This week, I was able to sit alongside a friend at a closing table. And while it wasn’t the ideal situation to be sitting there in those chairs which seemed to wrap around us as they signed a mountain of papers, there was civility. Facing the oversized picture window, the skies were blue after a weeks’ worth of rain, and the oaks offered shade to the grass beneath. Trying to combat some of the uncomfortable silence, what do you do? Mention the weather. The small talk. I was able to offer a genuine smile of reassurance, knowing that the people across from me were placing a smile on their face that you know they didn’t feel.
Here’s to new beginnings.
Sometimes, it’s not about smiling faces holding a large key that says “Congratulations!” for the world to see posted all over social media. Because that is the last thing one needs as they try to wrap up the pieces of their life to move it from one place to another.
Sometimes, it’s about the small keys and about what the space represents—the quiet resilience behind the choice, the courage it takes to begin again. It’s about those who sit with you in the process and the one who will stand with you on a sidewalk on a beautiful spring day while you try to figure out what that new home would looks like.
Sometimes, it’s not as simple as walking through one door after closing another. Because new keys don’t always come with just excitement.
Sometimes, they come with the quiet ache of letting go.
Sometimes, it’s a release of the dreams, the plans, the “someday”s. It’s a breaking from the stressors and disappointments and anger that that relationship carried.
It’s learning to carry the sweetness of what was, while gently exhaling the weight of what won’t be.
It’s releasing the bitter.
It’s grieving the familiar, even as you plant hope in fresh soil.
But in that bittersweet space, something beautiful begins.
It’s where hope starts to grow again—
in fresh routines, new walls, and the possibility of joy to come.
It’s where children discover passions,
and where you create a new kind of togetherness and community with those that now surround you.
So here’s to the courage it takes to start again.
To new dreams, new adventures, and new hopes.
And to the quiet strength it takes to embrace them all.
