moving and changing places

I often receive questions about how I process and deal with a lot of moving and changing places. About how I do it with a cat in tow, how I navigate loneliness, what I do with my things, and more...

As I begin this article I am sitting in a London-esque retro-replica cafe in Margate beside a row of freelancers tapping away on their keyboards to the left of me and mums with their toddlers to the right of me.

Six days ago, never having been here before, I drove the two-and-a-half hours from Islington in central London to this coastline lapped up by the North Sea. It holds remanets of Viking violence, poverty and fear.

I won’t stay long because the energy is too murky for me. Every morning I wake up here I find myself completely spaced out and like I am moving through an underwater world. It’s the most geographically, architecturally and energetically disjointed place I’ve ever been to.

Yesterday on a walk it occurred to me that my body keeps trying to dissociate to avoid feeling the dense pain and suffering that has been imbued into this area over centuries.

So I focus on what’s beautiful here.

The wild beaches, the unexpected late summer heatwave, the occasional spontaneous free sauna by the sea, the tiny details that offer beauty.

Some places are for me. Some places are not. I can never know until I’ve spent time in them.

It’s all part of the current journey of discovery I am on to find the ‘perfect’ place to base myself for the next few years here in the UK.

This journey has taken me from Mallorca in late May to a month in Nottinghamshire (not for me!), a month in Ely (adored it but maybe a bit quiet in the winter?), a month in central London (I will always and forever adore London but city life is not the season I’m in right now) to here, on the south-east coast.

So I am looking for the next place and referring to my astrocartography for guidance. Ideally, I want to be between the blue line on the left and the red line on the right.

I often receive questions about how I process and deal with a lot of moving and changing places. I have curated those questions into the following to answer them.

How do you root yourself and deal with the fear of uncertainty?

I have come to the conclusion that life is uncertain. And so, instead of resisting uncertainty, I’ve learned to embrace it. The more I lean into uncertainty — the more I give up my need to ‘know’ — the more opportunities, gifts, and unexpected solutions are revealed to me. Ultimately, giving up on feeling in control, offers me an abundance of life experiences that are far richer and more aligned than I would otherwise be met with.

Having said that, I have spent 20 years cultivating practices that allow me to remain centred and secure or ‘rooted’ as the question poses. They include practising trust and relaxing into what is, getting plenty of rest, and knowing and honouring my boundaries. A non-negotiable is listening to the cues from the intelligence of my body and following them, no matter what. I don’t care much for others’ expectations of me. This allows me to make choices that are honest and in integrity with myself and my truth. Living like this means I never waver or am affected by the external. I’m strongly anchored deep within my being which remains a consistent and safe space.

You might enjoy reading my 6 tips for dealing with uncertainty and this article about navigating uncertainty: so much can change in 20 seconds.

How do you bring your nervous system to a place of arrival and security with frequent moves?

I have little rituals that I begin and end my days with which means that my nervous system is harboured by the external changes within a container of familiarity. They are very simple, nothing exuberant or fancy but because I have done them for years and years they immediately make me feel safe.

In the morning it’s:

• meditate / feel into my body / listen while still in bed

• take my retainers out (I wear one at night to keep my teeth from crowding) and wash them

• wash my face with cold water

• scrape my tongue with a copper ayurvedic tongue scraper

• spray my face with lavender hydrosol

• make a warm drink, often lemon water, lately red ginseng tea

• roll out my mat to do some stretches/intuitive movement/dance

In the evening it’s kind of the reverse:

• wash my face and brush my teeth if I haven’t already

• sometimes I give myself a face massage

• simple skincare routine (lately: lavender hydrosol, FADED by Topicals, Heritage Store Rosewater Moisturiser)

• get into bed, journal and review the day

• write a ‘to-do’ list for the next day

• feel into my body and notice anything that wants to be witnessed and felt before I go to sleep

Having said that, I’m not militant about these. I am not militant about anything but I naturally gravitate back to them which makes me feel really good and grounded.

I write more about these in my love list.

What makes you feel at home in new places?

