Season 4 Opener... WE'VE MOVED TO KENTUCKY!

**Anna Duffy** (0:08)
Well, hey, hey, y'all, hope you're doing well. I am so pumped to get back to this. Well, let's start with just the normalcy. So hi, welcome to today's episode of Every Mom Needs a Friend. This is Anna. I'm here, don't worry. I just feel like we are in some sort of high school reunion situation, like, hi, I'm Anna. Remember that Anna that had that podcast called MNOF, Every Mom Needs a Friend, you know, who lives in Seattle, has documented her life for the past three years on this platform. Well, that Anna has been going through a lot and has finally gained the confidence, I guess, to press record and rejoin this space.
OK, to start, I know this is a roundabout way, but it just feels right after this big sabbatical away from y'all. I just wanted to start today with a call to scripture where in the beginning verses of John, John 10, it discusses about how sheep should know their shepherd, how shepherds know how to enter into the gate the right way and the right way to exit the pen. And the sheep knows that their shepherd is the true shepherd and not a shepherd because of how he enters and how he exits and how he calls the sheep by name individually. And they even recognize his voice. So thinking about that, and when I studied it in, let's see, it was in the spring at some point in my BSF group, this was in the midst of me just struggling with wanting, I don't know, to talk to y'all, and I just couldn't do it. I was just struck with how I eagerly did await Jesus' voice and instruction on how to handle life and thought about my family's moving journey. And at that point, I already knew we were moving away from Seattle, y'all just didn't know yet. And it just made me so introspective on my moving story. So to quickly recap for y'all, so Christopher and I got married out of college and lived in Birmingham, Alabama. We then moved to Louisville, Kentucky, where we both are from, and we lived there for a couple years for a job for Christopher. And then we had about 20 months in Dallas. It was another move for Christopher's job, and we had Ellie there, and we had this short stint in Dallas with this one kid, and it was really short. But then we spent two and a half years in New Hampshire with two kids.
You know, we had Kate in New Hampshire. We also had a sweet angel baby go to heaven, but we had this move for his job and this other baby. And so although it was more time than Dallas, it kind of felt like the same amount of time, if that makes sense. And then we had three plus years in Seattle with three kids. As y'all know, our sweet PJ joined us, but truly it all felt the same. Like each stint in each place felt the same amount of time, if that makes sense. Like time is so wild. Like it does speed up with each subsequent kid, and I feel like in my gut, we were in each city for the same amount of time, which is not true. But I have to remember this, and I know this is silly to be said, and I know that I'm on the other side of it, so don't let me romanticize it too much. But when I first enter a city, no matter what, I hate the city when I first moved there. And I realized when I moved to any city, that I'm so prone to look for the bad in it. And that's just me being honest with y'all, because I'd love to tell you that each move got easier and easier in a sense, I found a rhythm. And we've talked about this before on the podcast, where in moving, you have this anticipation, you have a honeymoon period, a mourning period, and then a settling in period. But regardless of how bad I hate a city when I first moved there, the Lord is so good that I always walk out of the city when we move crying because I'm leaving the people I love, and I would have never crossed paths with those people. So in a sense, it feels so special to me. So, okay, I'm beating around the bush, and I'm sure y'all are like, we're waiting on pins and needles. Why did you move? Why do you live in Louisville, Kentucky? Whoa, that feels so weird to say out loud to y'all because it's been this, gosh, it hasn't been a secret, but it's been this thing that I've kept from y'all because I just haven't been able to record. And so I didn't want my Instagram to share something that the podcast listeners hadn't heard first. And this truly is our first self-inflicted move. You know, we've always moved like I just described for Christopher's job. And while that's been wonderful for his career and honestly, family growing and creating such durability in our family and our marriage, we just had this desire, this huge desire to get home, to get back to Kentucky and to ultimately raise our girls there, you know, raise our girls where, oh, it's just so sweet to know Christopher and I were raised. And so since about 2020, I'd say we've been praying for God to reveal when is that time? In a sense, like, where would it be like? Is it we're actually in Louisville? Is it we're just driving distance? So any subsequent big city around? And ever since we moved away, it's it's just been this idea that, OK, we want to get back to Louisville, OK? We don't know if we can keep doing this forever. OK, but does that mean Louisville? We're not sure. And we do love this city. And ultimately, to jump to the end of the story, I'm so glad that it's here is where we lived. But I just want to make sure you know that we worked it out hard. And Christopher and I will talk about this on future episodes, actually in the next two episodes, it will come up, I'm sure, quite often. But we just really I don't want to say put the Lord to the test, but really tried to be eyes wide open when we talk about Louisville. It wasn't just, let's just get home no matter what, it was what makes sense for our family, especially as our family grew and grew, and as values emerge in our family, we just didn't know what made sense. And I don't