The World Is My Mirror

What if the path forward meant stepping into the unknown, again and again?

At forty-three, Riza Rasco walked away from a career in science when her life fractured under the weight of infertility, burnout, the deaths of loved ones, the breakdown of marriage, and depression. What began as a nine-month overland journey across Africa deepened into a decade-long odyssey through every country in the world.

From war zones and remote villages to sacred rituals and tribal dances, Riza maps both the landscapes she crossed and the inner terrain of grief, healing, endurance, and transformation. Each place, each culture, each encounter reflected fragments of herself back to her, until what had been broken slowly reassembled into a life grounded in resilience, empathy, and purpose.

It is a story of detours and setbacks, of breaking apart and choosing, again and again, to keep moving. Reinvention, she learned, grows slowly through attention, through presence, and through the willingness to let change take root.

This is not just a travel memoir. The World Is My Mirror is a meditation on courage and what it means to keep going when the map disappears. For anyone standing at a crossroads, it offers both a companion and an invitation to begin again.