Sometimes the right decision is also the hardest one to make.
It’s been a year.
Four little words. Doesn’t sound like much, does it? But wow, can four little words carry a whole lot of emotion.
A year ago, our lives looked completely different. We were living in Edmonton, in what I truly believed was our forever home. Not just a house, but my dream home. The place I had imagined growing old in. The place where I thought we’d spend the rest of our lives.
I had plans for that house, dreams, little projects that were still waiting to be finished and absolutely no intention of ever leaving.
But life has a funny way of reminding us that just because we’ve made plans it doesn’t mean it’s going to follow them and sometimes, whether we like it or not, we have to make decisions that our hearts haven’t quite caught up with.
When life forces you to rethink the dream
Wayne had reached retirement age…well, according to WCB anyway!
Because let’s be clear, reaching a certain age doesn’t necessarily mean you’re ready to stop working and had it not been for his injury, Wayne would still have been working doing something he loves! But WCB had other plans. His regular economic loss payments were being transitioned to retirement benefits and just like that our financial picture changed.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I find it rather frustrating when life-changing decisions are made for you, especially when you’re the one who has to figure out how to make everything work afterward. So, we did what any sensible couple would do, we sat down, looked at our finances, crunched the numbers and tried to figure out what the hell we were going to do.
Between Edmonton’s property taxes, rising interest rates, the ever-increasing cost of living, and all the other wonderful shit that seems to come with simply existing these days, the numbers weren’t exactly painting a pretty picture.
We had last renewed our mortgage in 2020, when interest rates were ridiculously low. With our next renewal looming in 2026, we knew things were going to look very different and not in a good way.
We could have stayed, we could have stretched ourselves financially, crossed our fingers and hoped everything would somehow work out…but at what cost? Would we spend our retirement worrying about the next bill? Would we have to give up travelling, exploring, and doing the things we love just to hang on to a house?
Were we willing to sacrifice our future just to hold on to our past?
That was the question we kept coming back to and as much as I hated the answer, deep down, I knew what we needed to do!
We had to sell
Not because we wanted to but because the alternative could have been so much worse!
Trading space for freedom
Once we got past the initial shock of what we were considering, we started talking about what we actually wanted our retirement to look like and not surprising at all…
It was about freedom.
The freedom to wake up in the morning without worrying about money. To take a spontaneous road trip, to travel, explore, create, and enjoy the little things in life without constantly wondering whether we could afford to.
We wanted less financial pressure and more time to actually live, a quieter life, a simpler life, a life where we could breathe a little easier and so, we made the decision to leave Edmonton behind and look for something in a smaller community.
We were choosing to trade space for freedom.
Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? And on paper, it absolutely was.
But here’s the thing nobody really talks about when they tell you how wonderful downsizing is…sometimes you’re not just downsizing your home.
You’re downsizing a dream.
And that part? That part hurts.
The great purge begins!
By the beginning of September 2025, we had officially begun preparing the house for sale and let me tell you, nothing makes you question your life choices quite like going through years of accumulated belongings! Seriously, where does all this stuff come from?
We started sorting, decluttering, donating, and throwing away anything that no longer served a purpose or held any real meaning, we even had one of those enormous pink garbage bins delivered and we filled it!
An entire bin of stuff that, at some point, we apparently thought we needed.
It was almost embarrassing…Almost.
Once the great purge was over, we moved on to painting and tackling all those little repairs we’d been putting off, you know the ones, the things you walk past every single day and think, I’ll get around to that one of these days.
Well, apparently, “one of these days” arrives the minute you decide to sell your house! Funny how that works.
And somewhere between the paintbrushes, garbage bags, and endless to-do lists, something began to sink in.
This was really happening.
We weren’t just talking about moving anymore, we were getting ready to say goodbye!
Three days. That’s all it took!
By the last week of October, the house was ready.
We contacted a real estate agent and on October 31, 2025, our home went on the market with the official online listing appearing November 1.
And then something happened that neither of us was quite prepared for.
November 3, 2025. Our house SOLD.
In a bidding war, no less!
THREE DAYS!
After spending nearly two months preparing, sorting, painting, cleaning and mentally trying to convince myself that this was the right thing to do, it was over in what felt like the blink of an eye! Just like that, someone else was going to call my dream home theirs. I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, celebrate, or throw up.
Maybe a little of all four.
Don’t get me wrong. We were incredibly fortunate, selling so quickly and with a couple of offers, was more than we could have hoped for.
But there’s a strange feeling that comes with getting exactly what you need when it isn’t necessarily what your heart wants.
I was relieved.
I was grateful.
And I was absolutely heartbroken.
Because suddenly, it wasn’t a question of if we were leaving, it was a question of how quickly could we get out?
And then the clock started ticking…
As it turned out, the woman who purchased our home had sold her house in Calgary and was looking for a quick possession… a very quick possession.
Fifteen days!
FIFTEEN!
Excuse me?!
We had just sold our house and now we were supposed to pack up our entire lives, find somewhere else to live and somehow keep our sanity intact in two weeks? Thankfully, we managed to negotiate a 30-day possession instead. Still not exactly a leisurely stroll through the park, but at least it gave us a little breathing room.
The good news was that we’d already started looking at homes in smaller communities back in September. We had a shortlist of possibilities, places we’d researched and could imagine ourselves living. But looking at houses online and actually choosing where you’re going to spend the next chapter of your life are two very different things.
Now there was no more casually browsing listings or saying, Oh, that’s a cute little place, we had to make a decision and fast.
Somewhere out there was a house that was about to become our new home, we just had to figure out which one!
And while Wayne and I were trying to agree on where that would be, I was quietly wrestling with something else.
How do you get excited about a new beginning when you’re still grieving the ending of the life you thought you’d have?
That was something I hadn’t quite figured out.
And truthfully?
A year later, I’m not sure I completely have.
To be continued…
