WE'RE MOVING. AGAIN.

India. Dubai. London. Bangalore. Chicago. San Francisco. Chicago again. But this time, I’m trying not to abandon myself in the process.

I was born in India and moved to Dubai at 10 months old.

Since then, my life has been a series of arrivals, departures, and reinventions. I became fluent in starting over.

New homes. New countries. New versions of myself.

Keep adapting. Keep carrying. Keep going.

For a long time, I wondered if something was wrong with me. That I couldn’t settle. Couldn’t be still. Couldn’t fully belong anywhere.

Every return to London reminded me I belonged everywhere a little… and nowhere completely.

But lying flat on my back these past couple of weeks, unable to move, force, or control a single thing, something became clear.

I wasn’t running from anything.

Looking back now, I see it differently.

I wasn’t lost.

Life was bringing me home to myself.

When Chicago Became Sacred Ground

When we first moved to Chicago in 2014, I didn’t want to come.

I had just qualified as a coach in London in 2012. Built my private practice. For the first time, life felt aligned with who I was becoming.

But we moved because it was the right decision for our family.

Then I got pregnant through IVF with our younger daughter and son, and Chicago suddenly stopped feeling temporary.

For the first time, this city began to feel like home.

And when we lost our son during the pregnancy, Chicago held us through the grief that followed.

This city was no longer just a place we lived.

It became sacred ground.

The Season That Cracked Me Open

Then came 2020.

While the world was navigating COVID, our family entered one of the darkest seasons of our lives.

The season that dismantled everything I thought I knew about strength.

My dark night of the soul. My ego death. The beginning of the deepest healing journey of my life.

The woman who had spent decades adapting — packing and unpacking, starting over, holding everything together... suddenly could not push through anymore.

We moved to San Francisco because something inside me knew I needed space to heal differently. And that land became medicine.

For the first time in years, I stopped trying to outrun my grief and let nature hold me instead. Three years cocooned in Mother Earth’s arms, slowly remembering what safety felt like inside my own body.

Two trips to Peru changed everything. Not because they fixed me. But because they helped me remember the life my soul had been trying to lead me toward all along.

The second trip, this time with my daughter, became the beginning of something even deeper... not just personal healing, but the healing of our ancestral lineage.

The First Time My Body Interrupted Me

By 2023, I had already been deep in healing for years.

Grief. Therapy. Breathwork. Spiritual work. The slow unraveling of the woman I had spent decades trying to be. But much of my healing still lived in the mind.

Then came my total hysterectomy.

And for the first time, my body spoke loudly enough that I could no longer override it.

Lying there days after surgery, something became undeniable.

One day, we all leave.

The body. The roles. The striving. The control.

Everything.

And suddenly, so much of what I had spent years carrying no longer mattered in the same way.

That surgery did not heal me. But it changed my relationship with life.

With presence. With impermanence. With the body. With truth.

Looking back now, I can see that was the first moment my body truly got my attention.

Returning Did Not Feel Like Regression

We moved back to Chicago in 2024.

Not from obligation.
From love.

Our daughter asked for her family close while she continued healing and rebuilding her life through recovery and law school. So we came back.

And strangely, for the first time in my life... returning didn’t feel like going backwards.

It felt like readiness.

San Francisco held me through earth — solid, grounding, ancient. Lake Michigan has been calling me back through water — movement, flow, emotion, embodiment.

Two different medicines for two very different versions of me.

And maybe that’s the deepest truth underneath all of this.

I became so good at adapting that I forgot my body needed tenderness too.

Not Force. Integration.

Two weeks ago, while packing for our move into our new home and preparing for my Peru trip just days later, my back gave out completely.

A week flat in bed. Unable to move. Unable to force. Unable to carry.

And maybe that was the point.

Because I understand now why it happened this way.

Before entering this next chapter... a rooted home, deeper embodiment, family healing, Peru again, a new level of visibility and service in my work — life stopped me long enough to fully feel the weight of everything I had lived through to become this woman.

The grief. The adapting. The survival. The healing. The constant carrying.

My body needed me to finally stop long enough to integrate it all before moving forward.

Not force. Integration.

Not punishment. Preparation.

Because the woman moving into this chapter is not the same woman who arrived in Chicago over a decade ago.

Back then, I still believed strength meant carrying everything alone.

Now I know something different.

Support is sacred. The body is wise. Healing is relational. Softness is not weakness.

Embodiment Is Not Something I Teach

It’s something life initiated me into.

My work could never stay only in the mind after the life I have lived.

Grief brought me into the body. Motherhood brought me into surrender. Loss brought me into spirit. Healing brought me into presence.

And now my work holds all of it. Mind, body, soul. Not because I learned it from a textbook, but because I lived it.

A woman who spent decades crossing oceans trying to hold life together… finally learning she does not have to carry healing alone anymore.

Maybe that is what home has been trying to teach me all along.

Not learning how to carry more.

Finally allowing yourself to be held too.

We’re moving again.

And for the first time in my life, I’m not arriving somewhere as a stranger to myself.

With love,

Preet

P.S. This new season is still unfolding. I’ll be sharing more reflections from our move and my upcoming Peru journey over on Instagram.