On a summery Saturday night, a month after moving to the east coast, it felt like someone, somewhere, flipped a switch and suddenly my life turned from black and white to technicolor. Sitting on a bar stool at Rosemary’s East just steps from my apartment, I was struck by a feeling I hadn’t felt so distinctly in months – a feeling that extends beyond joy and gratitude – a feeling that I had finally arrived home. Not just back to a physical place I had dearly missed in the years I lived away, but a feeling that the life I imagined and the life I was actually living had finally collided.

Turning toward Colleen, I felt a lightness in my chest I barely recognized “I’m just so happy” I said to her, a smile on my face but tears in my eyes. “I know, right?” Col said as she smiled back.  “No Col, I’m so happy… and I think I forgot what this feels like.”

Happy doesn’t quite describe the feeling and I’m not sure there’s a word in English that does. If there was a word for what I felt that night, it could be described as 1. feeling of relief when you have finally found your way 2. the universe giving you a sign that you are on the right path 3. the feeling of confirmation that you are exactly where you’re supposed to be.  As my feet dangled off the bar stool, I realized I had finally found my way back – to me.

Like the flip of a switch, the realization hit me in the same way that color came back into my world. I was back in my body. My appetite had returned. I was sleeping through the night. I started blasting music in my room again and dancing around. I was smiling at strangers (probably shouldn’t do that in NYC…)

I had spent the last few months of 2021 and the beginning of 2022 feeling so off. I randomly burst into tears. I had trouble finding the motivation to get out of bed and brush my teeth. I felt numb even when I tried to do things I knew gave me joy. The scariest part was not knowing why I felt such heaviness – or rather not believing I knew why.

I spent months trying to pull myself out from that dark place – fighting doubts that my environment was contributing to my restlessness. Nearly two years of a pandemic made the physical distance between New Jersey and Washington feel so much greater – that or the homesickness finally caught up to me. The logic that kept me in an endless loop: I had been a happy version of myself in Seattle so if I waited long enough, why couldn’t I feel that again?

The pandemic was really hard on all of us. Surely, I would start being my cheery self again, I just needed more time. What would I do if I moved all the way to East Coast only to find that the unhappiness followed me like a shadow?

In my early twenties, I lived in a state of constant motion. Weekdays spent traveling to visit customers across the western US, and weekends brimming with trips to see family and friends. In the six years I lived away, homesickness was always lurking, but I could usually outrun it or fill the void by staying in motion. Being grounded through the pandemic was an opportunity to sit with my emotions.

Accepting a fully remote job mid-2021 also gifted me the freedom and flexibility to choose where I lived for the first time since I was 19. It was finally up to ME.

Oftentimes, we don’t see growth until we’ve already morphed or changed in some way. We don’t notice it while it’s happening, but we catch it when we notice the after. Moving to NYC this past summer felt like a leap of faith. It took some time to settle in, but within a couple months I started to notice how much I had changed.

I started enjoying the time I spent alone. When I went on a runs, I caught myself looking around at the city and it gave me chills. I felt the need to pinch myself, because I couldn’t quite believe I was finally home. I was so relieved to be able to wake up and start the day without feeling like someone was sitting on my chest, trying to crush the air out of me.

In the same way that the warmth and sunshine of summer are things we can count on, so are the seasons of life. For me, I started feeling the warmth come back into my world when I started noticing beautiful moments again.

Rather than my daily walks being consumed by the mental gymnastics of easing my anxiety, I noticed an employee at Sweetgreen dancing as he chopped tomatoes. I noticed a doorman in NYC hiding behind the planter and playing hide and go seek with a kid who squealed in glee.  When I walked into a barre class, the instructor beamed at me and welcomed me like I was local (I had never been there before). I felt the joy when I spent weekends at my parent’s, coming downstairs to the best greeting from Denali.

Rather than going through the motions, I noticed I was waltzing around feeling like my life was a movie – I couldn’t help but think, is it this place or am I different here?

When I look back on the beginning of this year, I cringe a bit when I think about the degree of suffering I allowed myself to endure before deciding that surviving is not enough for me. Suffering taught me a very valuable lesson – while change can be scary, resisting change is even scarier.

