A bit of a life announcement: I moved! To Copenhagen!
I’ve moved a few times. I was born in Alabama, grew up in upstate New York and southern California, and then I moved to Massachusetts for graduate school. I didn’t expect Massachusetts to become the place that I would end up living the longest. But over the course of 15 years, it went from "maybe I'll just study here a few years" to the place where in the corniest ways possible, I found both community and myself.
I remember starting my first year of grad school at BU and thinking that I had no idea what I was doing, and I was right. But I was at the right school with the right people who cheered me on as I started my weird little youtube hobby and turn it into a science writing career. I remember moving to western Massachusetts in 2019 to be with my partner–putting an end to twelve years of long distance–and getting our first home together. That house would serve as our shelter during the pandemic and our solace as we navigated a tough pregnancy journey. Eventually, it would end up becoming our son’s first home too. It was a place where we got to see all sorts of animals, from foxes to skunks (and even a bear!), and a place where we got to play games and hang out with friends.
It’s so strange to have lived in so many places, but to feel so much of my life encased in one structure. But when I think of that home, I think of the place where the foundations of my family and career were laid down. There’s a wall that’s painted yellow because it served as the remote set for Crash Course Organic Chemistry during the pandemic. That wall would later be the sunny wall of my son’s nursery.
When we knew we were going to move, it felt like the vast overwhelm of what we were going to do was embodied by my feelings about leaving that home in particular. It wasn’t that I was most sad about the house, but the house was the easy way to conceive of everything I was sad about leaving. And yet when we actually packed everything up and left, I didn’t cry the way I thought I did. It was easy to slip in to the next phase, where this house was no longer our home, and it belonged entirely to someone else.
I had a lot of ideas about what I was going to write here about the move, and to be honest, it wasn’t any of this. But I think I just had some feelings to get out of my system about my last home as we settle down into Copenhagen, so here we are.
If there are any topics re: the move you want to me talk about, let me know. And I would appreciate any and all recommendations for places to check out in the city. And I’d love to turn this newsletter into a more active and interactive thing, so if you have any requests for topics (whether that’s science writing, books/tv, mom life) let me know!
