Making Homes

I am back in Berlin and it feels great. I am starting to go on auto-pilot when it comes to biking to familiar destinations, and I love that. I still need to be alert when biking through this city as there is still so much of it that I do not know how to navigate. But, I love the moments of familiarity that unexpectedly reveal themselves to me in this city, I first visited six years ago. Who would have known in 2006 that this city, that both fascinated and scared me, would start to feel like home to me years ago?

I remember during my first trip, at some random bar with the circus, having a conversation with 6 other people, in English, Russian, Spanish, and German. And loving that interaction. And feeling in that moment that I wanted to have such a way of being as my life. Where people from different walks of life found ways to communicate and live with each other, with no one language or way of being dominating the other.  To explore and experience the vastness of the world and the people in it.

Since June, I’ve been in a bit of a liminal space as I moved from LA to New York to Bonn. It has been tiring at times, scary other times, and exciting the whole time. Every day feels like a new adventure and this weekend, I have embraced the unknown in this traveling phase of my life that was started 3 years ago. I know that all of this is teaching me how to make new homes for myself, how to recognize when places feel like home, how to connect new places to the old, but still home, places of my life. More importantly, this traveling/transitional period in my life is showing me to live my life on my own terms without fear of how in so doing, I disrupt the expectations and/or desires others have of/for me. Thank you.