There is a lot coming together at the moment.

We are still saying goodbye. To friends who are now genuinely sailing in a different direction. Our house in the Netherlands is for sale. School has started again. Work should somehow start picking up too. And somewhere in between all of that, we are trying to work out what the next chapter of our lives might look like.

Crete keeps popping up in our conversations. We are looking, dreaming and researching, but without knowing yet what our house will sell for, what our income will look like next year, or even exactly what kind of life we want to build there.

There are a lot of question marks.

And apparently, I am not always very good at leaving question marks as question marks.

Independence

One of the things I have always valued enormously is my independence.

Especially financially.

I think I learnt that from my mother. The importance of being able to stand on your own two feet. Of earning your own money and never having to depend entirely on someone else.

And for most of my adult life, I have done exactly that.

Even during these past two years aboard, I have continued working and contributing financially. Perhaps not always in the same way as before, but enough to feel that familiar sense of independence.

Now, for the first time, I can feel that shifting.

Work is not flowing as easily as I would like it to. I hope that this autumn will bring a few exciting projects, just as it did last year. I have ideas. I am writing. I am thinking. I can feel things bubbling away professionally.

But right now, there are no guarantees.

And I find that surprisingly difficult.

There are other women who don’t work

Edwin and I talked about it last night.

He worries considerably less about all of this than I do. Which, depending on the moment, is either wonderfully reassuring or mildly irritating.

At some point he looked at me and said something incredibly simple.

“There are plenty of women who don’t work.”

My immediate thought was: yes, but they have husbands who work.

And then I realised what I had just thought.

Because apparently, somewhere deep inside me, I still see his income and my income as two separate things. Two columns that ideally need to add up to roughly the same contribution in order for everything to feel balanced.

Whereas for Edwin, there seems to be much less his and mine.

There is mainly ours.

And perhaps that is another little threshold I have to cross.

Accepting that there may be periods in our life together when I lean more on him financially. Just as there will be other moments when the balance shifts again.

Equality does not necessarily mean fifty fifty at every single moment.

I know that.

But knowing something and truly feeling comfortable with it are apparently two very different things.

What counts as contributing?

There was another thought that stayed with me after our conversation.

Perhaps I am still measuring my contribution too much in money.

Because when I look at our life, I am certainly not doing nothing.

School has started again this week and our mornings are largely dedicated to that. It takes time, attention and energy, and I want to give it those things. Philou deserves that.

Having your child around you all day is wonderful, but it also means that parenting is woven into almost every part of the day.

Then there is our life aboard. The practicalities. Our plans. Our friendships. The endless conversations about where we are going, literally and figuratively.

And perhaps some of what I bring to our family is harder to put into numbers.

Connection. Direction. Thinking about what kind of life we actually want to create. Keeping certain values at the centre of the decisions we make.

And writing.

Maybe all these words I keep putting onto paper are creating something too. I don’t know yet what they will become or whether they will ever contribute financially.

But that does not automatically make them worthless.

Perhaps contribution comes in different currencies.

Seas of time

From the outside, our life probably looks as though we have seas of time.

Quite literally.

But somehow, the days still fill themselves.

And at the moment, everything takes just a little more energy because it is relentlessly hot.

The boat is hot. The air is hot. Everything sticks. Everything feels damp. The humidity seems to creep into every corner of the boat and every part of your body.

By the afternoon, we are often simply overheated.

And yet, somewhere inside my head, I am still expecting myself to function at exactly the same level as I did before.

Work more. Create more. Earn more. Make plans. Research Crete. Think about the house. Do school. Be present. Enjoy this beautiful life we deliberately chose.

Preferably all at once.

Yesterday I suddenly wondered whether perhaps I simply want too much, too quickly.

We are not just deciding where to sail next.

We are building an entirely new life.

Surely I am allowed to give that some time.

Somewhere between fear and trust

My bonus mother Jos often talks about a triangle, with fear and trust forming the base.

We are constantly moving somewhere along that line.

Towards fear.

Or towards trust.

I have written plenty about fear lately. About looking it in the eye rather than pushing it away. About allowing it to exist without letting it make all the decisions.

And maybe that is what this phase is asking of me again.

Not to pretend I am not worried about money.

I am.

Not to pretend selling our house isn’t huge.

It is.

Not to pretend that I don’t desperately want some lovely projects to come my way this autumn.

I do.

But perhaps I don’t have to solve everything today.

We can investigate Crete without knowing whether we will live there.

We can dream about a house without knowing our exact budget.

I can look for work without allowing my current income to determine my value.

And I can lean on Edwin without losing my independence.

Maybe trust is not believing that everything will work out exactly as you planned.

Maybe it is believing that you will find your way, even when you cannot see the entire route yet.

For someone who lives on a sailing boat, you would think I had learnt that by now.

Apparently, some lessons need a little more practice.

Maybe I don’t need to bring everything to the table. I just need to remember what I already bring.