After a lot of stops and starts, I think I’m finally ready to write this post. I’ve spent the past couple of hours trying to put down on “paper” what has been rolling around my brain and becoming clearer over the past week. It hasn’t been flowing because I’ve been trying too hard to make it general and impersonal. And if you are reading it, thank you for indulging this seemingly narcissistic form of expression.
So, here’s the thing. Just like every other human, I’ve had a lot of changes happen in my life. Some were horrible—my father dying—and some were wonderful, like moving back to London. Like most humans, I don’t always deal with change well, especially the bad kind. I’m slowly learning, though, that letting go and embracing change often go hand in hand.
Putting My Life on Hold
However, while I struggle to cope with my father dying (judging by how long I’ve been trying to cope with my mother’s death, I’ve got a long way to go), I’m also trying to fully embrace the good changes.
Being back home in London has been a huge turning point for me. I put my life on hold while spending three and a half years trying to get back over here. I refused to put down roots, didn’t make any new friends for the first couple of years and basically hid in a small town in Oregon until things finally fell into place and I could move back to my adopted home.
Stepping Off the Hamster Wheel
Now that I’m here I no longer need to put the rest of my life on hold. That’s a scary thought, to be honest, because, well before I moved to London the first time around, I had put a certain part of my life on a kind of hamster wheel (constant effort, but ultimately going nowhere). I had my reasons and they made sense at the time. Looking back with a fresh perspective, staying on that hamster wheel was self-destructive and somewhat masochistic. It stopped me from moving on and allowing my life to change.
While I have managed to finally jump off that hamster wheel once and for all, the change has not been without its…uh…revelations?
First and foremost, it’s amazing how much baggage you can collect while basically running in a circle. That baggage can act as a lovely protective coating, keeping you safe from getting hurt yet again. But it can also become a barrier to being who you want to be and opening yourself up to new experiences.
Letting Go and Embracing Change
This brings me to what prompted me to write this today (Ahhh, she does have a point to all this rambling!) What I’m finally grasping in my ever-advancing age is that even the most positive kinds of change can require you to let go of things that no longer fit or are damaging to your happiness. It’s not easy but sometimes the baggage is just too heavy and is only dragging you down.
Maybe that’s not the most inspiring or uplifting message I can leave you with this time around but, I assure you, it is actually a positive thing. It’s freeing to realise that it’s actually ok to let go of things and make room for more change.
A note from 2026: I wrote this not long after moving back to London, when I was still trying to understand what that change meant and what I needed to leave behind. Seven years later, London is still home. I now live here permanently and have become a British citizen. I’m not sure letting go ever becomes easy, but I still believe that making room for change can be freeing.
Change, even when you want it, is painful because it requires a leap of faith – that you know what you are doing, that the universe is basically fair and good, and that those who have promised to support you will do so even through the change that may impact them. I don’t often make leaps of faith and the biggest one for me was learning to say No. Happily, only a few people disappeared when I learned that lesson. I hope you can live your best life in London with no baggage weighing you down.