Why I'm Packing Boxes Today | Personal Reflection

I've been keeping a secret from you. Or rather, news, because it's not a secret and a lot of people know. News that is of particular interest to many, and to some people, shock. And it's sure been hard to keep as word gets around fast. Over the course of the last some odd weeks, I have found myself startled when an acquaintance greets me with a "So, I heard!" Sure, you did. Somebody told someone who told someone else, and that's the way news travels.

But for my own sense of coursing through this unique season of life, I've not made it public knowledge. In some ways, I wanted to honor the current community I live and work in everyday before feeling the tug between what they know and what you know.

But yesterday brought a little closure.
And today will bring a little more.
And then tomorrow, we'll call it a wrap.

I'm leaving my position at Belmont.

Tomorrow is my last day. And on Monday, I will be full-time at home with my photography and writing. The business, the art, the network, the people... and a life of creativity and relationships and work to call my own.

Belmont has been a home to me for the last seven and a half years of my life. It's the place that beckoned my heart to a city where I had barely thought of settling. It's the place where I made lifelong friendships and met my very best friend and husband. It's the place I learned things about myself I wouldn't have known otherwise. And a place where I had the opportunity to make a difference.

Ending up back there after getting my master's from Vanderbilt was a gift unlike any other. My time at Belmont as staff was a step in a direction I could have only dreamed of taking. But coming back was different than starting out, and this time around I had a few other pieces of my life in place that weren't there before. And with the advent of a new season in our home and looking a little closer at things that had seemed far off on our horizon, our perspectives shifted and it was time to make a decision.

Some of you might not realize what a significant step this is in the dreams Cliff and I have been planning and hoping for in our life together and in the life of our future family. They don't see that it's not about throwing away my education or abandoning people I care for; that it's about pursuing your true calling and following your heart and making room in your life for what is of greatest importance to you. But some of you do. And those who have already discovered the news have been, for the most part, an immense encouragement and support. For that, I am beyond grateful.

And I am grateful, too, for the amazing colleagues and incredible students at Belmont with whom I have spent the last year and a half. The ones I have been sharing "lasts" with all this week. How bittersweet it has been. But how amazing that my leaving has been on this note. That I am working to leave something in better shape than when I inherited it. And that I'm still, relatively speaking, just down the street.

Here's to a new adventure... Thank you for journeying with me!