body is begging for warmth, if your spirit is begging for freedom, if you’re craving a life where you can walk barefoot and whole…then baby, pack the car, change your zip code, choose the coast and let the ocean write your next chapter.

12. Because Some Moves Aren’t Just Moves

Some moves are rebirths, some moves are medicine, some moves save your life… mine did.

From winter boots in Chicago to feet in the sand in California-- I didn’t just move across the country, I moved back into myself and I’ll never apologize for that.

Not ever.

13. Healing in Seasons

Back in Chicago, the seasons told me who I had to be. Winter demanded survival. Spring whispered false hope, often followed by another frost. Summer came late and left early. And autumn always felt like an ending… everything felt dictated, predictable, but suffocating.

I didn’t realize how much I was waiting on the weather to give me permission to breathe.

California gave me a different rhythm. One that didn’t depend on the temperature to grant me joy. Here, healing isn’t seasonal. It’s daily.

It doesn’t come in waves of permission, but in small, quiet invitations, where every sunrise feels like a new chance, every breeze off the water feels like someone pressing “reset” on my nervous system.

I no longer brace myself for what the sky might bring. I just open my windows and let it in and that shift changed everything, because healing didn’t feel like a linear path anymore—it felt like a garden that grows whether you’re watching or not.

14. The Identity You Find When You Don’t Have to Prove Anything

In Chicago, everything was about hustle; Who you knew. How fast you moved. What you wore. What time you got there. What time you left. Who saw you. Who didn’t.

There was always a reason to be on edge, to keep climbing, to prove you belonged, and in some ways, that built my ambition. But after the accident, that mindset turned toxic.

I wasn’t moving fast enough. Wasn’t producing. Wasn’t “networking,” and I internalized that as failure.

California stripped all that away. Here, no one cares what you do for a living when you’re barefoot at the beach. No one asks about your five-year plan when you’re covered in sea salt, laughing with your dogs. No one needs your resume when you’re learning how to breathe again under palm trees.

I stopped trying to perform and started learning how to exist, how to belong to myself, not a title, how to just be a soul in a body, catching golden light at 6:47 p.m.

15. The Softness I Wasn’t Allowed Before

Back in Chicago, softness was a risk. You had to be quick. Sharp. Resilient.

There was no space for cracking open, but here—here, I could cry on my front porch.

I could write poetry under the sun. I could spend an entire afternoon in silence, letting waves do the talking.

Here, softness was sacred, not stupid. I let go of that sharp-tongued version of me that always had a comeback. I embraced silence as a skill—not a weakness, I began to parent my inner child instead of punishing her.

I wore linen instead of leather. Loose hair instead of tight buns. I became someone who didn’t flinch when people offered love, and that softness didn’t make me weak. It made me wild. It made me wise. It made me whole.

16. No One Here Knows Who I Used to Be

And that is the most underrated blessing of all.

When you move far enough away, no one remembers your past. They don’t know the version of you who almost gave up. They don’t know what your limp used to look like.

They don’t carry your old stories in their mouths, you get to be new… every damn day.

Not because you’re running from anything, but because you’re finally free to write your life from this chapter forward.

I stopped performing for people who only knew the trailer to my movie, and started living for the girl who still had whole scenes to shoot.

18. The Sky Told Me to Stay

I remember one day in particular. It wasn’t dramatic. Just soft.

I was sitting in my car at a red light, near Laguna Beach. Windows down. My hair smelled like salt and sunscreen.

A song I hadn’t heard in years came on. The kind of song that made me feel seventeen again—alive, aching, infinite.

The sky was lavender and gold. The ocean was a mirror.

And I whispered to myself: “You’re not lost anymore.”

That was it; not a Hollywood ending, not a breakthrough in therapy, just a whisper in the car, just a woman looking at the sky and realizing—

She made it.

19. From Survival to Ceremony

Chicago gave me street smarts, but California gave me soul smarts. I stopped surviving and started sanctifying my life, and every walk to the beach became a ceremony, every sunrise became a promise and every barefoot moment was a reclamation of freedom.

No more armor. No more frostbite in my bones. No more apologizing for wanting a beautiful life.

20. This Isn’t Just a Move. It’s a Manifesto.

So here it is.

If you’re still standing in winter boots, dreaming of warm sand… Let this be your permission slip.

You are allowed to outgrow your zip code. You are allowed to choose peace over familiarity.

You are allowed to pack your car with nothing but hope and leave. You are allowed to walk away from who you thought you had to be to become who you really are. You are allowed to be reborn in the light.

Because I did it.

And it didn’t just change my life.

It saved it.

From winter boots to feet in the sand,

The seasons change, as does the land.

No longer snow and icy winds,

But sunshine, warmth, and salty winds.

The sound of waves, a soothing lull,

Replaces snowflakes' gentle cull.

The sea breeze dances through your hair,

Replacing winter's icy stare.

The sand beneath your feet is warm,

A welcome change from winter's storm.

No longer bundled up in coats,

But wearing sandals and light totes.

The ocean's vastness, a new view,

A world so different, yet so true.

The winter's chill is now long gone,

And summer's heat has just begun.

So shed your winter boots and gloves,

And trade them in for sunny loves.

The beach, a place of joy and peace,

A perfect spot for summer's lease.

From winter boots to feet in the sand,

A change of seasons, a change of plans.

Embrace the warmth and joy it brings,

And let your soul take flight with wings.