The Myth Making of a Moving Story
Home is not a place, but a state of being.
To move from one home to another is to surrender to a sacred transition—an alchemy of loss, hope, and reinvention. It’s myth in motion.
In the spring of 2024, my husband and I placed our house on the market. It has been on and off ever since, challenging us with pricing, and patience. The process moves at glacial speed, but we chose this. We chose to be unmoored, to walk through the wilderness of liminality. And in doing so, we invoked a ritual of release.
Every release begins with a descent. The labor of packing, painting, prepping—is not just physical. It’s spiritual; a humbling walk to the threshold, that sacred place where what was meets what could possibly be.
Yesterday morning, I was reading James Hollis’ Tracking the Gods: The Place of Myth in Modern Life. This phrase stopped me: “A need that typically arises in the second half of life is the need to redefine oneself, to relocate one’s self in the context of a larger journey.”
Yes. A deeper locus is in play. This desire to move, to relocate, to change—it isn’t about dissatisfaction with a particular place. It’s divine discontent, born from the soul’s urging to expand, to grow, to shed the skin of what no longer fits.
A cross-country move at this stage of life is not just another adventure. It’s an initiation. One that honors the natural cycle of sacrifice, rebirth, fruition, decay. To move is to live that myth again. The etymology of the word sacrifice means to make sacred. Make sacred the endurance necessary to wait; to hold the dry-mouthed frustration and acknowledge the fire which forges us into the next becoming.
The longing to belong is braided deep into our bones. It stirs questions and contemplations:
Is home a place we belong to—or is our truest belonging to some Greater Mystery?
How do we build home? Is it energy? Intention? Memory?
And what does it mean to return home, especially when we've outgrown the old maps?
What do we come home to?
I hold the choice of this move with humility. I know not everyone has that. But even with choice, there’s grief in the letting go. There’s disorientation in the wait. There’s courage in continuing to believe the next place will be welcoming. In the meantime, to paraphrase Mr. T.S. Eliot – I am an old woman, with a dry mouth, waiting for the rain.
Dear and precious reader, please share what stirs in your soul when you relocate, reinvent, or release?
Recently, my poet friend
wrote about her moving story, encouraging and inspiring me to write my own. I hope you will reflect upon some of the questions posed and share what stirs in your soul when you relocate, reinvent or release. Thank you for being here. I am grateful for you.
Beautifully and wisely written, Stephanie. Thank you! My home and place were ripped out from under me at mid-life, when I was 55 and my beloved husband died of brain cancer. I've been wandering ever since, learning more about who this solo me is and what she wants from the final decades of her life as I re-story houses and sample communities within my home range in the Rocky Mountains. I am searching for my tribe and a place to root, just as you are. The disorientation of the process is real, and very, very difficult to sit with. And yet, we learn and grow in the re-defining and re-locating. Blessings and a hug to you!
I'm reading these reflections while waiting for the movers to arrive. Our house sold quickly and we have been madly scrambling for our cross country move to a much smaller house. Such a series of lessons in letting go: Of belongings, of friends, of church community. So many decisions: Do I keep this object, or just the memories attached to it? How to pack it? Or where to donate it? A big house holds many secrets, all unearthed now.