While letting go of ideas, dreams, and expectations can be terrifying, choosing to remain in a space you have outgrown is a much more dangerous choice. Despite life showing me time and time again that endings always lead to new beginnings and the most beautiful thing about life is just how mysterious it is, at times it feels so hard to let go and trust that there will be more joy on the other side.

Remaining in place when my heart was pulling me elsewhere caused immense suffering. The last winter I spent in Seattle, I focused so much of my energy on acceptance. I thought acceptance meant waiting it out. That the homesickness and intense anxiety I started experiencing, would eventually lift in the same way it had descended on me, slowly at first and then all at once. I just had to be strong. I had to wait it out.

Each day that I worked toward the acceptance of feelings that felt sharp and dangerous, I edged close and closer to surrendering. When a particularly dark cloud descended on me in February (and didn’t lift) I chose surrender over acceptance. It was time to come home.

The tears, the heaviness, the restlessness – I had dug myself so deep I wasn’t sure I could find my way out. A phone call to Colleen and finally verbalizing the emotions I was enduring changed the trajectory of my life. After months of indecision, I made the decision to move home. For the first time in months, I felt sharpness in the form of complete clarity – I felt like someone woke me up.  As the words rolled off my tongue I felt a weight lift, and a vividness like someone had dumped a bucket of cold water on my head as the relief washed over me. I didn’t know if moving back home would fix everything but in that moment I knew I had to try.

While emotions can be fickle and change in a millisecond, they are also key pieces of information – something we should take care to notice, accept, and get curious about. They’re guideposts that are doing their best effort to protect us from pain or lead us toward joy. They don’t want to be judged just like you or I don’t like to be judged. Shove them in a box and they’ll fight like hell to get out. I learned that the hard way.  When I started to make peace with them, and treat them gently, I realized they were just trying to help me find my way back.

In retrospect, I think I knew deep down that a new chapter was coming, but that thought really scared me. When I moved to Seattle, I believed at some point in the future I would move back east. I never pictured what that moment would look like, just that sometime between the present and the future, it would just happen. When I left New Jersey for Houston, and left Houston for Seattle two years later, I didn’t arrive with an intention to stay, but then life happens!

You build friendships, you form relationships, you settle into a routine and find pockets of the world that fill up your cup with so much joy you have trouble imagining giving it all up even if it was part of your original plan.

But like most of the good stuff in life, overstaying a chapter, holding on for too long, or clenching something too tight will only suffocate what was once so good. I think we all have a gut feeling for those times we know we can’t return to. Those moments where you’re already missing it while it’s happening because you know the experience is a once in a lifetime thing. Sometimes we get to celebrate our “lasts” – the last time you played on a sports team with childhood friends or walking out of your last college class. But sometimes we don’t know it will be a last – another reason to stay present and enjoy experiences as they happen.

I wish someone had warned me how challenging my late twenties might be.  A month before that phone call with Colleen, I felt like a stranger in my own body. Seemingly unannounced, my had skin erupted in little red spots. A quick Google search had me convinced that I had picked up ringworm from a yoga mat but a trip to the dermatologist revealed that it was inflammation. He couldn’t pinpoint the cause, but he could confirm that my body was inflamed. It was a startling physical sign that something was way off.  I learned another important lesson – my body is so much wiser than I give it credit for.

When I think about health, I never considered the impact that living out of alignment can have on your mental and physical being. After I moved, two of coworkers pointed out that my skin was not only brighter – but I looked like I was glowing since I moved to NYC. I didn’t openly share that I was struggling, but their observation confirmed to me that I was finding my way back.

Eight months earlier, I sat at Rosemary’s East (the very restaurant where I had a startling moment of clarity) eating dinner with Billy and Colleen, not realizing that in less than a year, Colleen and I would be roommates in an apartment just steps from where we sat. If I had a crystal ball back then, I wouldn’t have believed what I saw, but life has a funny way of changing our plans and catapulting us to places we need to be.

