05/17/2026
I went for a drive down an old back road, looking for a piece of property I’ve heard my mom talk about for years. Somewhere between the bends in the road and the muscle memory of turns I didn’t need directions for, I caught myself asking a question I hadn’t planned on asking: why does one leave this place?
I graduated from college with ambition and momentum, and like most people with both, I followed them out. There weren’t many jobs that aligned with the goals I had in my twenties if I stayed in small-town Appalachia. So I did what I was supposed to do. City to larger city to larger city, until eventually I landed in Washington, D.C.
And what I learned was this: for every good thing that came from each of those places, it was only on the drive back to my parents’ house that I ever truly felt like I was coming home.
I lived in northern Virginia for eleven years. I built a life there, surrounded by millions of people, constant movement, and endless opportunity. But there was never time to belong. Every relationship felt scheduled. Every interaction transactional. I was always moving through crowds, but never rooted among them. Progress demanded motion, and motion demanded distance.
The cost of that version of success wasn’t obvious at first. It showed up quietly—in missed family events, in a schedule that was never my own, in cross-country flights that left me piecing together a sense of belonging through FaceTime because I couldn’t be there myself. I learned how to reenter rooms that had already moved on without me, how to smile on a screen and pretend that was the same thing as presence.
The ladder rewards forward motion, not availability. It teaches you that being needed elsewhere is proof that you matter—even as it steadily pulls you away from the people and places that taught you who you were in the first place.
I was still supposed to be working my way up that ladder. That was the plan. But life—and my parents aging—had other ideas. And when they began needing more help, it became harder to justify staying so far away.
I told myself it was temporary. A pause. A reset. I needed downtime to decompress from a pace that left me constantly chasing my tail—always productive, always busy, and always tired in a way sleep didn’t fix. I never expected to come back. I certainly never would have said I wanted to.
But when I did, I could finally breathe.
At first, I didn’t know what to do with myself. My mind was still moving faster than my body needed it to in this environment. I woke up at five out of habit, my internal clock still calibrated for urgency, only to realize there was nowhere I needed to be. No inbox filling overnight. No meetings waiting. No one asking for immediate response.
The stillness felt uncomfortable—almost exposing. I mistook rest for laziness. Slowness for a lack of ambition. I felt guilty, as though I wasn’t living up to my potential simply because I wasn’t exhausted.
In twenty years, I had never known what to do with a January that wasn’t spent recovering from burnout or bracing for the next push. Here, the season itself seemed to invite rest. Short days. Quiet mornings. Time that stretched instead of pressed. My body began to slow before my beliefs did, and the mismatch left me uneasy.
I’m still learning that the world moves a little slower here—not because less is happening, but because attention is spread differently. People notice when you arrive. They notice when you’re gone. Time is treated as something to be shared, not optimized.
Slowly, without ceremony, people made room for me. Conversations stretched. Names were learned. Help was offered without an agenda. They didn’t have to accept me. They didn’t have to welcome me. They chose to. And for the first time in my adult life, I wasn’t just existing among people—I was belonging.
I noticed sunrises and sunsets again—not as something picturesque, but as markers of a day fully lived. I spent long afternoons walking land that remembered me even when I had been gone. I wasn’t going through the motions. I was living.
One afternoon, after the rain stopped, I walked up the hill to the family cemetery. It was supposed to be a quick visit but I found myself standing there longer than I expected.
The older I get, the more I realize how many people before me built their lives within a few miles of where they started. They worked ordinary jobs. Raised families. Sat in the same church pews for decades. Invested in the same communities year after year. Their lives would probably look very quiet by modern standards.
And yet, standing there, I couldn’t help but think how deeply woven they were into the fabric of this place. Not because they were famous or influential, but because they remained present long enough to become part of its foundation.
Standing there, I understood what had been missing before. Belonging isn’t found in density. It isn’t built by proximity alone. It’s found in continuity—in being somewhere long enough to be woven into it, and in letting it shape you in return.
As I walked back down the hill, I realized that staying isn’t about settling. It’s about choosing a life where your presence matters. Where your absence would be noticed. Where the work isn’t always loud or visible, but it lasts.
For a long time, I thought success meant becoming untethered. Free to go anywhere. Needed everywhere. But somewhere along the way, I started confusing movement with meaning.
Now I think a meaningful life may look smaller from the outside than the one I left behind. Quieter too. But it feels larger in all the ways that matter.
Because there is a difference between being known professionally and being known personally. Between being impressive and being present.
And I am finally beginning to understand that a life does not have to be fast to be full. 💕
