This wasn’t always the plan. I’m a full-time traveller, storyteller and professional overthinker who somehow traded boardrooms and carefully mapped-out plans for one-way tickets, solo adventures and a life that keeps surprising me.
I didn’t set out to reinvent my life in my 40s. I just reached a point where I could no longer ignore the question:
I’m Mia – Canadian by passport, curious by nature, and currently building a life that looks very different from the one I spent years carefully planning.
Before full-time travel, I built a career, earned a couple of degrees, raised my family and spent years in leadership roles where being organized, responsible and having an answer for everything was basically part of the job description.
These days, my life is a little less predictable.
I’m a mom, a Mimi, a former CEO, a writer, a traveller and someone who can happily lose several hours wandering through beautiful architecture, finding a ridiculously good meal, sitting in a café watching a city go by or dancing somewhere I definitely did not know existed that morning.
I love cities more than hiking boots, local food more than checklist tourism, and the people I meet along the way often end up being just as memorable as the places themselves.
I’m still ambitious. Still curious. Still figuring things out.
I just stopped believing there was only one respectable way to build a life.
Before the one-way tickets, hostel beds and figuring out bus schedules in languages I barely speak, my life looked considerably more organized.
I raised my family, earned my degrees, built a career and eventually became a CEO. I spent years leading organizations, solving complicated problems, carrying a lot of responsibility and doing work I genuinely cared about.
From the outside, it looked like success. And in many ways, it was.
That part matters to me, because I didn’t walk away from a life that meant nothing. I had worked incredibly hard to build it. There were people I loved, work I was proud of and accomplishments that had once seemed very important to reach.
But somewhere along the way, I started to notice something uncomfortable.
And eventually I started wondering whether I was still choosing that life or simply continuing it because I had become so good at living it.
By the time I arrived in Rome to celebrate my 45th birthday, I had already spent months asking myself questions I wasn’t quite ready to answer.
I knew something needed to change. I just hadn’t decided what changing it would actually require.
Then somewhere in Rome, surrounded by a city that has survived a few reinventions of its own, I made the decision. I was going to tender my resignation.
There was no perfectly mapped-out five-year plan waiting on the other side. No beautifully organized spreadsheet explaining exactly what came next. For someone who had spent most of her adult life being very good at having a plan, that part was mildly terrifying.
Naturally, I celebrated by finding a speakeasy and getting a tattoo.
That maybe getting a little lost from the life I had carefully mapped out wasn’t the worst thing that could happen. Maybe it was exactly how I was going to find out what else was there.
I didn’t know that night where those words would eventually take me. I certainly didn’t know they would become the philosophy behind Mia Without Borders.
I just knew I was finally choosing something different. And for the first time in a long time, not knowing exactly what happened next felt less frightening than staying exactly where I was.
Tendering my resignation made everything suddenly very real.
There’s something wonderfully dramatic about deciding you’re going to change your life. The reality involves considerably more logistics. There were plans to make, things to untangle, goodbyes to say and a future that was suddenly far less predictable than the one I had spent years building.
And there were doubts. Of course there were.
I had spent most of my adult life working toward stability, responsibility and knowing what came next. Now I was deliberately choosing a version of life where I couldn’t answer some of the most basic questions about what the next year would look like.
That was exhilarating. It was also occasionally terrifying.
That sounds like a small difference. It wasn’t.
For the first time in a very long time, I had room to make decisions based less on what made sense on paper and more on curiosity, experience and what felt worth saying yes to.
I didn’t suddenly become fearless. I didn’t wake up one morning with life completely figured out. I just started moving. One decision. One flight. One country. One slightly questionable travel choice at a time.
I am learning to move slowly enough to actually get to know a place. I want the neighbourhood café, the beautiful old building I accidentally found three streets away from where I was going, the local restaurant somebody insisted I try, and the conversation that starts because I sat down beside the right person.
I love cities, architecture, cathedrals, street art, food, cafés, dancing, culture and watching everyday life happen somewhere completely different from where I grew up.
I’ll take a great neighbourhood over a checklist of attractions, a long lunch over rushing to the next stop, and a night of salsa with people I’ve just met over waking up at 4 a.m. to climb a mountain.
Sometimes that means an incredible hotel. Sometimes it means a hostel bunk and six new friends. Sometimes it’s a beautiful dinner, a questionable bus ride, a dance floor, a train window or staying somewhere longer simply because I’m not quite ready to leave.
There is still planning. There are still deadlines, workdays, budgets, laundry and the occasional moment when I wonder why I own quite so many charging cables.
But this is my real life now. Not a vacation from something else.
THE JOURNEY SO FAR
What started as a decision to live differently has slowly turned into a life built across cities, countries and continents. Some places changed my plans. Some changed my perspective. Some gave me people I never expected to meet.
And somewhere along the way, I figured out the kind of travel I love most.
The local dishes, tiny restaurants and meals I’m still thinking about months later.
Old buildings, cathedrals, colourful streets and the details that make a city feel like itself.
The conversations, traditions and ordinary moments that teach me more than any checklist ever could.
Give me neighbourhoods, cafés, markets and somewhere good to wander.
Salsa, bachata, live music and occasionally staying out considerably later than planned.
The wrong turns, spontaneous invitations and experiences I could never have scheduled.
Because there’s only so much you can learn about someone from passport stamps and questionable bus decisions.
A slow morning, great coffee, beautiful architecture, wandering without much of a plan, something ridiculously good to eat and finding somewhere to dance later.
Cities. Every time.
I’ll admire the mountain from somewhere comfortable with a drink in my hand.
Food.
I can sleep in a hostel and take the bus, but if someone tells me there’s a restaurant I absolutely have to try, suddenly the budget becomes surprisingly flexible.
Talking to strangers.
Some of my favourite nights, recommendations and friendships started because I asked someone a question I probably could have Googled.
Salsa, bachata or kizomba.
Although apparently the threshold gets considerably lower after a couple of glasses of wine.
Packing light.
I travel full-time. You would think I’d be excellent at this by now.
You would be wrong.
People.
Not literally. That would create customs issues.
But the friendships, conversations and random connections I make along the way are often what I remember most.
I genuinely don’t know.
And for someone who spent years needing to know exactly what came next, I’m surprisingly okay with that.
Mia Without Borders began as a place to document where I was going and what I was learning along the way.
But the more I travel, the more I realize I want this space to be useful too.
A place for honest destination guides, solo travel advice, practical resources, the things I genuinely recommend and stories that tell you what a place felt like, not just what to see when you get there.
I want to share the beautiful parts of travel without pretending the messy parts don’t exist.
The incredible hotel and the questionable bus ride. The perfect dinner and the day nothing went according to plan.
The confidence that comes with doing something alone and the moments when you still wish someone else was there.
Because for me, travel has never really been about collecting countries. It’s about collecting perspective. And if something I share here helps someone book the trip, stay a little longer, try something new or imagine a different version of their own life, then this has become much more than a travel diary.
That started as something I needed to tell myself. Now it’s the invitation behind everything I’m building here.
Pick a direction. There’s plenty more to explore.
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