Home

You can never go home again, but the truth is you can never leave home, so it's all right." ~Maya Angelou

This may be the longest break in writing in all the eight years I've had this blog. As I mentioned in a previous post sometimes there is just too much to process, too much that sews up the lips when words become inadequate. Even now, I wonder how to begin. I want to get back to my art and to writing and so here I go. I feel like life has been on hold since that fateful night in April when the flood filled our home with 3 feet of water.

And yet life actually has not been on hold. It's been on fast forward, in fact. After living in a hotel and being displaced for over 6 weeks, we were forced to make some hard decisions. Hard decisions that brought a big move to our new home. In Maryland. Yep. Maryland. I wasn't kidding when I said there were some more changes in the horizon.



So this summer is a bit of a blur. It's gone something like this: Move back into flooded home. Pack it all up again. Finish up kindergarten for my son. Travel back and forth between IL and MD to home search, home purchase, home inspection, home closing, etc. etc. Moving to Maryland. Living at my sisters while waiting for our stuff. Delay of stuff. Moving in. Unpacking. Settling in. A little bit of culture shock. Holy hot humidity. And general adjusting to our new life in a new town. I grew up in Maryland, but outside of D.C. We are now outside of Baltimore, which is foreign territory for me and it is so different here than Chicago. These days I am remembering how hard it was to adjust to Chicago when we moved there from Seattle. But I am holding fast to the thought that there is a reason for all of this and it will all become clear.


exploring the Hampden neighborhood in Baltimore, MD

But among all the chaos, there are blessings. I now live really close to my sisters and my mom, who are really and truly are the people closest to my heart other than my husband and my children. We have a new home that is on a hill (less likely to flood)! We are currently renovating the space that sat on top of the garage into my studio. I cannot wait to get back to creating again. This has been the longest period where I haven't been able to create. So, in that sense I still feel unsettled. My kids have been missing studio time too.


blessing: an awesome climbing tree in our front yard


blessing: happy to be on the trail again, the Appalachian Trail

So here I find myself on the other side of a crossroad. We took a big step in an unexpected direction. Sometimes things happen where you find yourself at a point where you know that the decision you make will completely alter your path. And you just have to take a deep breath and say, here I am, I am going to make something out of all of this. Here I go. And then step forward.



The task ahead of me now is to make this new place a home, to make our new house our home, to get our life back on track, to get back to artmaking, to get back to me. These past few months have been pretty tough. I am ready to start a new chapter. And ready for this blog to get back to recording what is happening in the studio.

The rest will be written as the story unfolds.

Home is a shelter from storms - all sorts of storms. ~William J. Bennett