It’s been said that the only constant in life is change. 

I couldn’t agree more. 

Things have been weird in our house lately. It feels like some major shifts are underway, and I think we’re all a bit disoriented. 

On the plus side, mentally and relationally, things have been fairly stable. In itself, this is a huge paradigm shift. 

Over the past couple months, Garrett has made some major breakthroughs in therapy and in working through some past trauma. He’s also started taking some classes recently, and overall has been feeling a greater sense of confidence and autonomy. 

Yay! 

Although we’re all embracing this respite from the emotional turbulence, the question still lingers large in the back of our minds – when is the other shoe going to drop?

And, in the midst of these mental health improvements, everything else has been turbulent. 

Work and career are off balance. 

Financially things are strained. 

Our future in California remains unclear. 

I simultaneously feel adrift, and like I’m being turned inside out at the same time. 

For as long as I can remember, California has been my ultimate goal. A symbol of my ideal life, my freedom, and my success. 

California was my home long before it was actually my home.

Back in Junior High, when I was dealing with the double whammy of having no friends and my parents going through a divorce, during my moments of despair, I held on to a powerful belief: “Someday, I will escape this place.” 

That belief got me through some really sh*tty times, and to me, that escape always meant California.  

Palm trees became my symbol of freedom; California my symbol of hope and resilience. 

In some ways, moving here has given me just that. 

Proof that we’re resilient. Proof that we can face our pasts and rise above it. Proof that we can become the people we want to be. 

(And, I just plain love it here. Who wouldn’t be happy with perfect weather and miles of beautiful coastline nearby!?)

But, in many other ways, it’s brought about challenges that sometimes seem insurmountable. 

For starters, it’s f*cking expensive to live here, and I doubt that will change any time soon. 

Between our $5k/monthly rent, skyhigh utility costs, and $1500 a month out of pocket for therapy, our goals of financial freedom and home ownership seem more and more out of reach all the time. 

Does it make sense to leave the place I’ve worked my ass off to get to, the place we now call home, so we can have a greater sense of financial stability? So we can plant some roots and buy a house of our own again?  Should I leave the place I’ve always felt at home, so we can have an actual home that we don’t have to leave when the lease is up?

I wish I knew the answer. Our feelings on it change every day. 

Staying in California and living so far away from family also presents some challenges. 

Dominic would love nothing more than to live closer to family, and if I’m being honest, I wish he had more family support. There are times I also miss having family parties, especially around the holidays. 

But, moving near family also presents challenges. 

Neither of us have lived near family in many, many years, and to be completely honest – we don’t know if living close to family would be great for our mental health. 

In some ways, having help and family support would be a relief. And in other ways, the dynamics that would present could be challenging for all of us.

Is it really worth sacrificing our therapy support system, friends, and the place we now call home just to be closer to family? I don’t think there’s a right answer. 

Garrett and I both spent so many years running from place to place, holding on to the hope that the next place would be better than the last. As you can imagine, that never panned out for either of us.  

Now that we know better, we both want nothing more than to settle down, spend more time with the people we love, and have some peace and stability. But, to some extent, this goal seems impeded by staying in the place that we love and call home. What a dilemma. 

And if all those major life altering questions aren’t enough to chew on, I’ve really been struggling with the age-old question, “What do I want to be when I grow up?”

So much of my identity for the past 12 years has been wrapped up in being a business owner, and building a successful PR company.

But, if I’m being honest, I haven’t loved it for a long time, and the writing’s on the wall that things are shifting in my industry. 

Over the past year, I’ve had to lower my rates to compete with other people in the industry, I’ve had to fight harder to get and keep clients, and my income has gone down, in spite of the costs of everything else around me going up.

 Is it time to put my handy Masters in Psych degree to good use? Should I pursue writing more full time? Is it finally time to start speaking and telling my story to others?

For the longest time, I’ve sensed a calling to do something greater. A calling to help and inspire others, to be creative, to use my voice. 

But fear and the allure of familiarity have held me back, trapping me in a cycle of comfort and insecurity.

Now that the tide is turning whether I like it or not, maybe it’s time to press forward in doing something else. 

The only constant in life is change. 

Change is scary, but I suppose, so is stagnation.

We’ve got a lot of big questions that need answering, and we don’t have the answers right now. 

We’re all a bit adrift, and turned inside out. 

And, I suppose for now, that’s okay. 

All we can do is surrender to the not-knowing, and have faith that these challenges will give rise to positive transformation. 

What that transformation will look like remains to be seen.