- We moved to Seattle in 2012 because my husband got a high-paying job in tech.
- We spent 12 years in Seattle but never found true happiness.
- We finally moved back to Chicago and are thriving.
We went with the best intentions; that's what we tell ourselves now.
In 2012, my husband and I made the sensible decision to move from Chicago to Seattle so he could design Microsoft's line of phones and tablets.
The job came with an eye-watering salary bump, a bonus, and stock options we had seen only in the movies.
Both of us had moved to Chicago soon after graduating from college. We loved the city and didn't want to leave, but we questioned whether an offer like this would ever come again.
"We'll move back if we hate it," we promised ourselves. We spent the next 12 years breaking that promise.
Adapting to life in Seattle was rough
We found early on that people seemed to keep to themselves and weren't looking for new friends.
Still, there were some bright spots as the years ticked by. We had financial security for the first time in our lives, a few friends (all transplants like us), and a Craftsman house we spent weekends remodeling.
Life was good on paper, but behind closed doors we were struggling
I got pregnant three months after moving and lost the baby at 20 weeks. Three miscarriages followed, along with a fight for doctors to find the root cause.
Our son, Leo, was born healthy in 2015, but a childbirth injury disabled me for five years and nearly cost me a leg. The hits kept coming as steadily as Seattle's drizzling rain.
Five years stretched into eight, and I had long given up forming an attachment to our new city under the pressure of first-time parenthood, medical trauma, and Seattle's air of social isolation. Most days, I could barely get out of bed.
It was about this time when my husband and I began fantasizing about moving back to Chicago. The world was still in the throes of COVID lockdown, but what if it weren't? Where would we be today, we wondered, if we still lived there?
We romanticized Cubs games, the gritty "El" train, and even our first apartment that blew a fuse every time we plugged in the toaster. Living in Chicago was objectively harder, but our lives were fuller back then.
We weren't confined to hours spent in gridlock traffic or constrained conversations that seemed to revolve around the same five topics: health problems, renovations, money, apathy, and — poignantly — when life would feel good again. We didn't sit at home in front of the TV; we were out, moving, doing new things.
Our son had never experienced that kind of freedom, and depriving him of it weighed on our minds. We were in "golden handcuffs," chained by a lucrative job to a place we'd rather not be. We had bought into it in the beginning, not yet understanding that we were selling our quality of life.
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We finally made the decision to leave in November 2023
I had just come home after another unplanned hospital stay. I looked around at the house we had remodeled together: the shiny oak floors laid in painstaking rows, the tile and countertops that perfectly matched the hand-carved crown molding.
It had all been a distraction, a consolation prize for the years we'd spent trying to make it work. I wanted to burn it all down. I cried on the bathroom floor instead.
"I don't think I can live here anymore," I choked out between sobs. My husband sat down and put his arm around me. The hollowness of our life in Seattle had finally become too much, and without saying it, he understood that success on paper was no longer enough.
"OK," he said. "Let's go."
5 months later, we began an 8-day journey across the country in a rented RV
We were a less glamorous Joan Didion and John Dunne, barreling down I-90 with a third grader and a cat searching for a different life.
My husband landed a lead engineer role in Chicago's West Loop, our old stomping grounds, which has replaced dive bars and fish markets with five-star restaurants and art galleries.
In July, we bought a 115-year-old house in Evanston within walking distance of the train, restaurants, shops, an art center, and a comic book store where my son spends all his allowance.
Our garden gate opens to a community park where the kids play baseball all summer and ice-skate all winter. I started writing again for the first time in years, and I run our backyard Airbnb dedicated to John Hughes, who filmed his movies nearby.
The neighbors added us to the group chat and delivered welcome gifts to our front porch. "I'd forgotten what this was like," Dave said as we unloaded boxes.
"What?" I asked.
"Feeling at home," he said.
On our first Saturday back in town, we walked to a diner on Central Street near our house. A group of boys about my son's age rushed in in baseball uniforms, having ditched their unlocked bikes outside. They ordered food and sat in the booth behind us, chatting about their win. My son was enthralled.
"Where are their parents?" he whispered, craning his neck to see more of the unsupervised activity.
"I think they came alone," my husband whispered back, smiling at me. My son's eyes widened.
"Wow. Can I do that here?" he asked.
"I don't see why not," I said.
He beamed. So much possibility. He was in love.