When my mother died 11 months ago, I made a pact with myself. I will forever hold her loving presence, nurturing patience, and fierce reliability in my heart.

And I will let go of her inability to be wrong. I will be wrong every day if that’s what it takes. Even if I have to say it aloud to myself: “Oh, I was wrong about that.”

So be it.

This has been one of the most freeing experiments I’ve ever run. With every admission of a lesson learned, I feel generational cycles breaking. I will be the first in a long line of wonderful, beautiful, powerful women to soften into the knowledge that I can’t control everything.

And in that spirit, I thought I should tell you—

I was wrong about home.

Two Months

Back in August, emerging from an uncomfortable season of solitude, I decided to book a flight to Austin. My brother moved there earlier this year, not far from one of my closest friends. After threatening to visit for months, it was finally time to make it happen.

Kind of. I was not about to fly down there and shrivel in the 105-degree heat.

Instead, I set my sights on October, intending to stay for a few days. But at the last second—right before I booked—my friend convinced me to come for a week. A month into self-inflicted solitary confinement, I couldn’t believe I was actually doing this.

Good thing I had two months to get used to the idea.

Tuesdays in September

One weekend in September changed my life as I knew it. I faced one of my oldest, most merciless beliefs about my capacity to love and be loved—and entered a state of playfulness unlike any I’ve ever known.

By Tuesday, I felt like a new woman. The only way I could describe it was through poetry, chanting, and hours-long phone calls with a couple of my most trusted people. For the first time in forever, I felt free.

“It was this the whole time,” I wrote in a blank note on my phone. After a decade of training myself to feel nothing, to be numb to life, to freeze at the slightest hint of flippancy—I called off the war.

And the soldiers in my mind simply dropped their weapons and walked away.

Skydive

Long before I boarded my flight to Austin, I knew this trip was important. I think that’s why I wanted it to be short. How much change can you undergo in just a few days?

But after the events of September, I was glad to be traveling again, excited to see my brother and my friends. I hated Austin when I was there last year, but these were wildly different circumstances. This time, I was ready to experience it—to really feel it—and enjoy myself.

Even before the plane took off, I could feel something stirring. My heart, my soul, my mind? Before I could tell myself a story about what this feeling meant, I pulled out my phone and wrote a poem.

To fully grasp the significance of this thing, playfully titled, “Skydive,” it’s important to note that I rarely write poetry with my logical mind. It’s hard to describe, but usually, I don’t know what a poem is about until days (or even weeks) after I jot it down. It just flows, and my job is to let it.

Sitting there on the plane, “Skydive” flowed to me within five minutes:

Things are changing
Again
But am I ready for it this time?
It always feels impossible
When you’re barreling through life
But when you’re in the sky
It’s like butterflies and shattered ice
All the pieces of your psyche
Fighting for the right
To be heard
When there’s nothing else to do
And am I coming home to you?
Or coming home to me?
It feels like a truth intrinsic
That I’m supposed to go
But I don’t know why
And the mystery is looming
Like an angel on my shoulder
Guiding me on

The First Shift

From the moment I landed in Austin, I felt grounded, like I was returning to a place I knew well. It felt nothing like the city I visited in the spring of 2022, and yet, its embrace was familiar. For hours, I marveled at how natural it felt to be there, lugging around my too-heavy backpack and catching up with my dear friend.

I was so relaxed, in fact, that I took a nap. And then caught a cold (that I thought was seasonal allergies—whoops). At one point, my body was so thoroughly miserable that I considered flying home early. But I just couldn’t. Something big was coming, and that feeling made my sore throat and aching limbs seem small.

On Saturday, with my voice hanging on by a thread (and still believing I was having an allergic reaction), I went to a going away party for a man I didn’t know.

I won’t name the man, nor the one who hosted the party, but suffice it to say that I had no business being there. The introvert in me was out of her depth. But that night, I decided to let go and roll with it. And by the time I left, I felt like I belonged in that room. I was genuinely sad to say goodbye to a person I’d just met a few hours earlier.

