Starting Over: One Year In

When does a place become home?

The author paddling on Sparks Lake in Central Oregon. Photo credit: Megan Pooler

When does a place become your place—home? Is it after you’ve experienced all four seasons? Or when you stop relying on Google Maps to navigate town? Or when a new friend calls spontaneously to meet for a walk? Is it when you start bumping into people from your church or gym at the grocery store?

I’ve lived in Bend, Oregon, for a year now and have hit these time and “place” markers (except for Google Maps, which I may always need). And yet, Bend still doesn’t quite feel like home.

I moved here primarily to live close to three of my sons, a daughter-in-law and my granddaughter. One by one, they had all come to Bend years before to experience life in the Pacific Northwest, far from their Midwest upbringing. At the same time our youngest moved to Bend eight years ago, my husband and I ended our 31-year marriage. I moved from an outlying suburb of Chicago into the heart of the city to start a new life on my own, something I had never imagined needing to do. I embraced city life and took advantage of everything Chicago offered, especially Lake Michigan.

I loved being on the water, so I signed up to learn how to sail. Mostly I wanted to overcome my fear of capsizing when the boat heels hard in the wind. I also thought it would be a good way to meet people and make new friends. I didn’t expect to fall in love with my sailing instructor, but we hit it off and I ended up spending the next six years with him. His boating community became my social circle. It was like finding a built-in group of friends. I didn’t have to work for it; I just showed up for sailing races and yacht club events, and they were all there.

I didn’t realize until a few years in that I didn’t actually have my own friends in the city apart from this man. Honestly, I didn’t really have time to make friends. I worked all day and spent the evening doing couple things—dinners out, theater, and lots of sailboat racing. It was a good life for most of the years we were together, but it became clear he wasn’t the one for me. It was time to move on and start over. Again.

I cried hard the day I left Chicago and watched the skyscrapers recede in my rearview mirror. As much as I was excited to move to Oregon and be close to the majority of my kids, I grieved the life I was leaving behind. Moving meant saying farewell to my Illinois son and his family, my Chicagoland siblings, and my friends from my married life. Though I was moving by choice, I was also letting go of everything familiar and beginning life in a foreign place. Except for my kids, I knew no one in Bend.

To make the transition harder, just a few weeks after I arrived in Bend, I was blindsided by acute pancreatitis, an excruciatingly painful flare-up of the pancreas, which morphed into a life-threatening impact on my liver and gallbladder. I was in and out of hospitals for five weeks, enduring countless needle pokes, blood transfusions, feeding and gallbladder drainage tubes, endoscopic procedures, and myriad CT scans, ultrasounds, and MRIs. I lost 20 pounds, all my muscle strength, and the rest of summer and fall. So much for my fresh start.

Thankfully, I’ve made a full recovery. I’ve spent this year focused on rebuilding my strength and restarting my new life yet again. My top goal for 2024 was to make friends. In March, I went to a local author event and left an open seat next to me, and said a little prayer. “God, I’m leaving this seat open in case you’ve got someone you’d like me to meet.” Within minutes, a woman about my age leaned in from the aisle and asked if the seat next to me was available. Cindy and I struck up an easy conversation, and we’ve been friends since.

I met Jennifer, also a new transplant to Bend, at a women’s Bible study. I decided to be bold and gave her my phone number in case she ever wanted to have coffee. Turns out she did. We talked for hours over latte and tea and since then have met several times for happy hours around town. Another new friend, Megan, invited me to go on my first paddling expedition. With mountain views at each end of the lake, we chatted and paddled as the sun set behind the towering ponderosas. “Can you believe we get to live here?” we both said intermittently as we ooh’d and aah’d at the purples and blues splashed across the sky.

Each of these meetups has felt like a huge win. I’ve always been introverted, but putting myself out there and initiating a conversation, let alone a friendship, is harder than I realized. I’m seeing now how all the years of marriage and then a long-term relationship insulated me from cultivating connections outside of the safe relational bubble of family and built-in friend groups. Starting over requires so much courage, and I’m not always sure I have enough of it to carry me forward.

Being intentional about making friends, feeling an ambiguous sense of place, and wondering if I’ll always be alone—these are some of the uncomfortable thoughts and emotions that have stirred in me this past year and have left me feeling adrift, like I’m here but don’t fully belong. Sometimes, waves of loneliness wash over me, threatening to pull me into the undertow of grief over what I left behind. I fear I may never have a true home again.

So why not just move back to Chicago? The reality is, as much as I loved my life there and miss it terribly, it was time to end that chapter. And like Paulo Coelho says, “You can miss something, but not want it back.” 

Instead of running back to the place I know to regain a (false) sense of security, I’ve decided to stay in the discomfort of what I don’t know; to let myself feel the sometimes overwhelming despair of loneliness and uncertainty about the future—as well as the giddy delight of exploring new territory—and see what new growth emerges over time.

Maybe I will never feel grounded here. Maybe I’ll only ever be able to count my friends on one hand. Maybe I’ll never find love again or have a home I can share with someone. Maybe I’ll always need Google Maps. But maybe I won’t.

And maybe I’ll be okay either way.

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