When I began my dreading journey back in May, I thought of it as a right of passage. It was something that was important for me to do and I didn't really care what anyone else thought about it. But there has been so much unexpected enlightenment and I feel like this journey has already brought me so far in just 5 short months.I spent my life growing up in California. I am in the heart of Gold Country which also means River country. I was a river baby. I had never experienced life outside of my small hometown. I even lived in the same house my entire life until I got married at 21.At 27, I decided that it was time for a major change. So my husband & I uprooted our family and made a 900 mile move to Colorado. We bought a home and made a life and became bona fide adults during that time. It was something that was so necessary for us to be able to do away from our families. But all the while something was always missing or incomplete. We just never knew what that was.We came back to California in May 2010 for a family vacation and while on that trip I began my dread journey. We spent our time at our favorite ocean spot. I had some kind of peace about me from being back at home and I felt like by starting my dread journey that I could take that great beach hair as well as the inner peace back home with me.Before that trip I would have said without a doubt that I would never go back home because it would have felt like going backwards. But after that trip my husband and I both realized that coming back home was what we needed to do. There is a line in a Lisa Loeb song where she says "I walked away to get wisdom, but in the end I just walked home". Those words have been ringing in my head since the beginning of this dread journey. They are very humbling words.So once again we uprooted our life to make the 900 mile trek back home. It was so intimidating to make such a huge choice without really understanding why but still feeling like it was necessary. It was a very stressful couple of months this summer getting resituated. But day by day, I just feel like I keep getting all these little signs from the universe that this is exactly where my journey was supposed to bring me.I came home because it is time to enter a new chapter in my life. My parents are aging and my dad is in bad health and it is time for me to help him through his final journey. We are richly blessed by all the love and family around us here. This is where we need to be and what we need to be doing. But I never would have realized this only months ago.We had no clue how we were going to find a home on such short notice and we knew we would have to leave our own home behind to rent out and trust that it would be okay. We also knew that paying rent in California was going to be steep so we really didn't even know what we would be able to afford. But everything works in mysterious ways. We found a property for rent that no one wanted because it was so far out of town. When my brother in law brought me out to show me the house, I wasn't impressed at first. The house has a lot of charm, but it just didn't feel like my own. But as we walked the 5 gorgeous acres of property and ended up at our private river beach the deal was sealed!I didn't care that the house was 30 minutes outside of town once I realized that I had the river right at my back door! And I am literally living out in the wilderness with animals of every kind constantly surrounding me. It makes me feel like Snow White having so many little critters up close and personal. And with 5 acres of nice land on well water, I have been able to fully engage in my passion of gardening.My mom pulled out an old picture a few days ago of me & my dad in the river when I was a baby. It is the same river that flows at my back door
So that is why I am calling this my full circle journey. I feel like my choice to dread has helped me to learn a lot about myself that I didn't even know before. And somehow it has brought me all the way back to where I first began.
updated by @crazydaizy99: 02/14/15 07:26:51AM
Thankfully we have renters on a 1 year lease so now we can just deal with it year by year. I just hope these landlords here are prepared to let me settle in for several years because I don't think I can leave this place! 
