Why NOT!

Why Italy? I get asked this question by my clients, as well as my Italian friends, and my answer is always the same in English or Italian? Why NOT? (Perchè no?)

My name is Susie Macklem, and I’m your personal travel coach to Italy. I work with people that dream about traveling to Italy, but really have no idea how to get started. I was the same way, before I decided it was time to stop dreaming and start traveling!

I grew up in a small town in Nebraska, and my only friends where my brothers, sisters, and my animals. My mom likes to tell a story from when I was young – one day, she found me lying on the back of one of the horses just sleeping, arms and legs swinging back and forth and the horse wandering through the pasture. My parents lectured me on how unsafe it was to be on a horse without any control, explaining what could happen to me if the horse got spooked. These lectures continued through out my life. To be honest, I still get a lecture now and then from my folks. As luck would have it, I did not get hurt on my horses as a young child, and it wasn’t until I was a teenager with side job training young horses for me to get bucked off and hit the ground pretty hard. I’m a very fortunate person in that I’ve always kept the ability to trust and believe that things will work out. I’ve embraced the saying, “When you get bucked off, you get up, dust off, get back in the saddle, and keep moving forward.” It became my strategy throughout the rest of my life choices.

When I was in my twenties, I started a family. I have two daughters, and as most of us know, it is not easy being a parent. The philosophy of making mistakes but getting back in the saddle and keep moving forward became my mantra. I am very proud of my daughters (both are now married with great jobs and good husbands, and I am also a grandmother)!

The years flew by, and before I knew it, both my daughters left for college. I found myself in South Dakota, living alone for the first time in my life with only my dogs and horses for company. I had never really traveled much. I was a country girl through and through, and I didn’t even see the ocean until I was in my thirties! When you grow up on a farm, you may get to the city once in a while, but who feeds the animals if you’re gone? Vacations were for city folks, according to everyone I knew growing up. But it was time to see the world – I decided to take a trip to Italy with a friend.

The experience of getting on a plane for ten hours and traveling to a country I’ve never been to before and where I did not know the language was a bit scary for me. With some apprehension, I saddled up and got on the plane with my passport in one hand and some strange-looking money called euros in the other. Needless to say, this trip to Italy changed my life in more ways than I can count. I came home with a new perspective on my life and the way I wanted to live it. I had no idea that the world was so big and so magnificent! I thought, “I don’t have enough horses to saddle up and ride the entire world!” In that moment, I made the decision to travel and change my life.

Changing my life started with a dream that turned into a plan – I just needed to find the courage to do it! I had a bakery business, two kids in college, eight horses and a farmhouse in South Dakota. How do you make a dream come to life? Have the courage to saddle up and head out on the adventure. You may get bucked off a time or two, but you dust yourself off, get back in the saddle, and keep moving forward. I started selling everything, slowly changing my direction away from being a bakery owner, horse rider, and midwesterner and towards Italy. My daughters helped encourage me, too, telling me,“Go Mom! We are living our lives, and if you want this just go do it!” So I saddled up my proverbial horse once again, stopped dreaming, and started doing. Today, I’ve lived in Italy for over nine years. There have been ups and downs, but I kept getting back in the saddle and moving forward. Learning the language is still challenging, but now I can ask for things, talk on the phone, have conversations with my neighbors, and play tennis. I still make mistakes, but that is all part of the process, and I’ve come a long way. I’ve gone from only knowing “ciao” to being part of my community in Italy. I am humbled every day by these experiences, but also proud of the person I have become in a country that has accepted me and has allowed me to continue to grow and change.

If you are reading this, it means that you may have a dream just like me maybe not to live in Italy but to make a visit. It’s time to saddle up with me and ride into the adventure of a lifetime. Let me show you the treasures of my experiences here in the country I call home. As they say in Italy – “perchè no (why not)?”