Starting Over (Again)
Leaving your people is the hardest part. Everything else is just logistics
Starting over in your 30s is not for the weak. Starting over in your 30s back in your hometown is something else entirely.
When I moved to LA in 2019, I hopped on a red eye from New York with a couple of suitcases, a stroller, a car seat, and the intention of building a fruitful life for Sargent and me. I didn’t have an apartment. I didn’t have a car. I didn’t even have a license. What I did have was a deep, bone-level desire for peace — something that had eluded me in my child-free 20s in New York. The lure of endless summers, palm trees, S P A C E to create, and the seduction of slowness (in comparison to NY, that is). I had a few people I already knew in the city. Enough to make it feel manageable.
What I didn’t know was that I was about to build one of the most profound communities of my life.
My godsister Corey let Sargent and me crash on her sofa in her studio loft while I found my footing. Then I met Marquise, my first friend who was born and raised, a true LA native. The kind of friend who folds you into his family so completely that you’re at his mother’s house playing Uno and eating gumbo and suddenly the city doesn’t feel foreign anymore. Through Marquise came DaVohn and Raven, who felt like old friends from the very first meeting. DaVohn and I have a knowing — our big three are the same. D’Ara, my Scorpio sister, who I love to giggle and shop with and who makes me feel seen in the way only a certain kind of woman can.
And then there were the ones who became everything.
Domo, my sister from DC who knew exactly what it meant to build yourself from the ground up in a city that didn’t owe you anything. She always made me feel like home when we were both navigating what it meant to be new somewhere. Always encouraged me. Always saw me clearly.
Carmela, my soul sister, who nourishes every spirit she comes in contact with. Who reminds you to breathe. Who will look you dead in the eye and tell you water should be in a glass bottle, never plastic, and somehow that is also life advice.
Stephania, my east coast sister who found her way to LA the same way I did — with a child, a dream, and the nerve to start over somewhere new. Our sons became besties before we fully understood what we were building. That kind of friendship doesn't happen by accident. It happens when two women recognize something in each other without having to explain it.
And Elle. My best friend. Sargent’s godmother. His second mom. My platonic soulmate. So locked in that the people at his school know her better than they know me, which tells you everything you need to know about how present she has been in our lives. She has been a co-parent in the truest sense of the word.
How do you leave all of that behind?
You don’t, really. You just carry it differently.
And then there were all the hometown folks who had made their own way out to The Land. The ones who became my brothers, sisters - aunties and uncles to Sargent. We celebrated milestones and holidays and ordinary Tuesdays together. Deep philosophical conversations with one. Dirty memes at 2am with another. Business advice, grief support, the kind of love that is impossible to manufacture and profoundly difficult to leave.
I never took it for granted. Not for one day.
But I left anyway.
Making big girl decisions is not new to me. I started Cool Moms because I was terrified of losing myself in motherhood. This decision came from the same place, spiritually led, and ultimately about what was best for Sargent. Allowing him to grow up in an environment that felt reflective of him, his culture, his family. Allowing myself to come home.
The timing, as with most of my major life moves, was chaotic. I was in the thick of planning the first Cool Moms Feelings and Finance Retreat, preparing Sargent to go away for the summer with his dad, and simultaneously orchestrating a cross-country move.
The movers showed up two days after I got back from Palm Springs. I was so overextended that I sat in my car on a work Zoom call watching them in my rearview mirror, transitioning my entire life from an apartment into a truck.
That’s when the relief hit. I had help.
There’s something that doesn’t escape me about the contrast between how I arrived in LA and how I left. I came with two suitcases, a stroller, a car seat, and no plan. I left with a community of people who sent me off with love, and a moving company that handled every single thing. Roadway made the logistics of an emotionally impossible thing physically manageable. For an insanely high-functioning Type B founder and mom, the seamless process and partial packing weren’t just convenient — they were necessary. Knowing my things were handled meant I could actually feel what was happening instead of just surviving it. That’s not a small thing. That’s growth. That’s what it looks like when you finally have a little more control over your own life.
Less than two weeks later, everything arrived at my new front door in DC. Three flights of stairs, no complaints, partially unpacked. My stuff was there. I was there. It was starting to feel like something.
The going away party photos in this post were taken before any of it had really sunk in. I didn’t know yet how much I would miss them. I just knew I was loved. Sometimes that’s enough to move on.
I’m still finding my way back home. DC is familiar and foreign at the same time, the city of my birth that I have to learn how to live in all over again as the woman I’ve become. My LA people are still my people. That doesn’t change with distance.
But my stuff is here. My son will be here. And slowly, this is starting to feel like home.
This piece was created in partnership with Roadway Moving. If you’re planning a local move, use code coolmoms10 for 10% off local moves and 5% off long-distance moves rdwaymov.co/48VxSY1
Welcome home sis. DC isn’t like she use to be as I’m sure you know but is welcoming you with open arms always. To the journey! Try grounded cafe on MLK if you haven’t been yet.
sitting outside my coffee shop, sobbing, ty for sharing <3