Have you ever canceled a dream trip just a few days in, lost all the money from flights, hotels, and bookings, and flown home, broken?

This was my first time.

I planned this journey for over half a year. It was meant to be the trip of a lifetime, a 21-day vacation from the French Riviera to the Italian coast, through Florence, and finally London. A classic, dreamy European adventure. One I saved for, hoped for, and needed more than ever.

My travel companion? Someone I’d trusted for ten years. Not just a friend, but a former partner, business ally, my chosen family. Even though we weren’t romantically involved anymore, I thought we still had each other’s backs. Until we didn’t.

In the months leading up to the trip, something shifted. Their attitude toward me turned cruel, manipulative, even abusive. While I was juggling a cross-country move and my mother’s stage 4 cancer, they became someone I barely recognized. Still, I kept giving them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe it was stress. Maybe I was imagining it. After all, our trip was just around the corner.

And despite all the signs from my spirit team telling me not to go, including my beloved pug sis in spirit barking at them whenever they were around, which I brushed off as just a spiritual grouchy moment, or maybe she was stressed too from my move and mom’s illness. I pushed all the signs aside. I wanted this trip so badly. Everything was booked, and with everything going on, I knew I might not get another chance to travel for a long time.

On the third day of the trip, my spirit team sent me a message, clear and unmistakable: this person had a new crush, and I was now just a prop for their trip.

The moment I confronted that person, they admitted it. That was when my heart split open when I finally understood why they had treated me so inhumanely over the past few months.

I couldn’t look at them. I couldn’t breathe around them.

It wasn’t that they had a crush, I should’ve been happy for them. It was the ambush, the lies, the betrayal after ten years of everything we’d been through: months of emotional, mental, and verbal abuse; treating me like their punching bag; exploiting my loyalty one last time to serve their new obsession, and discarding me the moment I was no longer useful.

The betrayal gutted me. I was already juggling so much in my life, and still, I pushed through this trip on fumes. But now, my heart was bleeding. I was feeble. Defeated. My body started shutting down. I began coughing uncontrollably, and my heart went into atrial fibrillation. Yet, I was still dragging my dead weight for another two days, roaming alone, soullessly. The beautiful towns turned into a black-and-white backdrop.

The next morning, I was supposed to get up and get ready to board a train from Nice to the Italian Riviera.

Suddenly, I had a vision, vivid and undeniable, of my spirit team showing up like EMTs from the higher realm beside my bed. They dragged my lifeless body onto a stretcher, rolling their eyes like, “This dummy’s still trying to finish the trip.”
Without consulting me, they went full DEFCON 1 — threw me onto the evacuation flight and got me the hell out of there.

Honestly, I don’t even remember how I got on the plane. But after losing thousands on this trip, what annoys me the most now that I’m awake is that I didn’t even get to claim my €41 tax refund at the airport. Classic.

I didn’t even get to say goodbye to Europe.

The next thing, if I had any consciousness at all, I was already back in my bed. It felt like a dream. A blur.

One moment I was pushing myself to survive in Europe, and the next, I was safely at home, heart stable, breath calm, no coughing. My body went into full recovery mode like it had just been waiting for the green light.

I was safe. I was guided. I was home.

My heart still bleeds. The betrayal is raw. The dream trip is gone, the money lost.

But I’m here. Resting. Healing.

And that person? They continued the trip alone, even bought themselves an opera ticket, without a single message to check in. That says everything.

After I got home, I kept seeing my spirit team. My deceased grandma checked in often, her orange cat too. And, of course, my beloved pug sis, always food-driven, yet fiercely loyal, kept popping in again and again. They didn’t say anything to me. They were just there, quietly making sure I was okay, giving me space to process and regroup.

Strangely, I didn’t cry, not even when my heart was torn to shreds. Like that scene in Sex and the City when Carrie was jilted at the altar: “The only thing I could do was not cry.” Sometimes the pain cuts so deep, your system just shuts down. No tears. Just silence. And that’s when I fully realized: the trip was already over before I even went. I was just the last to know.

Maybe this trip was never meant to be finished.
Maybe it was meant to break me open, to give me the clarity I needed.
To walk away.
To reclaim myself.
To remember that when things fall apart, it’s not always a loss. Sometimes, it’s the rupture needed to break free from a pattern long overdue.

Sometimes, I still catch myself checking the shattered itinerary, wondering where I’d be if I’d stayed on that trip. But I know I’ll travel again someday. Not as the person I was then, but as someone stronger, renewed, and truly ready.

And I trust that when the time comes, my spirit team will be right there beside me, watching, guiding, and carrying me through whatever comes next.

Kari Light ❤

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St. Tropez, France – June 2025. Taken by Kari Light, etched with grief.