Chapter 2 - Up and Adum

 “Up and adum.”

That was how mornings began. Mommy’s voice cutting through sleep, gentle but unyielding. Up and adum—time to rise, time to move, time to face whatever the day demanded of us.

But the moment that lodged itself in my chest, the one that still echoes, came wrapped in those same words.

Up and adum—we’re moving to Chile.

Just like that. No soft landing. No easing into it. A sentence that tipped my world on its axis.

That day at school, I told my teachers, “Redefine yourself. Leave things behind.” I said it like I understood what it meant. Like I wasn’t eleven years old, standing at the edge of something vast and unnamed. They smiled, impressed by the maturity of it. None of us realized those words weren’t a slogan—they were a prophecy.

The days that followed collapsed into motion. Cardboard boxes. Garage sales. Goodbyes that clung to my throat longer than I expected. Within a week, school was over, friendships paused mid-sentence, and our life reduced to what could be carried. Everything I knew was suddenly temporary.

And yet—there was relief.

Middle school had been a battlefield I didn’t yet have armor for. I hadn’t found my place, only the sharp awareness that I never quite fit. Kids could be cruel in ways that felt surgical, and some instinct in me knew I was next. Leaving felt less like loss and more like escape. Like listening to a quiet inner voice that said, Now. This is the moment.

I was allowed one trunk. Just one. The K-mart kind, heavy and clumsy and impossibly small for a whole childhood. Into it went my stuffed animals, my art projects, my favorite books, the clothes that still smelled like home. Eleven years of becoming, folded and stacked and shut inside metal and hope.

That trunk followed me everywhere. Once, I tried to jump over it and misjudged the distance. I split my knee open, blood pooling, pain blooming fast and bright. I still carry the scar.

It’s proof.

Proof that life would demand many up and adums from me. That I would be asked, again and again, to leave, to release, to begin before I felt ready. Each move carved something away—but it also added something back.

I learned that resilience isn’t stubbornness. It isn’t clinging to what was. It’s the courage to step forward anyway. To carry what matters and trust yourself to rebuild the rest.

Saying goodbye never stopped hurting. But it taught me this: no matter how often life uproots you, there is a strength that travels with you. Quiet. Steady. Unbreakable.

And every time you start again, you don’t return weaker.

You arrive forged.