know if like, I don't know how much we've talked about this on the podcast, but I mean, Christopher and I did not know each other when we lived in Louisville. And we had that short stint in Louisville at the beginning of our marriage, but he went to this big private Christian school, or I went to a big public school. He's a couple of years older than me. But you know, our parents are here. We live ultimately or had lived 15 minutes apart. And I think we did figure out like one of our sweet best friends, Tannis, who ultimately was the gal that introduced us. I'm like, I'm sure at some point I was like swimming at her house and he probably was there in high school. So it's so funny to think about that type of stuff. But regardless, we knew we wanted to be back close to family in the sense that Christa's parents, my parents, live 15 minutes apart still. So is that Nashville? So we're three hours away from both of them? Is it Louisville? So we're super close to them? Or what does it ultimately look like? And yeah, so 2020 is when we began this true conversation, which, like I said, I'll talk about more in detail because we actually beginning of that year, we had this strong tug away from Louisville. Ultimately COVID happened that year, and there's a lot of weirdness in that year and the next couple of years with miscarriage and new babies and all the things. But we did have a lot of things, I would say, pulling us away from Louisville. Not like anything in particular that I need to share right now, but really just we were like, oh, I don't know if it makes sense. And so, like I said, I just feel like I need to say to y'all, like girl to girl, is that this decision has been so many years in the making, and it's been interesting to watch how the Lord has directed our steps away from Louisville, like almost as far as you can go to Seattle, Washington. When that was super confusing to me, I'm like, I thought we were supposed to be moving home. But after a lot of good talk, I would say in the last year, and health diagnosis, and like I said, PJ was born, we just felt like it's just time. It's time to move to Louisville, and it wasn't if we're going to move to Louisville, it was when we're going to move to Louisville. And I mean, I know that Ellie is just in first grade. She's in first grade this year. So my oldest daughter is just like, she's not like, I wouldn't say like, we have all these kids in school. I mean, we have preschoolers, and then we have a first grader. But regardless, we just felt like, huh, we have no reason, at least currently, like as of when we were having this discussion, to pull Ellie out mid-year. That was the common question for my friends of like, is it just time to go now? And I was like, you know what? Like it sounds like kind of nice to just pull the ripcord and go. But I so appreciate the Lord's timing and all of it, that we received information, that we made this decision, and we kind of decided no. So we were like, okay, so is it this summer or is it next summer? And I can't tell you all how weird it was to say, no, it's going to be this summer. And I just feel like we just push it off. We pushed it off since 2020 of no, I mean, we will do it ultimately. So to be like, no, we're actually going to do it. Yeah. So there was a whole decision there. And I don't know if it feels right to talk about that whole conversation until Christopher gets on. So he's going to get on in a couple weeks and we'll talk about that together. But I just feel like I've cried almost every day for the past six months for a plethora of reasons, but leading up to the move, to the move that I now currently, I'm sitting in Louisville, Kentucky right now talking to y'all. But here's the thing. I went dark on y'all. If you followed the podcast for any time or since the beginning, you know that I pride myself on thoughtful, planned out content about life and generics about parenting. Sure. But there's this honest Anna component that I felt like I brought to every episode, that if you listened, you would know there is no hiding, like me, who I am, what's going on in my life, how I'm struggling, how I'm thriving, maybe. And I just felt like every time I went to record this spring, I just felt like a liar. Like, I felt like you guys were like my best friend, Kaylin. I was sitting on a couch with Kaylin, and I wasn't telling her this huge thing in my life because of timing. It just didn't make sense timing wise, and lots of more conversations to impact that honestly in a therapy sense. I need to unpack that with y'all. But that being said, it just didn't feel honest. And I actually, the other day when I opened up my spreadsheet, started like, I was like, OK, I need to like put some pen to paper and get ready for this season four opener. And I looked back and I was like, oh, my gosh, Anna, you had three whole episodes ready to go, fully edited. All I had to do is upload them. So y'all were sitting there. And I'm sure I even described it like, oh, I'll be back next week. I mean, gosh, I don't even know if I can go back and listen to that episode, the last one I recorded before this, the not end to season three that was so long ago, because I know that in my heart, I was like even recording that episode going, like, this doesn't feel right. Something feels wrong. It just it just felt so ichy to be recording without talking about this move and what was going on in my life. So I'm not going to belabor that anymore, but just know that I really don't want you to question or wonder like who I am, maybe for myself, maybe just for me to have a good night's rest to know. I'm not like just lying. I just felt like, I mean, how was I going to talk to y'all about what was going on in my life without talking about this huge thing of moving and just life being thrown at me in a way that made me barely get out of bed some weeks.