In 2010, I graduated high school and moved out of my family home to go to college. That same year, my mom and step dad divorced, the downstream consequences of which would cause us to lose that family home in foreclosure. In the thirteen years that have transpired since, I have moved 22 times.
Ranging from cross-country, fingers-crossed, border-crossing-during-a-pandemic to, “well, that didn’t work out, I guess I’ll have to move home again,” and not at all including the many places where I temporarily stayed while on the move: hotels, AirBnBs, friend’s houses, a 15-foot camper I towed behind my car, and once, a completely vacant rental property owned by my mom’s boyfriend, where I dragged a single mattress into the corner of an empty room on the second floor and wasted away for a few weeks after a bout of severe burnout.
All of this moving around has mostly felt beneficial: I have usually felt I was moving toward something of consequence. When it wasn’t as specifically intentional, it still often felt like a purposeful groping around, taking handfuls of life and letting the grains slip back through my fingers to see what treasures might be left behind in my ready palms. Once or twice I’d heard someone mention that I was “running away” from something, and I politely dismissed it because I couldn’t feel it in my body - it simply didn’t feel true to me.
The onset of covid-19 saw me moving suddenly across country lines, leaving behind anywhere I’d ever called home in search of something lasting. In the 3 years since, I have driven my little SUV from Colorado to Toronto (and back) five separate times, each 1,500 mile journey taking 3-5 days of all-day-driving.
My therapist told me unceremoniously that I was “energetically split” between the two places, and my resolve to reconnect those partially-severed halves is heavy on my mind as the new year begins. Yet even after I’d made the decision to “move back,” I still spent another 6 straight months in Canada before I was ready to get real with myself.
While exploring the concept of “home” during poetry month this year, I wrote the following couple of lines as a part of this poem, which come to mind as I set my intentions for the new year:
I get a funny look when I say I want
Less, and
I do
I want so much less of all of this, to make room
As I prepared to settle down for the first time since… when was it again? I got to thinking about all of the many places I have been in the past decade and some change. Meditating on “home” was part of the work I needed to do to realize that in fact I had been running from something - the reality that I needed a home, and didn’t have one.
Every place I tried to carve out for myself was ill-fitting, every new town wasn’t quite right, jobs didn’t suit me and relationships weren’t made to fill in these kinds of holes in the self, so I’d shove off and keep searching. Every unturned stone allowed me to hold out hope for a sense of home that was out there, that I just hadn’t discovered yet. I believed, quietly in some locked-away part of me, that starting over gave me a better chance of feeling “at home,” than staying put did.
This past year, I bought my own home. I used my own money, hired my own agent, made an offer and closed with a new mortgage that had only my name on it. In order to accomplish this, I moved two hours outside of the city to a small town where I could afford a home but didn’t know anyone; I did it almost completely in secret - I wasn’t interested in anyone’s opinions.
I’d made up my mind to stop the constant movement, to repair the energetic divide, to create some stability and permanence for myself. I had a real sense that something had been lost in all the commotion, even if I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what it was.
Months passed, and I began to see that even buying my home hadn’t settled me. To get to the place of grounded-ness I so badly wanted, I’d need to commit myself even more fully to the experience. Each year I make a practice of choosing a few words as touchstones for how I’d like my year to go, and for 2024 two of my words are ROOTS and LESS.
ROOTS
I aim to be here. To root down. To breathe deeply into my little life in my little home on the plains, and exhale the persistent urge to flee or shed it in search of something shinier, something as of yet unknown.
LESS
I aim to do LESS. To say, “no",” more often. I aim to HAVE less; to be willing to part with more of worldly possessions in search of something greater.
After a recent trip to obtain a library card at my local library (a right of passage, a way of announcing to myself my intention to stay put) I stumbled upon a copy of the book The Year of Less by Cait Flanders. It’s been previously recommended to me, so I brought it home and started to devour it eagerly, hoping to glean from it something I could use to steady myself for the terrain ahead. Early on in the book, which chronicles the author’s year without shopping, she mentions that she kept herself accountable on her blog. I thought to myself… hey, I have one of those!
As I reflect on the journey of constant movement that has brought me to this point, I find myself on the precipice of something profound - the ability to realize an intention I’ve long been neglecting. The search for "home" has been a winding road, marked by countless temporary stops, yet in this new chapter, I've taken a decisive step towards grounding myself. This new home, a space solely mine, is a monumental stride towards an anchoring. Still, it’s become clear that this commitment requires more than physical presence; it calls for a deliberate immersion into the nature of rootedness.
At the center of my aspirations for this year, the threads of "ROOTS" and "LESS" intertwine as guiding principles. To root down, to breathe deeply into the simplicity of my life here, and to embrace the power of "less"—of saying no more often, of shedding possessions in search of deeper purpose.
Stumbling upon Cait Flanders' The Year of Less helped me see the potency of accountability through shared expression. What better space than my own blog to share this journey?
While future plans beckon, with one more adventure mapped out, my focus remains on nurturing the roots I’ve begun to cultivate in my little green house, in my small sweet town. One more brief departure before I’ll return to the warm hug of being home, basking in the joys of reading, writing, and simply being. And I’m not so easily fooled as to believe I can come to a crashing halt without consequences, which is why another of my guiding words for 2024 is PERSIST - a reminder that this kind of change brings grief, that even as I strive toward the life I want, I will suffer to live in new ways.
So here’s to the next chapter of embracing stillness, nurturing roots, and finding abundance in the simplicity of a life less encumbered. Thank you for joining me on this voyage; the best chapters are yet to be written.
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