Beginning Again

We moved to the west coast.

Picture it, a young mom and dad, 4 kids aged 1 through 9, navigating 2 different flights and with snacks and bags plus everything that we had packed in our checked luggage. Not to mention that several of these people are neuro diverse (whether diagnosed or not). It was an event… and it took me over a year to get settled in and to the point where I could feel like myself.

I stopped home schooling. As much as I valued my kids’ education and as much as I wanted them to love learning, I could see my relationships with each of them beginning to deteriorate. So we put the older two in the local public school and the younger two in a pre-school.

For two years, I was a stay-at-home mom who WASN’T also homeschooling and volunteering and involved in church.

I was detoxing. Detoxing from a lifetime of religion.

The functional reason that we had moved was for my then-partner’s job and career dreams. The secondary reason for me was to move away from Christianity. My reasons were many and varied and deserve a whole post to themselves.

I was deconstructing a lifetime of intensive worldview building. It wasn’t going to tumble with a light touch. I had to disassemble things - whole thought processes. I had to sift through the rubble, find the things I valued, own my values and ask myself questions about them.

In the meantime, I was learning to live differently as I did this.

I discovered that despite California’s reputation in Ohio as a granola nurturing place, I was not able to find the services and support systems that I thought I could assume. What a mess! More untangling of my own thoughts - embarrassing ones about how much I had assumed.

I realized just how dependent I had been on the church for my social life. I did not know where I could go to make the kind of friends I wanted to make. I started paying close attention to the other parents’ at my kids’ schools. I was searching for my community. I was going to build my own village if that was what it took!

I went through several versions of friend groups, sifting and sorting, searching for my people. It was SO much more difficult that finding a church home and assuming my people were there. In fact, I was finding that building intentional relationships was much more satisfying and far less lonely than even being involved in church had ever been.

I was still journaling - but my journals were no longer direct letters to god as they had become through my teenage years and my twenties. This was me - exploring who I was, who I am, who I want to become. So many people played a part in my learning, friends, family, spouse, children.

We moved 4 times in the 10 years we have been in California. Until our most recent house, we moved every two years. What a lot of work! Thankfully for the first 3 moves, we stayed within a block of the kids’ school. So the distance was not hard to travel for the move, I could take care of moving mostly myself during the weekdays. And on a weekend or two we finished up moving all together with a couple of friends to help.

So many new beginnings during our first 8 years - new neighbors, new schools as my kids grew, new friends.

But as with all new beginnings, there are corresponding endings.