Two weeks ago I joyfully shared the ch-ch-ch changes at Cuddle Sanctuary. I’d been looking for a new space for our events and one fell into my lap like magic. On June 1st, Louis, Susan, Fei and I entered the venue for the first time and hosted a celebratory Saturday night social. We had record attendance at Orientation: 21 people! There was gloriously more space and lots of cushions to make it cozy.

The truth is, it felt strange and chaotic

At first, I couldn’t find a parking spot. When I made it to the front door, I was surprised to discover another class in session. (There was a misunderstanding about our start time.) Once in the space, I learned that the electricity wasn’t yet turned on. (We cuddled by candlelight.) Odd things kept happening.

Getting back on the horse

This week, we had our Wednesday night social and I felt resistant. (Can’t we just go back to the old location where I know where to park and everything’s familiar?) This time, I found my spot with no problem. Setting up was easy. The event flowed. “Maybe things are on track now,” I thought naively. Just as I was about to lock the place up, I saw two unhappy people at the door.

Won’t you be my neighbor?

Our frustrated new neighbors were trying to go to sleep for work in the morning and our music and good-byes disturbed them. I’ve been there myself – dragging myself out of bed to figure out the source of a late night disturbance. It was weird to be on the other side of the equation. I apologized and contacted my landlord, Zoe, to give her a heads up. The first thing I learned is that she and I had a long standing misunderstanding about when our events ended. She thought we were done and out by 10:00pm which had been her boundary all these years. OMG. As it’s said in Yiddish, oy vey.

It was a rocky week for Zoe too. Another teacher who uses the same space at another time during the week did some kind of scream therapy with her students. The police were called.

Finding solutions quickly

Fei, Susan, Louis and I met for an hour yesterday to talk about our options. We had so many factors to think about. Should we move again? Where? Should we change the format so that we can keep our start time the same? How? What that team agreed on is this:

• The space is beautiful and affordable
• We want to try to make it work
• It’s important for us to be in integrity with our landlord and new neighbors

The times they are a changin’ (literally)

And so, with equal measures trepidation and hopefulness I’m announcing Cuddle Sanctuary’s new start times. All events now begin exactly one hour earlier. This means that Orientation begins at 6:30pm, the Social starts as 7:30pm, and our events end at 9:30pm.

Crawling out of the cocoon

I try to remind myself that when a butterfly is struggling to climb out of a cocoon, it probably doesn’t tickle. Cuddle Sanctuary is having its own humble moment of transformation. Change can be uncomfortable, but the reward is flight.