The daffodils are out.

Everywhere I walk there are bright yellow heads pushing up through the grass, nodding cheerfully along roadsides and in gardens. Technically, they’ve arrived exactly when they should. The calendar says it’s spring. The days are a little longer. The earth has decided it’s time.

And yet it’s freezing.

The wind cuts through my coat, my breath hangs in the air, and the ground still feels hard with winter. The daffodils look almost confused, as if they woke up expecting warmth and sunshine and instead found themselves shivering in the cold.

I think I understand how they feel.

Coming home from Sierra Leone has felt a little like that. On paper, the timing makes sense. This is where I’m from. These are my streets, my shops, my familiar places. My family is here. My friends are here. This life existed long before I left, and in many ways it has been patiently waiting for me to step back into it.

And yet, somehow, I feel slightly out of place.

The strange thing about returning home is that so much looks exactly the same. The same houses line the streets. The same paths wind along the shore. People talk about the same things they talked about before I left. Life has carried on steadily, quietly, faithfully.

But I haven’t come back the same.

Somewhere between the heat, the red dust, the hospital wards, the laughter, the exhaustion, the friendships, and the countless ordinary and extraordinary moments in Sierra Leone, something in me shifted. Not dramatically, perhaps. Not in ways that are easy to explain. But enough that stepping back into my old surroundings feels a little like trying on clothes that once fit perfectly but now sit slightly differently on my shoulders.

Home is familiar, but I am not quite the same person who once lived here.

And once again, I’m not here for long.

I’m packing my bags again — this time for Australia. So in many ways, this return home feels less like settling and more like pausing. A brief stop between one chapter and the next.

Which somehow makes the emotions even more tangled.

And with that comes a strange mixture of emotions that don’t seem to settle neatly together.

There is so much joy in being back. The kind of joy that sits deep in your chest when you hug someone you haven’t seen in a long time. The comfort of familiar voices, familiar kitchens, familiar cups of tea. The ease of conversations that don’t require translation, explanation, or cultural navigation. The quiet relief of simply being known.

There is also excitement. The anticipation of what lies ahead. A new country, new rhythms of life, new opportunities to grow and serve and learn. The sense that another adventure is beginning just as the last one has ended.

But woven through it all is grief.

Grief for the people I left behind. For the friendships that were woven so tightly into everyday life. For the hospital corridors, the nurses, the patients, the moments that shaped my days and my heart. For the particular rhythm of life that Sierra Leone carries — the warmth, the resilience, the way people show up for each other in ways that are both ordinary and extraordinary.

Leaving never feels clean. You don’t just pack your bags and take your memories with you. Pieces of your heart stay behind in places you never expected.

And so I find myself holding all of this at once: joy and grief, excitement and homesickness, gratitude and longing.

Perhaps that’s what this season really is — a strange middle ground. Not fully rooted here, no longer living there, and not yet in the place that comes next.

Maybe the daffodils understand this better than I do.

They appear when the season says it’s time, even if the weather hasn’t quite caught up yet. Bright and hopeful in the middle of the cold. Trusting that warmth will come eventually.

Maybe this moment is a little like that.

Standing between places. Between seasons. Holding gratitude for what was, love for what is, and hope for whatever is still to come.