When You Outgrow Where You Live but Can’t Yet Leave

“Living in the moment is learning how to live between the big moments. It is learning how to make the most of the in-betweens and having the audacity to make those moments just as exciting.” ~Morgan Harper Nichols

There’s a peculiar grief that doesn’t often get named. It lives in the moments when you’re neither here nor there. When you’re packing in your mind but still waking up to the same kitchen.

When your soul says go, but your bank account or relationship or circumstance says not yet.

It’s the grief of the in-between, an ache I’ve been swimming in for weeks now, maybe longer.

My partner might be offered a job soon, or he might not. We might move to Geneva and finally have a place of our own again: furniture, friends, rhythm.

You see, we’ve been nomadic for five years now. In 2020, we packed up all our stuff and put it into storage just when the pandemic hit and when we moved to Porto in Portugal. Italy, France, Sweden, and the UK followed. My partner now needs more stability again, and I’m not sure what I need yet.

I might take a leap, board a plane to Chile or China, and follow the whisper that says something there might change everything. I can’t plan anything yet. Not really. And it’s eating me alive.

I’m not new to longing. I’m half German, and there’s a word we hold close in our language: Fernweh.

It doesn’t have a perfect English translation, but it lives somewhere between wanderlust and homesickness—not for home, but for somewhere else. For a life not yet lived. For a distant landscape that feels like it’s calling your name, even if you’ve never been.

Historically, Fernweh has roots in the Romantic period, when writers and artists felt the pull of faraway lands, not to conquer them, but to feel alive inside them. It’s the ache of the horizon. The hunger for distance.

A soulful discomfort with too much sameness.

German Romanticism gave rise to this ache. Writers like Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Heinrich Heine, and later Hermann Hesse lived and wrote from this place of longing.

As the writer Goethe reflected during his Italian Journey, “Architecture is frozen music,” and he confessed that “the spirit of distant lands was what I needed to restore myself.”

I feel it now in every cell of my being.

And even when I’ve answered its call—wandering through Egypt alone last year, losing myself in Istanbul for a month, and living in Bali for two months—I’ve met Fernweh’s twin: homesickness. The longing for my dog, my partner, my kitchen table and shared meals, the known.

So I always find myself in that strange space between Fernweh and a desire to live a more rooted life. Between craving freedom and craving familiarity. Between the desire to disappear into a new culture, a new version of myself, and the desire to stay close to what grounds me.

But this time, something’s different.

I’m not craving the high of escape. I’m craving the quiet of returning to myself. Not in a performance way. Not in a spiritual branding way.

Just me. A woman with a suitcase. A woman with a camera. A woman with grief in one pocket and curiosity in the other.

And I’m learning to name this ache not as a failure but as a truth.

This is the grief of the in-between. The ache of belonging to no one place, because your soul is too wide for borders.

I used to think I had to choose. Be the grounded woman in a relationship, in a city, building something. Or be the nomad—alone, rootless, following the next passport stamp.

Then I met my partner, with whom I could be both for the last five years. Now that he wants to settle somewhere long-term again, I wonder what I should choose.

Or rather, I wonder if the real work is in the not choosing. But allowing both to live inside me. To let myself miss what I’ve left whenever I roam this world alone without him. And to let myself love what I’ve built whenever I live a settled life with him.

Because the truth is, sometimes, I want to light incense in a place that’s mine. Sometimes, I want to wander through Shanghai with a notebook and no one waiting for me at home. Sometimes, I want both on the same day.

And I know I’m not alone.

There are so many of us soul-wanderers, soft-seekers, sitting in limbo. Waiting for clarity. For visas. For a sign. Wondering if we’re selfish. Wondering if we’re just lost. Wondering what the f*ck we’re doing with our lives while others seem so clear.

If that’s you, I just want to say: you’re not failing.

Your ache is evidence of your depth. Your longing means you’re alive. Your uncertainty is sacred. And your desire to hold both freedom and rootedness is not a contradiction. It’s a gift.

So here I am, still waiting to know what’s next. Maybe Geneva. Maybe China or Chile. Maybe somewhere I haven’t dreamed up yet.

I don’t have answers. But I have language now. And language has always been my bridge back to self.

I used to think the ache meant something was wrong. That I had to pick a lane: freedom or stability. But now I know: the ache is a compass, not a curse.

The real lesson? Maybe we don’t need to fix the ache. Maybe we just need to learn how to live with it. To stop asking ourselves “Where should I be?” and start asking “Who am I becoming?”

Maybe that’s all we need in the in-between. Not a plan. Not a flight. But a sentence that lets us breathe. And for me, today, it is this:

My task is not to end the ache but to build a life that lets me hold both: the longing to go and the ache to stay.

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