The Places That Hold Us

Moving can be bittersweet.

I am moving—not to a different city, state, or country, but seven minutes away from my current home, which I’ve been renting for six years. I’m not new to moving—I’ve moved eight times in my life. Some of you will scoff at that number because you have moved dozens of times; those who have stayed in the same house for years will think it’s a lot. No matter where you fall in the how-many-times-did-you move category, we can agree that moving is emotional, exciting, and stressful…all at once.

In 2016, I lived in a cute house. Compared to other houses in the small town where I settled with my family for a decade, it looked like a cottage. I loved it, or at least I thought I did. That same year, I quit a job in book publishing on the spot because of a toxic environment and promptly had a nervous breakdown. I thought I’d get better with time, but the truth is, I didn’t, and things got to a point where something had to give. That something was abandoning the house I loved. We moved there when my son was three. Soon after, I found out I was pregnant with my daughter. That house held me during the push-and-pull of being a working parent with two small children during the years when I was building my career. I was devastated to leave it, but I wasn’t in a space where I could mentally process all the change around me. We decided to move to the Jersey Shore in 2018, and I resisted the idea with every inch of my body.

The house where I’ve lived these past few years isn’t fancy and needs a makeover, but it held me during my darkest days and saved me in the moments when I didn’t want to be here anymore because the pain was too much to bear. Don’t get me wrong, my affection for the house grew over time. I hated—really hated—it when I first moved there. I had no job, no interviews, and no friends. It felt like I had been banished from the life I knew 45 minutes outside of New York City, and I thought the only thing that would help was moving back to the town we just left. I was wrong.

After I made the difficult decision to participate in outpatient treatment for the severe depressive episode I was having, I slowly began accepting where I was. In outpatient, you are on the same playing field as everyone else. They might be in recovery for different reasons, but no one is better than the person sitting next to them in group therapy. I made friends there who I will never forget. I also did serious work on my mental health for the first time in my life. It changed me for the better. During this time, I’d read voraciously in my room, which gave me solace.

When I was discharged from outpatient, the house held me as I stressed about finding a job. The funny thing about book publishing is that you can love it with all your heart, but sometimes it won’t love you back. That is precisely how I felt during the summer of 2019. I sat in my home office every day, applying for jobs. Sure, I had some interviews, but they went nowhere. I jumped when I finally got an offer to work for an indie publisher in New York City. I mean, I’d be in New York again, and wouldn’t that solve my problems? Enter the pandemic.

I understand that some people had awful pandemic experiences and are still traumatized by them. My own experience was much different. My family was home together for a long time, and I felt like I slowly but surely came to terms with the fact that New York is just a place. It was not, and is not, my home. I had resisted working remotely for as long as possible, but we can only control so much. The house held me when I cried about being home so much. It also held the laughter of me and my family as we binged shows and played board games. The pandemic and the house brought me back to life.

When I decided to start an MBA program in 2022, my little office on the side of the house held me through late nights and long classes. That office is also where my kids would visit after they came home from school to tell me about their days. I will always cherish those talks. That same year, some family members moved in with us during a hard time, and though it was sometimes stressful, it brought us a lot closer. The house held all of us as we tried to navigate our relationships.

As I packed, I found journals from 2015 to 2018. I don’t recognize the person who wrote the entries. That person would’ve never agreed to buy a home down the shore. That person thought working in New York City was the only way to have a full life. That person didn’t appreciate what was right before her: her own life. I also discovered a box of Mother’s Day cards that my kids made for me when they were young, which reminded me that no matter where I am or what I am doing, my love for them is fierce, as is theirs for me. They are my home.

I always thought we’d move to a permanent spot after my 16-year-old daughter left for college, but when you step into a house and instantly visualize your family there, it’s hard to ignore the feeling that you should go for it. Now that we are close to starting anew, I see the new house with its arms open, ready to hold me and my family through the next season of our life together. It is bittersweet to shut the door on the chapters the old house wrote for us, but I am ready for a blank page, new words, and great memories.