It has officially been one year (to the day) that we moved back to the US. The fact that it has taken this long to post this final blog is really a commentary on what life is like as two professionals working in America. What a contrast to our lives in the UK. The truth is, a small amount of denial may have also played a role. What I am truly thankful for is the fact that I actually wrote this very last blog two weeks before we left Truro. It was a sunny Saturday morning as I sat in our favorite coffee shop in downtown Truro waiting for Katie to join me on her lunch break. Reading this now, one year later, actually serves as a good reminder for what this experience truly was and the state of mind we were in when I wrote it. Although we have had our moments of missing our lives there, I can honestly say that every single word I wrote in that coffee shop last March is still completely true. Enjoy.
-Saturday, March 17, 2012
18 months ago Katie and I did what we had talked about doing for years. We took a chance. We trusted in ourselves enough to believe that our decision to leave behind our families, friends, jobs and the lives that we had built would be a good one.
With 4 suitcases, more unknowns than certainties and great anticipation we landed in England and began a time in our lives that would be a reference point for all things that followed.
In our final days here, I find myself thinking back on what it was we wanted out of all of this. We hoped to challenge ourselves to live and think in a different way. We hoped to gain a new perspective on the world and our place on it and we hoped to learn how to better live together in each moment.
Our travels consisted of 20 cross country train rides and 24 flights, which brought us to 15 European cities in 18 months. We immersed ourselves in a culture different than our own and traveled far to experience new ones. We built new relationships and strengthened old ones, even from a continent away. The more we traveled the smaller the world got and with each new experience we were shaped into the people that will return in a few weeks. With our perspective broadened and our relationship strengthened we will return to the US with no illusion that experience was an incredible gift that we were lucky to have.
The decision to pursue this dream far from home was ours and the decision to return will be no different. What awaits us is a life that we love and a life that we choose. We want to sit on the dock at the cabin with our feet in the water as our growing family enjoys a summer day. We want to have the windows down and the radio up as we drive through Wisconsin to visit family. First birthday parties, graduations, weddings, Thanksgiving dinners and Christmas mornings will once again be the individual events that will fill our weekends but together they make up the life that we are resuming.
We choose these things because they are home…and there is no place that we have traveled that could replace the completeness of being surrounded by family.
We learned that we could probably live and thrive anywhere in the world but we choose to live here . We learned that if you can keep an open mind, work really hard and treat others with respect that good things will happen.
So as this time in our lives comes to an end and we look back on it with great fondness, we look forward with great anticipation for what lies ahead. We will do what we have learned to do so well during our time here. We will take a deep breath, hold hands, and jump.
