RightTurns with RoadRunning Rita

I didn’t plan to start a blog. For years, people told me I should do something with my journals and my pictures from the road, and for years I brushed it off. Too much, too personal, too messy. But eventually, as I looked back through my notes and my photos, I realized there was more there than I thought. Not just sunsets and travel snapshots, but pieces of a story I’d been living without fully naming: a story of survival, of detours, of unexpected right turns that carried me out of trauma and into something like healing and freedom. For a long time, I was just trying to outrun the wreckage—illness, addiction, heartbreak, loss. Some days it felt like the weight would crush me, like the world would never let me catch my breath. And in many ways, it didn’t. But I survived. I kept moving. I got back up. I took the next right turn, even when I couldn’t see where it led. That’s what this blog is about. Not just the pretty parts of travel, but the whole journey—the grit, the grief, the small victories that don’t make postcards. Some of what I share will be beautiful, some of it may be painful. And I hope to communicate in a way that is vulnerable, authentic, and transparent—because the road, like life, is rarely neat, but it is real. This is my way of gathering it all—the stories, the photos, the messy reflections—and offering them in a way that might mean something to someone beyond myself. Because maybe you’ve been there too. Maybe you know what it’s like to move from trauma, through tears, toward triumph. And maybe by sharing my road, I can help someone else find theirs. It won’t always be pretty. It may not look like golden sunrises and yellow bricks most days—more like gray clouds, gravel, potholes, dust, or weeds—but forward is forward. And forward is freedom. So here’s where it begins. RightTurns with RoadRunning Rita. A story in motion. A journey still unfolding.