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As an American, I was pretty much born with the state of mind that distance is relative. Now, as a partially handicapped ex-pat in a country 1/16 the size of the US, I am confronting distance head-on on a daily basis.

As a child in the states, it was virtually impossible to travel any further than my own neighborhood - and even that stretched farther than I could possibly imagine. A bicycle got me downhill to the local mall, but nine times out of ten I had to get a lift back up. As a kid, distance was an obstacle.

When I moved to Holland as a pre-teen, I was grateful for the flat landscape, the separate bicycle paths and the fact that you could travel across the country in a matter of hours. I found myself reaching beyond the boundries of my independence and flourished. Distance was no longer an obstacle for me, it wasn't even a speed bump.

As I grew older in the city, it never even occurred to me to get a driver's license. Wherever I lived was minutes away from a train station, and the costs of owning a car, let alone filling it up with gas or parking it anywhere, were above and beyond my means. My preferred mode of transport was the train and my own two high-heel-clad feet.

Perhaps I was too sure of myself and my own mobility when the accident happened. I was walking on a crosswalk in downtown Rotterdam when I got hit by a car. The driver was speeding through a red light when his bumper collided with my unsuspecting knee, leaving me with a cronic disability and mental trauma. Suddenly I found myself trapped in a wheelchair in the confines of my own house where the distance between the living room and the kitchen was virtually insurmountable. Distance was no longer an obstacle, it was Mt. Everest.

That was when my husband and I decided to flee from the concrete jungle to the south of Holland. Without any form of public transportation and lacking the ability to ride a bicycle, I experienced an entirely new form of social isolation. The scary thing was, I was subconsciously maintaining it. It took years to conquer the trauma and release myself from the prison I had created for myself; in fact, I still have to conquer it a little bit every day. Slowly but surely, I was preparing myself for yet another battle against distance.

Despite the fact that I was suffering from a deep-rooted psychological trauma at the time, I managed to get my driver's license at the age of 28. With a car and the ability to drive it, I found myself facing distance head-on once again. Freedom to me is a full tank of gas. Independence is a handicapped parking card. Distance has become relative, again. Finally.