Two days after this photo was taken I moved to Switzerland🇨🇭I had just graduated from university and returned home from my 3rd summer as an intern at Elizabeth Arden in NYC. In this photo my bags were already packed for my new life in Geneva where I would be working full-time for Elizabeth Arden in skincare, fragrance and color marketing (the beauty industry term for makeup).

It was the highlight of my young life, the culmination of years of following a linear path from elementary to high school to university, clinging to the hope that academic achievements would result in a successful future in “adulthood.”

Behind the glamour of what I was about to embark on, I was terrified of leaving everyone/everything I knew to live alone in a new country for the foreseeable future? Forever? I was riddled with impostor syndrome and feared failure so deeply my anxiety and insomnia returned with a vengeance.

Years later, this photo brings back a flood of feelings and I see the subtle cracks behind my confident façade already starting to show.

#btrdbook