Going away and coming home

This #thankyouthursday, I am grateful for going away and coming home.

I mean this literally, although it also works as a metaphor.

Last week my family went away, and tomorrow we come home, and I am so grateful for both occurrences.

It was a true privilege to go away: We can afford to take time off from our jobs, we are healthy enough to travel—and our society is healthy enough to allow travel. Because we could go away, we got to see friends and family we had not seen in years. So many children met each other for the first time.

I am grateful for going away.

And I am grateful for coming home.

Tomorrow I will come home to my own sheets and resume familiar routines: getting groceries, seeing neighbors, watching TV. And I will also resume having child care a few hours a day, which, you want to talk about gratitude—I am grateful for child care! (Spending more than a week away from home with a one-year-old is worth it, but it is work.)

So today, my last day of being away, I am grateful for all the experiences leaving home has allowed me to have, and I’m also grateful there’s a place I am happy to return.

Love > fear,
Christina