In September, Max and I took a road trip in a camper van through Switzerland (Zurich) and Northern Italy (Lake Como). I’d just gotten my new camera, a Sony A73 (!), and was looking forward to trying it out.

When my boss saw me on the first day I came back to work after my vacation, he remarked, almost concerned, “You look awfully relaxed.” I felt it then too, and I remember thinking that I wanted to prolong that feeling for as long as I could—maybe even forever!

“Choose peace,” my sister wrote to me today. It seems so straightforward, and yet it’s taken such a long time for me to get here, to the right mental space where it’s beginning to seem possible, doable.

These are some of my favorite photos from my road trip that I think visualize the lightness and tranquility I am trying to maintain in my day-to-day life moving forward.