I go and explore the nearby surroundings to get a lie of the land very quickly. It’s like I need to feel out my new environment to settle in and feel at home in the new place. I like to know where the closest nature is, where I can go for walks, cute cafes I can work in and the easiest place for me to get fresh produce and groceries. I’m a natural explorer so this part of ‘settling in’ is really fun for me. I love discovering new places and meeting new people.

How do you process and handle the transitions of moving frequently without it feeling heard or heavy?

It’s very much about mindset for me. I have chosen this way of life for this season of my life and so I choose it to be a joyful, playful, inquisitive and easeful experience for me. If I decided it felt too heavy or hard, I would stop. Every day we get to make a choice about how we live and perceive our lives. Every day I choose what feels fun, freeing and expansive for me.

Do you ever worry about not having a safe, quiet space for the days that you need to retreat and rest?

I am really sensitive to my environment and feel incredibly uncomfortable in spaces that don’t meet a standard of peace, beauty and calm so I intentionally choose and put out to the universe my standard of living. Therefore I am fortunate enough to always land in places to meet that. If I didn’t, I would very quickly make a new decision. For example, here in Margate, the apartment I am in is a delight and I feel so safe and peaceful and sleep so soundly, but the area itself is not a good fit so I am choosing to leave sooner rather than later.

Do you have storage somewhere for furniture and winter clothes?

Nope! I left a lot of things behind in Mallorca and am currently moving with everything I own: a big bag of winter clothes, a big bag of summer/transitional clothes, my toiletries, my cat and his backpack and litter tray, a 150-year-old morrocan rug that I can’t seem to let go of and 7 baskets filled with shoes and trinkets from my travels.

How do you deal with your books? I find it hard to reduce my collection!

I’ve stopped collecting books. I gave most of my recent collection away, and have 5 that I hold close with me and the rest I read and then pass along as I go. Once you let go of things you begin to realise how little you actually need.

How do you manage loneliness and transient connections?

This reminds me of the opening line of a poem by Brian Chalker. “People come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime.” I truly believe that the relationships that are meant to stick, will. And the ones that aren’t, don’t. So I don’t worry about transient connections because on some level they’re all transitory.

I have meaningful, intimate relationships with people that span across time and space in the strangest ways, and I am so grateful for every one of them. Some of them are with people I have only met for 5 minutes or a few hours or a couple of days. We leave each other long voice notes and share pieces of our hearts in unexpected moments. Some of them are with people I have shared large potions of places and times with. Any many of them we connect for the moments that we are in each other’s lives and then we let each other go. I find that some of the more toxic relationships are the ones that have lasted a long time based on mutual expectation and fear instead of being grounded in open-hearted integrity.

That doesn’t mean I don’t get lonely. I do.

But I have been far lonelier in a group of people that I felt disconnected from than alone, on my own.

And because of that I have learned how to seek out my people and have discernment around who I spend time with.

How do you build community and new friends in new places?

I heavily rely on connections I have already made and ask them to connect me with others as well as happily and willingly go to events and have experiences that are new to me where I meet new people. I’m fortunate in that I have a worldwide community from travelling all of my life, plus the addition of having an online business that connects me to people everywhere I go which I think makes this piece easier.

I speak to this question in my article 4 tips on how to find your people when you move to a new place and in this podcast interview and this one too.

How do you keep living, like meeting new people, joining classes, etc., when you know you’re not going to stay?

How does ‘not staying’ stop you from living and doing new things? For me, it encourages me to do so because otherwise, I would be floating about the world with nothing and no one to tether my experiences and existence to.

You inspire me so much moving with your cat, Danger Zone! How do you manage to do it with such ease?

It may look easy from the outside but I get a little bit stressed and anxious each time I move with him. He is such an angel of a being, he just accepts everything as it is. He’s such a teacher for me. Fortunately, unlike most cats, he is oriented to being close and connected to me as opposed to his environment, so as long as he gets all the affection and care he needs from me, he settles into every new place just fine. Together we have travelled through and lived in 6 countries now including lots of hotel stays (we lived in a 5-star hotel together for s month once!) aeroplanes, trains and cars.