Moving Along with Changes

"I have an everyday religion that works for me.

Love yourself first, and everything else falls into line."
-Lucille Ball

Moving can be a difficult transition for your self image and how you feel about yourself. Sometimes we place so much of who we are on where we are, our friends there, and the image we have created for ourselves there that moving disrupts the entire thing. Do you cling to what you were in that other place or do you attempt to start anew in this new city?
Growing up I always knew that i would be leaving the town I was born in, and the move to Boston was easier than expected. I already tried the "moving (literally) outside my comfort zone" by studying abroad in Thailand during highschool. But the college transition always seems loaded with extra importance as you are starting your move to "real life." I bought new clothes, I contemplated changing my nickname (didn't end up happening. Although ZsaZsa would have been pretty badass) and worried that I would have no friends and not fit in or find my niche. I worried that i would struggle to swim being one little fish in a gigantic school, in a brand new town, in a whole different coast. My worries were misguided and I found my way just find. I made amazing friends, found my true calling (nutrition, not a research biologist), and had a great deal of fun.
Yet, as I move in Houston today, I find myself facing these same fears. While I do feel a bit older and wiser than I was in my previous moves, I also feel the same state of unpreparedness. My entire life is about to be unpacked from my compact car, and I haven't stocked up on an entire new wardrobe. I am in a place I have never visited, or really thought much about before this April. I am leaving huge parts of my heart, with the people and places I love in Boston and Wyoming. I have centered a lot of who I am by where I have been living, and wonder what this new Texas image will look like. I have new people to meet and new topics to study and adapt to.

So I'm holding Lucille's words close to my heart. And carrying the religion of self-respect into this new life. As I venture into the great unknown in this Lone Star state

-Elizabeth
How do you deal with geographic moves, be they near or far? How has your self-image changed as you have moved?