Between Sorrow and Joy: The Family Tree

Time has a peculiar way of speeding up when you need it most to slow down. Our house went on the market this week, and within a day, we had an offer. Just like that, our Alaska chapter is writing its final pages, and I find myself caught between two powerful emotions that seem to pull at opposite corners of my heart.

The Ache of Leaving

They say home is where the heart is, and if that's true, then pieces of my heart will forever remain scattered across this beautiful, wild state we're preparing to leave behind. I have always held two values above all others: family and friends. And oh, the friends we've found here.

Over the past years, we've built something precious with our Alaskan community—a tapestry woven from shared laughter, tears that bonded us closer, adventures that pushed our boundaries, and countless moments that have become the stories we'll tell for decades to come. My husband always says, "food is love," and we've lived by those words, opening our home and our table to the people who became our chosen family.

Football Sundays will never be quite the same anywhere else. Neither will the spontaneous gatherings or the parties where our dining room overflowed with voices and warmth. These moments, these people, these relationships—they've shaped who we've become during our time here.

I'm tearing up as I write this, thinking about all the ways our lives have intertwined with theirs. To our dear friends who have walked alongside us through seasons of joy and sorrow, who have filled our home with laughter and our hearts with love: we will carry you with us wherever we go. The miles may separate us, but the memories we've created together are ours forever.

The Pull of Home

But within this sorrow lives something equally powerful: joy. Pure, anticipatory joy that bubbles up when I think about what awaits us.

We're moving closer to family—much closer to mine, and significantly closer to my husband's. After years of loving people from a distance, we'll finally get to be present for the everyday moments that matter. I'll get to watch my nephew grow up, not just through photos and phone calls, but in person. My parents, with their homestead that needs tending and their wisdom that needs sharing, will have us nearby to help carry on family traditions.

There's something magical about the thought of showing my husband the places where I grew up, sharing the landscape of my childhood with the person who knows my heart best. We'll create new memories on familiar ground, and I can already picture us years from now, pointing to places and saying, "Remember when..."

Our last visit to see my husband's family was bittersweet—we gathered to celebrate my father-in-law's life and legacy. During that visit, my mother-in-law invited us to choose a painting from her collection. The one that spoke to us depicts a tree with roots, deep and strong, spreading beneath the surface. To me, it represents everything we're moving toward: being rooted in family, grounded in the values that matter most, connected to the people who knew us first and love us longest.

Honoring Both Truths

Life rarely asks us to choose between love and love, yet here we are, loving the people we're leaving and loving the life we're moving toward. Both feelings deserve space in this story.

We will honor our Alaska friendships with a final gathering—raising a pint to the memories we've made and the bonds that distance cannot break. We'll toast to football Sundays and shared meals, to midnight conversations and morning coffees, to the way this community embraced us and made us family.

And we'll step forward into whatever comes next with open hearts, ready to cultivate new relationships while treasuring the old ones. We'll tend to family ties that have been strained by distance, and we'll plant new seeds of friendship in soil that's been waiting for us.

This move represents something beautiful about the human experience: our capacity to love widely and deeply, to hold space for both grief and excitement, to honor our past while embracing our future.

Here's to the journey ahead—to the friends who will always be part of our story, to the family waiting to write new chapters with us, and to the adventure of discovering what home looks like when all the pieces of your heart finally live in the same place.

The road ahead is calling, and we're ready to answer.