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This week we officially bought our beautiful land.

I was anticipating feeling all of the tingly feels. Exhilaration, excitement, the adrenaline rush of it all. But it didn't feel like that and it caught me off guard. Instead, I felt like laying on the earth with my arms open in an attempt to give it a great big bear hug. Like one you used to get from your Dad. I went out yesterday into the spring wind and sunshine and felt as though I could melt into the ground, planting deep and tired roots. Quiet teardrops fell down my face.

If you've known me for awhile, you'll have probably updated your address book for my family at least yearly. It has been an adventure, this journey of seeking and searching and learning. Pulled between my childhood memories and longstanding family ties in Michigan, and the deep yearning ache I have always held in my soul to be in the mountains.

We have said hello and goodbye to many houses, towns and friends along the way.

As newlyweds in Montana, my blue-eyed hubby and I started out in a cute apartment above a wild haired gypsy lady who sent smells of curries, spices and pot up through the floorboards.

I gave birth to my son in a trailer dubbed "The Chicken Coop" on a ranch in Northern Colorado.

We lived with my husband's brother on a ranch in Southern Colorado until we rented a spacious and sunlit modular house in the little mining town. Here, we welcomed our daughter to earth on the summer solstice, at home in the garden bathtub. Our nervous neighbors watched from their windows to see if we were going to call in the helicopter they suggested we have on standby. Gratefully, we did not.

Shortly after my daughter was born, my Dad passed away. This tore me in half. So we went to live with my Mom in Michigan for half of a year, until the mountains tightened up their pull on our hearts and back we went, like a slingshot. Only this time we tried Northwestern Montana, the homeland of my beautiful Mother-in-Law and an extraordinary amount of extended family. Here we lived in three different houses and raised our babies, chickens and a few tagalong barn cats. That was, until the ranch where we had first met called to tell us there might be a job available for my husband. Back to Colorado we went!

There were a few more moves in the mix over the years back in Southern CO. Then serendipitously, a wild and expansive ranch extended an invitation for us to come back up to Montana. It's promise of healing retreats and ranch managership made it impossible to turn down. We said yes and spent an incredible year "living the dream." And then one day it ended abruptly. Kind of just spit us out. Closed the door. We were left homeless, dreamless, and scratching our heads. We were dizzy. Confused. Exhausted from moving. Just what were we chasing?

Out of desperation to hold still for a minute, this time last year we bought a small home on a tiny city lot in a cute mountain town. I got extremely sick at my job from mold poisoning. My husband said goodbye to the ranch life and started his own business. Like you, our world got a lot quieter with quarantine and social distancing.

So we just held still for awhile. Kept up with online school for the kids. I planted a backyard garden and we had a boatload of adorable orange and grey baby bunnies. We took bike rides around the neighborhood. We sought small adventures, but the pavement under my feet felt foreign. Neighbors were incredibly sweet but our house was so close to theirs that it felt like a fishbowl. A private backyard conversation could be heard from everyone's yard. My body was so sick. My husband was on fire for his business and took over the yard with work supplies, trailers, old Ford Broncos and various other rusty vehicles that came and went.

We just simply didn't fit.

One night a few months ago, my husband found a listing online for a shop space on some acreage. Close enough to keep our kids in school, enough space for the rusty things and work things, and room. to. BREATHE. A brand new living space promised a healthy place for me to heal.

Prayers. Multiple mold tests. And a huge deep cleaning done by my hubs, who has worked tirelessly to pull everything together. But he agrees, it is happening with a different frequency this time, even with all of the work he is doing to help make it happen.

For me, it's been focusing on unlearning life in survival mode and practicing brain rewiring #DNRS. Belief in and trust in the process and myself. Releasing control and expectation. If it was meant to be our home, it would happen with a feeling of ease.

No more forcing anything. Ever. What a relief....

And here we are, four sweet people in a 400-square foot one-room apartment. The windows reveal rolling hills covered in long grass that waves in the wind like something from my dreams. We can see a small glimpse of the white tipped mountains on the horizon. The starlight is so bright you need to pull the shades to fall asleep.

It is quiet, private, beautiful and ours. I am so incredibly grateful.

My body is healing, our hearts are happy, and the sparkle is slowly returning, only different this time. Peaceful, present, quiet, yet unwavering in its existence.

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