I’m writing these words from a space of relief and release and reformation.

Seems like this past spring all I wrote about was unforming and deconstruction; breaking apart from life in Alaska was a painful, stressful, hard process. I could feel myself no longer fitting the space, ready to begin life in Kauai. But first I had to unstick those strong suction tentacles, in the forms of home and job, obligation and responsibility, holding me in place.

I could feel myself leaping and free falling as I cut the chords binding me, but I knew I wouldn’t know where I would land until I actually got to Kauai.

Now I’ve landed here; 11 days in. And though I’m still unformed as I settle in, find my way, stay open to the bigger soul question of why was I called here, it is ineluctably more delightful being on this side of things.

I’ve sat by the ocean as much as I can; she sings, the sea, and I’m trying to learn her music. I made a new friend who invited me to try her HighX fitness class, which left my abs so sore they still ache. I went back to work, smiling at the pups who insist on being in the room, still taking their responsibilities as therapy dogs seriously, lending their calm loyal energy as I video-therapy with clients.

I showed up for a modern dance class where I squirmed and turned and curved along to drum beats and heat. Melted into pools of sweat trying to run in the hot and humid. Made grocery runs, a Costco trip, and all the other odds and ends you do when you are first setting up house.

Walked around Kapaa, visiting local shops, realizing I don’t know anyone and they don’t know me: I have no history here. A thought that leaves me feeling like a blank slate- lonely and void and ripe with the crest of possibility.

I sit on the lanai most mornings and evenings listening to my heart think and seek in the jungle green; listening to the stories of the trees; discerning the sounds in the breeze. Be still, take this space, this time is for you, they say. You need to reset your nervous system, learn to be peace. The palms and fronds wave in viridian symphony, I sigh in return.

11 days in, and I’m slipping back and forth between different skins of self; all of them me; none of them quite me; I came here for a new skin and it’s still forming around me.

I don’t quite fit here yet, but then again, I’m not supposed to. It takes a while for any of us to find our place, our fit, our tribe, our next step. We answer our questions of being through the acts of our living.

But there is a deliciousness to searching for my answers. Each day a revelation of ocean salt and rainbow talk and cloud speak and remembering how to breathe. To not have to carry so much weight for others; the weight of a brother gone; the weight of being the strong, stable, dependable one.

Instead I keep offering up all of these things to sky’s reach. Watch the clouds form and reform and become again and again. Lose myself then find myself in their shifts and shapes; learn to breathe and be peace.