About

I started this blog in 2010 to share with friends and family the experience of moving from Central London to Huntsville, Ala., and to chronicle our lives as we grappled with all the weirdness of repatriation after 14 years in the UK.

We were no strangers to Alabama, only to Huntsville. I’m a New Yorker, then Londoner, with Southern parents and in-law ties to Alabama. If you live in a place long enough, it changes, too, and so each place I’ve lived has become something else, including here.

In 2017, just after our 25th anniversary and 30 years of sharing everything, including unspoken thoughts, my husband died. The questions I started this blog with were: What is home? Where do I belong? Once widowed you can add: Who am I? What happens next?

I could not have gotten through that first year of grief without the friends we have made in each of the places where we lived, including Jim’s hometown of Chicago, but this is home, too. All of these places are. In the midst of one of the most disorienting experiences you can have, I have answered at least one of my questions.

I have written, and continue to write, my way through it, here and on other platforms, each piece telling the story of how you might reassemble yourself and your life. Jim’s not here to talk to, so I’m telling you.

Other writing has appeared, a long time ago in Sassy, online in GrokNation, Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood, Postmodyrn, Rocket City Mom, and Dreaming with Your Feet, and on-air with WLRH, our local public radio station. My interest in garages is expressed on my other blog, Garage Project.