We have spent the last eighteen and a half months in the midst of renovations. It’s not something I have been public about. I am private about matters of the home. And I was so overwhelmed by the demands of design decisions, decluttering, demolitions, deadlines, delays, change orders, relocation, and my own internal constant second guessing whether we were renovating for our next twenty years in the home or for our exit.

The uncertainty of the time in which we find ourselves is demanding. And uncertainty finds a way to demand our attention, even if we don’t want it to.

I have made lists about everything from which vitamins to take for stressful times to which documents to have in my to-go bag to flee a disaster and everything in between. I even made a list of which towns in Sicily have great hotels for my friends to stay in when I move overseas one day.

The process of this kind of list making is anything but tidy. It is, for me, mentally exhausting because I am trying to put order on change. Change which my brain can too often perceive as chaos.

So, all of that certainty was being made manifest before my very eyes in the physical changes that I saw happening to a place I have loved for twenty years. And if you have ever visited a construction site, then you know change can indeed look like chaos.

I don’t watch HGTV. I cancelled my home decor magazine subscriptions more than five years ago. But I do like to look at beautiful spaces online. And I hoped our home might one day look like that. However I had very real things, like Saro’s books in the home and Zoela’s baby shoes to manage first. In the rooms along the upstairs hallway, closets held Robert’s clothes, Zoela’s boxing gloves, and my journals from college. To renovate meant to empty it all out and start from the foundation up, repairing, replacing, repainting and reimagining. Emptying it out meant sitting with the past in the present and deciding what you want to carry into the future. I won’t tell you the amount of tears I shed or the hours with jaws clenched. The emotions it all brought up were anything but tidy.

Would she return home after college? Would my mother move to LA? Picking out flooring and bathroom tiles helped and didn’t help to keep me calm and optimistic. I learned through a renovation that I am not someone who can keep the end in mind during the difficult stages of change. I get caught up in the moment-to-moment details in a way that drains me. More than decision fatigue, I doubt it all. Over the last year and a half, I wondered more times than I care to admit about the absurdity of renovating a house in a sinking democracy with a fragile economy. Why? Why was I doing this? But then another thought came forward, why not create a sanctuary space of peace and stability where I could reside during the uncertainty ahead.

But what really made the difference for me was realizing that in this stage of re-nesting, I was choosing to build the house back better with a stronger foundation for whatever was/is to come. I had reached a stage in my life and my history with this one old home where we both needed to empty out in order to reinvest in a stronger future, even if that future is uncertain.

As we near the end of a year and half of constant change and literal reframing, I can see that while that process has been anything but tidy, it has been transformative for me emotionally in ways I could not have envisioned.

Whatever is to come, I know that I made beauty right where I stood for as long as I stood.