Roots Are Not Chains

Roots are not chains—but they have been.

I am so ready for this chapter of my life to end.

And it makes me incredibly emotional to say that out loud.

I mean my life in Ketchikan.

This place has given me so much. My family’s history is woven into this town. Our store, our name, our legacy, generations of my family building and serving and belonging here.

I raised my children here. I built businesses here. I served this community and stood on stages and emceed events. I hiked these mountains and fished these waters. I pulled shrimp from the bottom of the ocean, crabbed and hunted and explored.

I have loved and lived and lost here.

I am incredibly proud of the life I have had in Ketchikan.

And I am so ready to be done with it.

The truth is, I think some part of me has been ready for a very long time.

Even before we lost the store, I remember feeling like I had hit my ceiling here. I wanted to grow and expand in ways I couldn’t quite figure out how to do inside a life that had become so familiar.

The losses didn’t create my desire to leave. If anything, they eventually removed some of the reasons I had stayed.

Because back then, my children were here. Their schools were here. The store was here. My family and responsibilities were here.

So I stayed.

Then the store was gone.

My children grew up.

And after years of enormous loss and enormous change, I find myself standing in a life that no longer fits me.

I crave what I cannot seem to find here anymore.

I want to meet people I don’t already know. I want conversations I haven’t already had. I want to be around people doing things I know nothing about. I want ideas that challenge me and experiences that change me.

My world here has become too familiar.

I know the people.

I know the conversations.

I know the places.

I know who I am here.

And my life has started to feel incredibly small.

Small and empty and lacking in something I have struggled to name.

For a while, I thought the problem was me.

I would wake up feeling miserable and lonely and uninspired and think, What the hell is wrong with you?

You have a beautiful home.

You have people who love you.

You have a life here.

You should be happy.

But I am not.

And there is something deeply freeing about finally allowing that to be true without turning it into an indictment of myself or of Ketchikan.

I don’t think there is anything wrong with me.

I think I am done.

I want to walk into rooms where nobody knows who I am.

I want to meet people whose stories I haven’t already heard.

I want to be surprised again.

I want to discover parts of myself that couldn’t possibly emerge inside a life I already know this well.

And I want to shed this idea that because my roots are here, I am somehow supposed to remain planted here forever.

For months, I have been saying I am planning to leave Ketchikan.

Eventually that became:

I am going to leave Ketchikan.

But somewhere along the way, “I am leaving Ketchikan” became “I am leaving Ketchikan once I have solved absolutely everything.”

I created a rule.

Before I could leave, I had to get the houses figured out.

Deal with the property.

Deal with the animals.

Deal with the vehicles.

Tie everything up.

Put a perfect little bow around an entire lifetime and then, once everything was handled, grant myself permission to begin another one.

And let me tell you, that plan has made me miserable.

Miserable with a capital M.

Because every morning I wake up here knowing I don’t want to be here anymore while simultaneously telling myself I am not allowed to leave yet.

And I understand why I did that.

I have spent most of my life being the person who handles things.

I take care of what needs to be taken care of. I solve the problem. I carry the responsibility. I make sure the loose ends are tied up before I move on to whatever comes next.

Of course I thought I had to finish everything here before I could leave.

That’s how I have moved through the world for most of my life.

But this morning I realized I don’t have to do that anymore.

Jesus fuck.

I can leave something unfinished.

I don’t have to completely close one life before I am allowed to start another.

I can leave.

I can find somewhere to live. I can take my animals. I can get a car. I can begin building a life somewhere else.

And I can come back.

I can handle the house and the property and all the unfinished pieces in smaller chunks.

I can sort things out while I am already moving forward.

I can begin before I am finished.

And maybe that is the bigger realization.

I am allowed to begin before I have taken care of everything else.

I am allowed to move toward what I want while there are still loose ends behind me.

I am allowed to leave something messy.

And holy shit, that feels liberating.

It feels like someone opened a door in a room I didn’t realize I had locked myself inside.

Because I am not running away from Ketchikan.

I don’t need to reject this place to leave it.

I can treasure what this place gave me and want something it cannot give me now.

I can love the life I lived here and be finished living it.

Maybe endings don’t require us to stop loving what came before.

I have lived an extraordinary amount of life on this little island.

I have roots here that will never disappear.

But roots are not chains.

And I am ready to go.

So that is what I’m doing.