On Changes, Part III

Written by Rebecca Peck · 11 minute read

I haven’t put this on the blog yet. We’ve been so busy making all this happen. About all I did was update the location line. But since it’s been a few months and things are finally settling down, I can update the blog as well.

After (for me) twenty four years in Alabama, in July, we moved to Fort Collins, Colorado.

This was probably one of the hardest decisions we’ve ever made. Leaving a place you’ve lived for decades is never a straightforward choice.

Thinking About Safety

My transition wasn’t the sole reason we moved. We were also extremely frustrated with Madison City Schools and scared for some of the things our child was dealing with, tired of the weather (both the heat and tornadoes), tired of the growth that made the city feel nothing like the funky geek town we moved to in the mid 2000s, tired of the noise, and feeling increasingly culturally out of place. The list goes on.

But … it was a reason.

The concept of safety is a complicated thing as there are multiple axes on which to look at it. Physically, socially, culturally, legislatively are some ways. Socially we were completely fine. We have an awesome group of friends who are completely supportive. It seriously speaks to the absolute goodness of so many of our friends that so many people were just 100% supportive. But legislatively and culturally? 😬

And being threatened with violence in my own front yard - and MPD’s completely expected response of being useless and doing nothing - was, for me, one of the big breaking points. Another was seeing what happened at the Space and Rocket Center in March of 2024. Social safety simply cannot overcome a lack of physical, cultural and legislative safety.

Right now, here, in America, there is a refugee crisis. Not at the southern border, in every single red state where families just like mine are having to make terrible, painful and expensive choices that weigh our history and social integration against existential threats to our lives. I never in my life expected to feel like a displaced person in my own country. It’s something we’ve talked about a lot. While ultimately our move is by choice, and there are definitely other things at play, choices are not made in a vacuum. And at a certain point, we’re angry that some of those choices were made for us largely by people who don’t even know us.

Alabama is a state that has made resisting change a point of pride for decades. When we say our family is not safe here, this is what we’re talking about. This is not theoretical, and it’s not overreacting. It’s things we have literally watched happen to others already. Even though almost everyone in our lives have been amazingly supportive, all it might take is one person we might not even know to make our lives a living hell.

I know this will be met with some sadness from many of our friends. Believe me we feel it keenly too. We will miss all of you so much. We’ll be back to visit, and Colorado is gorgeous and we hope you will come to visit us as well (we’re about an hour from Rocky Mountain National Park!). But we are also super excited about what the future holds for us in our next adventure as a family.

For me, when I moved to Alabama in 2000, everything I owned fit in a Ford Focus hatchback. When my wife moved in 2007, everything fit in my pickup truck and her car. But on July 16th, 2024, we set off on three day drive across six states and leaving 24 years of history behind. And while there are so many people I miss and low key wish I could have taken with me, I can’t really say I was sad to see Alabama (the state) in my rear view mirror.

Planning It Out

We had been discussing moving for the previous two years and had been very quietly looking in Maryland, in the areas outside Washington DC. Especially after I joined Aledade in 2022 and was no longer tied to a single place, we really began to think hard about whether we wanted to stay in Huntsville.

Then, we decided to vacation in Colorado in June of 2023.

For us, this discussion about moving to Colorado began before we even left the state. Without even realizing it at first, we were already “window shopping” towns while we were still out there because we kinda just fell head over heels in love with the state almost immediately.

So we looked at a map of Colorado and put some constraints on looking at options: not in the mountains (too much snow and too expensive), not in Denver (too big), good schools, in a safe and liberal area, and with a population about like what Huntsville was when we moved there in 2005 (because Huntsville is getting too big). Of the choices, Fort Collins came kinda naturally to the top, so we planned a visit in October of 2023 just to see what it was like.

And we absolutely loved it. About a decade ago I was in Denver for a conference and had an extra afternoon. I drove up to Fort Collins to visit the New Belgium brewery, but otherwise didn’t get to see much of the town. I was expecting something kinda like Huntsville around when we moved here, but it was actually like a bigger Auburn! Everyone we talked to was so friendly, we loved the town and we loved the vibe.

We went back again in January basically to figure out if we could handle a Colorado winter, and had the “fortune” of being there when it was so cold that we were repeatedly told that “this is very unusual even for us.” Apparently there is a point, even in Colorado, where they cancel school because it’s too cold. And while unpleasant, it was not intolerable. I wouldn’t want to be out in it all day, but just going about our daily lives, it was totally doable.

We also met with a realtor and, after returning to Huntsville, started preparing our Alabama home for sale. This was a long process that took months. We had been in that house since 2012. Years of accumulated cruft has been dealt with, projects finished out, repairs done, hard decisions made, and extensive cleanup completed to finally get the house ready. And Memorial Day weekend, we sprinted through the last few items on our list. Suddenly, a Trello board that had tons of cards on it in January of 2024 was reduced to just a handful … and the last one was “List House”.

Making The Move

While listing the house we had been looking at houses in Fort Collins since we met with our realtor in January. In mid June, we found a house that we really liked. We put in an offer and, thankfully, it was accepted. And so, we began to plan the biggest move of our lives. As the boxes piled up, the days ticked down, and the goodbyes started to happen, it really began to sink in that we were actually about to do this for real.

July 15, 2024 was the big day. The moving van was there all day but at the end of the day we were standing in an empty house and watching all of our stuff except for what we were taking drive down the road.

This was the point where it hit me the hardest. I ended up having the hardest, ugliest cry in my adult life in an empty room. At least crying now usually makes me feel better instead of worse. The weight of everything just kinda finally hit that this was actually real and we were actually leaving “for good.”

I walked around the empty house and all I saw was ghosts and memories. What finally broke me was setting up an air mattress for my daughter in the same room she has been in since she was three months old.

And the following day … we hit the road. My wife in her car with our kiddo and four cats, and me in my truck towing a U-Haul. And for four days, we lived in hotels and out of our cars. We spent the first night in St. Louis and the second night in Salina, Kansas. The third night we spent in a hotel in Fort Collins. And the next day, we signed papers until our hands hurt but, finally, on July 19th, 2024, we became official residents of the state of Colorado.

Starting Again

So what is it like to start again?

There is just doing all the things that we just haven’t done in decades. Paperwork. Re-registering our cars. Getting new licenses (this was even more complicated for me, there will be another post about that later, though.) Finding doctors. Finding things. And … finding community.

There’s no way to quickly make up for what we left behind. You could never replace the people you leave behind. You can’t even hope to make up 19 years of social integration in a few months. But we have already found some awesome communities and met some really, really, really wonderful people.

When we all agreed that we wanted to do this in January, we all had our reasons. Everyone we’ve talked to has often straight up said we’re going to be happier. I know we’re going to be okay. I know this is the end of one chapter and the beginning of the next. I know we’re all, not just me, going to be better off for this.

This entire process has been, without a doubt, the most stressful and challenging thing we have ever navigated. More stressful than our wedding. More stressful than having our first kid. It is without a doubt something we are not keen on doing again, and there is simply no way we could have done it without relying on each other and having extensive and yet flexible plans.

It was hard. But now that we are on the other side of the thing that has dominated our lives for an entire year, and just in the two months since we’ve been here, I can already tell we’ve made the right move. Our new house is lovely and already feels like home, we’re meeting some amazing people, and there’s just a lot of joy and happiness. Some struggles too, but we’re working through those as well.

And yes, the sunsets over the Rockies are simply stunning, and we get to see it every night. ❤️