Things, emotions, beliefs, rituals, dirt, feelings, duties, stuff… we are always collecting, whether we want to or not, we’re magnetic, we attract.
Sometimes we are wired wrong and we attract the wrong sort of things but, even when we are in our elements, we still attract things, even good things, that we don’t need. We have to let go of the things that don’t/no longer serve us.
This is a painful experience I have been going through for years, which climaxed last month. It isn’t easy to let go!
Let me rewind a little to give you some context, back to 2018…
After years on the road, I knew I needed a base and community (and money too, but that’s beside the point). After accidentally crossing the Atlantic twice and a lot of other random adventures, I had just arrived in Spain. Being a sailing Mecca and having friends there, I thought that Majorca would deliver exactly what I needed, so I set off hitchhiking there. But the harder I tried to get there, the closer I got to Portugal. I surrendered. Simply crossing the border into the country came as a breath of fresh air and despite the heaviness of the load I was carrying, everything felt lighter.
Needing a job, I “knew” that Lisbon was my only option as I didn’t speak Portuguese. I got dropped off on the road to Lagos. I walked a few kilometres through the summer sun to get back to the “right” road, only to be dropped off on the road to Lagos again. I took shelter with an exceptional CouchSurfing host who advocated that the Algarve was far better than Lisbon, but after a couple day of my mental and physical recovery on his land, he dropped me back on the road to Lisbon. And then some crazy (in a good way) woman who spoke very little English but who’s soul radiated awesome, picked me up and told me, ”No Lisbon, LAGOS! You come Lagos.” And I had no option but to listen.
Within minutes of arriving in the tiny city, everything in my body screamed that I needed to live there and everything fell into place in such an exceptional manner that I was certain that I was on the right path. That was June 2018.
I stayed a whole season (which is quite long for a Gypsy like myself) and left for a little bike ride (which became a long bike ride to the Netherlands). While I knew I didn’t want to leave, I had every intention to return. And I planned to do so with more money and better plans and …
Injuries and other distracting opportunities kept me from getting back as quickly as I planned. And I somehow lost focus.
After accidentally circling the globe again, a storm had us take shelter in Marina de Lagos as I delivered a boat to South Africa. I should have taken the opportunity to have jumped off right there, but I had a lot of lessons to learn still. And I had to let go of all the things that were stopping me from being a person who could put down some roots and grow.
After a dozen more random and necessary adventures, when Covid had the world started shutting down again, I seized my opportunity and returned to Portugal. From Lisbon, not having quite learned my lesson about letting go of baggage, carrying my laptop, wetsuit, and pretty much everything I owned, a friend and I walked to Lagos. I was curious if there may be other places in the country that may be even a better home, but there was no questioning it: Lagos was mine.
The first time I went there, I had drinking buddies and a lot of good people, but I hadn’t quite built the community I really wanted and needed. This time, purposefully choosing it, everything simply came naturally and flowed into place. EVERYTHING! And with all the things I normally had to fight so hard to find taken care of: safety, sustenance, income, security; I had the space to start dealing with all the things that I had neglected: my identity as a human rather than simply a traveller, my sense of self-worth, and the false belief that if people knew the real me they would run (some did, they were not my people). I spent hours (sometimes days) crying all the tears I hadn’t had the space to let out on the road. All the things that I thought were wrong with me, now that I had the courage to open up with community, turned out to be human problems that everyone faces. I didn’t have to carry everything I owned, and for a change I could simply take whatever I needed for any given day or micro-adventure that poked its head out to invite me. And while it was very difficult to stay still, I knew I had to. It was the only way I could properly move forward. It was the only way I could scrape off the barnacles of life that my gypsy soul had collected in the far reaches of the globe: all the things that were slowing me down and keeping me from moving forward. I lost myself so many times in the process of discovering who I really was, but that is also part of the beauty of life.
Over the 5 years I had Lagos as my base, I had an ever-transforming tapestry of tribe. Every time people left, it hurt. I was used to being the one who left. My heart started beating again and despite a few false starts, Lagos had a way of defibulating my adventurous soul to live for things other than simply adventure. Heart breaks hit hard, but it was still better to have a fully-beating heart than to drift through all the motions.
I managed to keep jobs for more than a few months. I learned to turn daily life into an adventure rather than needing to set off on epic voyages to keep myself entertained. Unlike other places I had restocked my bank account in, the wage-life balance was a little out of whack and over the past years I worked a plethora of jobs to keep afloat. But with every new job came new skills, new beautiful colleagues, new challenges, and often a whole new community.
Fast forward to December 2025, when suddenly, there was a small whisper in my gut that was so strong that it could not be ignored: “It is time for the next chapter”. I tried to muffle it at first. And then, when it persisted, I tried to question if I was hearing right. Despite my roots and community and new passions and crazy beating heart and my beautiful home in the safest place I have ever been; I knew it was time to go.
The last few weeks have been filled with waterfalls of tears as I have had to let go: of stuff (I arrived with one backpack I could actually carry, I gave away so much and still left with 100kg of abundance). I let go of all my jobs (and the awesome colleagues in all of them; I thank you and I miss you muchly!). I let go of the amazing home that sheltered me for most of my time in Lagos. I let go of the plants I learned to grow. I let go of my toys (surfboard, bicycle, actual toys…). Fortunately, community can transcend physical boundaries, so I did not need to let go of people, but knowing that I would not be bumping into those smiles and hugs on a daily or regular basis was hard enough.
And before I knew it, I was completely out of time and I hadn’t managed to hug everyone goodbye. And I hadn’t managed to get rid of everything, so I was shoving the last of my belongings in bags so that my housemates could shove into an attic to be taken care of later (yes, yes, I have to come back 😊) and the tears were flowing and the chaos was engulfing me and without even realising it I was carried to the bus which carried me out of Lagos onto the plane that carried me out of Portugal and the tears came in rivers as I flew across the world with no idea what I was doing or why.
And while part of my heart is still in Lagos, I’m sitting typing this in my homelands of South Africa trying to get my bare feet to reconnect with this wild earth. I still don’t know what I am doing, but it is good to reconnect with your roots before trying to grow your branches. I’m so grateful for all the amazing chapters of my life, but the Lagos one has undoubtedly been one of the most transformative!
I will be back of course, definitely to visit, possibly to live, but I know that right now I am stepping into a whole new chapter.
Before I can even start to think what the future looks like, I am letting go of everything and taking a step back from my life to breathe and enjoy. I’m tired of forcing things, and I know first-hand that if I let go of the reigns of my own life, I will be carried to exactly where I need to be.
