Boxed Up and Bewildered
Getting Ready To Go
It’s been an age. And everything feels in a muddle. But why wouldn’t it? If moving house was supposed to be easy it wouldn’t be up there on the list of life’s great stressors now would it?
But anyways, we move on Monday. Saying goodbye to Didsbury for now and heading to Ben’s family house where we will do what needs to be done before it finally goes up for sale and we can hopefully move to pastures new.
I’ll be honest, it’s been hard. It’s still really hard. There’s a reason they say moving is right up there with divorce and death on the emotional Richter scale. And for those of us who are neurodivergent, it’s not just about logistics. It’s about upheaval on every level—sensory, emotional, energetic. Every single routine and comfort I use to regulate myself is packed up in a box, some in this house, some in that and I’m trying to keep breathing through the disarray without dissolving into muddly, weepy mess.
Because this kind of change doesn’t feel like “just moving”—it feels like unravelling. Like trying to knit safety while someone keeps pulling at the thread.
The internet, naturally, is preparing to vanish. One moment it’ll be here, and the next I’ll be staring at a blank screen, whispering vicious threats to the router and wondering how people functioned in the pre-wifi era. Blogging, working, watching puppy videos for emotional equilibrium—all gone in a blink. I’ll be a Victorian housewife again, scribbling thoughts on paper and hoping someone finds them, until once again, the wifi deigns to show her face in the building site of a house that will temporarily be our home. A beautiful house that were it not stuffed with too many difficult memories for Ben to contemplate, would make a truly lovely sanctuary.
Packing Emotional Luggage
This move, then unlike the previous one, feels like wading through treacle in a Victorian gown. A battered, tea-stained Victorian gown smelling faintly of old cats and mud. Because there is no certainty on the other side of it it. There are boxes and bags everywhere. Boxes filled with the few things I brought here seven months ago, and boxes filled with things that aren’t mine but need to be packed and ferried and worried over anyway. Delicate decisions to be made about teapots and mixing bowls and books I’ve never read. It’s strange and sacred and slightly invasive: emotional archaeology served with a side of bubble wrap.
I’m not just packing up my life. I’m also sorting through other people’s—a home that belonged to part of family I’ve joined through love and loss. Wrapping things that aren’t mine. Holding space for grief I didn’t live but still feel. It’s sacred and strange. I hope every day that I am not stepping to heavily on ground that isn’t mine to tread. That I am respectful in all the ways that count.
And all the while, I’m trying not to get het up about the things I’m not doing for myself. For Brocantehome. For us. Though I’m reminding myself everyday this is part of my unveiling. That in this season of change, my only real job is to honour my rhythm. To stay honest. To ride the waves without piling on obligations that lead to work I don’t respect and cannot expect you to respect either.
A Gentle Promise
But please know: BrocanteHome isn’t going anywhere. This community—this space of domestic sanctuary and creative souls—is eternal. But right now, I’m choosing to let it evolve with me. To allow it to reflect real life, not performative perfection.
This past year has been—without exaggeration—one of the most difficult of my life. I’ve moved twice. I’ve let go of a home that once grounded me. I’ve entered a new relationship with a beautiful man still holding grief in his hands, and the emotional terrain has been more complicated and sadder than I ever expected.
I miss so much of my old life. The solitude. The order. Seeing Finn daily. The sense of knowing where I stood in the world. And some of the decisions I’ve made this year have been about turning the volume down—just enough to hear myself again. Not necessarily wise and to some degree enormously detrimental to my security.
And oh, how I long for a home. For my own front door. For the kind of peace that isn’t a break between battles but the actual landscape I live in.
So if I’m a little quieter, please don’t read it as retreat. Read it as presence. As the work of becoming. As a woman choosing truth over obligation, healing over hustle. I will share what I can, when I can until life is more settled and I would be so grateful for your patience in the meantime.
Thank you then for still being here. Thank you for holding this space with me while I make my way home. I know you know how very much I appreciate it.