Living in Newcastle, Washington

Because long before I ever lived here, Newcastle was already woven into my life.

Coal Creek is where I had my first real job. I remember family trips for frozen yogurt at TCBY and stopping at Boston Market after church, and yes, I’m still a little bitter that Boston Market is gone. 😂

They’re such ordinary memories, but those are usually the ones that stick, aren’t they?

Then, years later, I found myself back in Newcastle under completely different circumstances.

I had already owned two homes by then: my first in Maple Valley and my second in Renton. When my marriage ended, we sold the Renton house, and I needed to figure out what home looked like for just me and my son.

So we landed in Newcastle. And because apparently the timing of life has a sense of humor, we moved there during COVID.

Our community had this beautiful pool and a TWO-STORY gym. Amazing, right? Except everything was closed.

I spent all that time living next to these incredible amenities that we basically couldn’t use. Eventually things began opening again, but for so much of our time there, life looked completely different from what any of us had imagined.

And yet, when I look back on Newcastle, I don’t remember it as a sad chapter. It was actually a wonderful one.

This was where I learned how to be a single mom.

It was where my real estate career really started to take off.

It was where I began building a life that looked different than the one I’d planned, and discovered that different didn’t necessarily mean worse.

And I LOVED the location.

I loved being able to walk to Starbucks or grab food nearby, once we were actually allowed to go inside restaurants again. I loved how convenient everything was while Newcastle itself still felt tucked away and surrounded by trees.

You’re minutes from Renton, Bellevue and Issaquah. You can get into Seattle easily. Yet somehow Newcastle still manages to feel like its own little pocket of the Pacific Northwest.

Honestly, if life hadn’t taken me somewhere else, I probably could have lived there for a long time.

That’s what makes Newcastle different from some of the other places in my Rooted story. It wasn’t simply a stop I needed to make until something better came along.

I genuinely loved living there.

But Newcastle also gave me something I couldn’t have understood when I first arrived.

Perspective.

Here I was, rebuilding my adult life in the same place where a much younger version of me had once gone to work, gotten frozen yogurt with her family and stopped for Boston Market after church.

I was moving forward while surrounded by little pieces of where I’d already been. There’s something really beautiful about that now.

Because rebuilding doesn’t always mean starting over from nothing. Sometimes you’re carrying all these earlier versions of yourself with you: the kid with her family, the girl at her first job, the homeowner, the wife, the new single mom, the Realtor whose career was finally taking off. They’re all part of the same story.

And for me, Newcastle is where a whole bunch of those versions seemed to meet.

A place to look back. A place to rebuild.

And, for a really important season of my life, a place I absolutely loved calling home.