When I was 28-years-old, I got on an airplane for the first time in my life. I flew from Tulsa, Oklahoma to Houston, Texas, then to Dubai, then to Kandahar, Afghanistan. Before that trip, I had never even been inside an airport.

I was working for Remote Medical International, a private company that had been contracted by the U.S. air force base in Kandahar. I spent almost a year there. As a girl from Small Town, USA, it was my first dose of real culture. I was interacting with Kenyans, Indians, and Afghanis on a daily basis.  

It taught me a lot about resilience. In the book Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert writes you can let fear sit with you, but you tell it to get in the back seat. I told my fear to get in the fucking trunk.