Life Wild Open

"It cost me everything. I would do it all over again." In Life Wild Open, a powerful and evocative memoir, the author takes readers on a journey from the tight-knit streets of lower-income United Kingdom housing to the far-flung corners of Asia and the vast highways of America. At sixteen, she left home with nothing but a backpack and a scrap of paper written in a language she couldn't read. She handed it to a taxi driver in a foreign city and trusted he'd take her where she needed to go. That leap of faith led to twenty years in Southeast Asia as a missionary and business owner, navigating cultural shocks and building a life in villages most maps don't mark. She learned early that life doesn't wait for permission. She held out for love, married in her early thirties, and thought she'd found forever. Overnight, she became a widowed immigrant in a country she barely knew, with no family and nowhere to go. Homeless. Alone. Starting over from nothing. When life demanded she rebuild, she climbed into an eighteen-wheeler-80,000 pounds of steel and a woman who refused to stay down. She found love again in the most unexpected places. And she learned that survival isn't enough. You can choose to thrive, even when nothing is guaranteed. Life Wild Open is a testament to the wisdom of instinct, the power of radical acceptance, and the beauty of living with hands open to whatever the road may bring.