I’m trying to find my way into this new life while making sure I’m choosing things for the right reasons.

Years of familial and social unacceptance guides a person who wants the feel good of being wanted, respected, or otherwise to make choices out of guilt or with the hope that by making a particular choice, you’ve made someone happy and because of that, they will love or even just like you.

I don’t feel a need to do that anymore. Everyone from my family of origin or even past friends or loves that I wanted to want me are now gone.

I admit to a type of grief because any hope...even the miniscule kind...of reconnecting is no longer looking back at me through the mirror of my life.

Where I am in life now is a good place. A calm place within the world that our home allows us to create.

The place where we live is one of community and while societal norms of whether we are native...homegrown...blessed to have experienced this town from an early age... or, like us, those who settled here a mere 18 years ago, there is a central value of the importance of loving service exuded from those in my orbit.

And I am grateful.