Coming and Going

We're moving on Sunday.

We are moving into an adorable 2-bedroom, 2-bath little house where after 4 years I will have a bathtub and a closet that doesn't require a stepladder and arabesques to reach my dresses. There's going to be some repainting happening on the inside, and some gardening happening on the out, and I am really excited.

I'm also buried in boxes and dealing with neck and back aches from bending and lifting and reaching and wrapping. It's all OK, this is just what moving is, but I find I'm having one of those weeks where I kinda know what I feel but not really. Because as much as I may try to be still, I'm thinking about what the packing agenda for the day is and how the timeline of meeting the cable guy and spackling the holes is going to work. And I do want to be present this week because the place we're leaving has been a huge part of our lives. I wish I could run my hand over every square inch of wall and just thank this house.

When Sky and I moved back from New York at the beginning of 2007 we moved here. This is the first place we found together, the house where we lived when we got engaged, married, where his business started and I worked on the Segerstrom Stage at South Coast Rep. It's where I made the decorations for our wedding, where we had the baby shower for our nephew Dashiell, where I made macarons for the first time, and where my meditation practice started to get pretty deep. It's the house where my body healed, where we see hummingbirds and the ocean every day, and it's on the street I walked down in college and wished I lived on.

We're leaving because we need more space, but both of us wish we could slide a door and live a parallel life where we live here forever. Although then I'd HAVE to build a different closet. And install a tub. It feels weird to me to know all of this but to be so busy boxing it up that I'm not feeling much of anything about leaving. But I know it's there.

Anyhoo, all of that to say that I got home not too long ago and I am zonked. No more packing tonight. I opened an email that a friend had sent me, went to a link of a video she praised, and now it's an hour later and I've found a new source of phenomenal inspiration: Brene Brown.

Intrigued?

Go here.

Then go here. Maybe you'll check out her blog. I know it's going on my blog roll.

I love this talk so much. It's 20 minutes, but take the time. Right around 9 minutes it starts getting so good you want to push the pause button and write down everything she's saying. Like when she shares the true definition of courage: "telling the story of who you are with your whole heart". Which equals being imperfect. Which equals being vulnerable, which is at the heart of what she's saying. Tell me an area of life that doesn't apply to. I can't wait to read more of what she writes. And sit with it. Once I start feeling again:) She's a "Researcher Storyteller" and she's saying some pretty beautiful things about being a human being, which tonight I needed to hear much more than I needed to seal up another box.