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Freedom and Reinvention: A Solo Traveler’s Journey from Van Life to an Art Residency in Greece · Roam Alone

• 0:00
  Theresa: What if freedom didn't mean running away, but eventually building something worth coming home to?
• 0:06
  Theresa: My guest today spent six years living alone in a van across the American West, chasing adventure, solitude, a completely self-designed life.
• 0:18
  Theresa: And then something surprising happened.
• 0:20
  Theresa: She didn't stop being nomadic, she redefined it.
• 0:24
  Theresa: Today she owns an art residency on a Greek island where women come to feel safe, create, and reconnect with themselves.
• 0:33
  Theresa: This is a conversation about freedom, courage, creativity, and what happens when solo travel turns into a way of life.
• 0:42
  Theresa: I'm Teresa Stevens, and this is Rome Alone.
• 0:47
  Theresa: So my guest today is Kelly Peeler.
• 0:54
  Theresa: Welcome to the show, Kelly.
• 0:55
  Theresa: Hi, thanks for having me.
• 0:56
  Theresa: So one of my absolutely favorite, if not the favorite, social media that I follow is Threads.
• 1:05
  Theresa: I got on there about six months ago, and it is by far the best that I have as far as Facebook or Instagram.
• 1:13
  Theresa: Threads is fantastic.
• 1:15
  Theresa: And I was looking through post after post one afternoon, and I saw just this absolute gorgeous shot of Greece and this woman talking about setting up an artist residency in Milos.
• 1:30
  Theresa: And that was you.
• 1:31
  Theresa: And then I started going through all of your posts, and you just sounded absolutely amazing.
• 1:38
  Theresa: And I thought to myself, I have to message her right away if she will come on the show and talk about your adventures.
• 1:45
  Theresa: So tell us a little bit about your background.
• 1:48
  Kelly: Sure.
• 1:48
  Kelly: So I lived in New York City and did the New York City grind for about 12 years, right out of college.
• 1:56
  Kelly: And then at the end of it, I was pretty burnt out.
• 1:59
  Kelly: I worked in technology.
• 2:01
  Kelly: I had started and sold my own tech company.
• 2:06
  Kelly: By the end of it, I was like, I gotta get out of here.
• 2:09
  Kelly: And as luck would have it, COVID was happening right around the same time.
• 2:14
  Kelly: And I was one of the people, those people who actually had like a really fantastic COVID, which is such a privilege.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: I agree.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: I had the same experience.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: It was positive for me and my family and much needed.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: And I do, I'm the same with you.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: I feel guilty even thinking that.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: But it was a time of resetting in a lot of ways.
• 2:35
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 2:35
  Speaker: And I mean, as with any paradox, like the closer that I was getting to seeing, you know, mass death, like death on a massive scale, right?
• 2:44
  Speaker: This is the first pandemic that I've ever personally lived through.
• 2:47
  Speaker: And absolute, you know, horror, really for the first time, it brought me closer to life and living life in a way that felt meaningful to me.
• 2:59
  Speaker: And it really, I mean, it wasn't this like, oh, uh-huh I'm gonna go do this.
• 3:03
  Speaker: It was more of like, I life is short, it's clear, a pandemic can happen at any time.
• 3:10
  Speaker: I wasn't planning for a global pandemic, right?
• 3:12
  Speaker: In my in 2020.
• 3:14
  Speaker: No one really was.
• 3:15
  Speaker: And so it just was, it really was just this small little door opening to say, um, that allowed for this voice to say, girl, you gotta go, you gotta go get after it.
• 3:27
  Speaker: You have to go live like a much fuller life.
• 3:30
  Speaker: I took that door, I I opened it further, and I bought a one-way ticket out to New Mexico, bought a used car out there the first time I bought a car after living in New York City, and literally just started driving around out west.
• 3:44
  Speaker: And from there it's expanded to I now live in my van, I moved to Greece.
• 3:48
  Speaker: Like there's I'm now much more experienced at this, but that was really the the starting point.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's amazing.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: And is this the same vehicle that you called Bessie?
• 3:59
  Speaker: No, this was I had I bought I bought a I bought an SUV first and and his name was Hans.
