Text by Nora Vasconcelos
For Kristine K. Stevens, the answer was: All around the world. And for this dream to come true, she left everything behind her. She quit her job, sold her house, put all her stuff in a storage unite, took her beloved 16-year-old cat to a friend’s house, packed her clothes in a backpack and got a bunch of plane tickets.
After a six-month trip that took her to Africa, Asia and North America, Kristine came back home, but the dream didn’t end there. She put together, from her 3 journals, a book that captures in its title ,If your dream doesn’t scare you, it isn’t big enough, most of what she went through while making this trip happen.
Wonderfully written, this book is much more than just a memoir of a woman going all by herself on a trip around the world. The story grasps the readers’ attention from the very beginning and makes of them vivid witnesses of Kristine’s joys and troubles.
In a very honest way, the author narrates her story with such a detail that she creates real images of the places she visited. At the same time, she shares with the readers her fears, moments of sadness, times of loneliness and days of joy, making it really easy to relate to her in more than one time.
Who hasn’t faced airport troubles? Who hasn’t felt homesick in the middle of a long journey? Who hasn’t thought that what’s in front of oneself is the biggest and scariest thing ever? Who hasn’t felt that making a dream come true (once it’s been done) is the most frightening and overwelming thing one’s ever done? Who hasn’t ever wonder in more than one ocation: what am I doing here?, why did I ever start this?
Kristine faced all these moments of uncertainty, and even so, she kept on going. She dealt with all the unexpected problems and learned how to make the best of every given moment.
She learned how to loved her adventure, until it was over. Then, back home, she had to regroup, get all her strength together, even when she felt she had none, and go on with her new life as a momentarely unemployed homeless girl whose complete belongings were kept in the storage facility.
All what she had left were her friends, her cat, some savings, her backpack, her journals, and her inner strength that help her find her way into a new journey that seemed, for some moments, even more difficult than the one she had just finished.
In the end, what she didn’t know, was that, her solo journey around the world, would guide her to achieve a fulfilled life with a new job she liked, a new house, a new book, and a loving husband.
