Reflection 6
A Life Where She Gets to Stay
I did not realize how much of myself I had lost until I found her again in Norway.
Not all at once. Slowly. In small moments.
At concerts on Thursday nights. In quiet walks through Bergen. In sketchbooks I had forgotten how to open. In conversations where I was not the most impressive person in the room and did not need to be. In the strange freedom of being somewhere new enough that I could stop performing the version of myself everyone already knew.
Before Norway, I had become very good at becoming. Becoming accomplished. Becoming impressive. Becoming the kind of person who could turn exhaustion into productivity and anxiety into ambition.
I knew how to work hard. I knew how to keep going. I knew how to measure myself by grades, applications, publications, presentations, grants, and the next big thing. I knew how to be the person who seemed like she had a plan.
And in many ways, I did.
But somewhere along the way, I think I started confusing achievement with aliveness. I thought becoming successful meant becoming more myself. But sometimes, it meant the opposite. It meant becoming smaller in ways no one could see.
Less playful.
Less creative.
Less open.
Less able to rest without earning it.
Less able to do something simply because it brought me joy.
Then I moved to Norway.
At first, I thought I was just moving for school. I was going to study global development and health promotion. I was going to strengthen my research skills. I was going to learn about immigrant health, vaccine hesitancy, trust, and health systems from a different perspective.
But Norway gave me something I did not know I needed.
Space.
Space to be a person, not only a student or researcher or my CV.
Space to be curious without needing every question to become a product.
Space to walk slowly.
Space to sit by the water.
Space to listen to music.
Space to create.
Space to be imperfect in another language and survive the embarrassment.
Space to be quiet without disappearing.
In Bergen, I remembered that I had a creative self. I remembered that I loved live music. I remembered that I loved art. I remembered that I liked noticing small things. I remembered that I could be funny, soft, awkward, brave, and alive in ways that had nothing to do with my CV.
There was freedom in being foreign, too.
It was lonely sometimes. Of course it was. There were moments when the language barrier felt heavy, when I missed ease, when I wanted to be understood without having to translate myself.
But there was also relief.
People did not already know who I was supposed to be. I did not have to be the version of myself who had always been high-achieving, polished, responsible, intense.
I could become strange to myself in the best way.
I could try things badly or even try things and fail.
I could go to concerts alone.
I could draw outside the lines.
I could speak Norwegian imperfectly.
I could make a life out of ordinary joys and realize that joy did not need to justify itself.
That may be one of the most important things Norway taught me. Joy does not need to be useful. Rest does not need to be productive. Creativity does not need to become content. A life does not need to be constantly impressive in order to be meaningful.
I think that is why leaving Norway hurt so much.
It was not only the mountains. Not only the sea. Not only the language. Not only the way the light hit Bergen in the evenings or the way strangers helped without making me feel like a burden.
It was that I had become someone there. Or maybe I had become myself again. The happiest version of myself. The kindest version of myself. The most creative version of myself. The version who believed life could be soft.
And when I left, I was afraid I had left her there.
For a while, I thought the work was simply to bring her with me.
Into Boston. Into my PhD. Into the life I was building.
And I tried. I really tried.
I tried to keep creating. I tried to keep moving slowly. I tried to protect joy. I tried to remember that I was more than my work.
But the environment I returned to made that difficult.
The work-grind culture of the United States pulled me back into old patterns faster than I expected. Boston’s academic bubble, with all its intensity and ambition and constant motion, reminded me how easy it is to become consumed by achievement again.
At first, I told myself it was temporary. A hard semester. A busy season. A necessary sacrifice.
I told myself I would return to myself when things calmed down.
After the next deadline. After the next paper. After the next grant. After the next exam. After the next milestone.
But there was always another milestone.
Slowly, almost without noticing, I became my work.
Again.
My creativity disappeared. The softness disappeared. The version of myself who had felt so alive in Norway became harder and harder to access. Not because she was gone. But because there was so little room for her.
And then the country around me changed too.
The political climate in the United States became heavier. The work I care about most became more vulnerable. Immigrant health, vaccine trust, preventive care, public health communication, community-centered research, the very questions that brought me into this field- all of it began to feel like something I had to defend before I could even begin.
