Soft Landing
A move and a new perspective
“The leaves not only wiggle at the welcome of the breeze
but give way, beginning their journey to the ground beneath
Their fall…a soft surrender.”
We spend so much of life trying to perfect the outer world. Our homes, our titles, our image. Only to realize the peace we crave was never there. Alignment asks us to release, to soften, to breathe again. To surrender.
My family and I just moved into a new house in Boulder.
Rather, a 2,500sf townhouse in a lovely neighborhood, with trees that remind me, both in sound and in nature, of the ones I used to climb, believing height would give way to freedom, to repair, to hope.
If only perspective could heal all wounds.
God, the trees. One of my favorite sounds is the wind blowing through their leaves. And right now, this is met with the changing of the season. The leaves not only wiggle at the welcome of the breeze, but give way, beginning their journey to the ground beneath. Their fall…a soft surrender. A release.
A landing I find so peaceful.
If only we, too, accepted our transitions that way. Flow, release, and soft landing.
This house, this new chapter, feels smaller in size but perhaps larger in meaning. A constriction, yes. But one of intention. We chose time over distance. Proximity over possessions. Closeness guiding our comfort.
When we packed up in late July, I was certain we had downsized enough.
But now, as I unpack and confront the boxes that were sealed months ago. Stored, silent, and waiting. I feel the truth breathing through these tight-laid walls:
I still have so much more to let go of.
So today (4am…trying to stave off my impending jetlag when we arrive in Rome tomorrow), I sat down to write, scrolling through the screenshots in my camera roll, as I often do when inspiration is less than clear…Steve Magness’s words gave me pause.
“So we chase more: bigger houses, better titles, newer gadgets.
We confuse upgrading with evolving.
But it’s not accumulation that drives fulfillment—it’s alignment.
Without that, we’re just turning up the thermostat and wondering why we never feel warmer.”
—@stevemagness
It is no secret that for most of my life, I have felt insecure. Scared. Filled with worry. As if the world did not have enough air for me to breathe. If I trace it back, it leads me to the inconsistency of my childhood home. Later, to a partner so skilled in gaslighting, it could have been his life’s work.
I often found myself perplexed. Caught between my own reality and the version of it belonging to those I loved. I shaped myself to fit better inside theirs. Small.
Only shining when it was received as good, crafted, wanted, expected.
Dance. Perform. Behave. Repeat.
From the outside, it probably looked like everything I wanted.
A life unfolding just as I had planned.
But the truth was, I didn’t even know what want meant.
In their way.
And I too would have agreed—because I never thought to ask the opposite.
So perhaps…in my way, too.
What did I want?
God, what did I want?
That emptiness, that living for others, led me to seek fulfillment in comfort…in things.
Calm. Consistency. Achievement clothed in velvet.
In the kind of material order that promised peace and security.
If my surroundings could be clean, beautiful, warm, luxurious
then surely all would be well.
Surely, all would be repaired.
Surely, it would have been worth it.
Surely, I would feel better.
Surely.
And while I fully intend to fill this new home with the pieces I have earned and loved along the way, there is a different intention behind them now.
A softer kind of enough.
So, perhaps material beauty creates a space for peace…for alignment…for security.
But it never originates from the carefully curated and trimmed edges.
I have come to learn that it was never about the world around me.
It was about the way I believed (and was shown, time and time again) the world to be.
A place to fear.
And if I dared to stand apart from those around me,
those whose love I believed defined me,
I feared I would no longer be accepted. (I still fear this)
That I would fail.
That I would prove myself right
that there was no hope of escape,
no other perspective,
that the future was fixed,
and I was bound within it.
Powerless. Hopeless. Alone.
Now is the time for realignment.
True alignment asks something deeper of us…of me
not to perfect the outer world, but to return to the inner one.
It is the ongoing unlearning of performance,
the steady untangling of fear from identity. Release. Let go.
It is the slow, grinding work of standing in our own truth,
even when the ground beneath us shifts. Or to be quite honest, we are terrified of what we see.
Perhaps that is what this house
this smaller, tighter, freer space
is teaching me.
That fulfillment, through alignment,
is not built from the walls that contain us
or the things we fill them with
but from the freedom to breathe fully within them.
God, now doesn’t that sound nice.
