Congratulations! I love how present and aware you are! Of course I will miss the hedgies and Birdy too! Take good care as you fly to your next chapter! Wow. Wow. Wow.🥰🥰💚💚🎉🎉💖💖
Oh Cait. You know I have been following your journey for over a decade now, and I cried hard at this post (see below). Look at how far you've come, friend. You've travelled and moved and change your mind and dealt with and battled trauma and have now created the most beautiful life for yourself.... before this move of course, but it does really feel like a new season is upon you. And me too, which is why maybe this is hitting so hard right now.
I cried because I simultaneously feel two things reading this: I am so very happy to hear that you found a partner with TM, and your taking the next step to the even more loving and committed relationship you have.... AND, I am so sorry for your loss. Both things can be true.
New beginnings always bring grief. I've felt like this many times leaving places - so excited and a bit nervous for the next step, and overwhelmed by saying goodbye to the season just lived. Be it the people, the location, the community, and the little things like how certain flowers smell or noticing how the sun sets in the distance differently over the seasons. Nothing lasts forever, and often when I have revisited previous 'homes', I am nostalgic for a place / time that doesn't exist any more. But it's also a moment to reflect on how much I've grown and changed since I last visited or lived there.
Sending you so much love and strength over the coming weeks - I'm sure there will be more tears, some ups and downs, but I know you'll give ample time to honour the goodbyes. And thank you for sharing the journey with us.
Robyn, thank you for this thoughtful, kind, and loving comment. It made me feel seen/known, and I could also see so much of myself in what you shared about your own experiences too. Like revisiting old homes? Yes! Other than my dad's house, none of them have ever felt the same. The same will eventually be true here, I'm sure... although I still have a big connection to this town that will probably bring me over here once/week. And if I shared a secret with you (and anyone who reads this lol): I have a wild dream of opening a bookshop here one day. It's a total fantasy, at this point. But I even have a name for it. So... maybe one day ☺️ either way, it won't be quite the same as living here. But the town can still be part of my life... and I'm grateful for that.
You opening a bookshop in a place you found home makes the most sense. It wouldn’t be just about books, but I can feel the community hub you would build in your space. Maybe even a small cafe for people to write and meet in too. It would be the beacon of everything you’ve been building and it kind of feels like a manifestation of your work and life to date…. I hope it happens for you one day Cait! And I’ll visit 😉
As a constant moving person (never more than 2 years in a home since I left my parents), who settled nearly 3 years again my current apartment I feel you! The places that really feel like home are the hardest to leave, even if the next step is highly exciting. Luckily all those feelings can live together. The speed of trust seems so healing, well done! I met my now-husband at 20 and we did everything as fast as the passionate kids we were do things (moved in together after 3 months, moved together in another country after 2 years!) but it took us 10 years to get engaged and 2 more years to get married, so I think we also learned to slow it down with time.
Oh, how I love this for you and appreciate you sharing the journey with us! I understand as I have made myself stay where I am after my divorce and get rooted as I have said. It’s terrifying! I often think what if I had to move? I have no idea where those thoughts came from. Well, I guess I do. If this happened, so and so would happen. I’m so thankful for you including us in on this! Thank you. This is why I stay here while on a tight budget. Your writing adds so much value to my life. It sounds cheesy but it’s true. I have read some of your books and followed your writing. It’s like a friend is making a big life change and I want to celebrate with her while holding the sadness as well.
I think it’s a beautiful testament to what you created in the Lighthouse that you’d be sad to leave it. To me it means something good happened there. And in no way takes away from all the feelings and the rightness of the next step - just sits there beside it. I hope you get to say goodbye in all the ways you desire and get to take some pieces with you, onward.
I'm so happy to be able to read your thoughtful reflections on this decision, this forthcoming change. As a reader, as an internet stranger, it really is bittersweet: to think of how much wonderful writing (and living!) has come from your life in the lighthouse, and to feel the anticipatory grief of saying goodbye to that... and to look forward to the writing and living that is going to thrive in this next chapter. I appreciate you sharing this so much.
I appreciate you reading it, reader/internet friend! I'd never even thought to write about the topic of "home," until moving here and slowly letting myself settle in. Which is kind of fascinating, considering I've had so many. Now, I'm finding myself fascinated by this as a topic/theme in our lives... and something I want to say a lot more about. Just from a different place ☺️
Love your writing! I am new to the Lighthouse and found you through your book The year of less. This particular writings of change travels with loss, truly speaks to me. I am very happy to have found you. You’ve found a deep peace within yourself, shaped by the life you’ve so beautifully created. And now, as you step into a new chapter, you carry with you even more love - ready to share, ready to grow, ready to begin again with an open heart.
