making drastic changes in life

[OakLeaf]

Somewhat related: Children's social, academic functioning is impeded when their families move more often


I remember anti-Semitism in the neighborhood we lived in when I was in middle school, in the San Francisco bay area. And very frank racism in the Chicago suburb where I went to grade school. While there are definitely parts of the country where it's more acceptable to say certain things out loud in the 21st century (not necessarily where you'd think, either - I see more Confederate flags in Ohio than I do farther south), I don't think anywhere that isn't completely homogeneous is really safe from microaggressions.

And, my baby sister, who's if anything to the left of me politically, as well as needing much more of a cultural scene than I do - she loves Dallas. Lived there for a while, moved away, realized Dallas was where she wanted to be, came back, bought a house and established her business there. Unlike me, she isn't constitutionally moving-averse - she's lived in other English speaking countries and in several parts of the USA (as an adult) for long stretches, and traveled all over the world.

My dad spent most of his adult life running away from stuff. My mom uses a combination of denial and resilience to tell herself she's content wherever she is. [I haven't watched the second season of _Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt_ yet, but if you watched the first season, it really gave me an understanding of how so many people could find my mom charming, where all I could see was an incredible solipsism.] The combination has given me both the dysfunctional aversion to moving, and the commitment to making an honest assessment of what I like and don't like about something or somewhere before either embracing or discarding it.