How moving is bringing up a lot of feels (grief, third spaces & having a village)

This month I’ve been in the middle of a move, and I didn’t expect how much it would stir up in me.

On the surface: it’s boxes, logistics, and address changes. But underneath? Oof…it’s leaving the first place I’ve lived in this city, it’s sorting for the first time through the items of my mom and her matrilineal line with my own, it’s changing my space and window views, and it’s leaving a space that’s held all my feelings and memories from the past six years and figuring out where they belong in a new space.

Moving has reminded me how much I rely on what people often call “third spaces.” Those places that aren’t home or work, but places where life still happens. For me, those spaces have looked like the gym, coffee shops, parks, faith communities, music spaces, and different groups I’ve been part of. Places where I can show up, linger, breathe, and just be in the presence of others without needing to perform or produce.

I’m realizing just how grateful I am for those spaces, and for the people woven into them.🤎

This move has been different

I usually consider myself someone who adapts fairly well to change. I knew moving would be hard, but I didn’t anticipate how emotional it would be. 

What I didn’t fully understand until I sat with my own therapist is that I’m not just moving homes, I’m moving with grief. This chapter of my life has held a lot of loss. As I pack boxes, I’m sorting through the weight of these losses. My mom’s things, my maternal grandmother and great grandmother’s treasured items, and items passed from my father to my mom now passed to me…each object carries memory, history, and unfinished conversations.

I realize in this packing of items that I am also unofficially my family’s archivist of items and stories.

Alongside that, the move has stirred complicated feelings attached to some of these items and it’s all surfaced at once: anger, sadness, disappointment, longing. Grief doesn’t stay neatly contained, and it certainly doesn’t pause for practical timelines. There’s a particular ache in wishing my mom were alive to see me step into this new space, but knowing she won’t be. In seeing old report cards, diaries from childhood, and career-related journals, there are also so many versions of my past selves that I didn’t see realized because I had a decision making point and chose a different pathway.

I’m not regretful but it leaves me in a reflectful space of wondering what could have been. 

So yes, change has been hard. Moving is hard. And this one has been particularly heavy in ways I didn’t expect.

Third spaces have been so helpful

What has helped has been returning to those third spaces, especially because working virtually from home means my home is also my workspace. When the place where you rest and the place where you work are the same, the need for a third space becomes even more essential. Somewhere to remind your body and nervous system that there is more to life than productivity and solitude. Coffee shops, parks, community and familiar faces, and shared routines have carried me.

I recently read an article about village building, and it struck me that it goes even deeper than community building.

Community can sometimes feel abstract, but village implies mutual care, consistency, and being known over time. It’s about the places and people who notice when you’re missing, who hold space for your transitions without needing you to explain everything.

As I literally and figuratively move forward, I’m holding onto that. 

Gratitude for the villages that have shaped me. 

Awareness of the grief I carry with me. 

And a gentle reminder that it’s okay if change feels messy, emotional, and unfinished. 

Sometimes moving isn’t just about going somewhere new, it’s about learning what we need to bring with us and what we need help carrying.

My encouragement to you is to explore what you’re carrying, wonder about it, and ask for people in your village to help you with carrying it. I can only imagine what that process may help you feel in connecting with yourself and your village.✨