Write Your Story In Reverse

The alarm didn’t go off on Jan. 1, 2019. For the first time in more than a decade, I had nowhere to be and no title to go by. I was “just Casey.” Not “Casey Roman, WECT News, Wilmington.” Not “Casey Roman, Edward R. Morrow award-winning investigative journalist.”

I was “just Casey.” And “just Casey” didn’t seem worth getting out of bed for.

Parked outside was a white, windowless cargo van with something of a half-baked tiny home inside. I had bought it a few weeks previously as an escape vehicle.

After my career abruptly ended, I needed to disappear from Wilmington long enough that everyone would forget I had ever been their TV news lady. More importantly, I needed that cargo van to run away from myself. The loss of all my life’s blueprints had made my world shadowy. After a few close calls, I knew if I stayed stagnant, I wouldn’t be alive much longer.

We expect the new year to give us a sense of renewal and celebration, but often we get what we need, not what we want. In 2019, my new year came with a series of necessary endings that would ultimately teach me that you can’t have a comeback without a setback. 

In a matter of months my gorgeous downtown Queen Anne home brimming with niceties was whittled down to what could fit inside the 60-square-foot cargo van. I had cobbled together a makeshift kitchen, bed, pull-down desk and “closet.”

I told myself I wouldn’t need much. I was only leaving for three weeks — the specific amount of time I was willing to give Wilmington to forget the old me and for the burden of depression to show itself the door.

I made it as far as Georgetown, South Carolina, my first day, tucked between tractor-trailers in a Walmart parking lot. It became one of many overnight sleeping spots. All my worries about losing my house, my income, and my relevancy quickly faded into the rearview mirror, replaced by concerns over where to shower, sleep, and find a hot meal each night. 

It sounds miserable. Truthfully, it was wonderful. 

With nowhere to be and without a reputation to uphold, I naturally gravitated toward what drew me to journalism in the first place: telling stories. In whatever small town I stumbled into I held up my GoPro and told the story of the people and places along the backroads.

No makeup, hair knotted atop my head, my presentation would horrify any corporate news consultant. And yet whoever “just Casey” was quickly grew a little YouTube channel from a few subscribers to tens of thousands. Without realizing it, I had created my own little TV show with an audience that now stretched across the globe. Even more surprising, it quickly replaced my W-2 income. 

More than 12,000 miles and months later I had wandered throughout the swamps of the Gulf Coast, up through the Midwest plains, into the Rust Belt, north to Maine, and back south to Wilmington. I had become completely feral, proudly walking into a Walmart or truck stop bathroom each morning in flip-flops and a Tinkerbell bathrobe to brush my teeth. 

I had outrun tornadoes in Texas, helped birth a baby bull in New York, and crawled into an abandoned church in the “Murder Capital of the U.S.” where I helped shoot a rap video. In Indiana I learned how to turn grain into flour on a century-old gristmill stone. I tried to catch a moose in Maine. I learned how to drill for oil on a rig in Louisiana.

Mostly, I learned how to live again, and in the process saved my own life by keeping my eyes on the horizon.

That journey became a book, Looking Up, published November 2023. It’s the story I needed to hear years ago when my world was falling apart and I craved reassurance that there was something more around the next blind curve.

If your 2025 comes with more worry than jubilation, what is the necessary ending or hard reset that could lead to your own big adventure? 

Write your story in reverse.

Go a few years ahead and look back to today.

What decision will you be so proud of yourself for having made right now?

What story about how you lived this year will you beam with pride to tell?

Today I own a real estate brokerage and travel for speaking engagements about the book. Both often require fancy high heels and makeup — a far cry from just a few years ago.

While I’m proud of my big comeback, the biggest blessing was the setback that made it possible.

Don’t avoid life’s detours. They’re often the scenic route.