I don’t want to jinx anything, but we’re in contract on selling my condo I’ve owned since 1997 after being listed for just over a week!  We got a cash offer over asking price and a 10-day escrow. And I’m $10,000 short of having it paid off after years of sometimes scraping to make double payments to get it paid off before my wife, Julie and I retired. Suffice it to say, we couldn’t have asked for better news from our realtor when she called us on Friday.

But there’s a deeper story about the condo about letting go and liberation.  I always called my investment in the condo my insurance policy…my fall back in case things imploded.  In case Julie ever left me, in case one of us died so the other would have an affordable place to live, in case we lost everything, in case of any catastrophe you can think of.  In case of every loss imaginable, as if a house could actually save me from the devastation of the loss of something dear.

I sold the first home I purchased in San Francisco, a condo in an art deco building on the panhandle in Golden Gate Park in 1990.  I’d met Julie a year before on a visit to see a childhood friend in Boston. After flying cross-country for visits every couple of months, Julie and I decided I should move to Boston to see if we wanted to make a life together.  Boston clearly wasn’t my place, so thirteen months, ten days and six hours later, I returned alone heartbroken to California, regretting I’d sold my place because I had no place to live, and vowing if I ever bought another place, I’d never let it go.

I’d cleared enough money on the sale to move to Boston and live there for a year without having to work while I focused on my healing from childhood trauma and had enough money left to make the trip back to California and rent a place in San Francisco where I knew I belonged, and where Julie joined me (after our first break-up) fourteen months later.

The condo we’re selling now was our third home we shared in California. I bought it in 1997 and remained there by myself following our second break-up in 2006. Following the resumption of our relationship six weeks later, I rented out the condo and we found a home we bought together. We were married in the living room of our new house in 2008 and spent ten happy years there until we sold it in 2017 and bought our dream house, where we’re living now.

For twenty-five years, I’ve held on to the condo as an insurance policy in case my world fell apart.  Several months ago, on a call with my spiritual director with whom I’ve spoken monthly since 1997, I had an epiphany about the condo and on a larger scale, about my life.

I realized that I no longer needed an insurance policy, that thankfully, that policy had expired.  I trusted the love I shared with Julie explicitly.  I trusted myself and the two of us to navigate whatever comes our way.  I trusted that the universe, my Mama’s spirit, and the Divine Beloved has my back, so I could finally lay down the burden of needing to be so hyper-vigilant about the future once and for all.

As I prepare to let the condo go, I’m deeply grateful for the security the condo has provided, for everything I learned about myself as a result, and for the deepening awareness of being able to trust that I am safely held in the arms of protection and love.

I’m ready to release it and what it represents. And I hope the new buyer receives as many gifts from her new home as I was blessed to receive when it was mine, and I’m grateful for the wisdom that comes from liberation.