Between Two Shores
On identity, polarity, and finding home in more than one place.
The year was 1996.
I was on a plane leaving my hometown of Oslo, Norway, for college in the U.S., with a single blue suitcase that contained everything I thought I needed to start my new life.
I remember journaling on that long plane ride – what I noticed, what I was excited about. This was in the age of analog before smartphones and connected devices. I didn’t have a computer or a tablet, no cellphone. I didn’t even have an email address yet.
As I wrote in my large-format notebook with a pencil, I knew I was leaving home. I was crossing an ocean to another continent.
What I didn’t know yet was what that crossing signified. I was crossing a threshold into a whole new identity.
Over time, I built a full life in the States: new people, new work, new family.
And still, Oslo never stopped being the place my heart returns to.
For a long time, I felt split. One foot in each country, one identity here, one there.
Every departure felt like low tide. Part of me exposed. Part of me missing.
Every time I went “home” to Norway and then back “home” to the U.S., I felt like I left a part of me behind. It felt as if I was losing pieces of myself.
What didn’t occur to me then is that tides don’t lose water. They move it.
What I experienced as fragmentation was actually polarity – two truths existing at once. Two shores, both holding my life.
Norway was home.
America was home.
These are both true. And both are incomplete without the other.
For years, I treated that tension like a problem to be solved.
Where is really home? Which version of me is the “real” one?
But some things aren’t problems to solve. They’re polarities to manage.
The breath isn’t just exhale or inhale. It lives in the movement between.
The tide doesn’t choose one shore. It trusts the gravity that pulls, and holds both.
In Oslo, I was deeply connected to land and place, but guarded with people.
In Oklahoma, I learned how to connect with people, but not with the place.
And then, eventually, I came to Montana. It was the first time I felt truly at home – connected to both the land and the people.
In Montana, I found rivers instead of oceans; I found water that moves, silently, rapidly, sometimes calmly, sometimes violently. Water that carves character into stone.
In the lands near the headwaters of the Missouri, by the Gallatin river, I found a basin to hold my whole self.
Water doesn’t fragment when it moves. It expands to fill the container it’s given.
That first voyage across the Atlantic hadn’t divided me. It had widened me. My heart had stretched, not split. My definition of “home” had grown and evolved.
A month ago, after learning my father had passed, I found myself sitting on a rock on the Atlantic shore.
Looking out across the ocean – toward the other half of my life.
Listening to the waves, feeling connection across the water, I realized something.
The ocean has been holding my story for a very long time.
What felt like distance was also connection. What felt like loss was also continuity.
That understanding shapes everything I do now – how I think about home, leadership, place, and the rooms we choose to gather in.
Who I Am
I have lived between shorelines, between countries, cultures, and identities.
I’m deeply place-oriented. Land, space, and environment matter to me, not just where we live, but how we feel inside the spaces that hold our lives.
I’m drawn to people and communities at moments of transition.
When something old no longer fits and something new hasn’t fully formed, we get to move like water, inhabiting the space in between.
I don’t believe we’re meant to choose one version of ourselves. I believe we’re meant to integrate all the parts of us.
What I Do
Today, I lead and guide through presence, clarity, and deep listening.
I pay close attention to what’s already there – the strengths, the wisdom, the light people often underestimate in themselves.
My work is about creating the conditions where people feel seen enough, safe enough, and grounded enough to step into who they already are.
Whether it’s a home, a leadership role, or a life shift – how it feels matters just as much as what it looks like.
My work moves between two connected shores.
In Real Estate, I help people choose places that support who they’re becoming.
In Leadership Consulting, I help leaders and organizations align people, purpose, and performance.
Different contexts. But really, to me, it’s the same work.
In both, I’m working with threshold moments – moving, growing, letting go, stepping into something new.
The Space Between Shores
Homes shape how we live. The spaces we’re in shape how we feel. Leadership shapes how we relate – to ourselves and to others.
I help people choose and create environments, both physical and relational, that allow them to feel at home in their lives.
If you’ve ever felt like you belong to more than one place, like your heart returns somewhere your body doesn’t always reside, you are not broken.
You might just have the heart of an ocean.
If you’ve ever felt like you’re standing at more than one intersection, with one foot on more than one shore, you’re not alone.
This is an invitation to notice what – and who – helps you feel most at home right now. Allow your basin to expand,to hold all that you are. Allow yourself to move like the tide between shores, rather than trying to be everything all at once.
You don’t have to be one thing to belong. Oceans don’t choose one shore. You get to be all of you.
You are water in the vast space between your shores.
In 1987, I was simultaneously experiencing life's quadruple changes: divorce, the imminent death of a parent, a new job, and a major move—Chicago to Boston. As part of my relocation package, my company funded trips back and forth so I could spend a few remaining moments with my dad. After months of flying back and forth, I remember landing in Boston and feeling like I was "home." There was, by that time, more in Boston than in Chicago. It was my Montana. That said, I'm with you. I now live in New York, but I still feel drawn to the home I grew up in, in Illinois. The street number was "933," and it's uncanny how often I look at a clock and see that number. So many memories.
Thank you for a thought-provoking and beautiful piece of writing, Hannah.