True North. Returning to Me.

There are some upsides and some downsides to your ex-husband's secret girlfriend being a pseudo public figure. Upside: You found out your ex-husband HAS a girlfriend AND that she lives in the house you own together. Upside: You learn a lot about your now very secretive and uncommunicative ex-husband's financial choices, including said girlfriend living rent-free in that home, feeling very lucky that her "partner" is financially established (even though he's really not because he's borrowing money and paying the mortgage late) so that she has a free house to live in, the constant traveling that costs money, and that she is an unemployed stay-at-home...runner? that he apparently now supports (while telling me he cannot meet his financial obligations to his children).  There are some downsides too though, like Downside: learning your ex-husband moved his girlfriend into your co-owned home 7 months before you found out on Instagram. Downside: Getting to watch your...

Home means so many things. Home is, of course, the building where your stuff lives and where you lay your head most nights. It's where your children live and come back to someday. It's where you return to rest, reset, feel safe. It's your people. It is a feeling of peace and calm, and a sense of identity and a place you can most gently exist. And it's a thing you can lose and mourn and rebuild.  "Outside" has always felt like home to me. I grew up in the woods, building forts, following game trails, sitting on the banks of ponds and rivers. Outside still feels most like home to me. It's the only place I breathe deeply, where time slows, and worries eventually drift away on the breeze instead of trapped inside my head.  But like nothing else, I love the mountains! The mountains stole my heart from the first moments I spent in New Hampshire's Whites to my solo time deep in the rugged Montana Rocky Mountain range and every mountain trail and peak I've...