Photograph by my husband

I am a 26 year old British stay at home mother to a four year old boy. Married to a Veteran of the U.S. Army who, since his separation from the Army in early 2011, is now at college completing a degree in Communications, PR and Advertising. We currently live in Chicago after 3 years of living in Germany.

I have an accent that is not quite British anymore after 4 years of being surrounded by Americans, yet it is certainly not an American accent either. After living in Germany for 3 years I often use German words for things when I find that I like the German word better than the English.

I have seen the Vatican from the very top of the 259 steps of St Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City, danced to Jazz through side streets of Trastevere, Rome and been covered in mud in the preserved World War I trenches outside Ypres, Belgium.

I have wandered Montmartre side streets  in Paris, bustling with people on an evening, gotten lost in the streets of Greenwich Village NYC and run through golden cornfields on the English-Welsh border. I have walked the dripping dark tunnel beneath the Thames River, London and sat outside with a cup of tea watching fireflies in the vast fields of rural Illinois.

I have left everything behind to begin anew, traveling alone across the North Atlantic Ocean with a single suitcase containing my worldly possessions to meet my husband on the other side. I own altogether too many books and have read every single one of them at least once. My dream job would be to be a Librarian or Archivist. I take my camera almost everywhere with me, despite the extra weight it adds.

I have fought mental illness and trudged through crisp snow in the mountains of the Lake District, England. I have explored a morgue, deep in the bowels of an abandoned hospital on a summer evening and I have climbed to the top of scaffolding holding up a rotting five floor warehouse to look at the city lights of Nottingham at night. I’ve trudged Oxford Street, London in the brisk cold of Christmas while gazing up at the beautiful lights and I have watched the sun setting over disused train tracks on the West Texas horizon.

I’ve listened to the echo of my own footsteps while climbing the leaf-covered stone steps of a Nazi-era Amphitheater, watched dark storm clouds chase one another over Lorelai Rock on the Rhein River and watched a meteor shower while sitting on the roof of a friend’s car in rural East England. I have heard the deep roar of small Spring waterfalls, while stepping over moss-covered rocks in the otherwise calm silence of the Black Forest.

I have held my son’s tiny hand through the plastic window on an isolette in the NICU ward, the sounds of bleeping heart and lung monitors in the background forever etched into my mind. I have walked, speaking only in whispers, through catacombs beneath the ground on the outskirts of Rome and silently watched fireworks explode over Heidelberg castle.