I have moved 15 times in the last 10 years.

Fifteen.

And while I know that sounds incredibly ridiculous, seven of those moves took place outside of the US while I was exploring our big beautiful world for 2 years. Others came from life circumstances that required me to pack up and go, like marriage, divorce and my mom’s cancer diagnosis.

…and the rest were simply me upgrading to a better apartment, a better view, and a new city, for what I was hoping were incredible new experiences.

But when I zoom things out a bit more, it appears that renewing a lease hasn't been part of my personal brand since Cash Money was taking over for the '99 and the 2000s.

What can I say, I really like change.

I like new experiences. I like walking into an empty space and imagining what I can make of it. There is a part of me that genuinely comes alive when I'm doing something new.

And somewhere along the way, I got very, very good at leaving.

Which brings me to July. Because once again, I was planning to move.

This time, I decided I was going to buy a house and move back to Jacksonville. I was looking at houses and thinking about neighborhoods, imagining what I wanted my next home and my life there to look like.

In my mind, I was already on my way.

Except the closer I got to actually doing it, the more I realized that I didn't want to.

I was tired.

I was tired of moving, changing things and constantly trying to figure out what was next. Even the thought of finding the house, buying the house, packing everything I own and starting over somewhere else felt exhausting.

And one day, in the middle of all of that planning, I felt God tell me:

Be still.

There was no, you can't have a house right now or Jacksonville isn't the place for you.

it was just, Be still. Stay here for a while.

And there was something else I felt in that message too: a reassurance that everything I desire for my life and for my heart doesn't require me to chase it down.

I didn't need to immediately figure out the next move or make something happen simply because I could.

So that's what I've been doing; for the first time in more than a decade, I'm staying put.

And whew. Turns out, sitting still is its own kind of work.

Especially since my daughter left for grad school on the west coast last week. It's like she went as far away as possible without actually leaving the country. And almost immediately, my home became still still.

It’s so quiet in here I can hear a pin drop.

And listen, I love silence. I love a quiet house. I am not one of those people who needs the television playing in the background or music filling every room, and although I do love a jam session, give me peace and quiet any day.

But this was different. This wasn't just quiet. It was the absence of someone who had been here, someone my entire life was once built around.

There were no footsteps shuffling in the other room, no green smoothies blending while I’m trying to write this newsletter, no conversations happening in passing or random moments when she would come into my room to tell me something. I wasn't wondering what she was doing, whether she was home or what she had going on that day.

It was just me.

At first, the silence was jarring. I could feel the emptiness of the space, even though nothing about the apartment had changed. Her absence had simply made me aware of how much life had been happening around me.

But after a few days, something shifted.

I stopped noticing the silence as something that was missing and started settling into it. I would just sit in my home and look around at the space, at my life, and where I am right now. At first I wanted to give it meaning, but ultimately I just let myself sit there.

And slowly, I allowed all of it envelop me.

Ya know, there is something strange and beautiful about realizing that a chapter of your life has ended while you're still sitting in the same room where it happened, like you know your life isn't the same life it was a week ago.

My daughter is beginning a new chapter of her life, and whether I had fully thought about it or not, so am I.

As I sat in all of that quiet, I started to feel something I hadn't expected. At first I thought it was sadness, and then I wondered if it was loneliness. But it wasn’t either.

It was possibility.

Like there is something beautiful waiting for me on the horizon, and I don't have to run toward it.

I can sit still and let it come.

Maybe this is why this season feels so unfamiliar to me. I've spent a lot of my life moving, and not just geographically. I've built and closed businesses. I've traveled, moved countries, ended a marriage and started my life over. I've reinvented myself more times than I can count.

And somewhere along the way, I became a woman who knows how to begin again.

On most days, I'm proud of that. On others, I wonder if I will ever get to stop, beginning again, that is.

Starting over has carried me through many seasons. If something isn't working, I know I can change it. If a chapter ends, I trust myself to figure out what comes after it. And that has served me incredibly well.

