After years of talking about it, my family and I finally made the move from the San Francisco Bay Area to Portland, Oregon this summer. It was a long time in coming — a shift that had lived in my imagination for more than twenty years. In truth, this was my third attempt to relocate to Portland, a place I’ve always felt quietly called to, even as life and work kept pulling me back to California.
There’s a certain kind of longing that never fully goes away. The sense that somewhere, there’s a community that more closely matches your inner rhythm. For me, Portland has always carried that resonance: the soft rain, rolling hills of greenery, the creative pulse of authenticity that runs through the city. So when the moving truck finally pulled away from our old street and I stood with my family in the echo of the empty house that had been our home through our children’s formative years, I felt both the relief of completion and the ache of leaving behind years of life, laughter, and hard-won growth.
Moving has a way of unsettling everything we think we know about ourselves. It shakes loose our attachments to places, to roles defined and undefined, and to the unspoken routines that quietly define our days. But it also offers something magical: a chance to start fresh not just in another location, but in a new awareness of our world. We have a chance to see the experience of the less familiar as a prompt to question, Who am I now? What do I really need to feel at home in the world?
In the weeks since the move, I’ve begun to realize that this transition is an opportunity to explore what it means to come home to a more authentic, more centered way of being in which my established routines and rhythms are less automatic and more conscious.
The Threshold Moment
Every move begins with a threshold, a moment when the familiar dissolves and the new has yet to take shape. For me, it came the night before the drive north. After three days of loading trucks with boxes and furniture, the house was nearly empty. The walls echoed with the ghost sounds of the life we’d lived there: my daughter’s laughter from down the hall, the clink of dishes from family dinners, the sound of my son’s footsteps running down the long hallway, my wife calling to me from the next room, the low hum of late-night typing in my office. That rhythm had marked the heartbeat of our home. The space held the residual emotions of countless ordinary miracles, and as I turned off the lights one last time, I felt both gratitude and grief mingling in my chest.
That moment, standing between what was and what would be, carried a quiet sacredness for me. I found myself inhabiting a liminal space, a threshold where identity loosens and transformation begins. Leaving a home is an opportunity to let go of the person who belonged to that place and the routines, mindsets, and self-stories that made sense there, so that something new can emerge.
The drive itself became its own meditation. Mile after mile, over the mountains, the road stretched ahead like a long exhale, carrying the fragments of a familiar life into an unknown future. Somewhere past Redding, as the hills turned to pines and the air grew cooler and our dog slept fitfully in the back seat, I began to sense that this wasn’t just relocation but a re-creation and the slow unfolding of my inner self in motion.
Crossing the Oregon border felt like a homecoming, though not yet to a home I could point to. It was that rare feeling of arriving where I feel I’m meant to be, even before the boxes are unpacked. And in that sense, the move itself became a teacher: that home is less about arrival than about the continual act of crossing thresholds with awareness and intention.
What “Home” Really Means
In the weeks after arriving in Portland, I found myself thinking often about what “home” actually means. The new house is still half-inhabited— walls bare, furniture misplaced, the rhythm of daily life still unsettled. Yet there are fleeting moments when something in me just exhales: the morning light filtering through the tall trees behind the house, the sound of rain against the window, the scent of coffee rising in a quiet kitchen. Each small moment reminds me that home isn’t built overnight. It’s slowly remembered from within as new patterns and familiarities emerge.
Psychologically, home is more than shelter. It’s a domicile of personal meaning, a space where the external environment reflects our internal state of being. Abraham Maslow (1968) described self-actualizing environments as those that support authenticity, creativity, and the full unfolding of one’s nature. Roberto Assagioli (1973, 2000) frames our experience of the outer world as a mirror of our inner one — the house as a metaphor for the structure of the psyche, with hidden rooms, open spaces, and a center of stillness at its core. When we feel at home, it’s because our surroundings resonate with the person we’re becoming.
And yet, the deeper we explore this idea, the clearer it becomes that home is not fixed in wood or stone. It’s a felt sense and a harmony between inner and outer life. We can feel utterly at home in a temporary apartment or profoundly alien in the house we’ve owned for decades. What makes a place feel like home is the alignment between our environment and our values, our sense of belonging to both self and world.
This is the spiritual dimension of homecoming: realizing that home is a practice, not a possession. It’s the practice of presence — of inhabiting our lives fully, wherever we are. Every time we ground into awareness, every time we breathe into gratitude for the moment we’re in, we’re coming home again.
Re-centering Through Change
The act of moving has a way of revealing what we’ve been carrying, often without realizing it. Packing each room became its own meditation — sorting through years of possessions, memories, and the silent weight of things that once seemed important. Each decision about what to keep and what to release felt like a small act of discernment: Does this still belong in the life I’m creating?
I began to notice that the same process was happening internally. Old routines and self-concepts surfaced for re-examination. The pace and intensity of my life in the Bay Area — the constant urgency, the endless doing — no longer felt sustainable or even authentic. As boxes filled, I found myself quietly shedding more than physical belongings. I was letting go of a way of being that no longer fit.
Moving invited me back to my own center and a living orientation within, precisely because it disrupted the exterior orientations that defined the patterns of my life. It reminds me that all change is a way of rediscovering the axis that connects all parts of ourselves so that our outer actions arise from inner coherence. When we move through change consciously, we re-weave those threads into a new pattern of being.
In Portland, I began to feel that realignment almost immediately. The slower rhythm of the city, the easy proximity to nature, and the creative weirdness of the community all resonated with different aspects of myself that had gone quiet in the noise of constant striving in the Bay Area. It felt as if the move had opened a window between my inner and outer worlds, allowing more light and air to circulate through both.
Transitions like this often stir discomfort because they unsettle our identity. But that very unsettling is what allows integration to happen. Psychologist Nancy Schlossberg (2011) describes transitions as catalysts for identity redefinition — times when our established patterns are interrupted, making space for transformation. In that sense, moving isn’t merely logistical; it’s developmental. It invites us to re-center around who we are now, rather than who we once were.
Rediscovering What Matters Most
Two months after the move, most of the boxes still sit half-opened in the garage. The walls are bare in places, the shelves partly filled. Each week we find a new rhythm, then lose it again. It’s a liminal space — not quite the old life, not yet the new one — and that unfinishedness has become its own teacher.
At first, I thought the goal was to get settled, to restore order as quickly as possible. But I’ve come to see that the unsettled state is part of the journey. It’s showing me what I actually need to feel grounded — and how little of it depends on everything being in place. When the outer world is in flux, the invitation is to turn inward and ask: Where does stability live now? What am I reaching for when I say I want to feel at home?
Without the familiar routines of the Bay Area, the noise has quieted. There’s more space for listening — to the land, to my family, to the quiet voice inside that knows what matters most. The essentials are emerging slowly: time together around the dinner table, the laughter echoing down a new hallway, long walks beneath trees that feel older than any plan I could make.
Psychologists Richard Ryan and Edward Deci (2001), who have worked extensively in the study of meaning and purpose, describe eudaimonic well-being as the fulfillment that comes from living in alignment with our deeper values, not from achieving comfort or certainty. In that light, this in-between period feels like a purification — a process of clarifying what truly sustains us. Every time I choose presence over productivity, gratitude over grasping, I feel a little closer to home.
Maybe that’s what this move is teaching me: that homecoming isn’t a moment of arrival, but a slow unfolding of relationship — with place, with self, and with what’s most essential. We’re still finding our footing here, but in that search, something real is taking root.
Practices for Coming Home, Wherever You May Be
In the midst of transition, it helps to remember that homecoming is not a project to complete but a relationship to nurture. We come home not by perfecting our environment, but by entering into a deeper dialogue with it — letting the new space teach us who we are becoming. These simple practices can help turn the experience of moving, or any life transition, into a living practice of centering.
1. Mark the Threshold
Create a small ritual to acknowledge the crossing from what was to what is becoming. This could be lighting a candle your first night in the new home, writing a letter of gratitude to the old one, or taking a slow walk through your new neighborhood in silence. The ritual itself is less important than the intention: to recognize the sacredness of transition.
2. Let the House Breathe
Instead of rushing to fill every space, give the house time to reveal what it wants to hold. Notice how light moves through it at different times of day. Listen to its quiet sounds. Place objects gradually, with awareness, as acts of belonging. In doing so, you allow your inner landscape to settle alongside the outer one.
3. Find Daily Anchors
When everything feels in flux, small rituals create stability. Brew coffee slowly. Sit by a window at the same time each morning. Step outside before bed and look at the sky. These humble repetitions remind the body where it is and remind the mind that grounding begins in presence.
4. Reclaim Connection
Moving often pulls us inward, but belonging grows through relationship. Reach out to neighbors, explore local places, and make time for meaningful contact with friends and family. Every genuine connection is a thread that roots us more deeply into life as it is now.
5. Keep a “Becoming Home” Journal
Write a few lines each day about what feels new, what feels lost, and what feels like home. Over time, you’ll begin to see patterns, values, sensations, and relationships that consistently evoke belonging. This awareness turns transition into transformation.
These practices are inherently participatory, and they demand our conscious engagement. They remind us that home is not something we build once, but something we continually create through attention, gratitude, and love. Wherever you are, welcome home to yourself.
References
Assagioli, R. (1973). The act of will. Penguin Books.
Maslow, A. H. (1968). Toward a psychology of being (2nd ed.). Van Nostrand Reinhold.
Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2001). On happiness and human potentials: A review of research on hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. Annual Review of Psychology, 52(1), 141–166. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.52.1.141
Schlossberg, N. K. (2011). Revitalizing retirement: Reshaping your identity, relationships, and purpose. American Psychological Association. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2009-02673-000
Turner, V. (1969). The ritual process: Structure and anti-structure. Aldine Publishing.
