𝗙𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗦𝗼𝘂𝘁𝗵 𝗔𝗳𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗮 𝘁𝗼 𝗜𝗿𝗲𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗱: 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗠𝗼𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗖𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗱 𝗠𝘆 𝗙𝗮𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗠𝘆 𝗙𝗶𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻

We didn’t just change countries. We changed everything.

When my family immigrated from South Africa to Ireland, we left behind comfort, familiarity, and deep roots. We traded known roads for winding ones, sunshine for Irish rain, and our old rhythms for a thousand tiny unknowns.

It was disorienting, humbling, and holy.

In that space, I found myself asking questions I thought I’d already settled. About who I was. About what I believed. About whether I still knew how to hear God.

The homesickness didn’t just live in my body—it seeped into my creativity. I couldn’t write the way I used to. I was grieving in ways I didn’t know how to name.

But slowly, God began to rebuild something new.

I started writing Where the Lion Roars not as an answer, but as a prayer. A way to process grief and faith and mystery. A way to remember South Africa through the eyes of a character who, like me, was trying to make sense of the ache inside her.

That book holds my journey between two continents. It holds Asja-Rose’s grief, but it also holds mine.

Immigration changed my writing because it changed me. I learned to find God in the unfamiliar. To write without knowing what came next. To trust that even when everything feels uprooted, the roots of faith go deeper still.

So if you’re walking through transition—physical, emotional, spiritual—know this: God travels with you. And He writes new stories in the places you never planned to go.