Home is never just a place…

It’s a strange thing to grieve a place while feeling relief to be gone. I lived in Texas for most of my life, long enough to feel tethered to its heat, its rhythm, its stubborn pride. I was born along the Texas coast. I’ve traveled before, even lived abroad for a brief time, but Texas was the place I came back to. The kind of place that feels inseparable from your identity, until it no longer can be.

Austin, in particular, was home for nearly two decades. It gave me friends, work, and a deep sense of belonging. So many big memories. My partner proposed under the Zilker Christmas Tree. All my babies were born in Austin. We had so many of those early “adulting” firsts. We even bought a house and made it ours. But it also became a place that asked us to compromise too much of who we are.

For years, we’d dreamed of traveling as a family, of living abroad, soaking in other languages and ways of being. There’s just so much in this big world to take in, and we wanted to experience some of it with our children. But what finally moved us to leave Texas wasn’t wanderlust. It was something quieter and heavier: the growing sense that staying meant shrinking.

Our family doesn’t fit neatly into the expectations; politically, socially, or medically. It became clear that living fully and freely would require a different backdrop.

We’ve landed in a new country, my partner’s country of origin. Canada is giving us the chance to reimagine how life can feel when you’re not always holding your breath. It isn’t perfect, no place is, but it’s becoming home: a place where conversations about difficult topics still happen, where the social contract still holds, and where our children are free to be themselves and love who they wish.

I won’t be offering productivity hacks or perfect parenting advice here. I’m not selling a lifestyle or pretending at simplicity. This is just a space to share the layered story of one family’s shift: across borders, across roles, across expectations. A place for the messy beauty of life.

I hope to share stories and reflections on so much, and also the quiet magic of the mundane. If that resonates, you’re welcome to walk alongside me for a while.