Our Moving Announcement: We’re Leaving Chicago

Here is our long anticipated moving announcement! But before I tell you exactly where we will be headed, I wanted to put this in context.

Over the last few weeks, we have been packing up and cleaning up. We have listed our home for sale and searched for a new place to live closer to family and Mark’s job. We have been extremely busy, to say the least. If you have been following along on Instagram, I shared all the chaos and overwhelm that I have been trying to manage during this time, including speed cleaning the house for a short notice showing.

In all seriousness, though, it is time for change. Living in pandemic anxiety for the past year and a half now has revealed to us how much we really need to be around family. Prior to all of this, living in Chicago seemed like the ultimate dream. I was living in a big city with the love of my life. We were paving the way for success in our respective careers and felt like we were free to fly away from the nest and create our new adventure away from where either of us grew up. If we needed to see family, we would just hop on a plane, no problem, assuming our schedules permitted such trips. My medical school schedule made this difficult at times. 

In 2019, I canceled a flight down to Florida to visit my parents for Thanksgiving. We were expected to work every day that week unless our clinical site permitted us to have a vacation. We visited Mark’s family as scheduled for the Christmas holiday, and then the pandemic hit in early 2020. I have not seen my dad in person for over two years. What is even more heartbreaking is that he has needed my help more than ever during this time. This combined with being pregnant and having a baby in isolation was just so very hard. I didn’t have my mom come up because I didn’t want her to get sick flying on the airplane. But this meant that I missed out on hugs, words of encouragement, help and advice while our son was struggling in the NICU. 

Moments like these require a response. We cannot simply endure such heaviness for so long and not reevaluate our priorities, values and goals. It is healthy to change course to align our lives with those priorities once we have dug deep to discover them. For me, medicine was an awesome career path, but it required everything that was most dear to me to be put in second place. I guess you want your doctor to put you first on their priority list. That makes them great doctors. For me, however, it was a signal that I was not in the right place.

While I am still working out what my life looks like, I am so happy that my husband has been able to reach all of his goals, graduate from his Master’s program and work at his dream job. He has found his groove in his career, and I am finding mine in prioritizing family. 

So we’re moving. We are closing this incredibly bittersweet chapter of our lives in Chicago, and anticipating the growth, joy and simplicity in this next chapter. We will miss Chicago, our neighbors, our first home. It’s the place where Noah was born and where I finally discovered who I am at age 30. We are downsizing literally and figuratively. Moving into a smaller space will force us to intentionally choose what is essential, leaving behind the excess.

Finally, the Announcement

I think this new adventure is going to teach us so many new things, and I’m here for it. It will teach us how to be grateful for what we have. We will share generously with those who are in need, and nurture relationships with loved ones and friends. I can’t wait to continue to share this evolution with you as you join us in our move to South Georgia! We were thinking about a move to Atlanta, but decided to choose a simpler and slower life in South Georgia. I can’t wait to share more about our new adventure with you.