The Cold Plunge: The Goodbyes Begin

Travel is supposed to be exciting, right? Moving overseas is an adventure. And it is an exciting adventure, well, the idea is, and then you start planning. Your to-do list starts growing and doesn’t stop. Then the overwhelm hits, not just because of the endless to-do lists, but the impending change, including saying goodbye to everyone.

In this post, I talk about the range of emotions I experienced as I prepared for the Cold Plunge-aka my trip to Ireland via Canada- particularly the hard and unexpected ones like sadness, guilt and grief, in particular about saying goodbye to friends and family.

I love to travel. I love seeing new places, meeting new people and doing new things. I worked hard and pushed through some really tough times to get on this trip of a lifetime. That’s why I was so confronted by the resistance I felt in the lead-up to this trip.

The closer my departure date grew, the more intense hese emotions became. I had never gone without seeing my parents for more than a few months at a time, and I had never lived more than a few hours’ flight away. My best friend Meg had just moved back to Brisbane after a year living in North Queensland. The stress of planning an international move were mixed with these strong emotions about the pending goodbyes. It weighed me down, and my friends and family were more excited for me and my trip than I was. It was their encouragement that kept me going through the gruelling planning and prepping process. In the midst of overwhelm, my heart was warmed by their enthusiasm, and I was realising just how special my friends and family were to me, more than I ever had before.

Risking the Familiar for the Unknown

In March 2023, I moved into the best sharehouse I’ve lived in since I started sharing in 2019. I was in need of a new room to rent, and put a shoutout on Facebook that I was looking. A former colleague, Anna, put me in touch with her upstairs neighbour Cat.

Cat and I met on a Thursday at the unit in Burleigh Heads on the Gold Coast. We sat for three hours chatting, and it was obvious from the start we would get along well. I took the room almost immediately.

Cat and I were similar in many ways, and got along well. We both lead quiet lives, and were considerate of each other in the sharehouse space. After four years of turbulence and nightmare housemates, it was the steady, reliable home environment I needed. I loved Harper, Cat’s two year old bengal cat. I lived at Burleigh Heads for 14 months, and wished I had found this place earlier. It was a beautiful location beside Tallebudgera Creek. There were four other apartments in the block- Anna and her husband Jason and their cat Archie lived downstairs, and another couple, Ka and David and their dog Bowie, lived behind us. The owner, Chris, lived in the fourth apartment with his cat Tiggs. We would often get together for games nights. I hadn’t had such close connections with my neighbours at any of the other places I lived. I knew I could live happily there for years, which made me reluctant to leave it. In order to have this adventure, I had to be willing to move out of this wonderful sharehouse, at the risk of not finding as great a housemate match as Cat again.

Family Ties

My dad and stepmum live in a beautiful house in Mount Coolum on the Sunshine Coast. I loved visiting them there- it was a slower pace than the busy Gold Coast. I loved the end of the day the most, when Dad would have a beer and watch the news for an hour before cooking dinner. After dinner, we’d play a few rounds of Rummikub while sipping glasses of wine.

A few weeks before my departure, in mid April 2024, I spent a week at Mount Coolum, the last visit for awhile. A sadness weighed heavily in my heart- I knew I would miss these visits so much. I was planning on being away for at least three years, and I felt anxious about the years I would lose out of my parents lives.

2023 also threw some serious health scares at my family. My stepmum was hospitalised with septicemia and liver and lung complications, and Mum was diagnosed with Myeloma in June, resulting in back surgery and radiation treatment in the last half of 2023. Shaken by these health scares, I feared what else could happen.

While fearing for my parents, I also secretly wondered how these health scares would impact my travel plans for 2024. At my core churned a fear that it was too late. That I had lost my chance at a working holiday and living overseas, because I had chosen to settle down in a long-term relationship in my 20s. I felt so ashamed of it, but my worst fear was that I would be stuck in Australia looking after my parents, resentful and full of regret, and never realising my Cold Plunge travel dream.

But my fears were unjustified. Both my mum and stepmum recovered from their health scares. Mum received the all-clear of cancer in April right before I left for Canada.

Through it all I reminded myself that I had to do this trip. It felt so strange and scary, and I cried alot. But I couldn’t settle down in my life, especially with a partner, until I got this adventure out of my system. But I needed to do this. I would turn 35 in September 2024, the cut-off age for the Irish working holiday authorisation. It was now or never.

In the next post I will go into detail about planning for the Cold Plunge, and the challenges I faced in the process.