It began filled with so much anticipation, overwhelming hope, passion and excitement. Embarking on a new adventure in a foreign country, ready to conquer life and the world together. Nothing was going to stop us...

And yet it ended with betrayal, and deceit...with broken promises and crushed dreams. Life showed me it's one-sided unfairness, and peoples selfish choices, and it arrived again at my door in crushed boxes.

My dad protected me as much as he could for months in his Emily safety bubble, keeping me from having to deal with the beat-up boxes bursting at the seams with painful memories and a lost life.... until today.

Today as we moved the boxes in the California storage. I realized that I'm not the woman who excitedly packed up those boxes in anticipation for our once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I'm not the woman who was forced to leave Italy due to someone else's choices. I no longer look at those boxes and see the brokenness of that woman, or of the world, but a woman who has overcome dauntingly overwhelming odds, a woman whose life isn't packed away in those broken boxes, but who's life is happily in this moment. A woman who's able to walk into a room and hold her head up high, who's learning to fall in love with her new life path, a woman who's learning to accept another person's free will and choices made for her life. Learning to fall in love with herself and God all over again. A woman whose boxes may still arrive shattered, but she herself is no longer so.