Grieving the Home that Built Me

Ashley Elenz August 18, 2025

I am going through it right now, and so I must do what I know helps me the most.

Write.

I will write through this
and cry through this
And then I will write some more.

This post was written hours after accepting the offer on our family lake house, and edited roughly a month later.
The pictures were taken a day before closing. We unexpectedly lost our sweet Stella girl 6 days later.

|The Acceptance Call

We accepted the offer.

I ended the phone call.

Instantly;

A wave of flooding feelings and emotions.

Not fully capsizing my ship of existence, but good lord, am I bracing for it.

They are mostly good feelings and emotions, but they are also the heart-stabbingly painful kind.

I feel the lump sitting in my throat like an unchewed bite of a bagel. That bulge is just waiting to let go and grant the tears permission to start streaming. Only my fear this time is that I won’t stop. That fear is imminent now.

Everything is lining up, all the synchocities are syncing.

I feel them, I hear them, I melt into them.

It is like I can see the past, present, and future all glowing around me.

Telling me “Yes. This is it. You’re on the right journey.”

Then the thoughts.
The thoughts creep in. That “Thinking-Mind” of mine that never seems to stop.

I have time and space from the kids – so I let my mind do it’s thinks.

|The Thoughts

Thought No1 – “My Babies”

Like a gasp from under my breath, that barely whispers out of my body, in a sad airy tone. “My babies”.

That lumpy-bump in my throat shifts, and the tears bust out of me, with zero hesitation.

This is where I had them.
Where I brought them home.
Loved them, raised them.
Held them, hugged them, cried with them, laughed with them.

Thought No2 – “My Only True Home”

The tears, stronger. These words, “my only home,” said in bold. Fumbling so fast off my lips, they sound like a mere grunt.

I moved a lot growing up.
State to state.
Living space to living space.
Apartments to family members, to condos, to rentals, to homes, to step-family homes,to out on my own, a mobile home at one point, more apartments
and then finally,
The Lake House – that was made into our home.

Thought No3 – “What Have We Done”

“What have we done?” panics out of me. Like a gust of wind, spiraling anxious energy up throughout my entire body. The wave of feelings is becoming too much, too uncontrollable, too unpredictable.

To
finally

Thought No4 – “FUCK.
Did We Do the Right Thing??”

Have we somehow just robbed our children of a home – a home they don’t currently live in. Nonetheless, it was our home. (at one point and that we routinely visited and still had access to.)

The “Rational-Brain” kicks in and says;

“Yes, Silly Queen, of course you did the right thing.
For alllllll the reasons you vetted out over and over,
AND over again, before even listing the home.

YOU did the right thing.
But YOU, my dear, are a human thing, and humans feeeeel things.
That’s what makes us special.
And this THING is a BIG thing.“

And then, I hit a WALL, blind-sided and halted and alerted all to the weight of the cement Shoes of Grief that sink me to the bottom of my thoughts.

All silently on a dark canvas, the words float up to my consciousness.

“I am grieving the home that built me.”

|Grieving a home

I didn’t have a lot of traditional upbringings. Even “The Lake House” wasn’t traditional to live in.

It is, no joke, a straight-up LAKE HOUSE.

Not a house meant to be a home for 2 adults, 3 kids, 3 pets, and a beachy vacay vibe that made every day seem a little less than serious.

But this house.

I grew up in this house. In this home.

Yes, I raised my babies and all that traditional “home-y” sentiments.

But I also learned how to be an actual adult and all the things that come along with that. I learned how to do laundry on my own here (at like 26… don’t judge me; at 16 I was learning how to smoke wacky tobacky from simply an apple– can YOU do that?? I digress…)

Back to the laundry; I learned how to do laundry from start to finish – cause if you don’t actually finish, you end up with moldy smelling towels that inevitably you have to just throw away from the stench.

I learned how to cook.

Like reaaally how to cook. Like following a recipe and prepping meals, and all the things. We had the same meal of chicken, frozen veggies, and pasta, pretty much every day until our daughter was like 7.
Oops?

I learned how to be a sober, honorable woman after many not-so-sober nights in this home.

I learned that if you are supposed to be the one cutting the grass, and don’t do it, it actually doesn’t just magically get done. Instead it will grow a small little forest, especially if you are in the high rain seasons. Landscapers are well WORTH the money, yet I so value my time cutting grass for so many years in such a beautiful place.

I learned how to be a parent.

How to show up, how to apologize; how to be who I needed when I was younger.

I learned how not to cry over spilled hot sauce… (Read about that one here)

I learned how to fix things on my own, with big girl drills and tools. How to trap a mouse, kill a snake, and know way too much about copper plumbing and why having a heavy duty leaf blower is important. Ya know, all those “man things”.

I learned how to navigate emotional abuse and accept that abuse is abuse, no matter what form or shape it takes, whether it’s the result of mental illness or addiction.

I learned how to become myself.

This house was more than a house; it was a home that was a foundation for who I am today.

|The Grief Inside

As I walk through the empty house, it has imprints all over it. Literally like the kind you see in the movies, where when you look in a room, you can see the faded vision of a little baby 13 years ago bebopping around.

These memories surround me.

It’s heavy.
powerful.
beautiful.
saddening.

It’s bittersweet at best.

When I think back 6 years ago to when we turned this little lake home of ours into an Airbnb, I remember briefly grieving.

But now, as I am feeling the feelings hit harder than I EVER could have imagined. I feel a whole new level of grief that I was not prepared to endure.

I find that I am grieving the years spent in the home, years that looked picture-perfect and polished from the outside, but in truth were far from pleasant or perfect, more often than I care to admit. Yet within those brick walls, those rough and coarse currents of life, carved the steady foundation of my womanhood that exsists today.

I have always found it infuriatingly beautiful how some of the most painful life experiences shape us into the most amazing versions of ourselves.

I am grieving the version of me that felt every bit of those painful experiences.

I am grieving the “parts of me” that witnessed me struggle so much in those experiences, especially growing up as a younger mom. Those “parts” are overwhelmed with joy, screaming; “Yes, Sis. You made it. Look at youuuuuuu. We are so proud of you.”

I am grieving “those parts” because as helpful as they were, they no longer serve me today. They kept me alive during those significantly challenging times, and I’m so grateful for that. But, these “parts” themselves know that with the selling of this house, they must now go too.

As happy as I am with this evolution within this joyful life moment, letting go of something that has kept you alive is hard. Even if that thing, or things, are slowly and quietly, (and continuously) eating away at your aliveness now.

But, I want to live today, so I say;
Farewell, Lake House on Catalina …

As I grieve and rejoice in the farewell, I also say, thank you.

Thank you for serving me that way that you did, “Lake House on Catalina.”

Thank you for being a house built of glass & brick. Strong and transparent, keeping me from throwing many stones, many times. Literally and figuratively.

Thank you for hosting parties (and ghosts 😉 ) and for keeping us safe and warm.

Thank you for hosting a slew of Airbnb guests and capturing the essence of summer nights, even in the dead of winter.

Thank you for being the longest HOME I’ve ever known.

Thank you for being the home that built me.

Our Photograpgher Ashley Frisk , is absolutely amazing, therefore deciding which of these images got a permanent spot on this lil blog post was virtually impossible. I narrowed it down as best as I could, but feel free to scroll through our memories in small frames.
(click on the image to enlarge it)