Moving homes and resting in the middle

I have been working with my partner for the last year and a half to rehabilitate an old home that we will be moving into any day now (a specific day!). Over the last too many months, I watched our project list grow and and complicate, seen our budget expand and contract, and adjusted expectations as timeline projections proved frustratingly inaccurate. I have had to learn a type of patience that feels particularly painful - being so close to a dream a long time coming, but not there yet, and missing a sense of completeness. This has come among the other surprises, interruptions, and adjustments I have come to expect from a life of caring and being. The world never ceases to be complicated; once we have things figured out, they change.

Although my wisest self is appreciative of every step along the way and the learning it brings - especially the camaraderie, and the feeling of doing some things that I never thought I could - my neurodivergent nervous system has really struggled to tolerate the liminal space of being in process for so long. Mapping and navigating processes are hard for me, and if I don’t externalize them and really take the time to rework them, I end up going on wildly inefficient tangents. With something as big and foundational as a home being in flux, it has been hard to feel tethered and connected. There have been dark moments, panic, and letting go of important things to me, bringing up disappointment and vulnerability.

Not shockingly, my partner and I haven’t handled this transition the same way. Same with my kid. There is always a part of me that sets out a little (but big feeling) expectation that I won’t have to explain my process in order to bridge it with someone else’s, and there will be no friction of needs. What a world of ease (and stagnation!) that would be. We all have challenges with transition, but our challenges and how we cope is looking really different.

In a moment of grief, I found myself picking up The Five Invitations. This was a book I inherited from a friend that I lost to cancer several months back and has been a source of comfort through losses small and big. It suggests that in hard times we find a way to Rest In The Middle. To me that means giving myself the support, boundaries, and encouragement I need to go do something restorative even though everything isn’t done yet. Of all the processes I have tried to grow this year, I have found myself most dedicated to this one. I want so badly to have the sensation and peace of mind of a clean slate, but change is happening in slow stages, each of which has required something of me that deserves a restorative response.

I am not done yet with this process, but I can see the finish line. I have chosen to write from the middle as an act of resting in the middle. I know that there will be new journeys and processes ahead once I complete this one, at the same time that I know this long investment is in someways the foundation I need to do the next ones. I will celebrate it, do something radically restorative, and then there will be more change waiting for me.