Ten years ago this month, everything changed.

Honestly, how has an entire decade gone by already?

It feels like yesterday that I packed up a moving truck, loaded my car with the last bits of my married life, and drove back into the city with two teenage boys, a golden retriever, and absolutely no idea what came next.

As I crossed the Lions Gate Bridge, I couldn’t help but think of the opening credits from Full House. You know the one—where the family is driving into San Francisco, full of possibility? In my mind, that was us.

Well…sort of.

My boys were excited. Mom had found a fantastic house to rent.

What they didn’t know was that I’d quietly bought our next family home.

Starting over after divorce wasn’t something I had planned for. One day, I was trying to figure out what I could afford. The next, I was trying to figure out where we would live.

Those early months after my separation felt like one giant question mark.

But once our family home sold and I finally understood what was possible, something shifted.

I had a plan.

Looking back, buying a townhouse in the middle of a separation probably wasn’t the best decision. My lawyer specifically told me not to buy anything until our separation agreement was settled.

But I wasn’t looking for an investment.

I was looking for a home.

A place where my boys could still feel grounded while everything else in our lives was changing.

I listened to my heart.

There were a few complications because of it.

I don’t regret it for a second.

The moment I walked through the front door, I knew.

It wasn’t perfect.

But it was ours.

When we pulled up with the moving truck, reality had other plans.

The carpet installers weren’t finished.

We couldn’t move in.

Instead of unpacking boxes and settling into our new home, our entire life stayed in the moving truck overnight while it was taken to a storage facility. We waved goodbye to everything we owned, crossed our fingers we’d see it all again the next day, and found somewhere else to spend our first night.

A move that was supposed to take one day somehow turned into two.

It seems oddly fitting.

Nothing was quite ready yet.

Not the house.

Not my new life.

Not me.

At the time, I thought I was simply buying a townhouse.

Looking back, I was building a life I couldn’t even imagine.

That little townhouse quietly became the backdrop for the next chapter of my life.

It saw me cry.

It saw me laugh.

It watched me slowly become someone I didn’t yet know I could be.

It saw it all.

The boys playing beer pong in the kitchen.

Heidi finding her favourite spot on the floor.

Girls’ nights in.

First dates.

My boys coming home from university.

Holidays that looked different from what I’d imagined.

COVID.

Every morning, I’d sit at the kitchen island with a cup of coffee and write.

Page after page.

Chapter after chapter.

Slowly, my story found its way onto the page.

Some mornings the words came easily.

Other mornings they came through tears.

And somewhere in the middle of all that ordinary life, it quietly held me together.

Over those ten years…

I became an empty nester.

I reclaimed my maiden name.

I travelled to Paris on my own.

I fell in love again.

I lost my mother.

I spent a year living in France.

I wrote a memoir about all of it.

None of it was part of the moving plan.

But sometimes moving forward doesn’t begin with courage.

Sometimes it begins because there isn’t another option.

You take the next step.

And then another.

One day becomes one year.

One year becomes ten.

Maybe that’s been the biggest surprise of the last decade.

The woman who unlocked the front door of that townhouse ten years ago wasn’t sure she could do life on her own.

The woman writing these words today still doesn’t have all the answers.

But somewhere between repainting walls…

Renovating.

Writing a memoir at the kitchen island every morning.

Packing for Paris.

Filling this house with a life I never could have imagined…

I’ve put my stamp on this home.

And in return…

It quietly left its mark on me.

As I write this, I’m sitting in the very same house.

And somehow…

Home still feels exactly right.