How exciting to have so many mentions in Oprah Magazine in the past few weeks…
Posts published in “Holland America”
All blog post opinions are my own. #OMAGONHAL #OMAGINSIDERS #AD A sold-out three day cruise with…
Follow Your Path – Meet Jenn: In her own words “I loved art from the…
“The key to realizing a dream is to focus not on success but on significance — and then even the small steps and little victories along your path will take on greater meaning.”
― Oprah Winfrey
Meet Tabitha:
In her own words
“I’d always dreamed of two kids and that white picket fenced home. Little did I know what life would bring me in just my 35 years on this earth. A new kind of dream, and a little more than just two kids.
“It’ll be an adventure,” I promised. It was a move that transformed the shape of our home, literally.
Just a month after the birth of my fourth, we moved into our downtown loft. It was a space that we’d converted for our studio… a space where we could shoot and film recipes I’d create with the brands I was working with. It was a place to host workshops and events… and now? It was becoming a space my family of SIX would live until we found our home.
In a turn of events the home we put an offer on fell through and we were so grateful we had a place to go.
The small storage room in the back became a shared kid’s room and the loft upstairs held a crib next to our bed for the master bedroom.
Something that year taught me, as we huddled as a big family in our small studio loft, is that home truly is what you make it… and dreams? They take on a completely different significance when you look through that lens.
That year, we grew so much closer as a family. It became the base for a big film and magazine project we did with Folgers and brought us so many new opportunities.
Isn’t it a bit like life as well? We don’t always know the twists and turns that will come our way, but even the small steps and little victories along your path will take on greater meaning.
What began with saying “YES” to the opportunity of downtown living with my family, taught me how to say “YES” to more… like being invited to the White House, cruising with Oprah and creating our own business (with more launching soon, shhh!).
Through it all, we’ve learned that we can live in just about any landscape, and sometimes what may seem the most terrifying can actually deliver some of the most beautiful moments. Those things that may be intimidating can be just the things that catapult us into our dreams… sometimes the ones we didn’t even know we had.”
Meet Annita: in her own words
“Becoming a world traveler wasn’t on my radar as a young girl. I wanted to be a businesswoman who would take the world by storm or at least my hometown. However, as fate would have it travel entered my life via WWII stories my father shared and I lingered to hear every detail of his travels through North Africa and Europe as a soldier. I imagined walking the same cobbled stone streets, sipping coffee in French Cafes tucked away along narrow streets and late night chats with new friends over Spanish tapas and Sangria.
I applied with Pan American World Airways and started my journey to explore cultures, see far away lands and meet new friends around the world. Exploring cultures became the highlight of my travels. I was intrigued to see we lived our lives differently around the world. On my first Pan Am flight to Japan, during a Soba Noodles meal service (Japanese noodles made of buckwheat), I heard passengers slurping their noodles. I was shocked because my mother always instructed that I not slurp my noodles, but cut them neatly enough to fit on my fork along with the spaghetti sauce. I later discovered this too was not the way to eat noodles in Italy. I was amazed to learn that while my mother in South Georgia taught me “do not slurp, but cut,” another mother in Japan was teaching her little girl “slurp to show how delicious the noodles are.” And, in Italy, little girls were learning to twirl their noodles with a fork & spoon. My first lesson in cross-cultural communication helped me learn we love the same things around the world, although we express it in different ways.
After traveling to over 100 countries, people often ask where is my favorite destination and that’s not an easy question for me. I am still intrigued by the cultural differences of the people, places, and foods I experience. I love exploring them all. Instead of expressing a preference for one destination over another, I want to inspire others to get up from the sofa, put down the city/country brochures and travel the world. Through my radio show I seek to encourage listeners to have the one-on-one experiences of places right down the street, across town or around the world; explore this beautiful world we call home, and you will find there are more similarities than differences between people around the globe and most differences don’t really make that much difference. Go explore – the world is waiting!”
Visit my website and social media to explore the world with me:
Blog and Instagram and Twitter
-Annita