CHAPTER 2, POST 1 ▫️ 685 days

One year, ten months, and seventeen days. 

That’s how long it’s been since my last post. I can’t believe how time has flown! 

I am happy to report that there are no more packed boxes everywhere, that Ashton and I are settled into our house in Cloverdale, and that we are finding our way through this new chapter in our lives. All along the way, I’ve been longing to get back to my blog and share stories, experiences, and lessons learned. But here we are, one year, ten months, and seventeen days later. 

In my last post, I declared myself “off-road” as I looked ahead to a time of change. The next leg of the journey would be through uncharted territory, full of adventure and potential and promise. What I didn’t take into consideration is that making new roads is serious work, and that I would have to be ready for obstacles that would need to be removed or negotiated. 

Here are three road blocks I’ve run into so far:

Losing my focus. Ironically, my goal for 2019 was to be more focused. I think I set that goal after realizing that during 2018, I was extremely unfocused. We changed a lot of things in our lives all at once, which seems to be the way we do things as a couple—I mean, hey! If you’re going to change one thing, why not just change everything, right now? I often felt like that little boy in one of my childhood story books that was trying to stop up leaks in a Dutch dike with his finger, but as soon as he plugged up one hole, another one popped open, and soon there were more holes than he had fingers. My attention span is more limited than a small Dutch boy’s ability to stop the inevitable force of water pushing its way through a weakened straw dike, so you can fill in the mental picture from there. (If you’re now imagining me looking up at two ten-foot ocean waves converging over my head from opposing directions, you’re very close to understanding how I felt.) 

Losing my voice. Not my literal voice, but my literary voice. I had worked so hard to rediscover it back when I started this blog at the end of 2017, and I used it to help me find my way along a journey that I knew would be hard but was absolutely necessary. Then, after my last post, I had a sense of closure, a feeling that I had said everything I needed to say. Why force anything else? It’s true that if we don’t use an ability, we lose it, and because I stopped using my voice, I lost it. 

Losing my interest. This was a natural consequence of losing my voice. It would be easy to blame outside factors for this: depression, distraction, frustration, etc. But the reality is, I am ultimately responsible for giving up on this “hobby” that had been so helpful to me. It’s not easy for me to admit it, but I made the conscious choice to set it aside. 

Now, one year, ten months, and seventeen days later, I can look behind me and see those obstacles in the rear view mirror. Ashton and I are more focused on the direction our life together is taking, which helps us both to have a better perspective of where we’re going as individuals. I learned that not all things lost are forever lost, as I was reminded that I can use my voice not just to get through trauma or stress, but to encourage, strengthen, and comfort others—and how much better that is than to focus on my own issues. With this understanding, my interest has been renewed, and I’ve finally settled on the subject for this next chapter of Live. Learn. Blog: the subject of home.

Part of the “adventure” of this chapter of off-roading through life has been a constant feeling of longing for a sense of home. Honestly, this has been something I’ve struggled with for years, not just the aforementioned one year, ten months and seventeen days. Ever since we moved from my hometown of Ukiah, I’ve wondered if and where I truly belong. Don’t get me wrong: it’s not that I haven’t enjoyed where we’ve lived since then. There were days on the coast when I joyfully clambered on algae-covered rocks and squealed with delight in sea spray, and days when I snuggled up on the couch, watched the waves crashing on a stormy afternoon, and felt gratitude for aloneness and oneness with nature.  After moving to Cloverdale, I rejoiced at being in country that seasonally changed colors and temperatures, and at being within 90 minutes’ travel time of people and towns and cities that I’ve loved since childhood. Still, after that move from Ukiah in 2014, no place has given me that feeling of familiarity, comfort, and belonging that I connect with the word “home”.

And then it hit me. Millions of people on this planet would also consider themselves without a home—and in much more valid and concrete ways. They are refugees from political and/or religious persecution and violence. They are victims of injustice and prejudice in broken financial systems. They are misunderstood by their own families and are forced to choose a life of truth without them rather than a life of deception with them. 

Others are in situations not so dire. I personally know many individuals, couples, and families who have given up a so-called “normal” life of home/work/vacations to care for victims of natural and unnatural disasters, or to help out people in their home communities in need, or to teach their children how to make supporting other people’s better-being their priority. These are conscious choices, ones that make them and those around them happier. Yet, they, too, may find themselves unsettled, up-ended...homesick. 

So this chapter of Live. Learn. Blog. is devoted to the meaning of home. I’m confident it means something different to everyone, and I’m looking forward to exploring home as a concept, learning the various hues and tones of it, and in doing so, helping settle the hearts and souls of all who feel home-less. One of my wishes for this blog is for readers to jump in and contribute to the conversation, so please do! Hopefully, we will move forward together, navigate the obstacles that we find along this brand-new pathway, and in doing so, feel a little more at home.