I find myself living in the in between, no longer caregiving and not yet living the life I have begun to imagine. I am making plans for a life I have dreamed of for a long time, and yet, for now, there is nothing more to do than wait.

The house is ready. Much of the packing has been done. Closets and drawers have been emptied, boxes filled, and years of belongings have passed through my hands as I quietly decided what would come with me and what I was ready to release. Hours upon hours of purging, cleaning, sorting, and preparing have been clocked. I have done what I can do.

And now I wait for the interest, the call, the contract. I wait for the right person to walk onto this land and somehow know that it is theirs. I wait for the right home in Sedona to reveal itself when the time comes.

Some days I wait easily. Trust settles into me and I know that what is meant for me is already finding its way. Other days my trust wanes and impatience comes knocking, sometimes bringing old wounds along with it. I am learning to notice those parts of myself when they surface, to sit with them rather than push them away, and perhaps most importantly, to love them too.

Because something is happening here that I almost missed.

This in between is not empty space. It is not simply a place to pass through on my way to somewhere else. There is something here asking to be witnessed.

As I have moved through this house preparing to leave it, the past has come forward in photographs and forgotten objects, in drawers opened after years of being closed, and in memories suddenly awakened by something I can hold in my hand. Some of those memories are beautiful and some are difficult. Some carry more than one truth.

I am discovering that I can allow those memories to expand now, beyond whatever single moment first comes to mind. A photograph can remind me of something painful and, if I stay with it long enough, it can also remind me of everything surrounding that moment—the people who loved me, the laughter that came before or after, the person I was then and the woman I have become.

There has been so much life here.

This home and this land have witnessed decades of becoming. They have held celebrations and heartbreak, beginnings and endings, ordinary mornings and extraordinary ones. They have known laughter around tables, animals underfoot, people I have loved, seasons changing outside my windows, and countless versions of me learning how to find my way.

And through so much of it, nature has been here.

Today I stood beside the old hickory tree whose branches canopy the side yard, and tears filled my eyes. I found myself wondering how many times I have walked beneath those branches without really thinking about all that tree has witnessed. How many storms have moved through while it stood there? How many mornings have begun beneath its canopy? How many times have I looked toward those trees, listened to the birds, walked this land, or simply stepped outside and found something steady enough to remind me that life was still moving?

Nature has held me here in ways I am only beginning to fully understand.

And now, as I prepare to leave, I find myself wanting to slow down enough to say thank you.

I don’t want to hurry through this part.

Of course my mind wanders ahead sometimes. I imagine the red rocks and desert mornings, trails I have not yet walked, people I have not yet met, and a home I have not yet seen. I wonder what my days will look like there and who I will become when so much of what has defined my life here falls away.

I let myself dream about Sedona, but I don’t want to start living there before I have finished living here.

That realization feels important.

There is still life here that I don’t want to miss simply because I know I am leaving. There are mornings on this porch, walks across this land, familiar trees to touch, birds to listen to, sunsets to watch, and moments that will never come again in quite this way.

Perhaps that is the invitation of the in between—to stand with one hand open to what is coming while the other rests gently upon what has been, without needing either one to disappear.

Recently, an oracle card was shared with me that spoke of the ultimate in between: the space between womb and tomb. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about that.

Isn’t that what this whole human life is?

We arrive through one mystery and eventually leave through another, and everything we call life happens in the space between. We love and lose. We hold and release. We become and unbecome. We begin again, sometimes by choice and sometimes because life leaves us no other way.

Perhaps the in between was never meant to be something we simply endure until the next thing arrives. Perhaps it is sacred ground in its own right.

So yes, I am waiting. I am waiting for the interest, the call, the contract, the home, the move. I am waiting for Sedona and everything that chapter may hold.

But I am not waiting for my life to begin.

My life is here, too.

It is here beneath the old hickory and among the boxes and memories. It is here in the quiet mornings and familiar sounds of this land. It is here when I trust completely, and it is here when I lose that trust for a little while and have to find my way back.

For now, I am here—grateful for what has been, tender with what is ending, and open to what is coming.

And maybe that is the gift of the in between: to not yet know what comes next, while learning to be fully present with the life that is still happening right here.

— Delta Ori Nahimana