My parents raised my brother, two sisters, and me to be adventurers. To seize the day and explore the planet, just as they did in their younger years. I’ve lived away from them for 15 years, moving from place to place. Although I’ve had fun, I do feel guilty about it now that my parents are getting older.
I spent my childhood and teenage years on the Gold Coast in Australia. It was a wonderful place to grow up, with beautiful beaches and sunshine year-round, but I felt it also lacked substance and culture.
And so, at 25, I decided to take off overseas to Canada. I’d lived away from home on and off since I was 17, but I’d always stayed relatively close to my parents up until that point. They encouraged me to go, to spread my wings and follow my dreams.
I thought I’d only be away for six months
What was meant to be a six-month working holiday in Canada turned into a yearlong adventure, followed by an epic backpacking trip around South and Central America. From there, my partner and I moved to London for a year, traveling through Europe and Africa before finally heading home.
When we returned to Australia in 2014, I didn’t want to go back to the same old routine on the Gold Coast. As much as I had missed my parents and would have liked to live close to them, I thought that if I returned to the same neighborhood I grew up in, I’d sink into a depression pretty quickly.
My partner and I ended up settling in Melbourne, Victoria. Melbourne is a thriving cosmopolitan city, and we loved living there those first few years. Our first two kids were born there, and we met some great people who became lifelong friends.
Mom and Dad would fly down to visit regularly, and even though they missed me, they could see how genuinely happy I was living there.
In 2021, after eight years in Melbourne, my husband asked if I wanted to turn over a new leaf and relocate to Bright in regional Victoria, where most of his family is based. I’ve always been a nomad, so I jumped at the chance for a fresh start.
I remember calling my parents and telling them that I was moving to Bright. They sounded surprised because the town has a population of less than 3,000 people, and I’ve never been a small-town kind of girl.
“Don’t worry, guys,” I told them. “It’s just for 12 months, then we’ll be moving back to the Gold Coast so that the grandkids can live closer to you.”
That was three and a half years ago.
I love our life in Bright but wish we lived closer to my family sometimes
I feel like the longer we spend in Bright, the harder it’s going to be to move on. Our kids are settled, we’ve made enduring friends, and my husband’s business is thriving. But while we love it here, most days, I also feel a tremendous amount of guilt about the situation because I feel like I haven’t kept my word.
I chat with my parents multiple times a week, and they come and visit twice a year, but they’ve missed out on a lot of special milestones — especially with our youngest daughter, who was born after we moved to Bright.
My husband keeps telling me that you have to live your life on your own terms, but I worry that one day I will regret not living closer to my folks, who are now 80 and 76. Time is something you can’t reverse; once the moment has passed, there is no going back.
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