There are some words you imagine saying for so long that, when you finally get to say them, they don’t quite feel real.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We are in Denver.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I have typed that sentence, deleted it, read it again and smiled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We are in Denver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After all the waiting, all the uncertainty, all the dates that came and went, all the moments when we thought, This is it<\/em>, only to find ourselves waiting again…<\/p>\n\n\n\n We made it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our Sunshine Suitcases finally crossed the ocean. \ud83c\uddff\ud83c\udde6\u2708\ufe0f\ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8<\/p>\n\n\n\n For so long, this journey existed in emails, medical appointments, interviews, documents, phone calls and suitcases waiting to be packed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There were moments of enormous hope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There were moments of crushing disappointment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There were goodbyes I thought I was ready for, until I actually had to say them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Leaving South Africa wasn’t simply getting onto an aeroplane.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was looking around at a life built over decades and realizing that I couldn’t pack most of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can’t put thirty years of memories into a suitcase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can’t pack familiar roads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can’t pack the people who have known you forever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can’t pack the smell of home, the sound of a familiar morning, or all those tiny ordinary things you never realized were precious until you knew you were seeing them for the last time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And somewhere between South Africa and Colorado, something changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The journey stopped being about leaving<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It became about arriving<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \ud83c\udfd4\ufe0f Denver. Colorado. Our new beginning.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Everything is unfamiliar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The air feels different. The mountains are new. The weather is definitely preparing to teach this South African woman a few lessons. \ud83d\ude02\u2744\ufe0f<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are new roads to learn, new shops to discover, paperwork to figure out, jobs to find, a home to build and an entirely new life waiting for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And yes, there will probably be days when I miss home terribly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There will be days when starting again feels exciting and days when it feels frightening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But this morning there is one feeling bigger than all the others:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gratitude.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n We were given the opportunity to begin again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not to erase the life we had.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not to forget where we came from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But to carry the best pieces of it forward with us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sunshine Suitcases began during a time when I didn’t know where this road would end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I wrote about waiting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I wrote about disappointment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I wrote about hope when hope sometimes felt ridiculous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And you travelled with me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Today I finally get to write the post I have dreamed about writing:<\/p>\n\n\n\n We made it.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The suitcase isn’t waiting beside the door anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It crossed the ocean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It landed in Colorado.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And now the next chapter begins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There will be mountains, snow, mistakes, discoveries, laughter, probably some tears, and undoubtedly a few stories involving our travelling Ark. \ud83d\udc15\ud83d\udc08\ud83e\udd9c\ud83d\ude02<\/p>\n\n\n\n But we’re here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After everything…<\/p>\n\n\n\n We’re here.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n And perhaps that is what Keep Packing Sunshine<\/em> was always supposed to mean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not that every day would be sunny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not that everything would work out exactly when we wanted it to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But that even when we couldn’t see the destination, we kept a little hope tucked away somewhere in the suitcase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Today, I finally get to unpack it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2600\ufe0f Keep Packing Sunshine.<\/strong> \u2600\ufe0f<\/p>\n\n\n\n From Denver, Colorado.<\/strong> \ud83c\udfd4\ufe0f\ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8\ud83d\udc9c<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There are some words you imagine saying for so long that, when you finally get to say them, they don’t quite feel real. We are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":330,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"class_list":["post-329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-keep-packing-sunshine"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunshinesuitcases.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunshinesuitcases.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunshinesuitcases.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunshinesuitcases.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunshinesuitcases.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=329"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sunshinesuitcases.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":331,"href":"https:\/\/sunshinesuitcases.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329\/revisions\/331"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunshinesuitcases.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunshinesuitcases.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunshinesuitcases.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunshinesuitcases.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}