One Year Since We Left the US: What Leaving Taught Me About Slowing Down

Today marks one year since we left our home in the United States for good.

I remember looking back at that house so clearly. It is the house we brought our youngest home to after she was born. Where we watched her take her first steps. Where we watched her big sister grow into the beautiful sibling she is today. Where we hosted family for Christmas. So many moments we will carry with us forever.

I remember walking through it once it was empty and no longer ours. It felt so vacant. For a while, I thought of that moment as losing a part of myself.

Now I see it differently. It was not an ending. It was the beginning of the next version of me.

There are parts of my old life I am still grieving. I want to be honest about that.

But this last year has shown me how much is actually possible. A little over a year ago, I believed life was a narrow series of experiences, sitting in its own little container with your name on the label. It felt like my journey was on rails and I had very little say in where it went. Some days it felt like somebody else was driving and I was in the back seat, just trying to keep my composure.

I don't feel that way anymore.

You think you understand the world until you spend time inside cultures that are constantly overlapping and learning from one another.

Before we left, almost everything I knew about Europe came from books, and most of that was about war. American history lessons tend to focus less on culture and more on victory. I have come to realize how much that shaped me.

One side effect is that I have always felt the need to win. I push hard toward goals, especially the ones that seem impossible. That drive helped keep us focused through the move abroad, and I am grateful for it. But it is also something I have noticed the rest of the world does not feel obligated to carry around all day.

Since being in Europe, I have realized life does not have to be a nonstop competition with the people around me. I don't feel pressure to outperform everyone just to be noticed or valued.

Our time traveling through the UK gave me permission to slow down and actually experience the life in front of me. It changed me in ways I did not expect, and fast. I started becoming the most authentic version of myself.

I stopped bracing for something terrible to happen. I stopped looking over my shoulder and sizing up the people around me. I watched people breathe easily on the bus, not expecting anything at all. I stood in the middle of crowded Christmas markets genuinely stunned at how peaceful they were. Nobody was scanning the crowd. Nobody looked like they were waiting for something to go wrong.

I stopped needing to know where every exit was.

There is a social contract in the UK, and here in Spain, that lets people simply live their lives. I have only seen one arrest in all this time. A man stole some alcohol from a shop. Once it was returned, the people involved helped get him back to the rehabilitation facility in Bath where he was supposed to be staying. The goal was not punishment. It was helping someone who needed help.

That one has stayed with me.

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Living around people who look out for one another this way has taken more getting used to than I ever imagined.

The United States is not all bad, and this post is not about listing everything wrong over there. It is about appreciating the life we get to live now. I usually feel the urge to defend home after sharing the good things happening for us here. Today I am not going to do that. We left for a reason, and I am still glad we did.

Watching my wife and me change this year has been remarkable. Watching our girls change has been something else entirely.

They still miss their friends back home and bring them up now and then. But this morning when I dropped my daughter off at school, two of her friends ran up, grabbed her hands, and the three of them ran inside together.

I stood there a little longer than I needed to.

If I am honest, it has taken me a while to let my hair down here. Part of me has been holding back without realizing it, because I was not ready to let go of the old life. That kept me from fully experiencing Spain as home.

After a year, I am finally letting that part go. I can feel a new version of myself starting to bloom, and I am leaning into it.

Spain may not be our forever home. But it is starting to feel like home. I love our life here, and I am proud that we landed on our feet.

If you have read this far, thank you.

You have probably seen plenty of highs and lows from me this year. This adjustment has not been easy, and there were moments it felt impossible. But I really believe we have turned a corner. The possibilities feel endless now, and I am grateful for everything the UK and Spain have taught me.

I would not be writing posts like this if it were not for people like you, who take the time to read and respond. Thank you for supporting this whole transformation, and for being part of it.

Here's to year two, and whatever it brings.

The Blog is only half the story. Moving a family across the world is 10% planning and 90% "figuring it out as we go." If you want to see the daily chaos, the travel hacks we use in real-time, and what life actually looks like when the cameras aren't perfectly positioned, come hang out with us:

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