Homesick Nomad: Settling into an Untethered Life

 

Homesick Nomad: Settling into an Untethered Life 

By Brianna Madia

After finishing The Road to Tender Hearts on my drive home to Florida, I started Homesick Nomad: Settling into an Untethered Life by Brianna Madia. A round trip to my mom’s is about 20 hours, which usually means I can fit in two audiobooks. Brianna narrates this one herself, and listening to it felt like catching up with a friend.

I’ve followed Brianna and her adventurous, dog-filled life online for years…maybe close to ten. Because of social media, I thought I knew a lot about her story, but this book reveals the deeper layers behind what people see on the surface.

Homesick Nomad explores love, loss, identity, and what it means to remain true to yourself even when the world, and the internet, tries to tear you apart.

There’s a heaviness throughout the book, especially as Brianna navigates grief and the devastating impact of online bullying. But woven through that pain is resilience, growth, and moments of clarity that linger long after the chapter ends. Watching her confront her fears and slowly reclaim herself was deeply inspiring.

Seeing her journey come full circle, from heartbreak and divorce to finding love again, I personally felt inspired by her resilience to opening herself up to finding love again after all she had been through.

The book is packed with lessons about choosing the life that feels right for you, even when it doesn’t look like anyone else’s. One chapter that especially stood out to me focused on the choice not to have children. Why is that still something people judge so harshly? And for some people, it’s not even a choice. That part felt honest, vulnerable, and important.

I have a keychain that says, “Don’t let the bastards get you down,” and honestly, that sentiment fits this book perfectly. We get one life. Not one life approved by strangers. Just one life

Choose wisely. Live freely. Just live.

The online bullying Brianna endured was unbelievable. I was especially happy to hear about Selena, a woman who stepped in to help Brianna uncover the people behind the anonymous harassment and hold them accountable. Hearing that brought such a sense of justice and relief.

One quote that really stayed with me was:

“When someone wants to help you, it doesn’t always mean that they think you’re incapable. It might just mean that they love you.”

And maybe that’s the thread running through this entire story: that surviving isn’t just about enduring pain alone. It’s about finding the courage to keep choosing yourself and letting yourself be loved anyway.

 

The Road to Tender Hearts

 

The Road to Tender Hearts 

By Annie Hartnett

I was heading to Florida this past weekend to celebrate Mother’s Day early and three big birthdays, and I needed something that would travel well with me…something light on the surface but with enough depth to sit with me in the in-between moments. I had seen this book on several reviewers’ lists and well…the cover caught my eye.  It felt like the right kind of company for a long drive.

The story follows PJ Halliday, an aimless, lottery-winning man in fragile health who somehow ends up responsible for his dead brother’s grandchildren after a tragic accident. From there, things spiral in the most unpredictable, chaotic, and strangely tender directions. PJ, still half-lost in his own life and dependent on his ex-wife for nearly everything, suddenly finds himself traveling across the country with two grieving pre-teens, his equally drifting adult daughter, and a stolen car. His goal? To reconnect with his high school crush, Michelle. Of course, that’s only one of several increasingly strange objectives that emerge along the way.

What unfolds is a road trip in the truest sense…equal parts hijinks and heartbreak. There are stolen wax hands, motel detours, questionable decisions, run-ins with the law, and more narrow escapes than seems statistically possible. And yet, beneath the absurdity, Hartnett is constantly circling something much quieter and more vulnerable: the ache of grief, the awkwardness of found family, and the strange ways people keep moving forward when they don’t quite know how to heal.

I’ll be honest…I didn’t just smile during this book; I actually laughed out loud. More than once. That alone felt like a small miracle since most books that promise laugh out loud humor don’t quite deliver, for me.

But what surprised me most was how effectively the humor coexists with something heavier. It’s how these characters survive what they’re carrying.

And then there’s Pancakes…the cat who may or may not be an agent of death. It sounds like something that shouldn’t quite work, but somehow it does. At first it felt a little strange, but I gradually found myself settling into it. In the end, I was more charmed by the cat than anything else, though maybe that’s not so surprising if you know me well enough: I do tend to like my cats more than most people.

There were moments when the quirkiness tipped into excess for me…bordering on too much, occasionally veering into the kind of stylized chaos that feels almost deliberately staged. At times, I could absolutely see this as a Wes Anderson movie, all symmetry and eccentric heartbreak.

By the end, I realized the journey wasn’t really about reaching Michelle, or solving any of the more improbable mysteries along the way. It was about the way broken people accidentally assemble into something like a family, not because they fix each other, but because they keep showing up anyway…messy, uncertain, and still moving forward.

And maybe that’s what the book is really trying to say…not whether we can untangle our pasts, but whether we can learn to sit beside one another. Even if nothing is resolved. Even if the road is ridiculous. Even if the only thing we end up carrying home is the faint, unexpected feeling that tenderness was there all along, waiting for us to notice it.