Last summer I moved to the same city and I grieved hard for all the little things—specific trees and backyard animals, the certainty of knowing the neighbors and pets that walk by, etc. I still miss all of that but I’m starting to find good friendships here. I still feel foreign to my own patch of yard but I know that will change in time. I’m still learning names and faces to those who walk these streets, but I’ve also had a lot of fun exploring new areas.
Oh Katie, thank you for sharing your experience and some of what's been true for you! It makes me feel less alone... and hopeful, too. I'm also curious what you think helps you feel connected to a yard/garden. Asking for a friend ☺️
Part of connection to a garden to me is time spent. I need to see it in every season. I need to recognize the view of it from each window (that goes for neighbors trees too if they are in my view). Helping to care for it—weeding, watering, planting something new. Noticing the wildlife, I may put up a bird feeder. Looking up the names of any plants you don’t know. It’s not something that can be rushed I think, but I hope by the second or third growing season I feel less like I’m a stranger when I walk around my garden.
This is so beautiful and thoughtful. "I need to see it in every season," feels like it could apply to so many things in life. Physical things like gardens, homes, places, etc. But people and relationships too.
I'm also going to ask TM if he'd mind if I got a bird feeder ☺️ I've never had one before (throw seed into the grass, etc. for the birds here). But it feels like something I'd like to get one day.
When I read “It made me feel like we are friends,” I started crying along with you. I am *so* happy for you and Tall Man, and so appreciative that you shared all the bittersweetness of this move with us here. It all feels so real and hard and beautiful. Cheers to The Lighthouse! ❤️
This post gave me all the feels, and tears ensued (but in a good way). We don't often focus on what we leave behind, like you said, instead focusing on what's ahead, and I think we miss out on an integral aspect of life by doing that. I love that you're honoring what you're leaving, how wonderful! And congrats on the life shift, but also truly soul affirming to go through a goodbye process to a place that's meant so much in your growth journey.
Thank you, my friend! Now I'm finding myself curious about what YOU love about your own home/neighbourhood? If you ever had to go, what would you miss most about your daily life there?
Just thinking about this gave my heart a nostalgic pang, imagining not being at this place anymore. There's an energy to this land on which our home is built. It's 5 acres on a hilltop overlooking a valley and Mt. Pilchuck, in Washington State. The trees are magical and all the birds and critters that live around me seemed to have welcomed us into their midst. I look at land/home ownership more like stewardship, wherein I protect and care for everything on it and in it, trying to blend instead of dominating the landscape. So, I'd miss all the critters and trees I've gotten to know. I'd miss my walks down our road, sometimes seeing neighbors walking, other times it's just me and my thoughts. Whenever I've been away and I am driving towards home and I get to the last few miles, I get this feeling of anticipation and peace at arriving home. I would miss all that, the hug that my house gives me when I walk in, the smell of the flowers and trees, the sound of all the life happening around me. Thank you for asking, friend. :-)
This painted a beautiful picture of your home and land and life, friend. And that last mile before arriving home from being away? Gosh, isn't that the best feeling...
I enjoy hearing about your life in the UK and your appreciation of simplicity.
I love the British people and have always had a great conversational connection...likely because my ancestral roots are British and I see myself in the people and culture.
There's nothing like getting out for a walk in the morning in the UK and stopping off for a flat white and went to Nero's every morning when I was in Northern Ireland last September.
I went to see another book reading last week at the Elliott Bay Book Store. This time it was a local journalist for the Seattle Times and she discussed her book entitled "Ward of the State" by Claudia Rowe.
In July I'm going to see documentary filmmaker Ken Burns at McCaw Hall in Seattle who's one of my heroes. I'm sure you've seen his work in Canada.
In your last comment to me in your previous Dispatch entry, you wrote that you didn't think that I would be surprised. Well, I have to admit that for awhile now I've had an inkling and felt that you were one day destinated to travel in life together with "TM".
