Skip to main content

Goodbye Amsterdam; Going Home.

Finding home. To some it’s the clearest thing in the world: “home is of course where you live”. But is it really? Is it a physical place or a state of the heart? Does it have to do with location only or people as well? The term “home” easily becomes something not so straightforward when locations, places, people, and heart-connections have changed numerous times. It leaves you feeling like a little bit of your heart remains in every place where you lived; every place where you made your “home” for a season. And I think you can have many “homes”, yet there has to be one place where you’re settled, whether it’s just for a season or forever.

Uprooting and moving is so much more than the physical relocating of oneself and ones belongings. It's like when you pull something from one place to another, it leaves a mark, and moving leaves a mark on those who go through the process. And sometimes it can take a while to actually “move”.

Being back in Amsterdam this week was so good. A place which was “home” a year ago, which now is not. And somehow it felt like although I and my things moved at the end of April last year, my heart caught up with it this week. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t in a “I-am-so-glad-I-am-done-with-Amsterdam” way. It was such a good week where I felt so loved and embraced by dear friends, but it really felt like a visit. Visiting some friends still in the “windows” was so precious, yet I didn’t feel the sadness of not working with the women there anymore. It was good, but it felt like what it was: a visit. And I felt like a guest. A very welcomed guest, but a guest nonetheless.

Amsterdam will always be in my heart, and I hope I will always have people to go back to visit there, but now I am home. Home in Norway with my heart able to fully embrace that this is where I am settling. Released from the things that gave me life before, so that I can find new things here to fill my time and heart.

So maybe this marks the end of transition... or maybe not. Life is a journey whatever season we find ourselves in. But what I do know is that even if I don’t know what it will look like or even if there will be any visible changes, there has been a shift in my heart and it feels good. Good to be Home.

Popular posts from this blog

Packing...again.

I just folded the last load of laundry and I’m almost packed. Off to the airport at 5am tomorrow morning, heading off to Amsterdam. I’m excited, a bit nervous, and wondering what it’ll be like. It’s been a good week at home with lots of quality time with family, especially the little nieces and nephew. I’m glad I’ll see them in April again. Well, not much to write and packing to be done and a bit of sleep would probably be a good idea too. Next time I write it’ll be from Amsterdam....
Read more

Single-tasking September: The art of single-tasking.

To change habits and ways of life, the motivation for change has to be strong, and the benefits outweigh the effort it takes to make the change.  For so long it’s seemed like the ability to multitask has been regarded as a great skill, but is it really a good thing? Recovering from burn-out, one of the effects I noticed was that it was harder to concentrate, and especially tricky trying to focus on many things at once. I’d try to multitask, only to realise that all tasks suffered from lack of capacity to complete any one of them. The challenge is that the habit of always doing many things at once goes deep, and when I tried to focus on just one thing, I found that it was actually really difficult.  As I did a little google search on the matter, I found it seems like multitasking isn’t as healthy as once thought, and that it doesn’t help productivity. Some even referred to it as “switch tasking”, in the sense that the brain isn’t doing many things at once, but shifting rapidly...
Read more

Snapshots of life...

Life. What is life anyway? And what does it mean to live life to the full? A little reflection there. One thing I do know is that I am alive and that the days seem to pass by quicker then I would like them to. The month of July has literally flown by... I can’t believe this weekend it’ll already be August. Where did July go? It’s been an eventful month. Last week was my birthday and I felt very loved and valued. Going for a Brazilian BBQ with some friends in a week or so and I am very excited!! I really hope it’s authentic and good, or I think I will most certainly be a tad disappointed. I also got given a car, almost on the day of my birthday. A good friend of mine got given another car and so she gave me her old one. It took a week and a bit for the garage to fix it up and pass it in the inspection, and getting it licensed in my name and getting insurance wasn’t totally straightforward, but I now have it. And it feels so freeing and lovely when I’m driving my own car!!! It’s a golden...
Read more