• 4:06
  Speaker: I've I've since upgraded to Bessie, which is my best.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: That's amazing.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: So, so this artist residency that you are starting in Greece.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: Tell me about scouting locations for it, because you when you thought of this idea, you weren't sure where you're going to set it up.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: Is that correct?
• 4:27
  Speaker: Yeah, I have I've been looking.
• 4:29
  Speaker: So whenever I would travel, I mean, a lot of my solo travel was always ingrained in my solo travel, was always looking at real estate in different places.
• 4:39
  Speaker: So part of my personal like way that I enjoy solo traveling is literally to go look at real estate wherever I go.
• 4:48
  Speaker: Um, and whether that's in Peru, whether that's in Norway, whether that's in the south of France, whether that's in New Mexico, you know, and so I have this after doing that over several years, I now have accumulated a lot of knowledge about different real estate markets, about different visa situations, about, you know, just the mechanics of real estate in different places.
• 5:15
  Speaker: And it allowed me, at the time it was a little frustrating because I was like, am I ever gonna find a home?
• 5:19
  Speaker: You know, like this was years living nomadically.
• 5:21
  Speaker: And then I found this place in Greece and I just knew it was the place because the island, the isle, I mean, I could talk for hours about the land and how alive it is on this island, but it really just resonated with me.
• 5:35
  Speaker: So I decided to make the leap.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: That's incredible.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: You know, I feel like whenever I have traveled, and this is since I was a kid, I always imagine myself living wherever, even if it, you know, it's just a week or a long weekend, how it would be to live there.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: And you extended that into looking at real estate and literally how financially it would be to live wherever you have traveled.
• 6:00
  Speaker: A question that I've asked myself many times is like, why can't my life be the vacation?
• 6:06
  Speaker: Yes.
• 6:07
  Speaker: To me, going on vacation, there's actually like a big sense of grief that would come up because I would miss places.
• 6:14
  Speaker: And the grief, for me, grief is a big motivator because it means that there's a longing, there's a pull.
• 6:20
  Speaker: And I've just chosen to orient my life around those specific pulls.
• 6:26
  Speaker: Right.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: So this nomadic lifestyle, how many years has it lasted?
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: And are you still there or with this purchase in Greece, are you starting to settle into one place?
• 6:37
  Speaker: Yeah, so it's been six years.
• 6:39
  Speaker: So it's been since COVID.
• 6:40
  Speaker: And something that I feel like has really dramatically changed for me is um at least for today, because who knows where the world will be even in six months.
• 6:49
  Speaker: But so I've been living nomadically for the past six years.
• 6:52
  Speaker: And I personally, my view of what does it mean to have a home has really shifted over that period of living nomadically.
• 7:02
  Speaker: So when I grew up, what I was shown and was sold, it was this idea of living in one place, maybe going on some vacations, you know, having kids, putting them into school, staying in a one particular geographical location.
• 7:17
  Speaker: And that was lovely.
• 7:18
  Speaker: But as I started to solo travel and live more nomadically, I just started to question that model and really just tuned into my own interests.
• 7:30
  Speaker: And my interests were I don't want to live in one place 12 months out of the year.
• 7:36
  Speaker: I personally have ADHD and I have no interest in that.
• 7:40
  Speaker: I have no interest in staying in one place for 12 months out of the year.
• 7:43
  Speaker: I really deeply enjoy attuning to natural landscapes in different remote locations, which is why I also live in a van.
• 7:53
  Speaker: But it also I see the really strong value of having community, of having a location that I can call my own, of being able to design that location and like create a certain energy and aesthetic within that space that feels very deeply my own.
• 8:11
  Speaker: And so I feel like a lot of people who do digital nomad or nomadic living ultimately arrive at some, you know, they need someplace to hang their hat.
• 8:21
  Speaker: So for me, it was never about let me find a place for 12 months out of the year.
• 8:25
  Speaker: It was let me find a home that feels grounding to me, that a community and a lifestyle that feels easeful to me, and combine that with continuing to live nomadically.
