I’m about a quarter of the way through The Last of the Moon Girls and I’ve already had to put it down a few times just to sit with what I’m feeling.
Not because it’s hard to read. Because it’s a little too relatable.
Lizzy’s whole internal back-and-forth about returning to Moon Girl Farm got me. That specific kind of dread where you love a place, but you also know it has a pull to it that could mess with everything you’ve worked to build for yourself. I know that feeling. I’ve been there.
When I moved to Nashville, I wasn’t running away from New Hampshire exactly. But I was definitely running toward something, and part of that required putting some distance between me and the familiar. There’s a version of yourself that only gets to exist when nobody around you remembers who you used to be.
When it came time to come back, it got complicated. Not in a dramatic way, just in that quiet internal way where you’ve got two fears running at the same time. One was: going back feels like going backwards. The other was: if I go back, I might never leave again. Both felt real. Both were worth looking at.
What I kept coming back to was this: I was a genuinely different person from who I was when I left. So coming back didn’t have to mean going back to who I was. The place would be the same. I wouldn’t.
And honestly? That turned out to be true. This chapter in New Hampshire has brought some really brilliant women into my life. It’s given me the space to grow in ways I didn’t fully see coming. And getting to be close to my parents, to actually show up for them as they get older, that means a lot to me. More than I expected.
But I’d be lying if I said that second fear just went away. Sometimes I still wonder: is this it? Is this where I stay? And I don’t actually want that question to disappear. There are places I’ve been drawn to for a long time that I still need to see. That pull toward something new isn’t restlessness. It’s more like unfinished business with the world.
I think you’re allowed to love where you are and still feel the tug of somewhere else. Those two things can exist at the same time.
She spent years building a life that was hers, separate from the weight of that farm and everything attached to it. Going back risks messing with all of that. Or at least that’s the fear: that the place will remember who you were, even when you’ve done so much work to become someone different.
What I keep sitting with as I read is this: sometimes the thing we most dread returning to is also the thing that holds a piece of our story we haven’t fully dealt with yet. Not because we have to stay there, but because we might need to go back through it to actually move forward.
A few things to sit with as you read:
Is there a place, a relationship, or a version of your life you’ve avoided going back to? What’s the fear underneath that? Is it that you’ll get stuck there, or that it might confirm something about yourself you’d rather not look at?
When you left something behind to become more fully yourself, what did that leaving actually cost you?
Is there a difference for you between going back and returning? One feels like defeat. The other feels like choice. Which one shows up in your body when you think about the chapters you’ve closed?
I’m still reading. Still very much in it with Lizzy. Still sorting through my own stuff about places and belonging and what it means to have a life that feels a little too big for one location.
I have a feeling this book is going to keep doing that to me. The good ones always do.
Tell me where you are in the book and what’s been hitting you. I want to hear it.
With love,
Kristin