For a while now, I’ve felt slightly disconnected from our home.
Not in a dramatic way, not in a way that made immediate sense, but in a quiet, persistent way that I couldn’t quite explain. And alongside that feeling, there was guilt. A sense that I was trying to fix something that wasn’t broken, or move away from something that had, in so many ways, held us so well.
We’ve been here for over eighteen months, and it’s been the first home Emilia and I have lived in on our own. Before this, I had always lived with someone — friends, a partner, then my mum after Emilia was born, when I needed that layer of support and capacity. So this home marked something significant. It was the first time I stepped fully into my life as an adult on my own, while also learning how to be a mother in all the ways that were being asked of me.
It held a very specific chapter. A chapter where I was learning independence, learning how to manage a home, how to hold responsibility not just practically, but emotionally — how to be the one who provided stability, nourishment and presence. It expanded me in ways I don’t think I fully recognised at the time, and within that, we built a life here.
We’re within walking distance of the river path where we ride our bikes on the weekends, where I walk after school drop-offs before beginning my day. There are established gardens, a sense of familiarity, rhythms that have quietly taken root over time. It has been a beautiful space, and yet, alongside all of that, something began to feel… less connected.
The more I found myself wanting to anchor into a deeper sense of home, of stability, of roots, the harder it felt to do that here. I couldn’t quite see myself in this space anymore. I couldn’t visualise what it wanted to become, or how I wanted to shape it.
We live with an eclectic mix of furniture — some borrowed, some second-hand, some simply acquired along the way. It’s not a home that reflects a clear sense of style or identity. It feels more like a slightly upgraded version of a student flat, where everything works, but nothing quite settles, and I’ve judged myself for that. For not being able to make it work. For not feeling inspired to create something more from what we already had. For wanting something different when, on the surface, everything was fine.
But when I sat with it more honestly, I began to consider something else. Maybe this home was never meant to be the place where we rooted long-term. Maybe it was the place that held the transition. The place that allowed me to step out, to become independent, to learn how to stand on my own, to find my footing in a completely new version of my life, and maybe that was enough.
Around the same time, I found myself gently, almost absentmindedly, looking at what might come next. Not with urgency, not with a plan, just from a place of curiosity. I started noticing the things that felt important to me now — proximity to the market, the rhythms that sustain us, the places and people that feel like part of our life, not an addition to it.
Where we are now, going to the market feels like an extra trip across town. Something we have to organise around, something that takes more energy than it gives, and yet, the market itself — the people, the produce, the familiarity — is something that deeply nourishes us. It wasn’t the activity that felt misaligned, it was the distance from it.
So I began looking, just lightly, at what might exist closer to the way of living I’d been daydreaming about, and then, very quickly, everything shifted.
I saw a post from a friend who was renting out her home. It was close to the market, aligned with what I had been quietly considering. I reached out on a Friday, we viewed it the following Tuesday, and by that afternoon, it was ours.
It all unfolded so quickly it almost felt surreal. But underneath that speed, there was something else.
A sense that the only thing that had really changed was my willingness to acknowledge what I was already feeling. To stop dismissing it. To stop explaining it away. To stop waiting for a more “valid” reason to move on. Because nothing was wrong, as such, and that was the hardest part to reconcile. The house was good, the life we had here was good. Everything, on paper, made sense. But I wasn’t feeling inspired, I wasn’t feeling expanded, and slowly, I realised that those things matter too.
We don’t often give ourselves permission to change when things are working. Whether it be a home, a relationship or a job, we wait for something to break, for something to become unbearable, for a clear and logical reason to justify looking at another path.
But sometimes, the only signal is quieter than that: a lack of energy, a sense of flatness. a feeling that something has run its course — even if it’s been good — and I’ve been thinking about how easily that can be mistaken for restlessness or dissatisfaction, when sometimes it’s simply completion.
There is a difference between living in a way that is steady and regulating and living in a way that has become stagnant — and the line between those two can be subtle.
But when something in us begins to seek movement again, to seek inspiration, to seek a different perspective, it’s often because there is something waiting for us on the other side of that change. Not because what we have is wrong but because it’s no longer where we are meant to stay.
Sometimes, when we can’t see the path forward, it isn’t because there isn’t one. It’s because we’re still looking from the same place and when we allow ourselves to change our position — physically, emotionally, environmentally — something opens. New perspectives, new rhythms, new ways of being that weren’t visible before.
Nothing was wrong with where we were. But something in me knew, quietly and consistently, that we were ready for something else.
Here’s to embracing discomfort, taking the plunge and being available for whatever might reveal itself for this next chapter of ours.
Rhi xx
A PRACTICAL GUIDE
If you’re in a season where something feels complete but you can’t yet see what’s replacing it, I wrote a companion guide called When a Season of Your Life Feels Complete (And You’re Not Sure What Comes Next) — a gentle exploration of the in-between spaces where clarity hasn’t fully arrived yet, but something inside you already knows it’s time to move.
