Another chapter, one iced tea, and a little bit of quiet

I spent a few hours in a café today — just me, my laptop, and a cookie I hadn’t planned to eat but did anyway. The iced tea wasn’t because I was thirsty. It was something to hold onto while I tried to think.

I was working on a chapter of Parenting Unpacked, and it wasn’t coming easily. I kept circling around one question: Who do we become when we leave everything familiar behind?

When you move somewhere new, something quiet changes in how you move through the world. You notice it in gestures, in timing, in what you no longer say out loud. The barista called my name wrong again today, and I didn’t correct her. Maybe that’s part of it — the slow blending of who you were and who you’re still becoming.

And it’s not just parents who feel this shift. It happens to anyone rebuilding a life from scratch — people who care, people who carry, people who rebuild. Maybe that’s what we’re all doing in our own way.

That’s what I’m trying to capture on the page: the quiet parts. The in-between moments that don’t make it into guides or advice columns. The spaces where identity, belonging, and care blur together in the everyday.

I used to think moving made me brave. Lately, it just makes me tender.

Maybe you’ve felt this too, in your own way. If so, I think we’d understand each other.

The cookie’s finished. The tea’s gone warm. But the question — who do we become when everything changes — is still right here, waiting.

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