When the kids started doing school from home in March/April 2020.

When I realized I felt safer traveling alone as a woman abroad than I did in my daily life in the U.S.. activities like going to the movie theater was no longer fun because I was worried about gun violence

The amount of people I’ve heard say mass shootings is incredible. For me, it was a realization that I was stuck and something just wasn’t working.

I have wanted to leave since 2022 when we visited Iceland, and after being there a week and not having one stomach ache, we realized our food in the US is different and is poisoning us. I wish we’d been able to leave before the end of 2024, but we have 2 teenagers and one just started college this year and the other is a junior in high school and we just don’t feel like we can uproot them right now. Having kids complicates things sometimes.