Where Does Your Heart Go When Home Is No Longer an Option?
First, let's catch up to speed.
The title of this post, my first update from Utah, and 2024 for that matter, comes from a memoir I just read, Unbound by Steph Jagger, which 100% feels like it was written just for me at this exact moment in time. But I'll get to that mind-blowing moment further down the page.
It's been six weeks since I landed in Salt Lake City, and I'm happy I took this leap. Salt Lake felt more my vibe than Orlando almost immediately upon touchdown. I love my new job, the commute is breathtaking, and a community welcomed me with open arms, so three issues that plagued me in Florida have been promptly eliminated. Also, working in Alta, a bucket list ski destination for many, feels like a special notch on my travel belt, whether it becomes a long-term thing or not. Oh, and perhaps most importantly, living with a long-time bestie who also knows the pain of losing a mother to cancer too soon is a priceless gift on my healing journey.
However, the positive changes of this move are freeing up space for more grief to rise, so while there's more positivity in my outer world, the ouchies are feeling more tender on the inside. No longer do I have the distraction of focusing on my stepdad's needs, steering me away from getting curious about my own. No longer is there a job I hate, pulling my attention from the numb and hollow feeling in my chest. No longer is there judgment of a city I felt no connection with to distract me from the disconnect within myself. These shifts beautifully illustrate one of the most transformative aspects of embarking on life adventures, as I often call my travels. They tend to strip back everything you thought was the issue in your life and reveal the true culprit, which is, spoiler alert, usually untended emotions within ourselves.
Our title question, "Where does your heart go when home is no longer an option?" dissolved a protective layer and put words to feelings I hadn't yet identified, let alone tended to. I don't think I've ever burst into tears reading a book. Well, one that wasn't sad anyway. I realized at that moment that Mum was my heart's home, and now that her physical being has ceased to exist, it's like my heart has gone walkabout in search of her.
I've digressed a bit from the actual story I wanted to share. But I need you to know that I haven't been feeling all rainbows, sunshine, at one with myself or the Universe because it will emphasize how we're constantly being supported and nudged along by unexplained forces, even when we feel lost and angry at the world. And, in my case right now, even when I'm actively avoiding all the things I know would help me feel better in my body and bring me back into alignment with myself. Hello, adolescent chair, my old friend!
Get comfy, it's story time…
The seed of this week's infamous Cat travel juju moment was planted back in July.
While browsing my local library for a new read, the spine of Everything Left To Remember, also written by Steph Jagger, caught my eye. I'd never heard of her or it before, but there was a tiny energetic nudge when I laid eyes on the title. I was hooked from the first page and continuously mind-blown with each turn. She connects experiences and describes reflections in a way that feels like you're actively witnessing her unlock and gift you long-hidden secrets of the Universe.
Her bio said there was a previous book, so after I smashed through Everything Left To Remember, I was eager to get my hands on more of her spellbinding wisdom. Much to my disappointment, not one copy of Unbound was in the Orlando library system. With my propensity to pack up and move across the world, I avoid purchasing books when I can borrow them for free. So rather than order it, I decided Unbound would find its way to me when the time was right. And boy, did she.
The next few months ended up revolving around helping my stepdad move, selling off my mother's belongings, getting the house ready for sale, and streamlining Harv's life for ease on his new unpaved path without my mother. Then, as I have a history of doing, I randomly decided to uproot and move cross country practically overnight. Needless to say, I totally forgot about the book.
Until the Universe intervened last week.
While actively avoiding feeling better with late-night doomscrolling, I came across a post from Steph about the seventh anniversary of publishing Unbound. I felt a tiny jolt in my system, immediately hopped on my local library app, and boom, there it was, available for immediate pickup. Upon cracking it open, I was tickled to discover that Unbound is about her adventure of chasing winter around the world to ski 4,000,000 verticle miles. I wasn't tickled because I'm interested in skiing, but because I thought it was a teensy serendipitous that I was reading a book about skiing while working on a famous ski mountain.
Not only did I have real-life visual inspiration to illustrate her excellent stories, but the serendipitous feeling grew as I read parallels to some of my earlier vagabond days. She was falling in love with someone she met on the trip while I was doing the same during my first year in Australia. She spent a good chunk of time in New Zealand, hilariously describing several places I lived and traveled through two years after she was there.
Now, we have to double back to my grief to set the rest of the magic travel juju scene.
