Moving Part 2... You've been worried about me, I've been worried about me

**Anna Duffy** (0:03)
Well, hey, hey, y'all, hope you're doing well on this wonderful day. Welcome to Every Mom Needs a Friend, and welcome to today's episode, Moving Part 2 I am so pumped to catch y'all even more up to speed as we talk about this crazy cross-country move that we just went on. I mean, relatively speaking. To me, it feels like it both has been the longest and shortest summer of my life.
But yeah, let's unpack that today, and let's talk a little bit about some of the things I know y'all are wondering. But first, let's start with the big question. So the big question for today is really directed at me, and it's a little bit of a look in the mirror, I'd say. So yeah, let's warm up our hands real quick. Get those hands ready. Okay. One, two, three. So the question for today is something that I've gotten direct messages on, but then also I feel like in person, a lot of people have just been worried about me. I mean, I've been worried about me. And it's basically, why did I struggle so much to record? This spring, why did I drop off the face of the earth? So, okay. I mentioned lightly in the last episode that we had several reasons for moving. And to kind of, I would say, categorize them from easiest to hardest. We moved because we wanted to be close to family, and we hated being so far away. We moved because it was wearing on us, not having family in town. I mean, jumping to the end of the story, like, oh my gosh, like living in town with family is so unbelievably helpful. So I completely understand where I was thinking for that. But, okay, well, why else do we move? We moved because we were worried about raising our kids, and it felt like it was kind of a now or never situation. You know, moving them older and older is more and more difficult. Not that it can't be done. And also in the same breath, I'll say we were hoping for more of a traditional environment and a more simple small town vibe, you know. Okay, we also moved because we received some really tough news. And I have to believe this is one of the biggest reasons, at least for the timeline sake, that we moved. So this spring, yeah, we received some news that we had wondered about for a little while. And that's why Christopher and I felt such peace about our decision to move. And we actually made that decision before we even knew any diagnosis or anything. We made a decision in early December. But this spring was a little bit of a confirmation of our decision. And y'all, out of respect for the family member who is going through a pretty big health thing, I am just not going to speak about that person or the diagnosis, at least for the time being, just know it's not me, it's not my girls, it's not Christopher. And I will say, I came to a mutual understanding early in the year with this person. And I'll be honest, unfortunately, that is the sole reason I have not been able to record. It was really this rock and hard place scenario of, y'all, how can I be authentic and talk with y'all while I'm working through some of the darkest worries I've ever experienced? Like, how can I talk to y'all about parenting and kids and life and job stuff when seemingly I'm having the hardest time in my life to get out of bed each day? And in that angst, I wish I could tell you I was just journaling and continuing to record, but I wasn't. It was so hard to press record. But I tried to write. I tried to write a whole episode on the power of perspective and hoping that this was going to be cathartic to me and I was going to be able to record it and would be authentic. And I really was just trying to mind over matter my sadness. I was trying to force myself into a place of gratitude and I was just desperately failing. It just rocked my world and I sounded so, so good on paper. I was able to regurgitate scripture and lessons, and I could pretend to an extent that I'm okay, but I wasn't doing okay.
And I mentioned this I think in the last episode, but I just never felt more inauthentic in my whole life. I felt like this whole podcast as a whole was going to be a sham because I was having to compartmentalize in such a drastic way. And it's made me giggle, I will say, to look at the episodes I tried to record because I can see why they were so hard to say because I just wasn't believing even my own words. But in my writings and this episode, I remember building about perspective. I wrote about life is about 10 percent what happens to us and 90 percent of how we react to that. So I mean, that sounds great, right? Like, oh, life only throws you a little easy 10 percent, and then it's just 90 percent of how you react, which that's just not how I felt. In fact, I felt it was inverse. And in my ethereal way, my happy little podcast speak, I was able to write about how goodness, we should be thankful for hardship because it's all ultimately good and it's just about perspective, right? Because perspective takes it from, I wrote this down, discomfort to growth, problems to challenges, rejection to redirection, triggers to reveal wounds, darkness to reveal light, failures to lessons, fears to teachers, pain to power. And those are great for like a stage, but not so great for a podcast that was seemingly built on me documenting my life and speaking from personal lessons and growth. And from a place of honesty and what I would call barrier breaking. But so I was at this like fork in the road as this summer progressed, because here I am in Louisville, Kentucky, in a whole different house. And y'all know nothing about that. Like y'all, the sweetest community that's walked with me from New Hampshire to Seattle, my Seattle in-town move even, the sweet community that shared the intimate and graphic details of my miscarriage, that catastrophe that was called a miscarriage, oh, the darkest days of my life. And y'all, this community that was my stability during so many moments of loneliness, and it just felt like my friend was gone. I just felt like you weren't there and it wasn't your fault, it was my fault. And it's ultimately just because I wasn't updating you on this huge thing that was going on in my life. And then also, yeah, we're moving. So let's just maybe for today, if we could just take a step back, let's try if we can't do some retroactive trust building. Okay. So let's talk about the house search and the buying process. So let's see, it would be back in late December, we reached out, Christopher and I reached out to our old Louisville realtor from way back when. It would have been like eight years before, something like that, that we first lived in Louisville, and he sold our house. He did a great job, and we just assumed if he was great on the selling front, he'd be great on the buying front, and he was. And so if you're ever moving to Louisville and you need a realtor, please message me because I could not recommend him more. He was just so patient with our timeline and our house once. I feel like I thought I was an easy client, but I realized I'm like, okay, I want to live in this tiny little radius, and I want my house to be exactly like this, and this and that, and this and that. And I'm like, we either could have been the easiest client or the most difficult client because we had just a very specific set of things. And at the end of the day, I also realized that we probably weren't his only out-of-town move, but it's just so hard to not be able to pop by a house when a house goes on the market because the market is insane. And Christopher and I talked about it, and ultimately when we visited for Derby, so in May, we put this little bit of a crazy stipulation that we needed to go under contract that weekend no matter what. Whoa, it was so stressful. My friends in Seattle were so anxious and so praying over me because they're like, okay, you have a very small window to decide such a huge thing. And so the Wednesday before Derby, we, let's see, it would have been like six houses, I believe. We viewed these houses. It was just a back-to-back-to-back house. It felt like we were on a house show or something. And we were viewing them for the first time, and we were expecting to put an offer on a house. And then the next time we'd see that house is when we're moving into the house. Like, whoa, that just feels crazy even to say out loud. But somehow we did it. Like, that Wednesday, we looked at houses, and that Friday was Oak's Day, and we woke up that morning, and we went under contract for the home that I'm currently recording this episode in. Oh, so y'all, I mean, our beautiful 100-year-old home is nestled in a small town outside of Louisville, and it's just unbelievably perfect in every single way. And it's not because it's actually perfect in every way. We're practically redoing almost all parts of the inside of the home, but it's perfect because of the location, and it's because of the property. We just never dreamed in our wildest dreams that we'd have this much space for the girls to run and play. And we never dreamed that it would become a reality to live so close to both Christopher and my parents, and not to mention that my baby brother and my best friend, sister-in-law Molly Jane, also live so close. So we're truly just living this wonderful dream of doing life with family in the most beautiful and I'd say appropriately clunky way. So let's take one little jaunt back, which Christopher and I giggle at this because my new word, I think it's jaunt or I sometimes say ganter, which I don't think ganter is a word, but I'm like, Christopher, let's take a little ganter. And he's like, you know, it's just like you're mixing up too many words, but let's say jaunt. So we'll take a little jaunt back. And this home, this home that I'm recording in, our Green Haven Home is what we're calling it.