• 8:38
  Speaker: And I do that between Greece and my van.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: That sounds incredible, Kelly.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: It really does.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: So with the art residency in Greece, what are you hoping to achieve?
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: What do you hope that artists get out of it when they come to visit you?
• 8:53
  Speaker: Sure.
• 8:53
  Speaker: So we already have art residence.
• 8:55
  Speaker: We're fully booked for 2026, which is amazing.
• 8:58
  Speaker: We had over a thousand left art applications, you know, which is incredible.
• 9:03
  Speaker: I personally interviewed over a hundred women from around the world.
• 9:07
  Speaker: And we just had our first resident stay there who is an author.
• 9:11
  Speaker: And so the broader vision for the residency is a few things.
• 9:15
  Speaker: One, it is, I'm a believer personally that female artists and creatives are being called to architect the new world, and that requires an ecological approach as opposed to a hierarchical or a linear approach, which we've currently been living in.
• 9:32
  Speaker: And so, how does that actually take form and shape?
• 9:35
  Speaker: One is that we need to start creating spaces where, for me, I'm focused on women, but where women can feel safe, where they can be in a beautiful space and where they can unfurl into that space to reach different levels of their own creative journey and process.
• 9:55
  Speaker: So, really, it's a container, it's a space with an intention where women can be given the opportunity to create whatever they want to create, as opposed to making like another art launch or just kind of being in the day-to-day grind that we essentially all are in and giving like starting from a place of rest as opposed to just like instant production.
• 10:20
  Speaker: So the overall goal is to like that to me, this is a this is a petri dish.
• 10:26
  Speaker: Like I will create more of these, and I am also teaching other women now how to set up their own residencies in different places around the world to create a global network of these.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: Oh, amazing.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: I love that.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: And as far as the art itself, is it open to all mediums?
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: Like you mentioned, there's an author that is staying.
• 10:47
  Speaker: It's multidisciplinary, and so that means that this year in 2026, we have muralists, we have writers, we have textile artists, we have a watercolorist, so a wide variety of mediums.
• 11:02
  Speaker: And something that I personally communicated to the women who I interviewed was that if they decided to come and grieve and wail by the sea for two weeks, that is also a successful residency.
• 11:16
  Speaker: Because we have to honor, if we want real art, and why do we need real art?
• 11:21
  Speaker: We need real art because it moves people to change.
• 11:25
  Speaker: And if we want real art, we have to honor the parts of the creation cycle that include grief, surrender, dissolution, not only just the production side of things.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: Getting back to the nomadic lifestyle, I'm curious because I I always want to make sure when I host the show, when I talk to people, that I'm not necessarily putting solo travel above traveling with others, with family, with friends, with a partner.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: But there's something about solo travel, it just hits different, it affects you differently.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: Can you imagine having the lifestyle that you've had over the last six years with someone else alongside you?
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: And how would that have been different if someone was with you during this time?
• 12:17
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 12:17
  Speaker: So I I really at the beginning, when I didn't know how to solo travel, I really wanted to travel with other people.
• 12:24
  Speaker: Like I was really trying to think of other ways of like, well, should I set up like women's trips?
• 12:29
  Speaker: Should I, should I convince my boyfriend at the time to go with me?
• 12:33
  Speaker: You know, like none of them panned out, which was fine.
• 12:36
  Speaker: And I'm grateful for that because really what I was, you know, this opportunity to solo travel, ultimately I just kind of got frustrated.
• 12:44
  Speaker: I was like, you know, screw it, I'm just gonna do this myself.
• 12:47
  Speaker: And what a gift that ended up being.
• 12:49
  Speaker: So to answer your question more specifically, traveling with other people is very different.
• 12:53
  Speaker: It has its own joys.
• 12:55
  Speaker: But for me, solo travel is a is an emotional and spiritual and self-attunement experience.