But there is another side to being so comfortable with starting over that staying long enough to let something simply be can feel a little foreign.

When you're accustomed to movement, movement can start to feel like progress.

There is always something you're working toward or planning for. So when all of that stops, even temporarily, the absence of movement can make you wonder whether you're doing enough.

I've caught myself doing this over the past few weeks. I'll be sitting here perfectly fine and suddenly start wondering if I should move, change something, do more, make a new plan or figure out what the next chapter is supposed to be. It's almost like my brain goes searching for something to work on because surely there must be something.

And sometimes there is.

But what happens when nothing is actually wrong?

What happens when life has simply gotten quiet, and because you're used to movement quiet feels suspicious.

I no longer want to confuse my ability to change my life with a requirement to constantly change it. So when I feel that familiar itch to do something, I've started asking myself:

Do I actually want something different right now, or have I just become uncomfortable with nothing needing to change?

I haven't always loved the answer.

Of course, the only way to answer a question like that is to sit still long enough to hear the answer.

Once I did, I started realizing how much noise movement had created in my life. Because when you're constantly planning the move, working toward the next goal or imagining the next chapter, there isn't always a lot of room left to notice what's happening in the chapter you're already in.

And I've started noticing things.

I've been paying attention to what I actually enjoy about my life, what I want more of and what I don't miss at all. I've had enough quiet to notice which things I've been chasing because I genuinely wanted them and which things I may have been chasing simply because chasing had become familiar.

That said, getting quiet hasn't made my desires disappear.

I still want a house. I still want more stability. I still want love. I want to continue growing my business. I want to travel and experience beautiful things and build a life that feels expansive and exciting.

None of that disappeared because God told me to be still.

If anything, I feel clearer about some of those desires because I'm not in such a hurry to satisfy them, and I'm starting to understand that I can deeply want something without making the absence of it a problem that needs to be solved tuh-day.

That’s been really hard for me because I am a doer. Give me a problem and I will find a solution. Give me a goal and I will make a plan. Give me a life I don't like and apparently I will pack the whole damn thing into a 10x20 and blow this joint.

But there are some things you can't force into existence, things that require time or clarity. And those things become easier to recognize when you're not running toward them so quickly that you never have a chance to really see what’s in front of you.

This season has required me to trust that my life doesn’t need my constant interference in order to become good. I can work and plan and prepare. I can continue to be ambitious and want beautiful things for myself.

I just don't have to wrestle everything I want into existence.

Some things need room to simply arrive.

Something else has happened since I decided not to move.

I've started settling in again. Which is funny, because I was actually doing this 9 months ago.

Back in late December and early January, I went through this whole hibernating nesting season. I was purging and cleaning out my apartment, getting rid of things I didn't need and finally dealing with some of the bins and boxes that had been sitting around in my closet. I started thinking about the little things I wanted to do to make my apartment feel more finished.

There were bar stools I wanted for the kitchen and a bench I wanted for my bathroom (it's massive in there). I had been looking for art to go on the wall above my couch and saved all of it in my Amazon cart.

It was nothing major, just the little things you do when you stop looking at a place as somewhere you're living and start treating it like home.

And then I decided, almost in an instant, that I was ready to go and declared that I was moving to Jacksonville…for good.

HA!!! Chile, the brain, honey.

And so I stopped. I didn't buy the bar stools. I didn't buy the bench. I didn't buy the art for above the couch. Some of the bins stayed packed because, well, why bother unpacking everything when I was going to have to pack it all up again anyway?

Without realizing it, I had stopped living fully in the home I had because I was already living in the home I planned to have next.

And that seems like such a small thing, but I've been thinking about it a lot lately, because once I decided to stay, I started looking around my apartment differently again.

And I realized, this isn't just the place I'm living until I get to the next place. This is my home.

