Sydney...it's not you, it's me.

It’s like since moving away from everything and everyone I knew, I finally know what home means.

The last time I stayed at my mum’s place was almost five years ago. It was peak COVID, when the Northern Beaches of Sydney went into its own mini-lockdown, and my husband Trent and I had just been given notice to move out of our sweet rental home in Seaforth. My Mum lived just around the corner, and we were anxiously awaiting the signing of contracts for a new home we had put an offer on - a home up north, away from Sydney and all we knew. It was a huge leap for us - our first home purchase, and leaving thirty plus years of born-and-raised-in-Sydney behind, but we were ready. We were so committed to the move, we had even sent all of our furniture and boxes on courier trucks up to storage in the Northern Rivers before any confirmation of our move was even finalised. We just knew we’d land up there.

What followed was two weeks of stained trakkies and Game of Thrones marathons on my Mum’s worn couch with our two bulldogs, waiting anxiously every day to hear the news that we could move into our new home. We were on the phone to solicitors and real estate agents every day for those two weeks - just one more thing to sign, one more insurance to pay for - and it was getting to the point we didn’t know if it was actually going to happen. Mum would leave for work in the morning, and come back after a full day finding us in our exact spots on her couch - wrapped in blankets and misery. We watched the entire Game of Thrones cataolgue back to back in those two weeks. 

When we received the call the day before Christmas Eve that we could move into our house, we rushed to get our COVID tests approved (we were still in our lockdown), and piled ourselves and our pups into the car. We bid adieu to Sydney and the void space we had found ourselves in, playing Chris Stapleton’s When The Stars Come Out as we drove, both of us crying and laughing at the expansive feeling of driving into our future together, watching the potential of it all peek over the horizon down the highway. We spent that first Christmas north toasting prosecco surrounded by unopened boxes. 

Life was about to really begin.

We always knew we would move up north. We’d been holidaying in Byron since we were 18 - newly in love, and milking the free family trips with my Mum - and when we were engaged ten years later, there was only one place we were going to get married. Our wedding was set in the hinterland of Byron, while our home was still in Sydney. “We’ll end up here,” I kept saying, to anyone who would listen. I spent every summer finding an excuse to travel north - a new intuitive reading retreat, a speaking event, time away solo to write - and would always, always land barefoot on the sand looking out to the lighthouse praying aloud “Please, please, please can we live here? Please. This is our home.”

I remember clearly on one of these aforementioned trips, catching the shuttle bus back to the airport and crying. It felt wrong to be leaving, again. I even remember receiving a DM from someone who followed me on social media saying “Did I see you crying in Ballina airport just now?” Every time I left, my body cried. My heart hurt. I couldn’t explain it other than, I was leaving myself behind.

It’s been four years and 6 weeks since that move. In that time, I have become a mother. We welcomed our little girl within that first year of moving north, conceiving her only two months after our move. I knew we would. I knew I’d be a mother, but it had to be out of Sydney. I knew I’d have my baby up there. 

I have written two books since landing north. A bestselling non-fiction book on people pleasing, with my second book set to launch in March (and my third being pitched end of this month!)

Alongside the dreams realised, I have also faced-off with more life challenges in those 4 years, than in the previous 31 combined. Complex PTSD resulting from a traumatic birth and breastfeeding journey, our experiences exacerbated by the worst floods in our country's history right on our doorstep. Postpartum depression which saw me navigating the hardest year of my life - survival was my only focus. And the grand crescendo - mould toxicity, leading to MCAS, histamine intolerance, alongside hypothyroidism and a myriad of chronic illness symptoms. I became estranged from my father, I ended friendships that weren’t in my highest good. We had to move home after we realised it was the source of much challenge - I even lived in a caravan on our property, and the garage of our friends for 6 weeks while we figured out “where to next?” Four years - looking back - feels like a lifetime, in terms of all I have navigated since leaving Sydney behind.

When I landed in Sydney last week - one year since the last time I was here (for the Taylor Swift concert no-less) - I wasn’t sure how I would feel. After three back-to-back Sydney trips in the earlier stages of 2024, I vowed I wouldn’t be coming back for a long time. While we catch a plane every time we come to Sydney, it is far from a holiday for us. It is a beautiful chance to see the loved ones we have left behind, and to get that “Sydney hit” anyone who doesn’t live in Sydney will understand but - truth be told - there is not much I miss about it.

I feel guilty saying this because so many people I love call Sydney home. Sydney held me through so much. It was the city I was raised in. Growing up, I’d spend every Saturday morning piled into the back of my Dad’s old car making the trip from Manly to Newtown and back again, crossing the Harbour Bridge on our drive to visit my Nana in her tiny two-bedroom terraced home that my Dad and his 13 siblings grew up in. I remember once meeting out-of-town kids who were blown away that I’d seen the Harbour Bridge “in real life!” before, let alone driving over it every single weekend. I remember their excitement hearing this so clearly, because it shocked me. It was the first moment I realised that the life I lived wasn’t the “norm” for everyone. I spent summers in Mosman with my grandparents, playing in the sand and heading back to their home on Middle Harbour for sleepovers. When I was older, I studied at the University of Technology, Sydney, before graduating and interning at CLEO Magazine, while taking a corporate job on Sydney’s York Street. I spent 8 years in the city, every day.  I lived a very quintessential Sydney-life for the majority of my life. And while people would speak of the buzz, and the beauty, I would feel anxiety in my chest and a lump in my throat.

