Build a new Linnea: Version 2.0, Colorado Edition

Hi! My name is Linnea, and I'm fundraising for an imminent cross-country move to begin my life, again.

Nearly two years ago, my husband committed a really, really, really Bad Thing, and the Bad Thing he did tore my life into a deep, dark pool of neverending grief with ever-expanding ripples of devastation.

I lost a person I thought I wanted to be my life partner.

I lost a person I thought of as my friend-soulmate, my platonic life partner, a person I never imagined possible to lose.

I lost the comfort and belonging I'd carved out for myself, in my little corner of this city.

I lost a lot of trust, a lot of mental and physical capacity, the physical capability to socialize and "go out," and I completely lost who I was into my black hole of grief.

About one year after the Bad Thing happened, I took a westward road trip. It was my first time going further west than Texas.

I went to New Mexico, Arizona, California, Utah, and Colorado – and I fell in love.

I knew then and there that my mental and emotional health would be healthier by leaps and bounds if I lived in a place with such gorgeous nature and landscape just outside my front door.

So, I'm moving to Colorado. At the end of June 2022, I'm moving from the home I've created for the last 15 years in Columbus, Ohio.

I've saved as much as I can for this move, but now that I'm able to calculate costs and not estimates, it's likely that I'll slide further into debt to fund this move. So here we've arrived at the 'why' of this GoFundMe – any dollars you can pitch in to make this move will be an incredible gift, a gift for which I'll be forever grateful.

Any gift you can give will fund hiring TaskRabbit movers to load & unload my belongings, the camp-site fees where I'll sleep during this multi-day road trip move, the exorbitant cost of gasoline, the sedatives I'll give my grumpy cat while we drive for multiple days, and so much more.

I love this city, but all the things I love about this city are now ghosts, haunting me and reminding me of the happiness I once had with my favorite people and the blissfully ignorant ease with which I used to move through this world.

I'm terrified, and I'm nervous, and I'm so goshdang thrilled.

I've lost relationships, I've lost jobs, and I've lost who I am in the midst of all this grief and pain. But, once the landscape has been razed, there's room to rebuild.

And I'm going to rebuild this Linnea-person. We'll rebuild in the mountains where I feel closer to the sun and the sky, where I can shed the skin of the previous before-Bad-Thing-Linnea, and where the dirt and rocks are the most beautiful things I've seen.