In my house, there's a famous story about me as a toddler, crying at the front door with an empty backpack because I wasn't allowed to go to school with my sisters. My mom says she had been looking forward to having one-on-one time with her last baby, but I had other plans. On my first day of kindergarten, I barely hugged her goodbye before running into the classroom — eager to grow up, impress the class with my shiny Barbie backpack, and finally be a big girl.
That desire to launch never really left me. I spent my teenage years on Tumblr, making mood boards and dreaming of swapping the palm trees of Oahu for New York City skylines. And by my early 20s, I'd done it. I moved to Brooklyn, and after many internships, I was doing social media for a media publication and building a life that looked shiny from the outside. I remember walking through SoHo on the way to work, thinking, Wow, this is exactly what I dreamt of as a little girl. But that life was expensive, lonely, depressing — and far from home.
In July 2022, that glittering "dream" came to a halt. I was laid off from my job and the career I'd worked so hard for. I was burnt out. Broke. Emotionally fried. And suddenly, the most grown-up decision I could make wasn't to keep pushing forward — it was to go home.
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