The Road Home...

It's been 6 months... more than 6 months actually. Time keeps on ticking, I keep on learning, and I keep on seeking out new experiences. One of those experiences is returning home for the first time since "truly" moving away. I haven't lived at home since high school, but I've always lived within a hour's drive of the home I grew up in, the friends I learned multiplication and sharing with, and the places that are burned into my brain since birth. On the one hand, I can't believe it's taken me this long to have this experience, but on the other hand I realize that some people die having never lived more than a stone's throw from their birthplace.

The concept of seeing old things with new eyes is one that I've been thinking about since a dear friend mentioned it in an e-mail last week. I feel like I'm returning to all that I know, but frankly, I don't know what it will be like. My eyes are indeed "new" and my perspective has changed... I'm still wholeheartedly myself, but with 6 months greater perspective. In that period I've moved to a different state (let's be honest, Texas is kind of a different country), built a support system from the ground up, started an intense doctoral program, started an intense new job, coordinated a clinical research lab, had a car accident, broken a bone (haha, okay it's my toe, but it counts!), had a family health scare, and made it out in one piece! Now that's some perspective. We'll see how it translates to good ol' Colorado... which is still, very much, my home.

I ask my group to do "final thoughts" a lot at the end of our group: a thought that reflects on the day so far and the day ahead. It's funny, I end up seeing the "doorknob effect" a lot. Clinically, it's the phenomenon of a client coming to see you for therapy for an hour but not speaking the real problem or feeling until the moment they're opening the door to leave. So my final thought is:

There's no place like home.

Love,

Laura.