If you told me five years ago that I’d bike across Southern Ontario and publish a 700-page novel, I would have laughed you right off the map. One, because I never wanted to bike long distance—ever! Two, because me? An author? Not in a million years.
The plan, from the beginning, was the Bruce Trail. Running it. — That was the dream I carried in my head: miles of rugged ground beneath me, the kind of punishing beauty that strips you down and rebuilds you. Running was freedom, and I thought it would always be mine. But then my hip gave out. The dream dissolved, and I was left staring at a new reality—one I did not want.
The Trans Canada Rail Trail. A bike. A choice.
At first, I hated it. The idea made my stomach knot tight — Every hill was an insult. Every gust of wind a fight I never signed up for. The seat, a cruel joke. I told myself it wasn’t running, it wasn’t the dream, it wasn’t me. And yet, I pedalled. One reluctant mile at a time. And then something strange happened. Somewhere in the grind, in the long silences, in the ache of my body learning a new rhythm, I began to soften. I began to see what was in front of me instead of what was lost. The mornings broke open into light I wouldn’t have seen otherwise. The small towns, the fields, the endless sky—they carried me. And without realising when it shifted, I fell madly in love with the ride.
I will run again. That part of me isn’t gone. But biking gave me something I didn’t know I needed: proof that the path we don’t choose can still carry us exactly where we’re meant to go.
Writing was another one of those paths. I never pictured myself as an author. Storyteller, sure—I’ve always had that in me. But books were for other people. In my mind, authors were the ones who devoured libraries, who read a thousand stories before daring to write their own. I wasn’t that. With my mild dyslexia, reading was always uphill unless the book had me completely in its grip. Writing my own? It didn’t even cross my mind.
But the stories inside me knocked louder with every passing day. They pressed and swirled and demanded to be told. So I tried. And then I kept trying. The words came clumsy, then faster, then unstoppable, until suddenly I wasn’t just writing—I was finishing. And not just finishing, but holding a novel in my hands. Me. The girl who never thought she belonged in that world. The girl who thought books were beyond her.
It’s humbling, really. The things I planned for—the ones I thought I couldn’t live without—were taken from me. And the things I never imagined—things I didn’t even want—were the ones that handed me keys to a life I never thought I could touch.
The path is never what we picture. Sometimes it breaks us. Sometimes it saves us. Sometimes it hands us the very things we were made for, but couldn’t see on our own. Sometimes the very thing we’ve convinced ourselves we can’t have is the only thing waiting for us when we finally let go.
I never planned to bike. But I found freedom in it.
I never planned to write. But I found myself in it.
Maybe the sweetest vision is the quiet miracle that waits for us after we’ve let go of the one we thought we needed—proof that the detours, the derailments, the unwanted paths are often the very ones that shape us into who we’re meant to be.
If running taught me freedom, biking taught me resilience. If writing showed me discipline, it also showed me belonging. I thought I knew what I wanted. I thought I knew the limits of what I could do. But life has a way of reminding us that the story isn’t finished just because we’ve lost a page.
The truth is: we don’t always get to choose the road. But we do get to choose to move. And in moving, in trusting, in saying yes to the paths we never planned for—we sometimes stumble into a life wider, deeper, and more breathtaking than anything we dared to dream.
So here I stand: a runner without a finish line, a cyclist who swore she’d never ride, an author who never thought she belonged on the shelf. And maybe that’s the point. Not to become the person we planned to be, but to become the person we discover in the unplanned.
And if that’s true, then the path ahead—whatever it brings—can only be possibility.