I keep coming back to my home town, despite knowing in my bones it’s not where I want to live.
Yes, I know— kids, cousins, grandparents, family, lifelong friends.
That’s exactly why we keep coming back.
Even though I know we’re not all meant to build our lives around the place we come from. We only need to look back at our ancestors and their migration patterns to see the naturalness of it, and also the necessity of it sometimes. I’m an Aussie married to an American— migration was always on both of our bingo cards.
I mean, it’s a luxurious part of Australia. The weather is better than anywhere else in the world— no exaggeration. It is sunny most everyday— winters are very mild, but enough of a change that you get a break from the long, hot, dry summers. I love the long, mediterranean style summers. Hot yes, but dry hot. I lived in Arizona when I first moved to the states and that’s a whole other level of hot. Everyone always goes on about the dangerous animals in Aus but when i lived in Arizona, we had to check our toilet paper and bed sheets for scorpions.
It’s isolated geographically in this little corner of Australia, which has it’s pros and cons. Close to Asia, far from everywhere else. It’s very clean, mostly. The entire city runs along the coast. The beaches are insanely beautiful— more beautiful than anywhere I’d argue. There are parks everywhere.
My mum herself has always described our home town as ‘an amazing place to raise kids, just not my vibe’.
This place is the home of friends I have had for most of my life and of course, it is home to my family of origin. My mum, my dad, my two sisters, my niece and nephew. My brother lives abroad.
It’s where my mother grew up, where my nanna grew up and where her mother grew up. My great grandfather helped build this city with his bare hands.
It’s also home to so many of my memories— good memories, and tough ones. I drive by certain spots and feel sweet, happy nostalgia and I drive by other spots and feel instantly down— like my body remembers a time when I was in the grips of anxiety.
This place, my birth home, it feels comfortable, familiar, easy, nice and safe.
It will always be home in the sense of origins.
But it’s not expansive.
It feels like a place of duty, responsibility and heritage…
but not growth.
After school, I went straight into university in my home town. It was my dream uni because it had one of the best programs for sports/exercise science in the world. It was even in the top 100 universities globally. Unlike in America, it’s quite common for kids in Aus to go to university at home.
I did take a gap year though, but it wasn’t until after my undergraduate degree. I went to Melbourne for a year and then came home to do my honours research.
I then left home again a few years later to move to the USA — to be with my now husband.
Since then as a family we have lived on both coasts of Australia, the USA, London and also Italy for several summers (we bought and renovated a Piedmontese farmhouse in 2021— on 60 acres of ‘never-been-sprayed’ land. We touched it up according to building biology standards, making it a designer X non toxic home. Unrelated, but I just love talking about that house. Renters are in it and I miss it so much).
We tend to come home to this part of Australia, my origin home, when we have a baby— there is such a naturalness to the pull to want to be around family in those precious young years and I am so happy that it’s what we’ve done.
Some days though I become frustrated because I feel such tension within me — between this longing to be away again in an environment/dynamic better suited to us, and the desire to be around family.
But we have chosen exactly this life.
We have chosen this rhythm. We have chosen to spread our wings and live abroad. We have chosen to come home to the nest and cocoon in seasons where we need comfort, familiarity and support.
I wouldn’t change any of it looking back.
But what I wrestle with inside is this— do I want to live here, or do I feel I need to live here?
What is desire Vs what is duty?
We are all happy, and live a beautiful family centered life. But I also know it’s time for me to reach a new stage of maturation— to unwind even more from my self imposed ‘eldest daughter’ duty and step into an even more aligned design for my beautiful little fam.
Astrologists will tell you that my loop-de-loops are to be expected. Between my leo sun, gemini rising and my cancer moon there are no surprises with my migration patterns.
The leo sun wants to be seen, which to be honest is not always straightforward in your home town.
The gemini rising wants novelty and is endlessly curious (not a flaw, by the way!).
The cancer moon is very connected to home, loyal, and emotional in this way.
Look, I am no astrologer and I don’t need anyone to tell me of the tension inside— i know it intimately.
I know that sometimes when we’re living away, I feel anxious about something happening back at home. What if I’m not there? What if I can’t help? There is an eldest daughter dutifulness that has lead a lot of my life.
And at some point I had to stop letting the scared little girl inside lead my life.
I have learned that you can only expand to the degree that your most vulnerable part inside can feel safe. You can have all the resources in the world to live an expansive life, but if there is a little girl inside who is still terrified of what will happen if she leaves her family, you will always lassoo back to your safe zone.
That is, of course, unless you can hug that little girl, look her in the eyes, and tell her that everything is ok. It’s not all her job anymore. You’re a woman now, and you have beautiful children of your own.
Sometimes we have to go back and get her, rescue her from the position she’s in— she’s still sitting there in my childhood bedroom, 8 years old, she’s hugging her knees, worried, weight of the world on her shoulders.
I’m 38 now, but this scared little girl is the part that’s not always ready to come along to the new thing.
We can only expand to the degree our most scared and vulnerable part can feel safe.
I know that there are many modern day mothers wrestling with this— where should I live? Is it enough to live where I was raised? Am I myself here? What matters the most when raising children? Is it to be around their extended family, or is it that the central family unit is thriving even if it means moving away? I am sure we could sit with a cuppa and chat about this for hours. I sure could! I have lived it for 9 years— ever since I was pregnant with my first baby in the USA and we were deciding whether to have her on my home soil.
Sometimes I hear in my head the voices of certain people— whether it’s a random quote I saw online, or a conversation I had with the local Orthodox Priest. I hear things like “Just be grateful where you are” and “The most important thing for kids is growing up with the love of their grandparents”.
But it’s not those voices that are the loudest in me.
I don’t live dictated by the voices of others.
I do, however live dictated by the parts of me that are not yet matured.