Seattle, Washington: January 17th – January 31st, 2026
Seattle is a beautiful city. For me, it somehow managed to shift my entire life into an adult perspective. In a lot of ways, I view it as the life I could have had. I grew up loving Grey’s Anatomy (set in Seattle), it’s the home of my favorite store, Nordstrom, it has an active city life, and my one responsibility while I’m here for two weeks is to take care of the dog I would have killed for in my childhood, a Yorkshire terrier.
Living in the cold has truly been an adjustment, and thanks to Carol’s hats, scarves, and jackets, I’m enduring in style (on the outside). I’m not sure if it’s just me, but I have to say, I get why the Seattle metro area is above average when it comes to adults reporting feelings of depression or hopelessness. The weird thing is, I really do love all that this city embodies.
My dog-walking outfits have been matching the mix of feelings swirling inside of me. When I step outside, I’m typically wearing a large, luxurious coat, but underneath I’m sporting elastic-waistband bottoms and an oversized top that I slept in the night before, paired with comfortable black walking shoes and maybe a matching scarf and beanie around my head. Appearing all wrapped up with a bow on top, but ready to come undone with one gust of wind. I’m faking it, and I feel it.
With one more week to go, I decided that I didn’t want to leave this unique city as a faker, feeling sorry for myself. I had to be resilient like its residents and resist the urge to succumb to negative mind chatter. Instead of thinking of this home of the famous coffee bean as a life that could have been, I shifted my perspective to see it as the life I manifested — trusting God’s timing, believing that He knew I only needed two weeks to fully live that life before stepping into a new one to fulfill even more of my hopes and dreams.
Out of all the places I’ve visited so far, Seattle forced me to get real with myself and sit with the rawness of life, stripping away the make-believe and naivety, and realizing that the water that fills the well floods in from deep within the core, activating the fountain of you.
