The House That Built Me

I’ve been finding myself avoiding my blog more and more each week. And when I’ve actually paused to ask myself why, the answer’s been the same every time:

“Because it forces me to feel. And I don’t want to do that.”

Maybe you’ve felt the same way.

It’s easier to stay busy. To work more. Clean the house (again). Scroll our phones. Numb out. Anything to avoid sitting in the stillness where big feelings live.

Honestly? I don’t even think most of us know how to feel. As wild as that sounds. One of my dearest friends—who also happens to be a brilliant therapist—once told me, “We’ve been taught how to talk about emotions... but not how to actually feel them.”

That stuck with me. Especially lately.

Some big shifts have been happening in my personal life this past month. One of the biggest?

My childhood home is being sold.

To some, that might not seem like a big deal. “It’s just a structure,” right?

But after my parents’ divorce three years ago, that structure became something more. It became a symbol of stability, of foundation. Of home. And I don’t really have the words for what it means to let that go.

I was seven when we moved in. I still remember waking up on the first morning there—how it smelled like fresh paint and new carpet. My parents built that house.

I remember barefoot summer nights running around the backyard with neighbor kids… playing Zoo Tycoon in what was both the computer room (IYKYK) and my parents’ bedroom… reading The Hunger Games on the driveway and not being able to put it down… chatting with friends for hours in that same driveway.

Swimming in the many versions of our backyard pool. Serving volleyballs off the shed roof. Laying on floaties and watching clouds roll by.

I remember planning my little heart out in my childhood bedroom—the first one finished when we completed the basement. I got to move down there because I was the oldest, and my parents painted the walls and chose carpet in my favorite color: blue. Very cool.

I remember walking the nearby trail after my first real heartbreak or going for runs after summer jobs in college, and then sitting on the front porch steps afterward—either deep in my music or talking it through with Mom.

It’s the house I stayed in the night before my wedding. I woke up to my mom bringing me coffee, and we sat in bed together talking before the day began.

That house has always been my calm. My steady place. Even when the family dynamics felt unstable.

So yeah, I’ve been a little nostalgic. Maybe more than a little.

But I’m learning that nostalgia is a form of grief. And this morning, I found myself wondering: Will this feeling ever go away?

I asked God, “How do I make this stop hurting?”

And in that quiet moment, it dawned on me:

The goal isn’t to make it go away.
The goal is to feel it.

And if there’s anything worthy of being deeply felt and fully grieved, it’s that house.
The house that built me.

I never thought I’d relate to a Miranda Lambert song… but that one? It’s the soundtrack of my summer.