• 13:02
  Speaker: So there's actually like very different intention that comes out of it than going with someone or a collection of people.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: What a beautiful way to put it.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: There was something else that you said in one of your posts that I loved because it it hit right at the heart of what solo travel has meant to me and to the people that I've interviewed.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: You said, I trust my ability to adjust more than my ability to predict.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: And the one thing that I have found in the interviews I've conducted so far is that something is always going to go wrong.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: And unlike trips that you take or travel that you do with others, when you're solo traveling, it's just you.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: It's up to you alone to adjust to whatever goes on and to write yourself to either backtrack or make the best of it or figure out a workaround.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: That that saying, I trust my ability to adjust more than my ability to predict is perfect for travel alone.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: What was your thinking behind that quote when you posted that?
• 14:10
  Speaker: Well, really, it's a it's a life mantra for me now, which is that I think, at least for me, I can get really up in my head and think like if I just make 75 more to-do lists, then somehow I will be more in control of my life.
• 14:26
  Speaker: I will be more on top of it, I will get the things that I want.
• 14:30
  Speaker: And solo travel has taught me, as has my art, and setting up an art residency, is that actually I become the most powerful when I surrender into the unknown, when I am willing to meet the unknown, and I cultivate a relationship with the unknown, the mystery of the unknown.
• 14:48
  Speaker: And to do that, it's almost like a shifting of power.
• 14:52
  Speaker: To be able to inhabit that space, I actually need to drop into trusting myself and my ability to adjust in any given environment, which requires much more presence, which is why it's scary.
• 15:08
  Speaker: Then my ability to predict involves a lot more control.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: Wow, it's very meaningful to me.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: I really, really appreciate your insight into that.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: It speaks to me as I'm this year planning to make some major changes.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: So it really does, it speaks to me a lot.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: And I I think you hosting an art residency is your calling.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: It's really amazing.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: If somebody's listening right now and they're thinking, oh, I've always wanted to do some solo travel.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: I want to roam alone.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: I'm uh I don't know that I can do it.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: What would your advice be to them?
• 15:42
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 15:43
  Speaker: So I, you know, I would look at people on Instagram or I would I even would like message people on Instagram asking them how they would do these things.
• 15:50
  Speaker: And I would kind of just get like short responses, if anything.
• 15:54
  Speaker: And it was like, oh, just go do it.
• 15:56
  Speaker: Just try it, right?
• 15:57
  Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
• 15:59
  Speaker: How?
• 15:59
  Speaker: How do I just try it?
• 16:01
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 16:01
  Speaker: And I'm I never there there was just something that was just unhelpful about that because it's hard to just try it.
• 16:08
  Speaker: Right.
• 16:09
  Speaker: Um and so I did to just acknowledge that that like trying anything new, taking a ceramics class for the first time, going to a martial arts class for the first time, going to a cooking class alone, all of these are forms of engaging with something new, inviting in a beginner's mindset of saying, I don't know, right?
• 16:29
  Speaker: And that's a hard thing for most people to do, and to actually grapple with that of being new at something again, which is really the emotional hurdle that is underlying the like logistical hurdle.
• 16:43
  Speaker: It's the fear of being new at something and not being in control.
• 16:47
  Speaker: Right.
• 16:47
  Speaker: Oh, that's so hard.
• 16:49
  Speaker: It is so hard to give that up.
• 16:50
  Speaker: And what I would say, as with anything of trying something new, whether that's art, whether that's travel, whether that's learning a new skill, is not to just rip off the band-aid and say, just do it.
• 17:02
  Speaker: Like that's just too, that's just too aggressive for me personally.
• 17:06
  Speaker: I like to sit, I like to sit with the feeling and say, okay, girl, like what are we really afraid of?
• 17:12
  Speaker: What's what are we what's the fear?
• 17:14
  Speaker: One of the reasons why I live nomadically is and also in my van and have centered nature in my life is because I do a daily tea ceremony meditation outside every day in different locations.
• 17:25
  Speaker: And in this tea ceremony, I literally put out two cups and I will invite in like an emotion.
• 17:33
  Speaker: And so if I'm afraid of going on a trip, I will invite in that fear in my tea ceremony.
• 17:39
  Speaker: I will literally serve it a cup of tea and I will sit with it.
• 17:43
  Speaker: There will always be some message that comes out.
• 17:45
  Speaker: Here's like some examples that to just be more specific.
