Taking stock

Time to breathe

When I was 26, I bought a one-way ticket from London to Buenos Aires. I flew alone, just me and a suitcase, and then the airline lost my suitcase.

So there I was, 26 years old, alone on the other side of the world, with nothing to show for myself but a passport and a wallet and a very poor grasp of Spanish.

I ended up staying away for 11 years. In that time, I went through alcoholism and recovery. I eloped with someone I’d been dating for six weeks—it went better than you’d probably expect, given that start, but nine years later, we divorced. I grieved—this and deaths and fertility struggles and more. I crawled through crushing failures, crushing homesickness, crushing confusion, and ego death after ego death, only surviving thanks to the beautiful things that happened too: the lifelong friends I made; their company as I crossed all these thresholds; the boundless generosity of humans, animals, the living world, and the spirit that animates it all.

I lived in almost two dozen homes on two continents—three if you count a three-month stint back in London, while I waited for a visa. After Buenos Aires, I lived in New York City, Los Angeles, and (for six months) Vermont, not to mention in a bust-up Airstream trailer that we drove from California to Connecticut across the southern states.

It’s been a ride.

A handful of the views and places I've called home in the past few years

And now, the ride is slowing.

I’ll be forty next year.

I’m buying a little cottage in a small town in rural southwest England.

I’ve finally found my place and my people.

It’s not that everything is settled. In so many ways, I still have no idea what the second half of my life will look like. Who and what will fill the days? Where will love and work and imagination take me? I don’t know.

But I can see where it will unfold, and more than that, I can feel in my bones that I’m done running. When hard stuff shows up—and it’s still showing up, of course—I know now that I can sit still and face it. And it turns out that’s the precondition to actually being of use in this world.

I’m sure you all knew that already. If I’ve learned one thing through all this running and failing, it’s that I’m a really, really slow learner. But I got there eventually.

I don’t really know how to finish this letter. I suppose it isn’t much of a letter at all. I’ve been scattered the past few weeks, trying to meet deadlines and secure my foothold in this new life I’m building. I haven’t had time to write much, and I’m not sure I’d have known what to write if I did.

Now that some of the crush has passed, I’m still not sure what to say. I’m wary of rushing to put words on what’s next. I guess it simply felt like time to exhale and notice the glow in the sky, over there, above those hills that have been dark for so long.

Thanks for being in it with me.

x Ellie