Lisa woke up every day with an unparalleled sense of adventure and spice for life. She was kind in all the right ways, in all the ways that mattered. Even when she was a teenager, she never felt the need to alienate others the way most girls her age would. She was friendly, creative, caring, and smart, and she had a way about her for making people feel heard and accepted.

All her life, people thought she’d go on to do something big, and they weren’t afraid to tell her so. As a child, she’d lay in her bed night after night, not counting sheep, but looking out, beyond her bedroom window and imagining what her big girl life would be. Would she save cats from trees? Maybe. Would she teach unteachable children like the ones she went to school with? Maybe. Would she be a world-famous singer, strutting her stuff on the stage for all to see? Maybe. But maybe she could be more. As a little girl, she didn’t yet know what that more could be, but it excited her to know that there could be more, that there could be something even bigger than what her young mind could imagine.

As she got older, the concept of bigness became crushing. She learned about Mother Teresa, Jane Addams, Rachel Carson, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Marie Curie and wondered how a great woman was made and whether she had any of that makeup in her. She wondered what people saw in her and what they could possibly mean by ‘big things,’ to her, the advances by these notable women were truly ‘big things’ and she just couldn’t compare.

So where did that leave her she saw that it could only go one of two ways: she could be crushed by the big acts of the women who came before her, or she could live her life in the most genuine and kind way possible. She chose to go with the latter option because it seemed healthier in the long run, mind, body, and soul.

She graduated from high school and attended Vassar, studying sociology and literature. She made it through in the way that most young women her age did. She studied hard, worked hard, and loved her new friends in a way that could only be described as hard—it was fierce, biting, and unconditional all at the same time.

She became the kind of person that people sought out for comfort. On any given day, her room would occupy herself and a crying freshman, or an angry sophomore, or a confused junior, or even a frightened senior. She was able to listen calmly and offer new perspectives and advice delivered so gently that her words would caress a friend’s tear-stained cheek before wrapping her up in a consoling hug. Lisa helped friends through break ups, bad grades, scary home environments, parental divorce, death, and fear for the future.

If her words weren’t enough, then they’d go out into the wilderness. They’d hike, swim, camp, and just enjoy each other in the open air of the world. She practiced yoga on mountain ledges, she played hide-and-seek in the woods, and she let her friends—no, sisters—lay their heads in her lap or on her shoulders as they watched the clouds float by humming softly under their breath. She radiated love and everyone still said she’d be something big someday, that she was something big in the making.

Toward the end of her academic career, she no longer felt crushed by that sentiment; she welcomed it. She was ready to go out into the world and make a name for herself. She packed her bags and “set out for the territories,” as she put it. She told her family that the sun sets in the West and so would she. For an East Coaster, the idea of the wild west was very alive in her mind, and she relished the chance of playing a part in taming it.

Maybe that would be her something big.

It was a silly notion, she knew. She knew the wild west days were long-gone, but there was something buzzing in the atmosphere that clicked with the buzzing inside of her and she just knew it was where she needed to be.

She settled down in Portland, Oregon, with the promise that she’d be in a place that kept her weird. She began working for an advertising agency and she found her people. She was able to flex her creative muscles at work and once she got home every night, she squeezed out those juices to keep that creativity flowing. She painted. She took photographs. Wrote poetry. Sang. Laughed. Danced.

She made friends and she fell in true, deep love. She found her kindred spirits. She went on weekend adventures in the wilderness of Oregon, Washington, and even Alaska. She lived for what the weekends would bring, what people she’d run into, and which lives would touch her own an in unalterable way.

After three years, though, she craved something more. She felt unsettled, but couldn’t put a finger on what was causing that feeling. She knew it was time to move on, deep in her heart. She wanted to stay, but she felt she owed it to herself to see what was next. She could always go back home if she needed to.

She sat bolt upright in her bed one morning. The idea had come to her in unconscious awakening. She wanted to see the country. She wanted to meet new people. More importantly, she wanted to talk to people who had been overlooked by society.

She decided to travel around the country by train like Jack Kerouac. She quit her job. She said so long to her beloved friends.

She set out to see the big wide world two months ago. In her first week alone, she met extraordinary people like Jackson the parentless young man who was trying to find himself while he strummed on his ukulele, or like Marguerite the octogenarian who fell in love with documenting life on the open road and carries around a trunk of leather bound journals filled with her travels.

That gave Lisa another idea. She got a journal of her own, removed her earbuds, and began talking to strangers on the train, in the towns she stopped at, and upon the trails she hiked.

She gave a voice and a platform to these otherwise ignored and downtrodden people during her travels. They felt validated as human beings, no longer considered urchins. Their lives so very different and sometimes so the same to her own, touched her in immeasurable ways, making her stronger and kinder than ever before.

So there it is. Her something big. And she doesn’t even realize she’s doing it.