For Those Who Dared To Move Away From Everything They’ve Ever Known

If you had the courage to uproot your life and become a stranger somewhere unfamiliar, then you know the feeling that home is now a blurry mixture of several places and not just one.

If you were brave enough to leave the familiar faces and spaces in order to create a greater reality for yourself, then you know how it feels to constantly be striving to belong.

You pack your suitcase with all your valuables, yet it stands next to you as you say your goodbyes to the people that made home what it was. You learn and practice how to cope with that sinking feeling in your soul as you leave everything familiar behind. Eventually, you find ways to fill the silences of empty apartments with the background noises of your favorite shows playing on repeat. You learn how to sit with the silence that lingers after you hang up the call with your favorite people. You watch how much easier it was for those who stayed with their tribe as you struggle to find your own. You try to make a home within the empty spaces that you always dreamed of having the liberty to fill.

If you had the courage to leave what you have known for so long, then you know what it’s like to deal with getting lost, getting sick, and finding ways to cope with your emotions all on your own, because you had no other option but to rely on yourself fully and completely.

If you took the leap to start somewhere new, then I hope this serves as a reminder that throughout all these stories, there was one common denominator: you.

You who made tough choices for a steady future. You who had the courage to follow your dreams. You who believed that there is more to life than what and where you were born into. You who found the strength to push through all the struggles that accompany such a decision, because I am starting to believe that maybe we do not notice our growth as profoundly as our longing for comfort.

Maybe we fail to recognize how much these feelings of unfamiliarity, alienation, and newness actually help us become more calloused to face the world.

Uprooting teaches us how to deal with uncertainty. It teaches us how to put one foot in front of the other. It teaches us how to be adults, real adults, who know that if we do not put the time and effort into organizing our lives, no one will come around to help us. It teaches us how to be alone and all the beauty that comes along with relying on no one but our own selves. It makes us realize how much control we have over our lives.

I think we fail to see how good we are doing because we are always focused on how our life should look instead of how far along we have come. We forget how much of our character was built through what we were faced with and how we were able to find a steady footing on a new ground.

No matter how the story has spun out for you, there was something to be learned  through being a newcomer. There was something to be learned from seeing how people think and behave in this piece of the world. You were meant to learn and start new. You were meant to reach the conclusion that wherever you go, home really is within you.