Hello, dusty old blog.
It has been, and I’m almost embarrassed to say this out loud, ages. Long enough that I had to remember my own login. Long enough that if you’ve been checking in on this space hoping for something new, I owe you an apology and possibly a drink.
But here’s the news, and it’s a big one: we’re moving back to Australia.
After 13 years in the Netherlands, we’re packing up the bikes, saying the hard goodbyes, and heading back or is it forward?
I’ll be honest, I’m not going to pretend this move is simple, uncomplicated, or a case of “finally going home.” It’s messier than that. Living with your heart in two places is a genuinely strange way to exist, and I’m not sure there’s a tidy way to write about it — I’ve tried, in about six draft posts I never published. We’ll never actually know if this is the right decision. But we knew, in the end, that we couldn’t keep going the way we were without going back and finding out.
The kids are nervous, if I’m honest. So am I, in my own way — though not about failing. I’m not scared of trying and it not working out. I think what I’m more scared of is the in-between feeling following us there too — that after 13 years of feeling like guests here, we might land back in Australia and feel like guests there as well. Thirteen years changes you in small, hard-to-name ways. You start noticing things you never used to think about — like whether it’s normal for kids to be independent, from age 8 they’ve been cycling themselves to and from football, or whether that’s just a “here” thing. When you’ve spent over a decade absorbing someone else’s unspoken rules, “home” stops being simple.
Anyway. That’s a heavier note for a “hi, I’m back” post than I planned, so I’ll leave it there for now and save the rest for later. There will be more of these — the goodbyes, the packing, the actual leaving, and eventually, hopefully, the landing somewhere that feels like ours.
For now: hello again. It’s good to be writing this down.
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