Your journal prompts this week:
What makes a place or space comforting to me?
Which places or spaces did I think I'd love, but discovered ultimately weren't the right fit? What did I learn from that experience?
How do I define "home"?
How can I be more at "home" within myself?
For most of my life, I believed that living in California was the dream. It was the place everyone said they would move to if they could. As a midwest girl, I always heard people complain about the weather and talk about how they wish they lived somewhere that was warm and sunny throughout the year.
When my sister moved to California, I visited for the first time, and I saw the appeal. Eventually my parents moved to California too. I remember being in awe the first time my dad picked me up from the airport in Palm Springs. I couldn't believe how close the mountains were and how magical it felt to walk beneath all the palm trees.
After my dad got sick, my husband (then boyfriend) and I decided that leaving Chicago and moving to California to be closer to both of our families was the best thing to do. My husband's parents and sister had left the east coast and midwest as well, so with most everyone in California, it seemed natural that we would follow.
We made it to San Diego on my birthday in 2019, unfortunately just a few months after my dad passed away. We had rented an apartment we'd never seen from a landlord who turned out to be a jerk. Our arrival that night was underwhelming and foreshadowed the difficulty we'd have ahead (there wasn't even a functioning door on the unit's one bathroom yet). But my husband always puts a positive spin on things—he's much better at that than I am—and we did our best to make the place work.
That was the first of four total places we'd live in within four years in California. We lived in San Diego, Laguna Niguel (which I will always remember as the cockroach house, after I woke up one morning to see all the neighbors outside, watching horrified as hundreds of roaches surged out of the sewer drain in front of our homes), and then finally we landed in Ojai.
Ojai has long been a home base for us because it was where my husband's family lived for several years. I still love Ojai, but the reality of the high cost of living there was something we couldn’t ignore. With both us working entirely from home and now having a baby, what we could afford to live in in Ojai was quite cramped for us. Not wanting to give up on space or having our own businesses that we run from home, we found a new place to call home outside of the state of California.
Wanting a place that was still drivable to my family in Palm Springs area and that was also very spiritual (like Ojai), we settled on Sedona, AZ. And as of last week, we are now officially Sedona residents.
Part of me is still sad that I never quite felt it in California. There were so many people I met who loved it there and who would never dream of leaving. I always wondered when I'd feel that spark. I'd have my moments, but they were never quite enough to keep me rooted there. I thought maybe I just needed a different city, a different house . . . but I didn't find it.
I think some of this pressure to fall in love with California comes from the fact that our culture idealizes places like California and makes living there a status symbol. There are very likely just as many people passionate about where they live in many other states, we just don't hear about them as often.
And some of it might just be that I am a midwest girl at heart who misses the midwest. It is familiar and comforting—it is where I spent the majority of my life. Now with a family of my own, it feels more important to build that comforting and familiar base wherever we land.
There is that saying that I always go back to: "Wherever you go, there you are." I realize that part of making a new place work is also on me. It's on me to make the shifts within that will help me create the life I want, regardless of the location.
In these first few days in our new home in Sedona, I will admit that it feels A LOT better to have a bigger home we can all move around in with ease. That cluttered lifestyle we lived in California can be a thing of the past—but I acknowledge that this depends as much on the space as it does on us. I can't let more space make me think I'm good to buy more things to fill it up with.
I have the pleasure of editing a podcast focused on holistic interior design by my client, Rachel Larraine Crawford. She asks all her guests to define what home is to them, and the answers I've heard across more than 100 episodes have been enlightening. Some people respond by talking about the city or town they live in, some talk about their specific house and how they found or built it, and some talk purely about the home within.
I wonder how I would answer this question. In a few months, if you ask me, will I talk all about Sedona?
It’s too soon to tell if this is the place, but I have hope that we made a step in the right direction. You don't know if a place is yours until you experience it, and so while it might look weird from the outside and it might be tiring, moving and trying new places is part of how you find your place. The other part is learning to find the home within that anchors you no matter where you go, and I think I will be focusing on that even more now.
I currently think of home as a combination of self, people, and place. Yes, you can find the root within wherever you go, but perhaps there are certain places and people who help you anchor even deeper.
Have you ever felt like you were supposed to fit in and love a place, but you didn't? What do you consider to be your place, your home?
I encourage you to explore this with the above journal prompts. And please feel free to share your thoughts or any insights from your journaling in the comments below. If you leave a comment on this post, I will pull an Oracle or Tarot card to offer you additional insight!
With much love and gratitude,
Marcy
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