Born Whole

We’re moving.

After nine happy years here, we’ve finally outgrown our flat and have been immensely fortunate to buy a house.

I feel excited but also a little sad about our imminent move. My eight year old cries that she doesn’t want to move because she’s lived in our beautiful but cramped flat since she was in my tummy, as she puts it. Never mind that she’ll no longer have to share a room with her naughty little sister.

The five year old, in turn, loudly proclaims that the first thing she’ll do once we’re at the new house is post a sign on the door to her room, warning intruders (i.e. her sister and parents) not to enter without permission or face grave consequences.

My husband will have his own office and I get a room of my own too!

I have moved a lot in my adult life: first from Sweden to the American Midwest at the age of 19; then onwards to Washington DC and New York City and, sixteen years ago, I landed here in London.

Each time I moved somewhere new and unknown, a part of me saw it as a chance to start a new life of sorts, escaping my painful past and reinventing myself.

This time, however, it’s different. I am no longer trying to get away from myself. After forty odd years on this earth I am finally at home wherever I am, because I know I am whole.

I don’t search anymore for external connections to give myself a sense of belonging, for at last I’ve discovered that the connection I was looking for all those years, was always within myself.