Moving to a new city where you know no one and have no connections, can be extremely daunting for most people. There are those rare breeds who actually fall in love with the idea of starting over in a new place, and I happen to be one of them. I have lived in many different cities, but my latest move from Las Vegas to Nashville, has by far been the hardest. It has been almost 3 years since we made the move and I still haven’t connected here like I had hoped.
Let me preface this by saying that I was so excited about this move. Las Vegas was getting old and boring to me and I was ready for a new adventure. I did all the research and joined a ton of Nashville based groups online and started packing. The hardest part about leaving for both my husband and I, were the friendships and relationships that we had built over the years. We had surrounded ourselves with a good supportive community and although we knew we would miss them, we decided together that it was time to go. We chose Nashville because it was close (not too close) to where my husband’s family lived and we figured that if we were going to be leaving the military life, we needed to be somewhere that would provide support. Actually, it’s kind of silly now that I think about it, because we really did have support there all along.
As soon as we got to Nashville, I immediately dove right in. I may be a stay at home mom, but rarely do we stay home. I knew that if I was going to love it here, we had to get out and explore. So, I started networking. If I was going to be happy here, we needed to find a new community of friends. I went to parks and museums and the zoo and the science center. Basically, to any and all places that I knew I would find other moms.
After only 6 months of living here, we hated it. I felt like I had tried so hard to love it but for some reason I couldn’t. I was miserable and so was my husband. Our frustration and unhappiness started to affect our marriage. I’ll be honest, it was not a good time for us and the only thing we could agree on, was how much we hated this place. We were hypercritical of everything. The weather, the people, the bugs… oh the bugs, the food (or lack thereof), the southern mentality… just all of it. We started putting our energy on figuring out how to make the move back. After a 6 months of trying to move back we came to the conclusion that it just wasn’t time for us to leave yet.
I realized much later that I had not fully bought my heart with us on this move. I was missing the life that we left in Vegas so much that I couldn’t see that it wasn’t as bad as we thought it was. Don’t get me wrong, Nashville is still not our ideal place, but we never truly gave it a chance and frankly we never cared to. It took a lot of frustration and disappointment from our attempts to leave before we gave in and gave it a chance. I began to really put more energy into making this place our home even if it was temporary. My hubby found a better place to work that enabled him to have more family time. We made a conscious choice to love where we are and what we are doing even if its not everything we thought it would be.
Now after giving it a real chance, we can confidently say that Nashville will not be our home for much longer. Will we go back to Las Vegas? Maybe not, but we are ready to take on a new place…only this time we will be making sure our hearts are there right along with us!
Diary of Momma Bear 
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