From Paradise to Walla Walla?
Why we moved from Hawai'i to Walla Walla, Washington and why that didn't last
We had a very nice life. Let me begin with that fact. We HAVE a very nice life. I'm 43 and have been married for almost 18 years to the best husband I could imagine. That may sound hyperbolic, but it is surely the honest truth. He is a jack of all trades, loyal and generous to a fault, and has an adventurous spirit. Spoiler alert, stuff happens because of this.
We have four kids aged 10, 12, 14, and 16. Two boys and two girls. Can you picture it? Cute married couple, two boys and two girls, and a family dog. Throw in an apple pie and a white picket fence, and it just doesn't get much more Americana than that. So there we were, living the American dream. My husband went to medical school and then to residency for seven years, training to be a neurosurgeon. Those 11 years had ups and downs, but we knew the struggles and stresses were temporary, and we dreamed hard about what life after residency would hold for us. It was the juiciest carrot at the end of a very long and dark tunnel.
We moved to Hawai’i after he finished and began building our new and better world. Like stacking Legos, we added each piece of our fun new life with excitement and happily anticipated what each additional piece would look like and feel like stacked on top of the others. We bought a couple of acres on O’ahu on the border of Kailua and Waimanalo. It was our paradise. We had a beautiful breeze and an ocean view you could stare at for hours, and that was our plan. Build a small home for our family, raise chickens and bees, surf and hike, and live happily ever after. That is not how the story ends, though.
We struggled through the pandemic like most people. My husband especially had a longing for a change and a different path in mind. His body and mind felt trapped in our beautiful island paradise. We sold our two acres of hope, which were bogged down in yellow tape and restrictions and decided to take a huge leap of faith and move to Walla Walla, Washington. There was not a scientific approach to this move. We didn't even know Walla Walla was a real place that existed outside Dr. Seuss' stories, but it was a place that was close to Hawai’i geographically, and it also had no income tax. Check and check. They were looking for a neurosurgeon, and we were looking for a change. Our family moved there and instantly began to build the dream we struggled to build in Hawai’i. We bought a huge, beautiful home on 10 acres of land (sight unseen, aside from a virtual tour!) and began to farm it, raise animals, and grow fruit trees; trying hard to do all the things we wanted to do in Hawai’i but just weren’t able to.
About a year and a half into our two years there, we recognized that as wonderful as our life in Walla Walla was, it just wasn't “fixing” the cracks we felt. What to do? Have you ever faced-off with something major in your life that made you feel unhappy? A consuming career path or toxic job? A large and regretful purchase- maybe a home, car, or boat? A relationship that doesn’t fulfill you? Micro-bladed eyebrows with too high of an arch? This list could fill the Cloud, but you get my point. Some people choose to stick with the thing that is making them unhappy because the alternative can be difficult, daunting, stressful, or overwhelming. All the scary things that come with the possibility of making a big life change. It's made worse when you have a large family that depends on you.
Some people take the “rip off the bandaid” approach when they decide to make a huge life change, but as extreme as our decision was, we actually moved strategically through the process. We decided that the first order of business would be to lighten our load at home. This meant getting rid of the menagerie of animals we had quickly accumulated, because just like Noah’s Ark, we had ALL the animals at this point. My husband collected animals like a 3-year-old collects shells on a beach. Alpacas, chickens of every kind, multiple types of ducks, roosters, a dairy cow, a steer, and bees.
The way I saw it was that each type of animal represented a unique type of stress. One person might have looked into our yard and noticed a team of Indian Runner ducks busily bathing and preening themselves in the water, but all I saw was “patient requests.” Another person may have recognized a flock of Brahma chickens scratching around for bugs, but what I saw was “not enough work/life balance.” The stress of taking care of our farm animals was siphoning away the joy of having them in the first place. It was a hard decision to find new homes for everyone but once we did, BAM!! Instant relief. Like lifting a weighted blanket from our bodies, we felt light and free. We recognized that we were using hobbies to distract us from stress, when really what we wanted and would benefit from was a more simple life.
Now that our bustling farm inventory was whittled down to just the family dog and 3 kitty boys, we began to think about my husband taking a sabbatical. In truth, he probably needed one immediately after residency but, like a wet fish in buttered hands, time quickly slipped by. If step one of our plan to change everything was to simplify our home-life responsibilities then step two would definitely be to give my husband a much-needed break. Easy in theory but where would we go and what would we do?
To be continued…