So, after work on Monday, I opened up to Aud about how I've been feeling lately. Namely, numb, sad, empty, slightly depressed, and deeply irritated with myself for intentionally avoiding self-care tools (that I spent good money to get trained in, mind you) and feeding into a cycle that I know isn't doing me any favors. Like any brilliant friend who's walked through your same hell two decades earlier, she paused momentarily, then asked a question that cut to a new layer of self-awareness.
"Do you actually want to feel better right now, or do you just need this time to feel sad and have all your feels?"
And, like with all brilliant questions that reflect a tender truth you haven't yet met, my face began to leak, and the answer bubbled right up.
"I just want to be sad that I had to watch my mum die. I don't feel like doing things that make me feel better."
{Let me elaborate on that so my loved ones don't worry about me sinking further into depression and offing myself. I'm still open to having joyful moments, and I receive them with gratitude when they occur, but it's only the small, naturally occurring moments in day-to-day exchanges that I have the capacity for. Actively reaching for and intentionally creating big joy feels amiss. Also, the party trick my grief often employs is to instantly follow up immense joy with a sucker punch of despair that I'll never be able to call her to share my joy again. So, I haven't yet found the drive or courage to go after something I full well know will knock me fucking sideways with the identical force it lifts me up.}
Her brilliant and compassionate question led to a conversation about honoring our feelings while seeking and nurturing joy and moving on from the pain, or at least being willing to let it go. (We said the words joy and pain many times; remember that that's important.) Aud also gently reminded me that the Pegster wouldn't want me to be stuck in sadness, especially because of her, and that she would want nothing but for me to live the most joyful life possible. Obviously, I know this intellectually, but feeling comfortable with it as an actionable way of life is clearly not where I'm at yet.
{Grief support tip- tread carefully, saying similar sentiments to your grieving people. If anyone else had tried to tell me that when I was already so emotionally charged, it would've elicited firey, sweary rage. However, since Audrey has lived what I'm living and knew the Pegster, she can get away with saying things that others would not.}
Stay with me here; this is where it gets good….
Later that evening, probably because of our heart-to-heart, I managed to override the desire to numb out and resumed Unbound instead of doomscrolling. A few minutes into reading, I got a spine-straightening energy jolt, and my jaw dropped. I came to a paragraph where Steph recounts a conversation with the man she fell in love with on her adventure, in which they talk about the effects mountains can have on you. I've snapped a picture for your reading pleasure in hopes the magic energy transfers from the book into the photo, through your screen, and delivers a swift kick in the pants.
Are you seeing what I saw??
Because what I saw was that five months after not finding this book and deciding it would find me when the time was right, and mere hours after having a lengthy conversation about finding joy and letting go of pain, a book published back in 2017 reflected my present-day conversation right back at me while simultaneously discussing the healing effects of the very mountains I just moved cross country to work on.
If the Universe could mic-drop, it would do so here.
Now, did that jolt magically erase all my pain and have me running outside to shout newfound joy from the mountaintops?
Negatory, Batman.
Did it pique my interest in taking a ski lesson or two as a part of my Utah adventure?
A little bit, actually.
More importantly, did it reignite a tingly knowing that even though I'm struggling through some of the lowest lows of my existence, there is still magic steering behind the scenes and that one day, my heart will find a new home?
Absofuckinlutely.
This is what I'm talking about when I bang on about serendipity, the magic of the Universe, my travel juju, etc. It's not just the big, obvious moments that have the power to shift our existence completely. It's often just a picture or a paragraph, a chat with a stranger, something small out of the corner of your eye, a song at just the right moment, or a literal sign, in Steph's case (read the book), that sends a palpable, energetic force surge through you, letting you know that you are perfectly aligned or are about to be realigned. That something special is occurring or has the potential to unfold from there.
But here's the trick: it's not our job to know what that something is; it's our job to acknowledge the tingle, the pull, the hit, the nudge and stay open and curious about the next one and be patient once we take a leap because the massive shifts rarely happen on our preferred timelines, for better or worse, as was the case with Mum's death. That last sentence was likely my soul trying to get a message through to my own heart, but I imagine it's meant to find its way to someone else here, too.
With all that being said, I have no idea where this Utah adventure will lead, but I'm willing to bet the Universe is about to teach me how to make a new home for my heart and turn immense pain into joy (with my adolescent chair kicking and screaming in tow). Actually, there's a fib in that thought; I have an inkling of where things could lead, but to do that nudge justice, I need to save it for another post before I bring it out of the ethers.
Until then, thank you for spending time with me. If your heart feels lost, feel free to imagine mine wandering aimlessly alongside yours, and I hope some vagabond adventure magic heads your way.
Hugs,
Cat
