Since I made this move, most people I’ve met have used one or both of these words. Lucky. Brave.
I understand why. And I want to push back — gently, but clearly — on both.
Brave suggests that this took courage. That I overcame fear to get here. But I didn’t experience it that way. I didn’t grip the door frame and make myself jump. I wanted this. I had wanted it since I was a child watching farms go past from a train window. I had wanted things with a particular clarity my whole life — I knew in high school that I wanted to be a journalist, and not just any kind of journalist but specifically in print, specifically in magazines. When I finished my masters in Paris and came back and walked into Femina, that wasn’t luck or bravery. It was just the next step in a direction I’d already decided.
The farm was the same. By the time I actually moved, I wasn’t being brave. I was just late.
The move was to a little village in Kotagiri, in the Nilgiris — a one-acre tea estate at 5,500 feet, about as far from a corporate tower as you can get while still having decent Wi-Fi.
On the Word Lucky
Lucky is the one I take more issue with. Not because I don’t feel fortunate — I do, every single morning when I sit on this deck with my tea and look at that view. But luck, as a word, has a way of making things appear from nowhere. As if this life materialised because the universe was in a good mood.
It didn’t.
My parents supported every unconventional choice I ever made, even the ones they quietly worried about. My aunt and uncle in Auckland showed me a garden that changed how I thought about growing things. My friends — few, scattered across cities, more dear to me than I can easily say — held me up through the years when the dream felt very far away. The decades of work that gave me the financial ground to stand on. Some choices helped in many ways… no husband, no children. I had more freedom to craft life entirely around myself.
But basically, none of that is luck. That’s a lifetime of help from people who loved me, and the work I did with all of it, choices I made.
It was an intentional shift, though intent doesn’t always account for the messy reality of the transition—like the four months I spent cooking outside during our Nilgiris home renovation. But even with a fridge in the bedroom, I knew I was exactly where I was meant to be.
So if you’re thinking about making a big change and you’re waiting to feel brave enough — I’d gently suggest you might be waiting for the wrong thing. The question isn’t whether you’re brave. It’s whether you want it enough.
That’s where it started for me.
The rest, as it turns out, followed. And am immensely grateful.
PS. The book at the top of this post is The Service Berry by Robin Wall Kimmerer — which I picked up at a marvellous little bookshop in Wanaka, New Zealand, run by two women who called it the next chapter of their lives (more on that another time). Kimmerer writes that “all flourishing is mutual” and that “hoarding won’t save us.” That, I think, is exactly what lucky and brave both miss — they make a shared thing sound solitary.
BTW if you’re visiting South Island, NZ… an absolute must stop-by is The Next Chapter, Wanaka.
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Chom Chom Pantry · Kotagiri, Nilgiris
