A brief overview of adulthood…

After graduating college and commissioning into the US Army Reserve, Sydney moved across the world to Germany to work as an Au Pair for a family in Munich. She began learning German and had her first real taste of both European and big-city living. Her first solo trip after arriving was to Salzburg, which opened the doors to a newfound feeling of freedom and connection that she had not accessed so readily before. While on a military training exercise in Zaragoza in 2015, she fell in love with Spain and began brainstorming ways to live there. The following year she landed a communications internship in Madrid, before relocating more permanently to Spain that Fall. That same year, she taught waterskiing at a girls’ summer camp in Maine, hiked the Tour du Mont Blanc, was back and forth to Germany for military duties, camped out in Raeford, NC for a month while getting her skydiving A license — all whilst waiting for her Spanish visa to arrive before moving to La Rioja to teach English. 2016 was a wild year chock full of new experiences, places and continual movement.

In the summer of 2017, she walked out of her front door onto the Camino de Santiago and kept walking ‘til she hit ocean (with a brief bus detour back to Logroño after etapa uno to heal blisters and buy new shoes). This was the catalyst for the next chapter of life that peeled the veils back enough to expose new truths and new awareness, and from which a new reality began to unfold... It became evident that despite the security, stability and community it provided, working for the military was no longer aligned with the path she was walking. It would take a few more years before she was able to fully resign.

Then, in early 2018, Sydney became sick with a mystery illness that ultimately determined an abrupt move back to the states. Healing took her on a winding path to study yoga, connect deeply with nature as a source of medicine, learn to stand behind her own reality unapologetically and begin to understand the mind-body-earth-spirit connection. She learned how to surrender into circumstances she never would have chosen, how to trust the body’s intelligence, find patience in the pain, and how to value her sensitivity and intuition as the true super powers they are. Simultaneously she began to take her love for writing more seriously, understanding it to be an integral part of her journey, both personally and professionally. As her physical health began to strengthen, she tested the waters by traveling solo again, this time out west across her home country in her trusty ‘96 Rav 4, Lyla, camping and living nomadically for over a year in 2022-23. She wrote a book about the journey of coming home to self, crowdfunded the printing and self published in 2024, and has since sold over 200 first edition copies.

Sydney has performed her poetry at open mics and on featured platforms across the US, in Mexico and on multiple stages throughout Scotland. In addition to Golden Threads, her poems have also been published in several online and print journals including Carolina Muse Literary & Arts Magazine, Sunday Mornings at the River and Wild Roof Journal. In addition to writing and exploring, Sydney works as Communications and Marketing Director for an Eco-Events & Lodging Venue in North Carolina. Her books are sold online exclusively at sydneycrutch.art and in a few select shops in North Carolina, Nevada and Edinburgh, UK.