Sydney never felt like home.

When I first moved away from Sydney, I assumed that when I would return for visits, I’d get that nostalgic feeling of “times gone by”, visiting all of my favourite spots (majority of which are on the Northern Beaches), and maybe even shedding a tear when it came time to leave again.

Instead, time between visits back have become few and far between. Friends ask “when are you coming down for a visit?” and rather than feel excited at the idea, I recoil. It’s why it’s been so long since I was last here. And if it wasn’t for work, I think it would be even longer.

The thing is, I don’t know how to fit in Sydney anymore. I am not the woman who left it behind. I am different in almost every way. My brain has (literally) changed since becoming a mother, so I am neurologically different. My physical body is softer, and more sensitive in my current season of healing, so I am physically different. The stories I have to share, the challenges I have navigated, the people I have met and left behind are all drastically different.

So if I am not who I was when I lived here, then where do I fit?

I was speaking to a friend of a friend at a party this week who had just moved back to Sydney from four years in Melbourne. “How are you finding it?” I asked her. She replied simply:

“I’m trying to figure out where I fit here.”

This is exactly how this week has felt for me. I can appreciate the beauty of this city. The people I love more than anything, who call it home. The opportunity to go to a musical last minute (which mum and I did just last night!) 

But even still - I don’t know where I fit here.

Even after calling it home for thirty years.

I spent the first few nights of my time here on the east, a part of Sydney I spent so many of my former years thriving in - the events, the “influencer lifestyle”, the parties, the expensive meals out, the drugs. I landed back, looking around and thinking “not much has changed”. But I have. I didn’t fit there anymore. And much to my sister’s frustration (who I stayed with for the first part of the trip), everywhere I looked felt jarring. It must have been noticeable, because over breakfast on my second day here she asked me with a slight edge of annoyance “What is your issue with Sydney?”

It was hard for me to explain, not wanting her to take it personally. I am not “better than” Sydney. I do not judge anyone for calling Sydney home. I don’t have an issue with Sydney. I just don’t know who I am when I am here. I moved away from Sydney a different version of me. People know the Sydney-me, and I think perhaps expect me to slot right back in when I return, as if the previous 4 years don’t count. But the truth is, I feel like an outsider when I do. I notice I get carsick when I’m here. I notice how hard it is to find quiet and silence when I’m here. I notice how many people bump into me when I’m walking, when I’m here. I notice how much money I spend when I’m here. I don’t have a car here, or my own house with my own things, here. I sleep in people’s spare rooms, in spare beds, living out of a suitcase and tip toeing around not wanting to leave any mess or indication I’ve been here. Minute, micro-moments that compound and trip me up, because none of them exist in the place I know call home.

I don’t feel like I fit here. I don’t feel “belonging” here. That’s as simple as I can explain it.

I am writing this sitting on my mum’s bed, overlooking the same harbour that I would stare at through the windows of my grandparent’s home as a child. A beautiful outlook, and a beautiful opportunity to spend time with my Mum - a full-circle moment, to reflect on how far I’ve come since the last time I was here four years ago.

But even amongst the beauty and the reflections…I yearn for home.

For the home I found on a whim, and a gut feeling. The home my husband and I committed to realising when we were teenagers on the edge of a huge life adventure. The home I have created for my daughter - the only home she knows.

How grateful I am to have taken the risk to find a place I can truly call home. 

It’s like since moving away from everything and everyone I knew, I finally know what it means. 

From the Notes in my phone - written 2020 (before we left) 

Sydney,

It’s not you, it’s me. You haven’t done anything wrong. There’s nothing you need to change or fix. You are still the Sydney I love. It’s just not a love that is serving either of us anymore.

I want to thank you. Because of you, I am the woman I am today.

You introduced me to the world. To my favourite people. Most of them came to me through you, and for that I will always be grateful.

You gifted me tough lessons. You held me in the pain of my upbringing. You swept me into the fantasy of the “real world” - a montage of high achievement, study, corporate slogging and your very Sydney-esque trademarked zombie stare. All of this teaching me the things I don’t want for my life - which have brought me the life I am living now, and closer to the life I am pursuing.

Without you I wouldn’t have known otherwise. I wouldn't have sought any other way. I wouldn’t have been forced deep into the shadows to scramble for more and more light.

I will cherish our memories, too many to name. I’ll miss pacing Manly beachfront lost in thought and music. I’ll miss solo sunsets and sunrises on the cliffs at Shelley. I’ll even miss the drive to the west and the east, mainly for the people who live there. I definitely won’t miss the tunnels though.

But that’s where the nostalgia ends. I won’t miss a lot. And that is unfair to you, because you are full of life and wander and beauty and in leaving you I am allowing someone else to come into your space that fully appreciates you for all of the wonderful things you are. I see them, I do. But they are not for me anymore.

Thank you for holding me for 31 years. It’s been wild and I won’t forget you.