First Visit Back, After Having Left Our Life in LA

Hello from the air, flying Toronto to Los Angeles!

Visiting LA, where we lived for 3 beautiful years, brings on such strong mixed feelings.

We had some of the most beautiful days of our lives as a family in the South Bay of LA. We truly experienced constant adventure. Not only the best kind - hiking, oceanside, visiting new exciting places all the time - but also becoming a family of four, navigating illness after illness (including my intense mold illness), and building a new life in a new place.

As this trip approached, I felt so much anxiety. Anxiety usually comes from somewhere, and if you can slow yourself and listen, you might just figure out where.

For me, a big contributor is grief. While my body likely remembered some of the challenge it went through health wise (with dysautonomia episodes, several emergency visits and fear), I also experienced deep, deep grief when we decided to say goodbye, and to move back to Canada.

That grief is not resolved. There are so many reasons that we will not move back at the moment, although there have been consecutive months that I’ve craved doing so. Until we landed upon a new potential destination for the future, and more on that later.

The election of 2024 certainly changed the tone. At the beginning of the administration change, I was very concerned about climate protections. Then we started to see racism flare and spread.  On top of politics, there then were the wildfires (particularly the palisades fires).  Also, Hugo, my eldest son, was approaching his kindergarten year:

We would walk and drive around the many elementary schools in our neighbourhood, quite dreading the day we’d be sending our kids to schools with high metal fences and frequent lockdowns. Now, with schools having faced the shootings they have, I certainly pose no blame for that insulation. But it felt so jarring coming from a place with big brick schools blending into their safe residential neighbourhoods. I know this lack of safety in schools is felt by all parents, even those having been born and raised in the US. And mothers of sane mind everywhere wish the statistics were different.

Despite these conflicts to continuing life in LA, we were surrounded by some of the most wonderful people we had ever met in our lives. An immersion into nature we may never feel again. 365 days a year, we were able to be running on treelined paths as a family, digging in the sand at the beach, playing at the playground… it was wonderful.

Our neighbourhood was such a strong community. Residents were always looking out for all the kids on the street, holding potlucks, happy hours and street parties. Their values aligned with ours. I have never experienced warmth, extroversion and overall joy as I witnessed and felt in this community. The kids were playing in the street, on our lawn, every single day. People came and went from everyone’s houses. In Canada, people are generally more withdrawn. While it is generally speaking, it is obvious when you’ve lived in both places.

My clients. My backyard training space. Hummingbirds, butterflies and fruit trees. The mornings, evenings and middays I spent back there under palm trees and pink, ocean-dewy skies getting to know these incredible people and helping to make their bodies strong. The relationships I built in that yard were bar none the hardest thing to leave. While I am still in contact with every one of them, either still working together or in friendship, I surprised myself in how much deep sadness I felt when we made the choice to leave. I grieve that space and the memories it holds like you wouldn’t believe.

I had done it before, a few years earlier, when we originally moved there from Toronto. But that was during Covid, when disconnection had become the norm and we were really stuck in our houses with nowhere to go. Truthfully, while I missed family and friends dearly, I never really missed Toronto too much while we were away. I love it, in a way, but now I know I didn’t miss it.

That said, moving back to Toronto in 2025 helped me heal. My schedule was a bit lighter, we moved out of the property that likely contributed to my illness (this property was also remediated). I reconnected with my Ontario clients whom I hadn’t seen in a while. We were near our foundational family and friends, and we enjoyed a summer when everything felt warm, stable and familiar.

But as the air chilled and the wind picked up, and then as we spent the following 7 months mostly indoors and experiencing dark days - my soul was really crying out for more. More light, more colour, more adventure. Not just for me, but for our lives together as a family. The kids were happy as clams in their snowsuits and snowstorms, running around the house and settling for the mall on weekends. But I had and have a very different experience, and also a different life expectation for the longterm.

So I am visiting LA, not to escape Ontario weather because it has warmed and brightened significantly now in May. But to see some of my favourite people, to go to my favourite places. The botanical gardens, the cliffs of Palos verdes, Manhattan beach and even just… my favourite markets and grocery stores for the healthful foods I miss so much.

Dimensions of swirling emotions inside me as we bumble through the turbulence on the flight map. A recap post is to come when I come back home (to Toronto) next week, just in time for Hugo’s 6th birthday.