extraction

We're down to the last two weeks in the only home our children have known. It is challenging to guide them through this process of farewells and last times they do certain things and see certain people. Right now they are drinking in as much as they can. Saying goodbye has become so very important to all of us. I finish with school this week and will move on to packing. Slowly we are loosening the knots of our web here so we can slip out. It is a challenge for the children to be excited about the future when it won't have their good friends in them on a daily basis. So we plan to come visit next spring and hope that it will allow them to keep open a space for new friends to come and happiness to be a part of their lives long before they reunite with everyone here.

Like my children, I also find beginnings and endings the hardest. Routine and everyday life are very comforting and while I welcome physical change, on the social level it's very challenging for me. On some level I am very excited about the move, but on another I am still way too enmeshed in everything here to be able to picture where we will be in just six weeks from now.

The most important and sometimes the hardest thing in all this is of course to remind ourselves to be kind and gentle to one another. It is so easy to just think of our own needs, but in the case of the children that means one needs to connect with someone almost constantly while the other needs to be left alone. As the adults, we have to put our own needs aside a little more than usual to be able to help them. So it's going to be challenging! But hopefully by August we will have found our home (for at least a year) and will be ready to jump into the newness of it all.