Last week was exceptionally busy. Not only was it the final week of Term One, but for me, it was moving week. There was a flurry of activity and moving parts involved – I needed to source and pick up second hand furniture, I had to pick up the keys and sign off on the final bits of paperwork. I organised trailers, a wood delivery, and services, like connecting the electricity and switching my car insurance from RACQ to RACT. Almost every evening after work I traipsed boxes and valuables up the road and on Thursday night my family banded together and moved the big things.

Being in my own home feels…like releasing a breath I’ve been holding for a long time. It is an older house, with noises that I’m not quite used to yet. The floor boards creak, and the gates bang in the wind. We’re in the middle of suburbia, and I’ve noticed how much louder it is – the dogs of the neighbourhood all have something to say, the cars go up and down the road at all hours of the night and the babies and little ones cry themselves to sleep or cry themselves awake. Conversely, there’s a distinct lack of people noise – there’s no snoring from the bedroom next door, or a TV on in the lounge room when I slip off to bed early. There’s no waiting in line to have the first shower in the morning, or dodging each other in the kitchen when the coffee and snack bugs bite. I’m not quite sure what to do with all of this space and all of this quiet. I still have that fluttery, on edge feeling inside of me, the one that rose to the surface when I realised I had to constantly be aware of other people using the same space.

I’m unpacking, slowly, but surely. This morning, I find myself reflecting on how metaphorical unpacking is. Unpacking has brought emotions to the surface. I am discovering my things, my personal and valuable things that have been packed away in boxes since December of 2023. I stumbled upon a glass, etched with a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle and engraved with my name. I’ve had this glass since I was a child – it’s the best glass to drink fizzy cordial from. I discovered a mug, also engraved with my name that was given to me by my grandparents at Easter time when I was just a small, slip of a thing, full of wild hair and the courage to match. These stirred memories of times long gone, and people who have passed.

When I packed my things I was full of hope and dreams and could literally feel the sand between my toes and almost taste the salty beach air on the wind. I had dreams of standing on stage, teaching and speaking, sharing my story and my truth and connecting with and helping others. I had dreams of running workshops and camps and living the freedom of a successful entrepreneurial life. But those dreams didn’t come to fruition and my life in Queensland was very different from what I expected it to be. Things there were so much more difficult, and I can’t convey the deep yearning I had for home. Again, I packed and moved, not with more emotional baggage than I had when I left, but with new emotional baggage.

As I unpack the things that are most valuable to me, I find myself starting to also unpack the emotional baggage from the last sixteen months. My hopes and dreams are different now and I no longer align with the big gestures of teaching and speaking on stage – I question whether they were actually mine to begin with. I find myself wondering why I couldn’t get myself to this point in Queensland, why I couldn’t secure my own house, why I couldn’t find my own space. I find myself wondering why in general.

I sit here in gratitude today – in a house that my Dad chose for me, as a place where he felt like I could settle and be comfortable. I am grateful for the family that rallied together to help me – my Dad who sacrificed his time to look at houses for me while I worked, and took it upon himself to drive a load of wood up the road to my new house, unload it and stack it for me. I am grateful to my Mum who was a rather practical and blunt sounding board for a lot of my thoughts and anxieties about moving. I am grateful to my brother, for his help on Thursday night moving in the big furniture and his experience and instructions on how to move the items safely. I am grateful to his wife, Sarah, who came up with Lily (my two year old niece) and introduced the sounds, the love and the joy of childhood into my new home. I’m grateful for my great Aunt’s partner who loaned us his trailer, and to my old cricket coach for delivering a washing machine to my new house yesterday. I’m grateful for the community that’s around me.

I am also excited because I have my own “space” and my things and memories around me. I have a wood heater that I’m busting to light – I can’t wait for cold winter days, sitting in front of the fire with a book and a steaming hot cup of coffee. I look forward to not having to watch Home and Away, to being able to go to bed whenever I want to, to having the things that bring back memories of the people I loved and their influence in my life. But, the emotions from the past sixteen months demand to be felt and processed. It’s a time for letting go – which is perhaps poetic as I’ve moved to one of the most beautiful places in Tasmania during autumn, and the leaves are already yellowing. I need to process and work through the disappointment – of the life and the connections that didn’t work out the way I expected it too, and the disappointment I have directed at myself. I am learning that it’s possible for me to be both things at once – happy and excited for this new chapter of life and to process the disappointment I feel about what happened in Queensland.

And so, I unpack, the physical baggage and my emotional baggage.