Does your life(style) feel sustainable?

Mar 11

He said: “You have to pick a place to live where life feels sustainable!”

We had been talking about leaving San Francisco for a while. But where to?

We knew instinctively that SF wasn’t “our city.” It was expensive, super competitive, crowded, and it didn’t always feel safe. Besides I struggled with the SF climate and my husband and I both deeply missed seasons. However, we LOVE California, the Pacific, the boys’ preschool, and many of our friends who feel like family.

Where should we go? We had already left NYC after Felix was born, explored Austin, and then ended up back in SF where we met in 2010.

Would a new place actually be better or did we have to change our outlook? Look for more positives? Surrender the things we felt resistance to? Were we stuck in being idealistic 20-something year olds who just needed to realize that this was adult life with two kids and real responsibilities?

Then, a close family friend said to me: “You have to pick a place to live where life feels sustainable!”

That day, SO MUCH clarity rushed through every cell of my body:

Financially, we cut even with two kids, but with a third on the way, we could feel the impending squeeze tightening.

Space-wise, we were about to outgrow our current apartment.

Energetically, I felt drained, overstimulated, and like my soul could never really ground.

Physically, I felt tired too often and realized that city life started to take its toll on me: never finding parking, dragging the kids into crowded grocery stores (& check-out lines), dodging traffic with two fast-scooting toddler boys 🤦🏼‍♀️Some days I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I deeply desired more certainty and more space for my thoughts to wander. I wanted for the boys to be able to be their wild selves without it sending me into a worry frenzy that they would get hit by a car.

This life and this lifestyle, I knew with 100% clarity that day, wasn’t sustainable.

I began to think seriously about what elements would have to shift so I would feel like life WAS sustainable, so I could feel calmer, less worried, less uncertain about how it will all work, and more grounded on a soul level.

Some answers I got included that I really wanted us to own a nice home (and invest into it every month rather than spend our money on rent).

I wanted a garden where the boys can run, we can plant fruit trees, and hear birds sing (instead of sirens and traffic).

I wanted a smaller, safe town where signing the kids up for swim class didn’t involve a 6-month waitlist.

I wanted warm summer nights, great public school, and the rhythm of the seasons that give rise (for me) to a cyclical way of being where each season allows for the cultivation of a different part of me: winter for introversion and rest, spring for the rebirth of new ideas and inspiration, summer for doing and blooming, and fall for harvesting and slowing down again.

In other words, I realized that I wasn’t a stubborn 36-year old holding on to her idealistic 20-something year old ideals, but that I had changed. That what used to make my life sustainable and exciting and fun, no longer did.

My husband and I sat down and wrote down all the things we wanted for our next chapter as we would transition to being a family of 5.

We made a clear and detailed manifestation for what we wanted in our new home, including literal, structural desires as well as feelings and energies that we wanted to experience.

Long story short, we made the decision to take a leap and move to a beach town in Connecticut that would still give us access to NYC when we wanted it (or needed it for work or socializing), but was far enough removed, so we could afford a beautiful home.

We took a risk.

We had no idea if we would find a house in time before baby #3 would join us in 7-8 weeks from now, but we trusted that we needed to make a move towards a more sustainable life.