Navigating Post-Quarantine Life After A Cross-Country Move

I’ve heard this time get called “re-entry”, which makes sense because we are re-entering. No season has ever felt like more of a re-entrance than this one. We moved from Portland back to the east coast before our first anniversary on the west coast. We did it all in under a week and it felt similar to the whiplash that came with the wave of COVID vaccinations across the nation. One day I had finally gotten to know the ground that I was standing on (after trying so hard to understand it since March 2020), only to have the entire planet turned upside on.

Admittedly, all in a great way. Both re-entry into our east coast life and into a post-quarantine world have been what I’ve been praying about for the last year. I’ve yearned for a time where seeing our friends and family felt easier and less risky. I wanted a time where we felt more at peace in our own home because it didn’t have to be the only place we existed in anymore.

And yet, I’m still navigating a lot of discomfort in the midst of this re-entrance, which again makes sense. Too often we assume that because we’re in the middle of moments we prayed voraciously for that we’re supposed to know how to exist within them. I don’t think that’s fair to our present selves, or even realistically possible. I think being in the middle of any new moment is hard, no matter how much it resembles past ones.

2021 is different than life pre-March 2020 because we’ve seen too much. Living on the east coast again is not the same as it was for me before we moved to Portland because I’m a different person than I was then. I care about my quality of life more than I care about the quantity of accolades, praises, or connections. I move through the world with different energy, perspectives, and priorities.

I realized just how much I changed whenever I decided that a mid-afternoon visit to the beach by our apartment felt like the right use of my time. Sitting on the sand in workout clothes I’d been wearing all day, it felt like coming home. Portland taught me how much peace I find in the middle of open spaces and out in Connecticut this beach was my Sauvie Island. It was my piece of isolation that let me breathe long enough to remind myself that I actually enjoy re-entrance into the world and my world.

It can be so easy to expect us to slip back into old worlds as if a day hasn’t gone by, but I hope you intentionally choose to not ask that of yourself moving forward. Re-entry is hard because the last year has been hard. I don’t think anyone is coming up short because we’re all building new lives in the world as we go.