It’s been nearly five months since I boarded a one-way flight from Seattle to New York City. Since the move, I’ve been thinking a lot about what coming home means. At the surface, home represents a physical place where you can unwind and kick back. It’s being surrounded by loved ones. It’s sharing a cup of espresso with my dad. It’s impromptu walks with my mom and Denali. It’s adventures around the city with Alessandra. Coming home for me has also meant returning to a place where I feel like I’m back in my own skin. A place where I feel at ease, and I’m not in constant battles with my emotions and feelings.

When I finally surrendered to change, the universe blessed me in so many ways. I recently had a conversation with a friend, and he pointed out that when we feel good and we’re happy we put different energy into the world. Something in me shifted since the move and frequent moments of joy and connection serve as confirmation that when I’m open, accepting, and living in a state of flow, the universe dishes it back.  When you’re living in alignment with your values, life doesn’t feel so hard. It’s not without hard moments, but the waves are easier to ride when your footing is solid.

While this past year has been the most trying year of my life, I feel blessed for the lessons and learning that living in alignment with what I need is the only way I can show up as the best version of me.

When I think back on my time in Seattle, my heart fills with gratitude for not just the adventures but more importantly the people I shared life with – runs through misty city weather, eating oysters by the ocean, hiking trails frequented by bears and marmots, stargazing in places where light pollution doesn’t touch. I wouldn’t change it. My time living west taught me that you can find community anywhere, strangers are just friends you haven’t met yet, and the best way to live is with a fully open heart.

Flash forward to June – I stood in the dingy hallway outside the DMV, frozen for a moment, looking down at the two metal license plates I held in my hands. I was surprised by a wave of emotion that crashed over me. The department of motor vehicle may be a place for tears of frustration, but as I stood there holding new license plates, it was another moment that I could feel in my bones – I am home.

Even though I was confident in my decision, moving cross country was still an ordeal. As I waited five weeks for the movers to deliver my belongings and bounced between my sister’s apartment and my childhood home in New Jersey, my friend Khrystyna gave me words of advice I didn’t realize how badly I needed to hear.

“It’s just like with rescue dogs 3 days, 3 weeks, and 3 months! I remind myself that when there’s a big change because it works for all of us that way! The first 3 days are the most hectic, lots of mixed emotions etc and so they don’t really count for anything. What happens in those first few days means nothing other than a big change is happening. Then it takes 3 weeks to get into a routine. In a new job it usually takes 3 weeks to learn a routine and what your job description is etc. For a pup it usually takes 3 weeks for them to start feeling like “home.” Then it takes 3 months to truly relax and actually feel like you belong.”

Maybe we should all give ourselves the same grace we would a new puppy when going through a major life change.

I never would have guessed that the DMV employees would serve as my official welcome home committee. When I told the first DMV employee, who was essentially the bouncer checking for appointments, that I just moved back to the east coast his first words were “welcome home!”  When I was allowed to smile for my license picture and told another employee I had just moved back, an employee one desk over shook her head in affirmation and started singing a Bon Jovi song.

Coming home has felt like the best kind of hug – the one that reminds you that everything is going to be okay. Like the feeling of comfort when you’re snuggled up on the couch with fuzzy socks and a furry blanket, swaddled in warmth and coziness. My cup is so full, I’m overflowing – there’s so much love and magic all around. I want to capture this feeling in a jar so if I ever lose it, I can peer inside and remember how good this feels – living in in alignment and being open to the magic that is LIFE. Believing in my bones that this life is happening for me.

Looking back at the last year, I wish I could give myself a hug. Tell my younger self that I’m strong and I will figure it out.

What does it mean to CHOOSE you?

To come back into your body.

To declare what you need.

To honor what brings you joy.

To decide that taking risk is better than living a life that’s not yours.

To take ownership over your happiness.

To make the choice that scares you.

To take a risk in the pursuit of figuring out what you need to be the true version of yourself.

To me, it means choosing to take a risk and bet on yourself. To have faith that wherever you land, you’ll bloom.

Have you ever seen a poppy
Right before she blooms?
Head held heavy, hung low sinking
You’d think filled with sorrow
But she’s teeming with new life
And flourished with dreams
And although harsh winters are woven in her seeds
She punches through, her resilience stampedes
Wake up
It’s not the end
It’s just the beginning

-Misterwives