It’s July 4th, and I’m sitting in my front room listening to the fireworks ripple across the neighborhood.
Kids are running from house to house, families gathered outside like they’ve done this a hundred times even though I know it’s not an everyday thing. Holidays like this are where the neighborhood comes alive. It’s beautiful to witness.
It’s been a while since we’ve shared anything. Not just here on the blog, but really anywhere. No Instagram updates, no YouTube videos. For a couple of overachievers like Mike and I, especially after seeing our YouTube channel hit almost 30,000 views in January after only three months, letting that momentum just hang felt truly agonizing. Starting strong wasn’t accidental, it came from intention, alignment, and effort. The silence that followed wasn’t from lack of care, but from deep discernment.
It went against every instinct to push forward and create. But the truth is, we’ve just been living through a season that didn’t want to be shared in real time.
There are certain chapters in life where you go quiet, not because you don’t have anything to say, but because the experience is so loud inside you that the words don’t land right—not yet, anyway. For us, this was one of those chapters.
We’ve been in what I call “survival mode”, not in a dramatic way, but in that steady, soul-level sense of getting through something big. It’s a familiar feeling, this deep-seated mode of just getting through. We’ve been here before, but this time it’s different. We’ve been navigating transitions, preparing for a move, and carrying the weight of things we thought would be different by now. It’s all been a long process. A quiet, tender one. Sacred even.
And in the middle of that, we didn’t want to share off the cuff. We’ve learned that when you try to speak from the center of the storm, it doesn’t always come out right. The words feel scattered. The energy feels fractured. It’s better to wait until you can step outside the moment—see it, hold it, reflect on it, and then share. It’s all part of the experience.
This quiet time also led to a shift in how we approach sharing. I’ve felt a pull to open up parts of myself I once kept private, like insights from my journals, which have become a language for understanding my own journey. And Mike and I have realized there’s space for all types of sharing – from in-depth stories on the blog to simple moments on social media. This period has shown us the importance of letting our creativity meet us where we are, not where we think we should be. So, we’re moving towards something more honest: letting writing be writing, and letting video be memory.
Back in February, we began preparing for our move and started working with Orchard. At the time, everything felt aligned—we had a timeline, we were emotionally ready, and we really believed we’d be home by July. A significant draw of Orchard was that they’d handle getting the home show-ready, which was a huge relief since we didn’t want to paint or do much ourselves.
But things didn’t go as planned.
Because of our status as foreign sellers, a detail in the process surfaced late, one that required a 15% holdback on the sale. It was something we didn’t anticipate, and it made it hard to move forward in the way we originally envisioned. Orchard was kind and understanding, they released us from our contract, which we deeply appreciated. But it meant starting from scratch, shifting to a traditional listing, navigating open houses and showings, and stepping into unfamiliar territory at a time when we thought we’d already be settling in.
By this time we had already sold most of our furniture, appliances, electronics, home goods, linen, and filming gear. We’d made arrangements with the belief that our move was certain, and in a very real way, we had to shift from planning to adapting. It’s not just about the logistics—it’s the emotional weight of feeling like you were almost there, only to find yourself in a kind of limbo. While the immediate setback has been mere months, the underlying weight of this uncertainty stretches back 5 years. A feeling we’ve known before, but hoped we wouldn’t have to revisit.
It’s brought us back to that survival mindset, not in crisis, but in careful, deliberate motion. Watching what we spend, recalculating timelines, and trying to keep our feet on the ground when so much still feels in flux.
Still, we’re learning. About how real estate works differently across borders. About how to move two golden doodles across the country in the middle of summer. And mostly, about what it takes to stay rooted when the outcome is still unfolding.
In all of this — the stops, the pivots, the long waits — we’ve come to see that creating and sharing can’t be forced. Not when you’re still figuring out where your feet land. When life feels heavy, the creative flow sometimes just isn’t there. And we’ve realized, that’s okay because creativity isn’t something you squeeze out of chaos. It comes when there’s space. And truthfully, the only kind of sharing that feels right to us now is the kind that’s rooted in what’s real.
We don’t know exactly what’s next, and we’re still holding space for the pieces to come together. But what we do know is that we want to create from where we actually are— not where we think we should be.
So here’s to soft starts.
To the fireworks outside.
To the pauses that teach us everything.
And to the stories that bloom after the silence.
Thanks for being here.
More soon.
— Mike & Theresa