Congratulations to you and to your Tall Man as you guys embark on the next exciting chapter of your lives, living together. I know that you will be happy, anxious, and curious - in all that your futures will hold. And even though you don't plan on getting married, but rather living together, in many ways both approaches have similar life characteristics. Yes, there is commitment but also there is trust in each other. Not to mention patience and understanding, as well as forgiveness.
I include forgiveness because being daily together 7 x 24 x 365 (along with x 366, during leap years), most certainly at some (hopefully rare) times in your lives there will occur issues where you and/or TM will not see the best in each other but rather the worst. Life is like that sometimes. We all encounter such times and often it happens in the early years when you are both getting to really know each other better. To be truly "meant to be happy together" for the long haul, you each will have to learn to be 110% forgiving of the other, even if you're dead positive that the other person is acting like a real "jerk" 😒 In other words, my friend, never go to bed angry, as the old saying goes. Give in to him at times and he treat you likewise. Life's too short to sweat the small stuff.
Now as far as feelings of sadness in moving away from your Lighthouse, well I too can understand how you are feeling these days. Many moons back both my wife and I, before and after we knew each other and then later got married, lived for many years in a suburb of Montreal. Time passed, and at the time when our kids were little ones, I and my family moved here (Toronto), away from family and friends, as part of my company's head office transfer. So - yes - we felt sad in some respects for some time but over the years that has vanished. We now have lived more years here than we did growing up in Montreal and are both quite happy campers. In others words, time heals all wounds. And so it will for you. Just give yourself time, my friend.
Here's wishing all the very best to you in your future with your Tall Man.
Beautiful Cait - may you go forward with courage, and have faith that this is so very right for your next life chapter. So many of us are cheering you on. Memories are precious, but so are new experiences.
Congratulations! I love how present and aware you are! Of course I will miss the hedgies and Birdy too! Take good care as you fly to your next chapter! Wow. Wow. Wow.🥰🥰💚💚🎉🎉💖💖
Thank you so much, friend! And something tells me there will be animals at TM's house... (there's already an old kitty who is my BFF)
Oh Cait. You know I have been following your journey for over a decade now, and I cried hard at this post (see below). Look at how far you've come, friend. You've travelled and moved and change your mind and dealt with and battled trauma and have now created the most beautiful life for yourself.... before this move of course, but it does really feel like a new season is upon you. And me too, which is why maybe this is hitting so hard right now.
I cried because I simultaneously feel two things reading this: I am so very happy to hear that you found a partner with TM, and your taking the next step to the even more loving and committed relationship you have.... AND, I am so sorry for your loss. Both things can be true.
New beginnings always bring grief. I've felt like this many times leaving places - so excited and a bit nervous for the next step, and overwhelmed by saying goodbye to the season just lived. Be it the people, the location, the community, and the little things like how certain flowers smell or noticing how the sun sets in the distance differently over the seasons. Nothing lasts forever, and often when I have revisited previous 'homes', I am nostalgic for a place / time that doesn't exist any more. But it's also a moment to reflect on how much I've grown and changed since I last visited or lived there.
Sending you so much love and strength over the coming weeks - I'm sure there will be more tears, some ups and downs, but I know you'll give ample time to honour the goodbyes. And thank you for sharing the journey with us.
Robyn, thank you for this thoughtful, kind, and loving comment. It made me feel seen/known, and I could also see so much of myself in what you shared about your own experiences too. Like revisiting old homes? Yes! Other than my dad's house, none of them have ever felt the same. The same will eventually be true here, I'm sure... although I still have a big connection to this town that will probably bring me over here once/week. And if I shared a secret with you (and anyone who reads this lol): I have a wild dream of opening a bookshop here one day. It's a total fantasy, at this point. But I even have a name for it. So... maybe one day ☺️ either way, it won't be quite the same as living here. But the town can still be part of my life... and I'm grateful for that.
You opening a bookshop in a place you found home makes the most sense. It wouldn’t be just about books, but I can feel the community hub you would build in your space. Maybe even a small cafe for people to write and meet in too. It would be the beacon of everything you’ve been building and it kind of feels like a manifestation of your work and life to date…. I hope it happens for you one day Cait! And I’ll visit 😉
As a constant moving person (never more than 2 years in a home since I left my parents), who settled nearly 3 years again my current apartment I feel you! The places that really feel like home are the hardest to leave, even if the next step is highly exciting. Luckily all those feelings can live together. The speed of trust seems so healing, well done! I met my now-husband at 20 and we did everything as fast as the passionate kids we were do things (moved in together after 3 months, moved together in another country after 2 years!) but it took us 10 years to get engaged and 2 more years to get married, so I think we also learned to slow it down with time.
