Tomorrow my family moves to a new home on the other side of the city. We've known for months that this was coming. We've been preparing for it for some time, for most of the last year, actually. The last time we moved we covered 6 states in 4.5 days and logged 2,365 miles pulling a trailer behind our small car. We had no place to live upon arrival and all our things went into storage for a few weeks while we looked for jobs and a new home. Everything had to be carefully packed and loaded for cross-country travel and storage.
Packing to move across town has been much simpler. Things are more lightly wrapped, more casually boxed and labeled. We know exactly where we're moving this time and have a home waiting for us. Being small-space dwellers, we don't have tons of stuff, so it won't take us too long to unpack and items won't languish in boxes for too long after our arrival. It all seems pretty simple and straightforward.
Then, two days ago I was hit with complete and total overwhelm about the move. Despite careful planning and all the feelings of excitement and hope for the future, despite all of the packing I started well in advance, and despite seeing how relatively little left there is to do in the last days before the move, I felt myself completely shut down. I couldn't find any energy, will, or excitement for these final couple of days. I spent yesterday despondent and depressed and on the verge of tears. I tried writing about it and the words wouldn't come. I tried finishing up some written correspondence to friends and family and didn't have any words there either. I couldn't get myself to focus even on non-moving related tasks.
Given the relative simplicity of this move compared to our last, I was surprised by my sudden overwhelm and at a loss about my total shut down. A well-timed text from a friend to check in on how the move was going led to my receiving a song from him about moving, his favorite song for such seasons of transition. As I listened to it, I was finally able to cry and I first began to realize the unrecognized grief that I was carrying. Still, though, I stayed largely shut down for the remainder of the day, unable to engage in anything productively.
When Benjamin came home that evening and asked me about my day, I told him about all of my feelings of overwhelm with the move. I expressed stress and was tearful, but it wasn't until I tried to put words to my grief, to explain to him what I'd been surprised to discover earlier in the day, that I was rendered temporarily speechless. Finally creating the space to acknowledge it, to speak it aloud for the first time, allowed the grief to well up in me with surprising force. It ebbed up so fully in me that I at first couldn't find the words, and when I did, I realized I was heartbroken and I sobbed openly.
I felt the depth of loss at leaving our community. I love our neighborhood and in all of my past hopes for the future, I hadn't planned on leaving it. Circumstances changed over the last year and a move across town became beneficial for many reasons, and I was on board with it and even looking forward to it. But I didn't realize that through all the planning and hope for the future and the surface-acceptance that I was coming to about leaving our neighborhood, that there was a deep, unacknowledged grief about leaving it too.
We moved to Seattle almost 6 years ago. We've lived in the same home, in the same neighborhood since our arrival. It was the neighborhood that I dreamed of living in upon our arrival and the only one that we looked for jobs and housing in. It takes me a while to settle into a new apartment. There's always a prolonged season for me of feeling like it's someone else's space. It took me about 4 years to fully settle into this space and only in the last year or two have I felt completely settled into it, like it is truly my space and my home. It nurtured me through a season of crippling anxiety and overwork and the accompanying periods of restoration and healing. It's my very own, cozy and personalized safe space amongst the busyness of the city whether I'm having a good day or a challenging one.
Pepper was a youthful 5 when we moved here. Now he's a full-fledged senior. We've watched him slow down some. He sleeps more and snuggles more. We've been through not-so-scary and really scary health challenges with him and have finally found a team of healthcare professionals that are perfect for him. This November he turns 11. We've walked him up and down the hills of this neighborhood, through its tree-lined streets. He's been shopping with us at the local pet-store in the valley behind our home, just a short walk away. Our neighborhood is filled with lovely parks from small pocket parks to the vast, expansive and gorgeous Arboretum. We've enjoyed time with him in these green spaces.
I know the plants and how they reflect the seasons. The bright, cheerful camellia bushes in front of our building are always one of the first lovely arrivals of Spring. There is a cherry tree down the street that bursts forth in fullness with so many blooms that it seems like something out of the most wonderful of dreams. I find that tree enchanting. There are tulips and daffodils and hyacinths. There are bright green leaves all summer long shifting into the gorgeous colors of autumn. I've seen our neighborhood in the wetness of a cold winter and the mossy warmer wetness of spring. I've delighted in seeing it completely transformed under the cover of snow. I've stood on the balcony behind our building which looks out across the entire valley, across the lake, and on into the Cascade mountain range. I've seen the sun rise over the valley, I've watched fog hang low over it, I've watched tiny fireworks bursting with color all along the other side of the lake as each of the smaller towns put on their annual fireworks show. I have loved watching the seasons change in the valley.
Tomorrow morning we load up the truck and move to a new home. We will find places to tuck and store all of our belongings and adjust to those new habits and routines. The new neighborhood will have its own loveliness and relationship to offer. We will be just across the street from a lovely park and botanical garden and very close to two of the largest and loveliest parks in the city. The neighborhood is more bikeable and I can't wait to reintegrate my back back into my life again for errands and for pleasure.
But for now, I want to sit with the grief and sorrow of all that I will miss. It is only by fully feeling grief that we move through it. So I'm finding ways today, and in the coming days, to process this loss and acknowledge what it means to me. I know what to do with grief: to ask for help and support, to treat myself with patience and compassion, and to find ways to engage with it and process it and move through it. Grief is an unstoppable force, there are no shortcuts. I just hadn't realized it was inside of me until it quieted me enough so that I could hear it speak.
