We have had a whirlwind the past two months. As many of you know previous to my health scare Joe had taken a job with Archer Aviation in California.  During my month from hell they got full funding for a very exciting project and offered him an amazing opportunity but it required us to move west.  From there circumstances seemed to all fall into place very quickly once we learned my diagnosis was so positive.  It felt like we were being pushed in that direction and we decided to let the current take us. My recovery has gone very well thanks to our amazing family and friends who have surrounded us in love and gifts and food and beer and support making it so impossible to say goodbye. 

I feel like I have explored every inch of this city. Touched every trickling creek, smelled every rushing stream, gloried at each dancing waterfall, listened to every wave lapping on the shore and it's still not enough. I have favorite trees in every park from Lester to Ely's peak. I have spent a life time in each neighborhood and in each house. Perfect snippets of time where it seemed like life was bursting at the seams and then we went on to have a whole other adventure in a new place and a new perspective. It was not love at first sight for me. I hated the first few years here. Once I left the first time a piece of me stayed here that I didn't know. Now I feel so intertwined with this place and it's people I don't necessarily recognize where I begin and it ends. It feels like ripping out a tree by the roots that are desperately clinging to the dirt. Gutted and exposed and knowing the effort and journey it will take to bury those roots again in new soil and how you can't catch lightning this many times. I am so tired of saying goodbye. It's too hard to leave a piece of you every where and feel that death each time you can't maintain that branch, that part of your life anymore. And yet each time we rise into a new year and a new place and a new chance to grow new life, moving energy to a new point. Growing not giving a chance for rotting to set in, not letting the grass grow underneath. Running from time to soak all this world has to offer into such a short life. Moving on these unseen currents that sweep us out just beyond shore. Where you can only swim parallel to the beach or you risk being lost forever in the sea. The feeling of drowning in the goodbye and washing up on a new shore hoping for a hand to lift you up and hand you a cocktail just before the sunsets.

To my people here that I am leaving behind. You all know who you are and how special you are to me and how hard you made this decision to leave. You have all showed up for me over and over again. We have watched each others children grow, we have laughed and cried and held each other up while the world fell down around us. I will never find a community like this again, but I also know no matter how far we wander I will always be able to come back home. For now it's California or bust. Until we meet again.