I love how even the simplest timeline can paint such a clear picture. Thank you for sharing, Kellya ☺️
Oh, how I love this for you and appreciate you sharing the journey with us! I understand as I have made myself stay where I am after my divorce and get rooted as I have said. It’s terrifying! I often think what if I had to move? I have no idea where those thoughts came from. Well, I guess I do. If this happened, so and so would happen. I’m so thankful for you including us in on this! Thank you. This is why I stay here while on a tight budget. Your writing adds so much value to my life. It sounds cheesy but it’s true. I have read some of your books and followed your writing. It’s like a friend is making a big life change and I want to celebrate with her while holding the sadness as well.
Thank you, Heidi! And for your support too ☺️
I think it’s a beautiful testament to what you created in the Lighthouse that you’d be sad to leave it. To me it means something good happened there. And in no way takes away from all the feelings and the rightness of the next step - just sits there beside it. I hope you get to say goodbye in all the ways you desire and get to take some pieces with you, onward.
Thank you, Forrest ☺️ and that's a beautiful thought to consider: what can I bring forward, from this place...
I'm so happy to be able to read your thoughtful reflections on this decision, this forthcoming change. As a reader, as an internet stranger, it really is bittersweet: to think of how much wonderful writing (and living!) has come from your life in the lighthouse, and to feel the anticipatory grief of saying goodbye to that... and to look forward to the writing and living that is going to thrive in this next chapter. I appreciate you sharing this so much.
I appreciate you reading it, reader/internet friend! I'd never even thought to write about the topic of "home," until moving here and slowly letting myself settle in. Which is kind of fascinating, considering I've had so many. Now, I'm finding myself fascinated by this as a topic/theme in our lives... and something I want to say a lot more about. Just from a different place ☺️
Love your writing! I am new to the Lighthouse and found you through your book The year of less. This particular writings of change travels with loss, truly speaks to me. I am very happy to have found you. You’ve found a deep peace within yourself, shaped by the life you’ve so beautifully created. And now, as you step into a new chapter, you carry with you even more love - ready to share, ready to grow, ready to begin again with an open heart.
This is such a beautiful and kind reflection, Christine. Thank you for these words! I'm glad you're here ☺️
Last summer I moved to the same city and I grieved hard for all the little things—specific trees and backyard animals, the certainty of knowing the neighbors and pets that walk by, etc. I still miss all of that but I’m starting to find good friendships here. I still feel foreign to my own patch of yard but I know that will change in time. I’m still learning names and faces to those who walk these streets, but I’ve also had a lot of fun exploring new areas.
Oh Katie, thank you for sharing your experience and some of what's been true for you! It makes me feel less alone... and hopeful, too. I'm also curious what you think helps you feel connected to a yard/garden. Asking for a friend ☺️
Part of connection to a garden to me is time spent. I need to see it in every season. I need to recognize the view of it from each window (that goes for neighbors trees too if they are in my view). Helping to care for it—weeding, watering, planting something new. Noticing the wildlife, I may put up a bird feeder. Looking up the names of any plants you don’t know. It’s not something that can be rushed I think, but I hope by the second or third growing season I feel less like I’m a stranger when I walk around my garden.
This is so beautiful and thoughtful. "I need to see it in every season," feels like it could apply to so many things in life. Physical things like gardens, homes, places, etc. But people and relationships too.
I'm also going to ask TM if he'd mind if I got a bird feeder ☺️ I've never had one before (throw seed into the grass, etc. for the birds here). But it feels like something I'd like to get one day.
When I read “It made me feel like we are friends,” I started crying along with you. I am *so* happy for you and Tall Man, and so appreciative that you shared all the bittersweetness of this move with us here. It all feels so real and hard and beautiful. Cheers to The Lighthouse! ❤️
It was such a nice moment ☺️ cheers, and hip hip hooray to this place!
This post gave me all the feels, and tears ensued (but in a good way). We don't often focus on what we leave behind, like you said, instead focusing on what's ahead, and I think we miss out on an integral aspect of life by doing that. I love that you're honoring what you're leaving, how wonderful! And congrats on the life shift, but also truly soul affirming to go through a goodbye process to a place that's meant so much in your growth journey.
