Come September, Sam will celebrate his second year in California. He says Modesto is finally feeling like home. Some of that, I think, comes from doing things for the second or third time. We’re enjoying the second season of minor league baseball and concerts in the park. We renewed our vehicle registrations. And the dog days of summer have begun again—not as hot as Texas and with a pool nearby.

Sam says the move was a little traumatic. Bruce Feiler calls disruptive changes ‘lifequakes’—changes that wipe away important, familiar things and leave us feeling lost or unsafe. Sam and I felt that disruption. But, we also saw our lifequake as an opportunity to level up.

Humans are always learning. Behavioral cusps are an important learning/behavior change that create future learning opportunities. Gamers might recognize the phenomenon and call it “leveling up.” In young children, learning to imitate or to ride a trike may be a behavioral cusp. Finding and making the most of a cusp can save time and resources at any stage of life.

After Sam put in for a company transfer, our family understood big changes were coming. Sam had built a good life in Texas, surrounded by people he loved and a community he cherished. Yet he saw the state’s political storms and their resulting destruction. He may have chosen it, but the change was still a lifequake.

I volunteered to serve as moving manager. Alan Ginsberg’s first thought, best thought came to mind. Keep things simple: load up the truck and head out, Beverly-Hillbillies style. However, that plan didn’t ease our anxieties about leaving a community after 30 years. Nor did it make room for ways to level up. Then I remembered another great writer, Anne Lamott, and her family’s wisdom in tackling big things bird by bird.

Working through this lifequake one bird at a time allowed us to breathe through anxious moments and think more deeply about what comes next. When we were young, my husband and I tended to leap and wait for the net to appear. We often made good choices, but that blind faith still took a toll. By breaking the transition into steps, Sam and I could tap other people’s wisdom and experience. We found more options with natural—and often more affordable—support along the way.

For example, for the first few months in his new job, Sam rented a room from a homeowner who’d set up her extra bedrooms for traveling nurses. I flew out with him to help him get settled. When we arrived, the auto transport company had already dropped off his Chevy Bolt EV (with his bicycle packed in the back). We stocked his micro-kitchen, set up laundry privileges, and practiced driving the route to work. I flew back to Texas knowing that the homeowner was there, and a nurse was across the hall, should Sam need support of someone nearby.

Over the next two months, he solved all kinds of just-moved, daily-life problems on his own. We checked in often by video call, even as he was proving to himself that he was okay on his own. He’d recognized that he had leveled up. Yet with that, he’d also made space for good, long-term choices for both of us.

In her memoir, Year of the Tiger, Alice Wong described the connections between disabled people and their attendants as both vulnerable and resilient. The work they do together has value, which is a radical notion in our capitalistic world. “Our relationships and well-being are linked. How we treat each other is a reflection of the kinds of world we want to live in,” she wrote.

I hadn’t ever thought of myself as Sam’s attendant and wasn’t about to start. In fact, I’d begun to wonder whether moving was optional for me. Wasn’t the goal of parenting to have children set out on their own? Still, Wong and other disability writers were describing beauty in the rich, layered reciprocity of our fullest human relationships. That resonated with me. “We are stronger together,” Wong wrote. Instead of the old tropes, I started thinking about what was important and what came next. Knocking about our big house in Texas with just the dog to keep me company, my thoughts started traveling in circles.

Then, I remembered a city council meeting that I’d covered a few years before. Council deliberations had been going for hours. They were stuck. One member, a retired elementary school principal, did his best to bring fresh perspective before the body voted a stalemate. Calling up wisdom from his father, he offered an accessible, elegant way to intellectual honesty: let the reason be the reason. City councils focus on delivering basic services. However, sometimes the members, especially the ambitious ones, bring more gamesmanship than intellectual honesty to their decision-making. This fellow’s words created a shift and a robust discussion followed. The council settled the matter.

We have an inborn urge to move that comes to us from the natural world. We see it when a living thing is stuck or trapped. In addition, many birds and other animals migrate by tapping an energy that comes from within. The Germans call it Zugunruhe, or “migration anxiety.” Biologists think of this energy as a natural part of the life cycle. They first believed that the restlessness was present only in migratory species. But they have since discovered the responsible hormones, triggered by changes in daylight, are present in non-migratory species, too. In addition, we humans consider the freedom to move about as fundamental.

I let the reason be the reason. Sam and I were better together. It was November. I felt the Zugunruhe. It was time to go.

(Note: This essay is based on an excerpt from what I hope will be my next book on becoming an ally, a shift that can be tough for many disability parents. Also, the audio version of my current book with Shahla Ala’i-Rosales is on sale for a few more days on the Kobo.com platform)