Coming Home

I don’t know what my life will look like.

I don’t know where it will take me.

But I know I need to keep moving forward.

Just not in the ways I expected.

In the discomfort of not knowing what comes next, I’ve found myself wanting to do more.

To plan, prepare, and to uproot my life and convince myself that somewhere else might finally feel like home.

Might finally feel like… arrival.

Like, “Here you are. You found it.”

Instead, I was told to stop.

Again and again, through different people, different circumstances, and that voice within that I am still learning how to heed.

Rest.

Find balance.

The more I listen, the clearer that inner voice becomes.

What it asks of me is unmistakable.

But how to live it isn’t always as obvious.

I think this is a season of honoring the woman who survived.

The woman who loved and lost.

Who raised a daughter on her own.

Who watched friendships arrive and then drift away.

Who learned to carry more than she should have because there wasn’t another choice.

But I also think it is time to release the woman who only knew how to survive.

The woman who believed that constant forward momentum was the only way to stay safe.

The one who thought stillness was dangerous.

The one who confused movement with healing.

As I’ve entered a stage of my life that feels uncertain, I believed that if I just kept moving, I would eventually outrun that uncertainty.

And find… it.

That the next job, the next city, the next relationship, the next goal, the next version of myself would finally bring the sense of home I had been searching for.

When I didn’t know what came next, I wanted to make something happen.

Anything.

Because doing something felt easier than sitting with the unknown.

But every finish line eventually became another starting line.

Because the thing I was searching for was never waiting somewhere else.

Instead, I am being asked to keep building a life where the woman I am now has room to flourish.

Part of that means no longer waiting until I feel like an expert before sharing my thoughts, my voice, or my work.

It means trusting that wisdom isn’t measured by having every answer.

It’s believing that within all the noise, what I offer is meaningful.

Not because I know more than anyone else.

But because what I share has been lived.

While I keep feeling called to stay where I am, for now, and remain in the career that has shaped so much of my life, the invitation isn’t to stay stagnant.

It’s to live differently within the life I already have.

To stop waiting for permission to become who I already am.

And perhaps most of all…

to trust my gifts.

And as I sit with this a little longer, something becomes even clearer.

This season of my life isn’t asking me to become someone brand new.

It isn’t asking me to reinvent myself or abandon everything I’ve been.

It’s asking me to trust the woman who is emerging.

Because the woman who is emerging didn’t appear out of nowhere.

She has always been here beneath the versions of myself that believed they had to earn their place in the world.

She isn’t someone I’m becoming.

She’s someone I’m finally allowing myself to be.

I don’t know what my life will look like.

I don’t know where it will take me.

But for the first time…

I’m beginning to trust the woman who will meet me there.

I know I’ll probably lose sight of her again.

Tomorrow, or next week, I’ll likely find myself reaching for another destination, another accomplishment, another version of myself that promises certainty.

And I’ll have to remember all of this again.

And I’m fairly certain that’s what “finding yourself” really is.

Not a single moment of discovery.

Not a destination you finally arrive at.

But a lifelong practice of returning to the person you’ve been beneath all the fear, striving, and survival.

We don’t find ourselves once.

We simply learn to come home a little sooner each time.

Always,

Your Trusted Friend 🖤