When do you know a chapter is over?
On leaving a life you still love, and knowing when it’s time to turn the page.
For much of that time, Bondi wasn't simply where I lived. It was the village in which I raised my girls.
I grew up in the country, surrounded by dirt and open plains. It was a wonderful childhood, and one that I still carry with me, but when I was given the opportunity to come to Sydney for university I was drawn to the ocean.
Bondi became home almost by accident, and then somehow thirty years passed.
For much of that time, Bondi wasn't simply where I lived. It was the village in which I raised my girls. They could walk down the promenade every morning to school, the local shopkeepers knew their names, and there were always people around who knew who they were and kept an eye out for them.
Bondi Beach Public was tiny then. There was one kindergarten class. Today I think there are seven or eight, which probably tells you as much about what has happened to Bondi over those years as anything I could write.
Back then it felt small. I knew everybody. You couldn't walk down the street without seeing someone you knew and Friday afternoons at the beach were filled with friends, kids, barbecues, glasses of wine and laughter. The beach was more than the beach. It was our meeting place, our backyard, our community and, in some ways, our place of worship.
I loved it, and I was proud to live here. Probably ridiculously proud.
I was quick to tell people I lived in Bondi. It became part of how I described myself, and for a very long time I couldn't imagine ever saying that I didn't live here.
Somewhere along the way, though, things changed. The girls grew up and our lives changed. Bondi changed too, although I'm not entirely sure whether it was Bondi that changed or simply what I needed from it.
I can walk through Bondi now, even in winter, and often not see a single person I know. I sometimes wonder where everybody went. Perhaps they moved on, perhaps I did, or perhaps what I loved so much about this place was never entirely the place at all.
Perhaps it was the people, and the belonging, and the particular life we were living here together.
My girls are grown now and beginning lives of their own. They will work out where their sacred places are. They'll find their people and their communities, and the places that give them what they need for whatever chapter comes next.
And so will I.
The ocean still calls me. That hasn't changed. But now I want something quieter, with more space and a different pace, and what has surprised me most about deciding to leave is just how comfortable I am with it.
There was a time when I genuinely couldn't imagine telling someone I no longer lived in Bondi. Now I'm not afraid of saying it, and I'm not particularly worried about what anyone thinks, because this is a decision I have consciously made and one that I understand. I know why I came here, why I loved it and why I stayed for thirty years. And I know why it's time to leave.
Maybe that's part of what knowing yourself gives you. Not certainty that every decision will turn out exactly as you imagined, but enough clarity about what matters to you that you don't need everybody else to understand your choices.
There is nothing wrong with the life I am leaving, and that feels important to say.
I don't need to fall out of love with Bondi in order to leave it, or make the last thirty years wrong in order to make the next chapter right. In fact, I think I can leave precisely because I know what this place gave me: a home, a village, a childhood for my daughters, friendships, belonging and an ocean I fell in love with as a country girl and never really stopped needing.
It gave me exactly what I needed for a very long time.
Now I need something different.
We talk a lot about having the courage to leave the things that are bad for us, but I wonder if there isn't another kind of courage in recognising when something good has simply run its course. In not waiting for the crisis, or for something to break, before allowing ourselves to choose differently.
It gave me exactly what I needed for a very long time.
Perhaps we stay in places, jobs, relationships, identities and even versions of ourselves longer than we need to because leaving feels like a rejection of what came before. We keep writing the old chapter, stretching it further and further, when somewhere inside us we already know that the story has moved on.
Next week I'll start packing boxes and sorting through thirty years of a life. There will be things I don't want to leave, things I've forgotten I owned and memories I'd forgotten I had. I expect there will be tears, and probably a fair amount of wondering why on earth I kept some of it.
But I don't feel as though I'm running away from anything.
I'm deliberately turning the page.
And perhaps that is a useful question to ask ourselves from time to time:
what am I holding onto because it still fits who I've been, rather than who I'm becoming?
Next week I'll start packing boxes and sorting through thirty years of a life.
Storymaker is where I write about the things I can’t stop thinking about — how we know ourselves, what shapes us, what matters, and how we make choices about the lives we want to live.
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