Meet Erica Hoff

We recently connected with Erica Hoff and have shared our conversation below.

Erica, sincerely appreciate your selflessness in agreeing to discuss your mental health journey and how you overcame and persisted despite the challenges. Please share with our readers how you overcame. For readers, please note this is not medical advice, we are not doctors, you should always consult professionals for advice and that this is merely one person sharing their story and experience.
This is a tough one. If I’m being completely honest here, 2022 was the hardest year of my life. Mental health is so important and many of us take it for granted. I’ve always struggled with mental health, but constantly being busy in life helped me not think about it too much. However, 2022 didn’t give me the chance to distract myself with my issues. In fact, my issues became amplified, and it affected my home life, my work, and my self worth. It got to a point where I couldn’t handle it anymore. The only things that kept me going were my family/friends, traveling, and God. I had lost sight of who I was and where I was going. I burnt myself out completely and needed professional help to move forward. My family and friends really carried me out of the dark place and helped me stand up little by little to where I am now. With the help of my therapist, I realized that not only do I loved to travel, but it helped me realize that for myself, traveling was a form of self care. Traveling is my favorite hobby and gives me something to look forward to. Most people think traveling is all fun and games. However, for me, traveling is much more than that. Traveling gives me a sense of freedom, happiness, and helps me persist despite the challenges I face with my mental health. I hope that someone out there reading this knows that it is not always dark and maybe traveling can help them too.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I create itineraries for all kinds of trips that help get you out of office. If you look on the internet, most travel bloggers will list “things to do” but then you need to do research on where to stay, where to eat, what to do, etc. Then you also have to make sure that the items you do are in a certain order that makes sense to make the most of your time out of office. I know how time consuming and even stressful it can be to plan a trip and feel like many people decide not to travel because they don’t want to deal with the hassle. That is why I decided to share my itineraries with others, so they too can take the fun trips and not have to do any of the research. All they have to do is pick a place, and go! I give honest reviews and share the mistakes we made so that you do not have to make the same mistakes. I do them all with a realistic budget in mind.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Looking back, I think that the qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in my journey of becoming a travel blogger are my empathy, and love for travel. As a mom and full time working professional, I understand how hard and tiring it is to travel. There is so much planning that is involved, scheduling, money, and time. I empathize with those who state that they simply do not have time or money to travel because I know how difficult it is to do so. Life gets in the way. I also empathize with those around me where I go, the people from the place where I am visiting, or employees. I always treat others the best I can, and this has served me well because for the most part I enjoy my travels. I am curious to see what is out there. I yearn to see the beauty God created in nature and to try all the food around the world. I think that these two are important because they have helped me get to where I am now.

How can folks who want to work with you connect?
I am constantly reaching out to companies and cities to collaborate with. I try to find travel destinations that include nature and great food. I love to create itineraries for trips and then share our experiences with everyone so they too can get out of office and explore the world. I try to vary the types of trips so that there is something that everyone can like – weekend trips, road trips, weeklong trips, trips with kids, romantic trips, or even trips with friends – ALL kinds. I would love to connect with more companies or cities to create even more itineraries to guide visitors towards these places. If you are a company or brand that is looking for micro influencers or a content creator to collaborate with, I can be reached at my email address: withloveerica.travel@gmail.com

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