Research funding was cut, frozen, threatened, politicized. Projects disappeared. Institutions became unstable. People started speaking about science as if it were only valuable when it served the right agenda.
Immigrant communities lived under increasing fear. ICE raids became part of the background noise of American life. Public health became another battlefield. Vaccines became more politicized at the very moment vaccine-preventable disease was returning.
And I felt myself breaking under the weight of it.
Not all at once.
Slowly.
In the way people break while still answering emails. In the way people break while still meeting deadlines. In the way people break while still publishing, presenting, applying, responding, producing, smiling, and saying they are fine.
That is the thing about being good at surviving.
People do not always know when you are disappearing.
Because you keep going. You keep producing. You keep doing the work. You keep being useful. And because the output continues, people assume you are okay.
But I could feel it. I could feel the light leaving me.
Friends could see it too.
People who knew me before and after.
People who had seen me alive and could recognize when something in me had dimmed.
They saw what the environment was doing to me. And then they saw what happened when I came back to Norway, even for a short moment.
How quickly the light started to return.
How my face changed.
How my body softened.
How the smile stretched across my face when I heard Norwegian.
How I laughed more easily.
How I noticed things again.
How I became more myself after only a few days in the place that first taught me I could be more than what I produce.
That is what I cannot unknow.
I have already seen what it feels like to be alive in my own life. I have already met the version of myself who is creative, joyful, gentle, curious, and whole.
And I cannot lose her again. Not after finding her. Not after knowing what it feels like to live with that much light in me.
That is why going back to Norway no longer feels like only a dream. It feels like self-preservation.
I want to go back to the place where I remembered I was a person. I want to go back to the version of myself who could create without needing it to become something. I want to go back to the version of myself who let joy be enough. I want to go back to the version of myself who believed that a meaningful life could also be a gentle one.
And yes, I want to go back to the work too. Because the work matters. The work has always mattered.
I care deeply about immigrant health, trust, vaccination, preventive care, and the systems that shape whether people are protected or left behind. I feel called to this work. I want to spend my life asking hard questions about health, migration, prevention, belonging, and the institutions people are asked to trust.
But I do not want the work to consume me. I do not want to become only my research. I do not want to spend my life defending why the communities I care about deserve attention. I do not want to sell my soul for stability. I do not want to mistake being depleted for being dedicated.
I want to do work that matters in a place where the work has room to breathe.
A place where public health still feels like a collective responsibility. A place where balance is not treated as laziness. A place where seriousness and softness can coexist. A place where I can care deeply without being broken down by the very environment where I am trying to care.
I know Norway is not perfect.
No country is. No system is. No institution is.
I know moving back would not be simple. Immigration is complicated. Jobs are complicated. Money is complicated. Love is complicated. Life is complicated.
I know there are people who may not understand.
From the outside, picking up my life and moving across an ocean may not look rational. It may look impractical. It may look risky. Maybe it is.
But staying in a place that slowly breaks you down is risky too. Building a life around exhaustion is risky. Letting the best version of yourself disappear because the choice other people understand is easier to explain is risky.
And I do not want to make that choice anymore.
For a long time, I thought leaving the United States again would be something I had to justify. Now I am beginning to understand that staying would require justification too. Because I am losing myself here. And I am close enough to the edge of that loss to know I cannot keep pretending it is sustainable.
I have seen what this environment can do to me. I have seen how quickly I can become my work. I have seen how easily creativity disappears when every part of life becomes survival. I have seen the light dim. And I have seen it come back.
That is what changed everything.
Because once you have seen yourself come alive, you cannot keep choosing the places that make you disappear.
So maybe this is not about running away. Maybe it is about returning.
Returning to Norway.
Returning to joy.
Returning to softness.
Returning to work that matters without becoming only my work.
Returning to the sound of Norwegian around me and the smile that appears before I can stop it.
Returning to the version of myself I found there.
The version who is not only surviving, achieving, pushing, proving, and becoming.
The version who is alive.
And this time, I want to build a life where she gets to stay.