Is it worth it? This is a question Richelle Gamlam of the Move Abroad Coach Podcast asked Nova and I after describing my hot, exhausting, chaotic, and overwhelming first month setting up our home in the Netherlands (with a giant puppy, no wifi, and not knowing Dutch) and the serious $ it costs to move that many people and pets that far.
The episode aired last week and is perhaps the deepest and longest conversation we've had in public about our move and the decision-making process that preceded it - and ultimately became the Should I Stay Should I Go Workbook.
The answer for me, for now, is YES. So much is possible in my life right now because we have affordable healthcare. My kids have more independence. There's a structure all around me helping me learn to be different and do different in a way that's so unlike the adversarial, pushing-a-rock-uphill way it often felt to live life aligned with my values in the US. That sentence right there is grist for more reflection and a longer post.
For now, if you're thinking "WHAT DO YOU MEAN GROVER" in the simplest way, I mean garbage. I mean I actually believe my cardboard is going to be recycled here, because I rip it into bits and put it in a certain bin that's collected by a separate truck. That's a very tangible example.
If I were to give a more abstract example: taxes. I pay a good chunk of taxes, and then I walk around and see elderly people scooting to the grocery store, not sleeping on the street. And after years fighting for solutions to homelessness, only to watch the number of people experiencing it balloon all around us, I'm living inside the painting I was trying to paint all along, and it is re-shaping, re-ballasting me.
The thing is, it's not actually simple. Not logistically, emotionally, nor ethically. People are still unhoused en masse in the US. My exit doesn't resolve anyone else's suffering, not in the short term. It does remove me from the engine a bit, and I am listening to different conversations and feeling and practicing different ways of being.
That's where I'm at and what's on my mind this week. Wherever you are, whatever you're wrestling with, I hope you have what you need and some good people to spend some hours with this week.
xo
Grover
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