Today is the first day of the rest of my life! Well I guess every day is the first day of the rest of our lives, but this one feels different.

On my birthday my mum always asks me, “So do you feel any older?” I never really do! But today I do feel different. It’s not my birthday. I am 27 years and 342 days old! But today I feel different. I’m no longer Siobhán who works in an office and studies Herbology on the weekends. Today for the first time I feel like Siobhán the Herbalist… Siobhán, the Nerdy Naturopath!

I haven’t graduated yet, it’s not that kind of milestone. But I have quit my job and travelled half way across the world to spend my summer doing a herbaculture internship with Herb Pharm in Williams, Oregon. And I am soooo excited!

This isn’t the first step on my holistic path, nor is it the last. There’s no destination I plan to arrive at after three months, no particular end goal in sight. This is more like a fork in the road, a bend in the river shall we say! Before accepting the internship I wondered, like Pocahontas, “should I take the smoother course? Steady as the beating drum?” Should I keep my stable, well-paid and completely awesome job at Airbnb? Or should I quit everything to basically become a farmer?

In my early days of fangirling, I was obsessed with Pocahontas. I was seven when the Disney movie came out in theatres. I went to see a special preview in London with my best friend and our mums. I begged my mum for a full costume of Pocahontas. I wanted to be her! And then, when I was a teenager, I dyed my hair so black that it was kind of blue, just like Pocahontas!

What I love so much about her is that she follows her heart. Against all odds! She’s an adventurer and a romantic, and isn’t afraid to stand out from the crowd, to be different.

Our nature loving Native American princess also sings, “what I love most about rivers is, you can’t step in the same river twice. The water’s always changing always flowing.” She’s so wise, our Pocahontas! (I also think she may have been studying Greek philosophy…) But then she goes on to say “people I guess can’t live like that, we all must pay a price. To be safe, we lose our chance of ever knowing what’s around the river bend.” But here I disagree. Even if we do take the smoothest course, living our lives in the predictable rhythm of society’s steady beating drum, we are always continually changing.

Every single day we are different, different than who we were the day before. They say that in seven years every single cell in our bodies is renewed and different, yet we so rarely notice the change. But today I feel it it! I feel it because I haven’t taken the smoothest course. Is it a risk? Yes! Do I have any idea where I’ll be or what I’ll be doing at the end of these three months? No. But who cares? If we’re all continuously changing every single moment of every single day we may as well notice and feel it sometimes! It’s invigorating, intoxicating even! I feel so happy to be alive! So grateful to be exactly where I am in this present moment. So full of joy!

Today is the first day of the rest of my life and here I am in Oregon, living in a big beautiful farm house with nine incredible women! I have mountains in my front garden, 85 acres of herbal farm land on my doorstep! I am so excited to be spending the summer with my herbs, basking in nature, talking to plants and hugging trees, soaking up the sun, meditating with the moon, and painting with all the colours of the wind!