I Left My Life in London to Be Closer to My Family, No Regrets

When I think back to how my life looked this time last year, I can’t help but laugh out loud. Last August, I was sipping cocktails by the pool at White City House with London illuminated in the background, wondering if I was ready to let this life go.

I was chatting to a friend-of-a-friend, a woman around my age, who was aghast at the idea that I was abandoning my life in the British capital to move halfway across the world to live with my two dads in Denver. So much so that her perfectly manicured hand almost dropped her spicy margarita when I told her the news.

She wasn’t alone. Most people were flummoxed as to why I would swap a charming flat in the heart of Marylebone and a thriving social calendar to live in our family house smack dab in the middle of America.

Courtesy of Jen Kaarlo,

By many definitions, you could say I had made it

I left the Mile High City over two decades ago and called Miami, NYC, and London home for varying lengths of time. I had a stacked résumé and traveled to over 50 countries, many of them solo. Though none of that seemed to matter as much after I turned 40. What mattered most to me was that I didn’t want to take time with my family for granted.

As an expat, I always find myself coming back to a cost-to-closeness ratio. Many moons ago, I was having dinner with a new friend I’d been introduced to through mutual friends in Paris. Over escargots and red wine, he told me all about the glamorous adventures he had embarked upon, seemingly plucked right from the scenes of “The Devil Wears Prada.”

What stuck out to me all these years later is not how he knew every designer under the sun, but how he spoke about the calculations behind his trips back to the States. He suggested that we were both in our 30s and that, if we were lucky, we could manage two trips back home a year, but some years it might be just one. If we were even luckier, we would have our parents with us for at least another 25 years. His grand takeaway was: if the experiences you’re living while you’re abroad no longer make your heart sing, then was living so far away worth it?

Time with family became perilously finite

So, one Sunday afternoon after a deliberate bout of hemming and hawing, not to mention a few pints at my local, I called my dad and said I was coming home. Unlike many of my peers, I didn’t look at the move as a step back. Instead, I chose to look at the adventure as my “Glitter Gap Year,” as I called it. Besides, if all else failed, I had my UK citizenship and could always move back.

Courtesy of Jen Kaarlo.

It’s been nearly a year since I hopped on that plane back to my beloved cow town, and it’s been a robust adjustment, but oddly, an even better experience than I could have ever dreamt up.

Sure, there are times when I miss my independence and wish I could catch a last-minute showing in the West End as I often did, but there is a beautiful luxury to seeing my two dads at the start and end of every day that few things can compare to.

What I’ve learned to appreciate are the small moments. Getting to chat about the state of the garden, shaking my head at ridiculous dad jokes, and relishing in every single hug.