To honor this anniversary, I’m sharing one question and reflection per day for seven days, one for each year of this journey.

Today is Year Two.

If you missed Day One, you can read it here: Day 1

Day 2 – Year 2

The end of the first year felt good. I started to feel it. I loved the place I lived in, my roommates. I went on a trip to Costa Rica that I loved.

But on May 17th, I woke up to my roommate banging and screaming at my door: "FIRE!"It was 8 AM. I had barely any clothes on. She threw a T-shirt at me and we all walked down the stairs and out. I remember looking at the gray smoke coming out of the roof...

After that, everything was intense. A lot of fire trucks. The sound of their uniforms beeping. Watching them come out sweating, seeing them flush out so much water... and I had left everything in the building: my computer, my passport, my phone. Some neighbors gave us clothes.We spent six hours watching the fire and the firefighters.

If you’ve had this kind of experience, you know the feelings that come up, and how you feel in the days and months after. I was totally in shock. I got really lucky: my room was only affected by water.

And guess what? My computer, my phone, and my passport were all okay. I saved a few bags, but with the shock, I couldn’t really process what I needed. I still have a pair of unmatched socks from that day.

That summer was the most challenging, but also one of the best summers I had in NYC.For two months, I lived in nine different places. I had an amazing community that let me stay with them, that gave us furniture, and when we needed to refurnish an apartment, we found a bigger place to live with the same roommates.

That year, I understood the solidarity that is very specific to New York City.People might move fast, be the masters of FOMO, sometimes rude or direct… but when something hard happens, they show up. Because they know what it's like to struggle.To be in love with a place that requires you to give everything. And, like everything in life, we are energy, and what you give will always come back in some way.

Today’s question comes from a friend who wanted to stay anonymous:“When you were in darkness, how did you find the light?”

The first thing I want to say is that I made a promise to myself when I left Switzerland: if I ever felt unhappy, I would shift.Because in Switzerland, I felt really in the dark for years, and I didn’t want to bring that with me.And you know how it is… you will always bring baggage if you don’t do the work on yourself before making a major shift.

There was a specific time I remember: I was nannying for a family that had high expectations, for their kids, and for me. One night, the mom was passive-aggressive with me, and I remember taking the train home and crying. That night, I remembered my promise. I quit the next day.I knew I would figure out what to do next, I had zero doubt. So I showed up for myself and I got out.

With the fire, I was in so much shock that I went on autopilot. I think I just accepted that it was where I was, and that things would get better. And they did.The moment I had my own room again, a door I could close and just be, I started to heal.Like I said, it was one of the best summers I had in NYC. That was the summer of 2019.

To answer more directly:Knowing that the choices you make in life are yours—and that if you are unhappy, you can choose to make yourself happy—is key.And sometimes, we need to stay longer in the darkness to learn something.And sometimes, we just jump back into the light and find ourselves again.

See you tomorrow for day three.

With Gratitude,Nina*If you missed Day One, you can read it here: Day 1