I grew up in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. I liked my hometown, but I had no real connection to the area. In fact, if you picked up all the people I loved and transported them to any different spot in the world, I imagined that I would be just as happy with it. The place itself held very little significance to me.
In college, some of my closest friends were from Michigan. As I was getting to know them, it struck me how much being from Michigan mattered to them. It seemed like a piece of their identity, and their attachment to their home region was striking.
I went to college in Indiana and then moved to east Tennessee to grad school. I found something deeply peaceful and settling about the endless cornfields and small town feel of rural Indiana. I was struck by the beauty of Tennessee and frequently took the long way to school just so I could drive along the river and admire the mountains. I liked Indiana and I loved Tennessee, but both were just lovely places, places I appreciated but knew I was just passing through.
My husband and I moved to Vermont after my internship year. I had just turned 27, completed my doctorate, and was pregnant with our first baby. We had a dog and student loans. At the time, I felt pretty grown up.
Those first months in Vermont were some of the loneliest days of my life. I hated how disconnected and isolated I felt, hated the intense cold and constant snow, and hated how long it took me to get anywhere I wanted to go. I couldn’t imagine that Vermont would ever feel like home.
And yet, somehow it did.
As the next years unfolded, I grew up in ways that I never imagined I would grow. We welcomed three beautiful babies into our family, and my whole world shifted when I became a mother. I started working as a therapist, doing the work I love and feel made to do. I experienced new levels of grief and loss, through a miscarriage and a brutal battle with Lyme Disease. My heart broke a few times, and healed in ways that felt new and different. My husband and I continued to learn how to be true partners and our marriage grew and shifted in ways we never expected. My spiritual life changed and morphed and changed again.
And as I was growing and changing, Vermont grew in to me. The space that once felt isolating became room for intentionality. I went from feeling isolated to having some of the dearest friends that I have ever known. There were days when I still cursed the cold, but I also fell in love with all of the colors, with the magic of the shifting seasons, with the sound of the spring thaw and the silence of a deep snow. Our A-frame house with the pellet stove became home in a way that no place had since childhood.
But it was more than just the house. The area itself grew right into the fabric of who I was becoming. I wondered if this is what my college friends felt all those years ago.
After six years in Vermont, my family moved again, back to the northwest suburbs where I grew up. It was a bittersweet move, and though it was exciting and hopeful, it was hard to leave our dear friends and family, and hard to leave a place that had come to mean so much to me.
Last week I was back in Vermont again. Everyone talks about New England in the fall, and they’re not wrong, but I think Vermont in the summer is one of the country’s best kept secrets. There are so many colors of green, sparkling rivers, hot days and cool nights. And I could feel it the whole time I was there, the longing, the homesick feeling for a place you love but know you have to leave.
Now, when I am getting to know someone, I feel like I want them to know about my time in Vermont. Because places can change you and shape you and thread themselves into your very being. I am glad that Vermont is threaded into mine.