INTRODUCTION

The theme of this month’s letter has come to be rather organically.

I found myself on a precious February Saturday afternoon slipping into a feeling of overwhelming emotion for the years I’ve spent in my current home, meditating on my upcoming move to a new one. I was called to reflect on all the lessons, eras, and learnings I’ve been blessed to endure and navigate, while living in my current place of residence, where I’ve been since graduation. I was moved by the deep evolution that has transpired, turning me, who may fundamentally be similar, into someone new - slightly weathered, wiser, and possessing of a grounded confidence and vulnerability I hadn’t yet come to inhabit at a fresh 22. 

While a melange of feelings accompanied my contemplative afternoon, including an achingly strong sense of gratitude and freedom, the awareness of the finality of this chapter, which feels so right, has also given rise to the knowledge of a funny acceptance of the homesickness that once gone, I will never be going back. 

I am choosing to believe it no coincidence that a central theme of one of the books I’ve read this past month is the idea of: ‘Heimweh’ or German for ‘Homepain’. Different than nostalgia, which, in my own belief, tends to over romanticize, cause rosy-colored distortion, and overpromises the return to the past, Heimweh feels staunchly more clear cut, more realistic, more unmistakably German, calling upon a the true upheaval of being physically separated from a home. 

It suggests the added layer of never being able to return, whether physically, or because one is fundamentally different that who one once was. Thus, the resolution of this seems to be the integration and acknowledgement of this feeling, coupled with some onward movement, either physically, mentally, emotionally, or some combination of the three. 

I leave you here to sample a bit of what’s evolved from this place. Enjoy with something that makes you feel cozy!