Sweet Chili Pepper

GUESSSSSS WHAAAAAATTTTT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

WE GOT A NEW DOOOOOOOOOG!!!!!!

Meet Chili Pepper.

Also known as Chili Dog, Chili Boy, Chill Pill (Justin keeps pushing for Chili Bob, but…ummm…no.).

He’s a red heeler rescue from Texas and he just arrived on Friday.

We are in love.

We are all still in the midst of getting to know one another and my full-time job at the moment is holding back the urge to snuggle my face into his neck and squeeze him until the big empty space in my chest that Tessie’s absence left starts to feel full again.

It’s a funny thing, isn’t it, the way we can feel so many things at once? In the midst of my over-the-moon excitement for Chili to be here, there are infinite tiny stabs of grief that Tess isn’t. His arrival is full of so much joy and welcome and love, and it also sort of feels like losing her all over again.

Change is like that, isn’t it?

It shines this big spotlight on all the ways things are different. We stand on this threshold, reluctant to let go of the way things were even while we are eager and excited (if also a little unsure and maybe even a bit nervous) for what’s next.

Over these last years of moving every three months, every single move has been this odd combination of loss over what we were leaving and hunger to experience what was coming next. Every. Single. Time.

I am still grieving selling our home in Maine and have moments of intense homesickness for that little house on Kendall Lane almost daily. And yet I cannot regret for even a moment the journey we’ve been on for nearly three years now. I have loved this life and the experiences Justin and I have shared intensely, and it could not have happened without letting go of another life we loved.

This is the nature of change. Big change and little change- it makes no difference.

There is always loss.Maybe it’s simply losing what was known, what was familiar, even if it was miserable or not working. Maybe it’s losing something or someone we never wanted to lose, something precious and irreplaceable.

But there is also always something next. The inherent possibility of tomorrow. Which can be so very exciting and wonderful, and also possibly terrifying and painful.

And, as it turns out, in our big, open wide hearts, we have room for all of these emotions at once.

It is okay to be really happy and really sad in the very same moment.

It is okay to mourn the loss of one era in our lives, while simultaneously welcoming the next one in.

We are complex beings, capable of the whole gamut of human experience, capable of carrying within us a spectrum of feelings that overlap without ever being truly at odds.

So.

Here we are.

The era of Chili has arrived.

I think it’s safe to say that my unintentional social media hiatus is officially over (I am obsessed).

Thanks, as always, for coming along on the ride with me!

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These are just poorly shot iphone photos from our first few days together, so forgive the low quality…

Coming off the transport from Texas: