Small island, big water.
I grew up in Alberta, Canada, in a small city called Life Bridge.
I'm one of five kids, I'm in the middle.
I went to school, came home, watched TV, played soccer.
I was always interested in going somewhere far away,
so I liked the idea of traveling and seeing other places.
Immediately, after I graduated high school, I spent a year in Germany.
I could see that I didn't have to be who I was expected to be, but I can be who I wanted to be and to explore.
My husband and I met in Taiwan.
We both wanted to travel and see the world.
I became pregnant, during my pregnancy, we lived in Alaska and Florida and Canada,
and then ended up giving birth to Milo in Key West.
From the first moment Key West was really magical, it could be an ending or beginning.
We bought our first boat for $500 we were out in the ocean and I could see this bird,
swimming in the water beautifully and gracefully. It had a magic to it.
When I was pregnant, I imagine this person, who could speak three languages,
and who didn't necessarily go and sit in a classroom every day, but learned through their environment.
everything that they needed to know. I dreamt of him like a mermaid.
I wanted him to be intelligent, but intelligent in the world, on this earth,
intelligent with people he met and non-judgmental. By nature, I think, he's going to be a resilient person.
It's a beautiful place. The mangrove islands are so incredible.
It's like the beginning of life for most of the sea life, the fish are laying their eggs
and that's where the fish are born and then they grow up and they move about into the ocean.
There's tunnels that you can paddle through, and you don't expect to see that in the middle of the ocean.
It's important for me to live in nature and have it be about daily part of my life.
I'm doing it for me, and now I have a child, and I'm doing it for him as well.
Seeing Key West from the sky and the water that I am on every day,
you get a sense of how precarious we are on the Earth ,
and you wonder how it's still there, through all those hurricanes, because it's so tiny and water all around it.
It's a small island, big water.