A couple weeks ago – maybe last week? – I was lucky enough to go on a yoga retreat. … Well, it *was* yoga, and yoga *was* practiced, but also, it wasn’t yoga. It was a life retreat.

Considering that my life has been in a free fall for going on two years, I might say that while it was a privilege to go, I also *needed* it. Despite having at least three legitimate panic attacks prior to leaving and while driving to the retreat. Sometimes panic sneaks in through the tiniest of kinks in one’s armor, and a person finds herself at a turnpike rest area completely convinced she will be murdered in broad daylight.

Like I mentioned, I kind of *needed* the retreat.

When John & I made the decision to come back to Chester County, there were a million reasons. But at the top of my list was my yoga studio. I understand that this idea – of a place I pay to go to practice something I could easily practice anywhere on my own – might not fully make sense to everyone. But John had several concerns before our big move nearly two years ago – and sadly/ironically/hilariously he was right about all of them. I’d said that we could be happy anywhere (this based on the fact that I’d moved every few years my entire life and was still alive and well … failing to remember that the moves had been difficult, painful, dark, hard, sometimes terrible and rarely -if ever – happy). I think, in retrospect, I didn’t fully understand how to stay put. How to just live and be happy in one place. I had itchiness for change under my fingernails, tickling my brain, and because I’d never known anything different, I thought moving was what had to happen.

I was wrong. This was not the first time, it certainly won’t be the last time. But hopefully I will continue to learn and grow and get uncomfortable and grow some more. Only time will tell.

Anyway. What dawned on me the longer we lived in central PA was that I’d willingly walked away from a life that John and I had painstakingly built. For no real reason. Just because we thought we needed a change. Everything came into focus the longer we were up there, the unhappiness growing like a plague. I missed my studio, I missed my doctors, I missed the city, I missed Birds’ fans and the Schuylkill Expressway. I missed Amtrak trains to NYC. I began to understand that I missed home. And I’d never really known where that was before (see above re: moving every few years). But I knew in my bones that it wasn’t Bellefonte.

I don’t remember the exact moment when we knew we were moving. But it happened fast. And so many other things – really hard, grown up, life-is-effing-hard things – were happening simultaneously that my memories are foggy. But all of a sudden we were buying a new house and we’d sold the one we’d just built and we were packing and loading and preparing for the hardest move of our lives.

It was brutal.

Right before our current house was due to be finished it flooded. Our timeline got kicked back several weeks. I spiraled, not really sure how to keep on keeping on. When we finally signed papers, we drove directly from the closing to see “Deadpool & Wolverine” because I’d bought tickets the day they went on sale and we hadn’t anticipated the delay. It was a comedy of errors. When we began our move-in the next day, my body seemingly collapsed, giving out after months of running on adrenaline and cortisol.

The dates of the retreat hadn’t seemed that close when I’d signed up (something I’d vowed to do having missed several retreats the studio had done while I was gone). But then all of a sudden it was upon me, and John had to be in Pittsburgh for work so we’d hired a sitter to stay with Eli for the first time in his little life. And I hit the road minus all my meds (which came back to haunt me – WOOF!)

Anyway.

All of that to say that the retreat was scary for me initially. I didn’t really know anyone going and as I drove I wondered if I’d made a huge mistake. I worried about Eli being alone with a stranger and if he’d behave. I knew that I forgave him anything but that’s because he’s mine. I worried about John getting out to the Burgh on time. I definitely got a migraine that I still can’t fully kick.

But also. The retreat was a gift. It was beauty and open souls and nature and sharing and yoga and hikes. And it confirmed to me that my yoga studio – one of the three things John had been most concerned about leaving – was as important and special as he’d believed it to be. I just hadn’t realized. That when I’d gone to my first class back on April 2, 2018, that I’d also found a home. A place full of like-minded humans who fill up my soul each and every class. Each and every day.

I learned these past two years and even more concretely these past few months being home again, what a gift and privilege and frankly, a luxury community is. I spent four days connecting with incredible people and confronting truths within myself. It was gorgeous and sacred.

It confirmed to me – if I hadn’t known before – that I’d come home. That I was back in my community.

That this place – these people – were my home.

Xoxo, g