Coming Home

Closed doors, open roads, and finally choosing to stay

I turned this week around. I want to start there because last week I wrote honestly about being in it, the impatience, the wobble, the weeks that test everything you have been working on, and this week felt like the answer to that. Not because everything got resolved, but because I got back to myself. That is usually how it goes if you let it.

The book had a moment this week that I am still sitting with. I have been working on it quietly for a while now, and I met with an editor who gave me feedback that stopped me in a good way. The writing is there. The story is there. And somewhere in that conversation I made a decision I had not fully made before. I am going to pitch it. Go for a book deal. See what happens when you believe in something enough to put it in front of the people who could take it somewhere bigger than you could take it alone. I do not know what will come of it but I know I would rather find out than wonder.

I also got to show up for some people I love this week who are going through hard things. There is something clarifying about being needed by people who have shown up for you. It does not fix what they are going through but it reminds you that being present for someone is its own kind of purpose, and that the stability you have been building is not just for you.

And then there is the thing I have been sitting with since I got to Austin and am now ready to say out loud.

I am moving back.

Not because I have to. Not because the nomad chapter failed or the dream got smaller. But because something shifted the moment I got here this time. This was the first time I have been in Austin since I started traveling that I was not visiting. I was just living. And it felt different. It felt like the city had been waiting for me to see it clearly and I finally could, because I am finally someone different than the woman who left almost three years ago.

A lot can happen in three years. I know that firsthand.

When my European summer got canceled I will be honest, it stung for a minute. I had plans. I had deposits. I had a version of this summer already assembled in my mind. And then it was gone and I sat with the loss of it and waited to see what was underneath. What was underneath was relief. The kind that tells you something you were not ready to admit yet. I did not need another summer of moving. I needed somewhere to land.

So this is what landing looks like. I leave Austin next Tuesday, my last week here before I head to Orlando for Mother’s Day, then Detroit, then New York, then DC. A proper goodbye lap through the people and places that matter before I come back and start looking for a place, get my things out of storage, set up a home again, and put some roots down for the first time in a long time.

The guy is part of the picture too, quietly. We spent the weekend together and it was good in the way that things are good when nobody is forcing anything. We are taking a natural pause while I travel but we have already talked about picking back up when I return. I am not rushing it. I am not bracing for the end. I am just letting it be what it is and trusting that what is meant to develop will develop.

This does not feel like settling. I want to be clear about that because I know how it can sound, the nomad coming home, the European plans falling through, the pivot back to something familiar. But familiar is not the same as stuck. I left a version of this city. I am returning to a version of myself she never got to meet. That distinction matters to me.

I am excited. I am ready. And for the first time in a long time, I know exactly where I am going.

Après Me,

Sherita