Home Sweet Homes

For a long time I tried to “categorize” my life in two parts: my life in Wisconsin and my life in the Netherlands. I grew up in Wisconsin; the vast majority of my friends and family are there. It’s where I learned to ski and to sail, the place to which I attribute my love for the outdoors. My life is there. In contrast, the Netherlands is where I felt a sense of belonging from my very first day, a feeling that caught me off guard. How could I feel so comfortable in such a foreign place? I have challenged myself in new environments here, built my own business, and showed myself that there are infinitely many ways to live a full life. These two lives felt so disparate; one was everything I’d ever known, the other a vast unknown of what I had yet to learn.

It was easier to compartmentalize the two when I was the only one who knew both, but I wasn’t doing myself any favors with that thinking. By keeping these places as separate “lives” in my mind, I found myself living in between the two, never fully immersed in either. 

As time has passed, the lines have blurred, requiring me to let go of this black-and-white thinking. Small adjustments over time have changed the way I think about my life. One day not long after setting up my contracts for electricity, heat, water, and WiFi, I found the “NL” folder on my phone overflowing with apps. This gave me pause as I mulled over that I may have outgrown this old way of organization. I had built up my life in the Netherlands to the point that I needed to admit that it wasn’t my life in the Netherlands, it was just my life. I merged my app folders, distributing the carefully segregated Dutch apps into the pre-existing categories like Navigation, Finance, and Yoga that have kept me organized for years. This was just the beginning of allowing these two lives I’d kept mentally separated to become one.

My friends and family have visited me, crossing the wires of my two lives, my two worlds, which I had so adamantly kept separate in my mind. I became more comfortable acknowledging that I wasn’t a visitor but a resident. I was showing people around, I was the expert, and I was the one waving goodbye at the airport, not the one boarding the plane. My two worlds collided and coexisted.

Speaking of boarding planes, though, I was flying home from Sicily the other day (trip of a lifetime!) and realized that home had taken on an entirely new meaning. Inbound to Amsterdam, I felt an odd sense of confusion.

I knew I was flying home and, ridiculously, found myself looking for the Milwaukee Art Museum out my window in 27F as the plane made its final descent towards Amsterdam Schiphol Airport. The muscle memory of coming home led me to look for the beautiful Calatrava on the Milwaukee shoreline, even though I knew more subconsciously that it wouldn’t be there. Of course it wouldn’t be! It felt nonsensical at the time and simultaneously served as a reminder of the both rather than the either or. The realization flooded over me: I have two homes. And perhaps most importantly, I didn’t have to give up any of my first home to have the second. 

Sending my best xx