Thank you, my friend! Now I'm finding myself curious about what YOU love about your own home/neighbourhood? If you ever had to go, what would you miss most about your daily life there?
Just thinking about this gave my heart a nostalgic pang, imagining not being at this place anymore. There's an energy to this land on which our home is built. It's 5 acres on a hilltop overlooking a valley and Mt. Pilchuck, in Washington State. The trees are magical and all the birds and critters that live around me seemed to have welcomed us into their midst. I look at land/home ownership more like stewardship, wherein I protect and care for everything on it and in it, trying to blend instead of dominating the landscape. So, I'd miss all the critters and trees I've gotten to know. I'd miss my walks down our road, sometimes seeing neighbors walking, other times it's just me and my thoughts. Whenever I've been away and I am driving towards home and I get to the last few miles, I get this feeling of anticipation and peace at arriving home. I would miss all that, the hug that my house gives me when I walk in, the smell of the flowers and trees, the sound of all the life happening around me. Thank you for asking, friend. :-)
This painted a beautiful picture of your home and land and life, friend. And that last mile before arriving home from being away? Gosh, isn't that the best feeling...
Thanks, as always, for sharing the complexity of your life so that we can all be reminded about that aspect of living and take it into our own lives.
Thank you for reading, friend ☺️
Hi Cait,
I am sending you a warm hug!
:-)
Hugs right back to you, Kaatje!
How exciting!
I enjoy hearing about your life in the UK and your appreciation of simplicity.
I love the British people and have always had a great conversational connection...likely because my ancestral roots are British and I see myself in the people and culture.
There's nothing like getting out for a walk in the morning in the UK and stopping off for a flat white and went to Nero's every morning when I was in Northern Ireland last September.
I went to see another book reading last week at the Elliott Bay Book Store. This time it was a local journalist for the Seattle Times and she discussed her book entitled "Ward of the State" by Claudia Rowe.
In July I'm going to see documentary filmmaker Ken Burns at McCaw Hall in Seattle who's one of my heroes. I'm sure you've seen his work in Canada.
I actually haven't seen a ton of his stuff, but think TM has! Hope you enjoy seeing him live, Sandra ☺️
Hi Cait !
Yes, my friend, you were right!
In your last comment to me in your previous Dispatch entry, you wrote that you didn't think that I would be surprised. Well, I have to admit that for awhile now I've had an inkling and felt that you were one day destinated to travel in life together with "TM".
Congratulations to you and to your Tall Man as you guys embark on the next exciting chapter of your lives, living together. I know that you will be happy, anxious, and curious - in all that your futures will hold. And even though you don't plan on getting married, but rather living together, in many ways both approaches have similar life characteristics. Yes, there is commitment but also there is trust in each other. Not to mention patience and understanding, as well as forgiveness.
I include forgiveness because being daily together 7 x 24 x 365 (along with x 366, during leap years), most certainly at some (hopefully rare) times in your lives there will occur issues where you and/or TM will not see the best in each other but rather the worst. Life is like that sometimes. We all encounter such times and often it happens in the early years when you are both getting to really know each other better. To be truly "meant to be happy together" for the long haul, you each will have to learn to be 110% forgiving of the other, even if you're dead positive that the other person is acting like a real "jerk" 😒 In other words, my friend, never go to bed angry, as the old saying goes. Give in to him at times and he treat you likewise. Life's too short to sweat the small stuff.
Now as far as feelings of sadness in moving away from your Lighthouse, well I too can understand how you are feeling these days. Many moons back both my wife and I, before and after we knew each other and then later got married, lived for many years in a suburb of Montreal. Time passed, and at the time when our kids were little ones, I and my family moved here (Toronto), away from family and friends, as part of my company's head office transfer. So - yes - we felt sad in some respects for some time but over the years that has vanished. We now have lived more years here than we did growing up in Montreal and are both quite happy campers. In others words, time heals all wounds. And so it will for you. Just give yourself time, my friend.
Here's wishing all the very best to you in your future with your Tall Man.
Thank you for all the kind words and story-sharing and advice, friend. I know it comes from some solid life experience ☺️
Beautiful Cait - may you go forward with courage, and have faith that this is so very right for your next life chapter. So many of us are cheering you on. Memories are precious, but so are new experiences.
Love,
Chel
"Memories are precious, but so are new experiences." That's beautiful, Chel. Thank you!
❤️❤️❤️
☺️☺️☺️