• 17:48
  Speaker: It might be like, oh, you're nervous about the transition between the airport to like your Airbnb, or you're nervous about there's some tension about getting to the airport and dealing with all the lines.
• 18:02
  Speaker: You might be nervous about being in a new place and orienting to a new place while being potentially jet lagged, for example.
• 18:10
  Speaker: And so once I sit with those fears and I'm I actually give myself the time to name them, we usually just brush them over.
• 18:19
  Speaker: We just say, oh, get over it.
• 18:20
  Speaker: Just do it.
• 18:21
  Speaker: Right.
• 18:21
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 18:22
  Speaker: It's not helpful because it does not allow for those fears to speak.
• 18:26
  Speaker: And then once you are articulate them, then you can actually say, Oh, okay, that's what I'm fearful about.
• 18:34
  Speaker: Okay, then let me make sure to eat before I go to the airport.
• 18:37
  Speaker: Right.
• 18:37
  Speaker: Like, let me actually specifically address each of them so I can care for myself in the process of doing something new.
• 18:44
  Speaker: Instead of just grit my teeth, just do it, figure it out.
• 18:49
  Speaker: Like, like it's almost like assemble the plane on the way down.
• 18:52
  Speaker: I think it's like crash it.
• 18:53
  Speaker: Exactly.
• 18:54
  Speaker: It really can be these very small personal invitations for care of like, I don't really understand how airline mileage points work.
• 19:02
  Speaker: Okay, let's just spend 15 minutes doing it, like researching it, right?
• 19:06
  Speaker: Most people just kind of brush it aside.
• 19:08
  Speaker: And so what I for me, like my my broader advice is to just sit and listen to what comes up, what fears come up, because they will be personal to you.
• 19:16
  Speaker: And I've taken baby steps before I, you know, I'm a solo woman traveling around in a van alone in the US, in the western United States, where there's like, you know, people have guns, it's not right.
• 19:26
  Speaker: It's like not the safest possible thing I could be doing.
• 19:29
  Speaker: I had a lot of fear around doing this.
• 19:31
  Speaker: And so I worked with that fear over a period of time by taking baby steps.
• 19:37
  Speaker: I rented several vans before I bought this one.
• 19:41
  Speaker: I rented a van in Iceland.
• 19:43
  Speaker: I rent on a group trip.
• 19:44
  Speaker: I rented a van in Norway on a group trip.
• 19:47
  Speaker: I rented a van by myself in Ireland alone for the first time.
• 19:51
  Speaker: And so what I would say is maybe like let's like collectively lower our expectations for how long it takes to actually get comfortable with something.
• 20:00
  Speaker: I see travel as a practice instead of travel as like a, oh, I'm gonna go on this one trip and it's gonna change my life forever, right?
• 20:09
  Speaker: Type of thing.
• 20:10
  Speaker: It's like, no, can I ease into travel as a just like a yoga practice, like a practice in my life that I, that I show up for, I learn from, I don't have the highest expectations and I continue to adjust.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: That's a fantastic way to look at it.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: And even if it's literally something small where you just go to another city two hours away for a weekend alone, that is a way to practice solo travel and to get started for yourself before you make a huge international two-week trip and try to do it that way, or an all-inclusive something where everything's taken care of for you, and you just do one purchase and you stay the one place the whole time.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: It is practicing solo traveling.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: I like that a lot.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: So, what's next for you?
• 21:00
  Speaker: I am in southern Utah doing an art installation out in nature.
• 21:05
  Speaker: That's my van is also my like art studio on wheels.
• 21:09
  Speaker: Um, and I'm an installation artist.
• 21:11
  Speaker: So I do these like very large-scale installations in nature that are also interactive that people can interact with.
• 21:19
  Speaker: I'm in the process of making one now, and then I will be flying back to Greece as my art residency is continuing there.
• 21:26
  Speaker: That's incredible.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: I wish you the best of everything and just some doing some amazing work and helping others with your residency to develop the best in them.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: I hope the best for you.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: And thank you so much for taking time today to talk to me.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: I really do appreciate it.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: Sure thing.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: I'm Teresa Stevens, and this is Roam Alone.