When at age twenty, a few months into my first job out of college, I announced that I was moving out, my mother announced that if I was going, my dog would have to go with me. Seven years of pee stains had been enough. She wanted her house back. (This story may appear to be unrelated to this Yellow Brick Road journey of mine. However, if you read through to the end, you'll see that it has everything to do with it!)

Sedona has kept me here just long enough to launch two extraordinary (and unanticipated) projects. Now, it’s time to move on. But where?

I had no choice: I would have to trust. Unconditionally. And I would have to reassure those fearful parts of me that I have always been taken care of. Even during those three harrowing months between Portland and Sedona, a 2019 journey I chronicle in Pilgrimage: A Fool’s Journey, I was never abandoned. There was always a miracle…then another…then another. I didn’t run out then. Why would I now?

When I “landed” in Sedona a year ago today, after one of the most financially and emotionally challenging periods in my life, I couldn’t know that I was about to make this place my home. For the third time

“Sedona is my heart home,” she said to me wistfully, and in that moment I realized that it is mine, too. That doesn’t necessarily mean that I get to stay. It does mean that I will relish every moment I have here and will continue to be grateful for all the miracles that this magical place is blessing me with!