Day One: Open Nesting™ with No Nest

Yesterday, I closed the door to our family home for the last time. The house where we raised six kids over the past 15 years. The house that held every wild early morning of getting everyone out the door (one year we had 6 kids at 6 different schools and three were in Chicago!), late-night family parties, holiday meals, and growing-up milestones.

For months, it sat on the market without a buyer. I couldn’t understand why—people kept telling me, “There’s a reason. You just don’t know what it is yet.” I wanted to punch them in the face, I wanted to move on, I felt restless while my life was on hold waiting. Why wasn’t the right buyer walking through that door?

Now I know.

It wasn’t about a buyer. It was about a family. A family from our community - people we have many connections with, though we don't really know them personally - needed a home while they rebuild their own. Their house was struck by lightning while their kids were in their rooms. What could have been the unthinkable, thankfully, wasn’t. But while the fire didn’t completely destroy the structure, everything inside was lost. In an instant, their home and all they had built was gone, and now they need to start over.

So, we decided to help. We took our house off the market and let them in. It felt like the only thing to do, the thing I would have wanted someone to do for me.

And so, in just 6 days we packed it up - yes, all the kids crap left behind when they went to build their lives was now mine to deal with. Luckily, I make quick decisions - I put it all in storage to deal with it later :) So for now, my husband and I are tucked into a friend’s two-bedroom apartment, quite a bit north of our community. Thanks to his kindness, we crammed our lives into one small bedroom of his furnished place until we figure out what comes next. Grace moves in circles, and this circle has brought us here.

This morning, we woke up side by side on day one in what I think is a full-sized bed and laughed at how his 6'4 body dangled off the edge. All of our possessions are either in storage or jammed into this little space.

But even as I step away, I reflect back to the ginormous life lived inside those walls. I see my kids swimming in the pool. I feel us gathered around our beautiful dining table, where we cooked so many meals together and shared stories that stretched late into the night. The Swedish glögg parties in December. The backyard Ravinia style concert series, The dinner parties with our homies. The birthdays. The graduations. Every celebration, big and small, layered into those walls like another coat of paint.

Those memories are stitched into the bones of the house, and now they will be joined by another family’s memories - different voices, different stories, but still love filling the rooms.

My nest has never felt bigger. Because it now includes another family. Our house - our home for so long - isn’t standing empty while I grieve its loss. It’s full of life again.

I feel blessed.

I feel a bit scared.

There’s no denying the unease of transition, of not having all the answers. But there’s also this deep knowing that this was exactly how it was supposed to unfold. That my letting go created space for someone else to hold on.

Open Nesting™ as I’m discovering, isn’t just about our children flying off into their own lives. It’s about realizing that our nests don’t disappear when they empty.

They transform.

They stretch.

Sometimes they even hold people we never expected.

And that feels good.