The Second Shift

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, then you know I’m not much of a party girl. I made peace with my homebody tendencies years ago and never looked back.

But my dear friend and soul sister was turning 27, and I couldn’t wait to celebrate her the following night—even if it meant interacting with dozens of new Austin people.

Especially if that’s what it meant. The going away party had awakened something in me, and I didn’t want it to be lulled back to sleep.

For the second time that weekend, I found myself in a room full of people who instantly felt comfortable, reliable, and friendly. The blissful unraveling that I experienced in September allowed me to show up sans shields. I got to feel it—this sense of community that permeated my friend’s home.

It was like magic. I met people that night who are going to be stuck with me for a long, long time.

Let’s Dance

By Monday, we were wiped. Back-to-back parties had my friend and I crashed in her living room, debriefing. We planned to go dancing until all hours of the night, but I was supposed to be at the airport early Tuesday morning, and my energy levels were swiftly declining.

“What if we dance here?” she suggested.

And that’s exactly what we did. We moved the furniture, rolled up the rug, and threw a third, smaller party where we danced for hours—an Austin specialty.

As with all forms of dance, it’s difficult to capture the magic of two-stepping in words. It’s something you have to feel firsthand.

Two months ago, I wouldn’t have been able to do it—15 years of ballet training be damned. I had to soften and open on a million different subtle levels just to stand in that room and be moved. And it was worth it.

For years, I experienced dancing as a mode of breaking down. I felt it in the unnatural curvature of my spine, the tension in my hamstrings, the inflammation in my Achilles. I danced until my ribs were bruised and my toes were bleeding. Every moment spent in the studio became a means to an end: performing. The one weekend a year when I got to share the art with an audience.

Two-stepping in my friend’s living room clinic was the opposite of all that. It was healing. Freeing. Transformative. And I didn’t have to be good at it—I just had to flow.

For months, I’ve been trying to articulate my definition of “fun.”

It was this the whole time.

Stay

There was no way I could go home on Tuesday morning—not after that. I rebooked my flight for Friday, changed my clothes, and went out to dance some more.

Sitting on a ramshackle couch in the corner, one of my new friends turned to me and asked, “So when are you moving to Austin?” And I laughed… because part of me already had.

How strange—having to leave home to go home.

Staying also meant I was still in town for my friend’s actual birthday. We spent the evening at a private art studio, where I sat in front of one painting for two hours, processing through poetry.

Something told me you were here.

We can park in this dirt and wander.

It feels like the stars aligned.

Our souls were made for this adventure.

Letting Go (Again)

At some point, it stopped mattering that I was sick. I stopped trying to intermittent fast. I stopped looking at the clock when I went to sleep because I knew it was at least two in the morning.

Letting go of control felt like the only logical, reasonable, divine thing to do. I was safe in Austin, laughing and dancing and crying and eating Greek food every other night.

By the time my friend drove me to the airport on Friday morning, I couldn’t imagine leaving. It was a scary thing to witness—the untethering of my heart. For a year, all I wanted was to return to Colorado. And now, six months later and nearly 900 miles south, I wasn’t ready.

I’ve brought you all this way with me simply to say, again, that I was wrong. I was wrong about home.

It’s not just one place. It might not be a place at all.

Unless that place is here. Here, where the love is. Here, where the joy is. In this moment, right here.

Welcome, welcome, welcome home.

Integration

It snowed the day after I got back to Colorado, as if to remind me why I love this state. Like a petulant five-year-old, I wished for 80-degree weather and a fat dose of humidity.

And I went on like that for a few days—right up until I remembered that integration is much easier from a place of acceptance.

I think my doctor said it best: “You rediscovered a part of yourself that you thought had died.” And that part of me exists whether I’m in the Springs or Austin (or anywhere, for that matter).

It may feel tenuous now—this new concept of home—but deep down, I know I’ve been on this very journey for most of my life. Just because the chain link of my former reality is breaking down doesn’t mean I’m breaking with it.

If two-stepping taught me anything, it’s that the freedom is in the flow.

Photo by Carlos Alfonso on Unsplash