I am trying to break your heart

Spring is coming. The trees on our little village street are starting to bloom. Following a complete week long rain parade, we have had two mostly sunny breezy days. I forget how much seasons play with my mental health pretty much every year until spring comes again, and seasonal depression lifts a bit with the sunshine. As forewarned by the residents, winter in the UK lived up to it’s reputation of being very dark, wet, and cold. We felt the depths of our decisions this winter as a family. We walked through coming to terms with the enormity of the decision we made last spring and I hope we are coming out the other side into spring with peace.

I feel that I prepared as best I could before we moved AND I was not nearly prepared enough. It may be that is just life, I couldn’t prepare for things I had no idea would come our way. If you are going to live life adventurously, at some point you just have to leap off the cliff, trust you have patched your parachute well enough, and hope you land without breaking all your bones. We are all finding our way at different paces, in a family of 6 that can be hard. Elsie and Frances jumped right in to a vigorous social life here, they made friends quickly, and it has been sweet to watch them grow. Archie is just finding his footing. For a kid who thrives in a group isolation has been the hardest on him both in the pandemic and the move. Watching him transform as he makes friends here is incredible. It is like watching something wilted re hydrate. He is off on his first big adventure Monday, taking a week long class trip to Wales (which I now know is it’s own country, not part of England). Hank is still sorting it out. He excels academically, but is still trying to find a friend group. This is not surprising, but none the less heartbreaking. Hank has had the same best friend since nursery school, separating him from that has felt like the cruelest part of this move. It has been one of the hardest parts for me as well, because his best friends mom is my best friend. I desperately miss momming with the tribe of women i had around me in Nashville.

It is hard, and we are here for it. Here for showing our kids it is ok for things to take longer than expected to fall into place. Showing them it is okay to go without, okay to fail and keep trying, okay to embrace and adventure even when it is hard and more complex than anticipated.