I have been writing this book, in one form or another, for most of my adult life.
Not always consciously. Not always with the intention of turning it into something anyone else would read. But the questions it circles — why do we live the way we live? how much of it did we actually choose? what does it take to find out? — these have been with me for as long as I can remember.
The Nomad: My Journey from Good Girl to a Freer Soul is my attempt to answer them honestly.
It is not a self-help book — even though it shows what finding freedom actually looks like. It is not a success story — even though there is plenty of success in it. It is not a travel book — even though it crosses continents. It is an honest account of what it takes to gradually, imperfectly, become more free.
It begins with a basketball court in Germany and a decision I made at nineteen that I didn’t fully understand at the time. It moves through Silicon Valley, through a publishing company I built and left, through years of deliberate restlessness — and eventually to a small village in Madhya Pradesh, where a skatepark and two rules changed far more than I had bargained for.
What runs through all of it is a single thread: the slow, sometimes painful, often surprising process of distinguishing between the life I had inherited and the life that was actually mine.
This is my version — not a publisher’s version. Mine, as it stands, right now.
It is available on Amazon. I’ve added the link below. If you’re outside Germany, search The Nomad Ulrike Reinhard on your local Amazon site. Click on the pisture below and you end up on amazon.de
I’d love to know what it brings up for you.
— u*