We are in the midst of many huge transitions right now. It seems like every area of our life was turned upside down a couple of months ago, and we’ve been slowly putting the pieces back together, creating a new life. It feels like so much to get into here, but the two biggest changes would have to be #1 my decision to night wean Emerson, and #2 our decision to sell our house and move back to our home state. Those two things alone feel enormously monumental.

First, the night weaning. I’m telling you, people, I feel like a totally new person. I had planned on nursing Emerson on demand, night and day, until she chose to wean herself. I felt so passionate and so good about that decision. But, I came to a point in my mothering where this decision was doing more harm than good for all those involved. It’s moments like those that we have to open our minds, do some serious reflecting and change what once felt like immoveable beliefs.

Second, moving. Oh, moving. I have such a conflicted relationship with this topic. I have lived in 16 different homes, five temporary living situations, three states and two countries in my life. And I have never hesitated in moving to any one of them (outside of my childhood). Never hesitated to change states, establish a new life, reinvent myself, or become part of a new community. Then I had a child and all of that changed.

I want things to stay the same for my child. I want her to have a home she can always come back to. Unfortunately, that home cannot be here. We have been living an unsustainable life for quite some time, and things kind of reached a boiling point a couple months back. Everything began to crumble around us, waking us up to the reality that change was necessary. Vital to our survival, really. As my man Pablo Picasso once said, “every act of creation is first an act of destruction.” I think about that quote constantly, and have all my life, feeling hyper aware of the fact that I am always creating or destroying.

So, we are moving. Something I was unwilling to consider as an actual possibility for quite some time now. But, so very cosmically, once the decision became apparent and we latched onto it with excitement instead of fear, everything began to change. There is a completely new life right within our reach, and I can see it so clearly now.

I will be so sad to leave this house…the first home we owned…where our child was born, and her placenta was buried beneath a tree…the place where we became a family. It will be hard to leave, and hard to make Emerson leave. But, I know in my heart that this place was a stepping stone, not a future. Looking back, I feel that I came here to birth my baby. There was no other place, no other way, with no other people that that was meant to happen. And we came here to grow, up and out.

Now it’s time to settle into a forever (or semi-long time, because that’s the best my restless soul can muster).