Maybe not forever. Maybe not even for another year (if only Portugal wasn’t cold in January). I genuinely don't know. What I do know, is this is my home now, and I want to live in it like I actually live here.

So, it looks like I'll be buying those bar stools after all. And maybe even unpacking the rest of those damn bins.

Listen, there's something bigger at play here that I want for you to take from this.

We don’t just not settle into our homes, we do it with entire seasons of our lives.

We put pieces of our lives on hold because we believe we'll really settle in once something else happens. That we'll establish the routine when work calms down. Or we'll start traveling when we have more money. And we'll wear the nice clothes when we lose the weight.

That we will finally let ourselves enjoy life once the kids are gone or the relationship is figured out.

There is always some future version of our lives that seem a little more worthy of fully inhabiting than the one we're living right now.

And yes, I know there are times when waiting makes sense.

Sometimes buying the bar stools two weeks before a move would just mean paying somebody to haul two more bar stools across the state that may not fit into my new home.

But I wasn't two weeks away from moving.

I had simply decided that because I was leaving eventually, there was no reason to keep investing in where I was.

But eventually can become six months (or in this case 9 months). Then a year. Then three years. And if we're not careful, we can spend a lot of our lives waiting for the part we believe is worth settling into.

Meanwhile, Tuesday is happening.

Someone you love is calling. The sun is coming through the window and there is something funny on television that is better shared with a friend.

There is a whole life happening right here that doesn't care whether you've reached the next thing yet.

And that's part of what this sitting still season is giving me: the chance to stop treating the present like a temporary holding place for my real life.

Yes, there are more chapters ahead of me. I may still buy the house. I may still move back to Jacksonville. There will be more places to go, more things to build and more versions of myself to meet.

But I don't have to keep one foot out the door while I wait for them.

I can want more without treating what I have as though it isn't enough. I can be excited about where I'm going without spending my entire life leaning toward the future.

And for once, I can finally stay where my feet are.

Instead of figuring out what comes next, take some time this week to look around at what is already here.

What is already good about your life that you haven't fully allowed yourself to enjoy because some part of you is waiting for something else?

What have you been treating as temporary while waiting for the better house, better job, better relationship, better season or better version of yourself to arrive?

And is there anything you're trying to change right now not because it actually needs changing, but because sitting still makes you uncomfortable?

Once you've answered that, choose one part of your life and just for this week, stop trying to improve it. Don't optimize it or make a new plan for it. Don't immediately turn it into another project.

Just live in it.

Eat the dinner while it's hot. Sit on the balcony and enjoy where you live. Wear the dress you've been saving. Call the friend. Take the afternoon off if you can.

Let something in your life be good without immediately asking it to become better.

For now, I'm staying. I don't know how long my sitting still season will last.

Maybe six months from now I'll be writing this newsletter from my new house in Jacksonville with boxes piled behind me or sitting on the shores of Lisbon. Wouldn't that be something?

But I'm not there yet, and for the first time in a long time, I'm okay with that.

So I'm here, in the same apartment, with no boxes, no moving truck and no new keys. There are still things I want and parts of my life that remain unfinished, but I'm learning that unfinished doesn't mean something is wrong and my life doesn't have to feel complete for me to fully live inside of it.

The truth is, I've always known how to find the beauty in going. I'm finally discovering there can be just as much beauty in staying.

Maybe that’s what this entire 3,000 word essay was all about.

Not giving up on where you're going.

Just finally allowing yourself to be where you are.

Until next week,

Donteacia 💛

P.S. I’m fully aware that these weekly notes are slowly becoming the length of a book chapter, but my hope is that you get just as much from reading them as I get in sharing them with you.

P.P.S. I've met someone. He's really sweet and gentle with me. And I get to just be a girl, which is nice. Sitting still has its perks. 🙃

P.P.P.S. I've opened up a few spots to work with me 1:1 this fall. If that sounds like something you're interested in, simply reply to this email.