Returning, Releasing, Re-rooting

What do you do when you find yourself standing between the old and the new?

Torn between moving forward and letting go?

Decisions often feel like choosing left or right, yes or no.

But life doesn’t move in straight lines.

It spirals, and brings us back to places.

It shows us what’s changed and what remains.

Lately, I’ve been back where my long-term travels began 5 years ago, and realised that returning can be just as transformative as leaving…

🇮🇳 India…

When I first visited in 2015 after finishing my degree, I was unprepared to discover the harsh reality that the majority of the world lives under. That first solo trip shattered my assumptions, and I realised the Western world lives inside a weird and egotistical bubble. It planted a question I carried with me for years back in London. A quiet knowing that something about my life needed to change.

On my second trip in 2020, I spent 9 months in stillness and surrender in one of the world’s strictest lockdowns. This time, I was lucky enough to discover Indian Culture Hostel, and detox from 5 years of burnout from corporate culture and cluttered living. The pandemic in India showed me love, clarity, community, simplicity, and healing that I didn’t know I needed.

Now, in 2025, I’ve been back for the third time… There’s a 5 year cycle running, and I've returned Indian Culture Hostel. (There’s even been a reunion recently – with 5/60 of the original lockdown crew!)

These past three months have stirred up more than just memories. Being back has surfaced old emotions, unexpected truths, and the tugging tension between who I was and who I am now.

🌀Returning…

I’ve come full circle from India back to India, across continents and through countless transitions. Returning to Indian Culture Hostel has been like walking past a mirror and suddenly seeing myself more clearly. While ghosts of lockdown memories wander the premises, and stories I’d long forgotten whisper in my ear at the sight of a door, a tree, a langur monkey, a restaurant.

But being ‘back’- wherever back is, also means revisiting old versions of yourself and asking questions like: what matters now?

🕊️ Releasing…

Suddenly, I’m facing truths I’ve buried for years, as I stand between two selves.

One self is wild and untethered, joyful and wandering free forever. She holds no ties to anyone, to any idea or belief. She trusts the path without a plan. Loves the open road, and is content in the space between destinations.

The other carries the gentle weight of ties to family, to identity, to the idea of a homebase, steady income and familiar faces. She is the aunty, daughter, sister, bestie, neighbour and friend. She wants to finish her book instead of being on the move. She wonders what it might feel like to belong in one place, instead of to the world.

Between the memories and the present, I keep circling the same questions. One version of me wants to roam forever. Another wants a partner, a small minimalist home base, and to finish the book.

I’m learning that both cannot thrive at once. One self must be released for the other to truly come alive. Which one is the dream? And which is the disguise?

It feels like the stage in the hero’s journey where returning with the Elixir is the real reckoning.

I know I’ve had enough of travelling for now, and its time to go ‘home’.

🌱Re-rooting…

Which brings me to the final part of this article…

There’s something sobering and tender about your dreams changing.

I love this quote, because I’m reminded of the dual nature of our lives and how dreams reflect the fears within us. How they differ, intertwine, disappear, resurface as you re-root yourself.

You can long for freedom and fear isolation. You can crave love and fear what it might cost. You can dream of success - and still fear being seen.

You might once have longed for the very life you have now- like travelling the world for 5 years.

Even freedom can leave you craving ties. 

I wish now for is a cosy warm home where I can write, a slow walk as the sun sets, with a coffee to hand and a good friend to talk to.

The fear is what that life asks of me. Emails, job boards, checking prices between Sainsbury’s and Aldi. Of being in rooms again with people who know a version of me I barely recognise. Figuring what to say when someone asks what you’ve been doing…

Perhaps overcoming your fears is what makes it anything worth it. Joy blossoms when you have no regrets and fully accept that every choice comes at the cost of another. I’ve realised despite all the doubts and questions, I have absolutely no regrets about the paths I’ve walked.

That's what this ‘re-rooting’ stage is about. Accepting change in direction and desire. To stay curious about the period of your life you find yourself instead of fearful. Change the question from: where do I belong? or ‘what am I going to do now?’ to something more like: “What am I drawn towards?” or “what will spur the most truth and beauty for me now?”

The idea of ending my travels and beginning a new life/career lingers like a half-packed bag in the corner of my room. But that is where you decide what to bring with you and what you are leaving behind.

Final Thoughts…

I started writing this piece in March between the last days of Ramadan and the Hindu New Year- a time in India ripe with change and new beginnings.

I finished writing this piece mid-May. As India and Pakistan’s tensions began to rise. More full circles. I was in the North of India volunteering at a homestay when words like ‘lockdown’ and ‘food shortages’ started to spread again. In eerily familiar territory of the pandemic in India 5 years ago, I almost booked a flight home.

Luckily instead, my mother was able to fly over and surprised me in India with my little brother a couple of weeks ago! For a beautiful and wacky 12-day trip through Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh.

I’ve been back in London for 72 hours now and feel so blessed to have reunited my beautiful best friend Joanna who gave me a safe and warm place to land.

Will I stay? Maybe.

Will I leave again? It’s never off the table.

One truth remains: India is the place that makes me confront myself most deeply and I love it for that.

I hate it for that too.

Fears, truths, dreams and nightmares all reveal themselves in these lands.

Maybe that’s why I keep returning.

Sophia xx

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