I don't think I can fully express the thankfulness I have in my heart for all that is being established in our lives now that we live in Miami, while also reconciling with the grief I feel about our move from NYC. I keep wondering how long it will be until I stop looking back with this lump in my throat and this ache in my chest? How long until I stop feeling sad when I see a flash of that NYC skyline in a movie or TV show? And how can I share an update to cover the YEAR LONG gap since my last post in one simple blog post? I don’t think I can.
Instead I think I will try to write a series of posts to update you to this point. I may actually need to go back to over a year ago to better set the stage. In my last post I shared that our life looked nothing like what I would have expected at the start of 2020… so maybe I should start with what I did expect at that time.
Last year started with a season of excitement and hope… with dreams and prayers.
During Lucie’s winter break, just before Covid was classified as a pandemic, we flew to Florida to escape the colder days of the NYC winter. During that week, Rob gave a demo to a school down here to test out if there might be interest in something like Huddle Up NYC in Miami. The school was incredibly impressed and wanted to have Rob organize a group to start in March, but that’s not something we were exactly ready for. We went back to NYC with a purposeful goal of establishing a Huddle Up Miami, and to make plans for the first group to start in September. We envisioned continuing to grow and solidify Huddle Up NYC, while getting a very small start going in Miami while still living in New York. We began dreaming of what it would look like to then swap in two years or so, and continue managing NYC from Miami while solidifying the presence of the business down here.
Rewinding a bit further… in July 2019, I was having a tough transition going back to work after my parental leave ended. Things just felt *different* this time around. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to work in the financial industry any more. The culture within my group was changing, a lot of coworkers were moving on as a result. In February of 2020, as we began to set these exciting goals for Huddle Up, we set one for me too. We looked at our finances, mades some ultra conservative guesses on Huddle Up’s possible growth, and set a dream end date to my time at my job. We called it “Operation Drexit”. Get it? Super creative, lol…
One month later, with the pandemic causing all things Huddle Up to come to a screeching halt, we watched those conservative guesses go out the window, and Operation Drexit seemed to vanish into thin air.
So much was unknown at that point, there were layoffs and hiring freezes everywhere. As I shared in this post when we were still living in NYC, like most of us, I was working remotely and on zoom calls from morning to evening. Rob was unable to coach and became the hands on therapist for Felicity and Lucie as they both transitioned to virtual therapy, while also navigating remote learning for Lucie who was wrapping up Kindergarten.
Everything was virtual. FaceTimes, Zoom calls, Google MeetUps, Church online, friend hangs online. Then, Second Avenue started to look like the photos of the Great Depression from my old History Text Books, with restaurants and stores that had been a part of our community getting boarded up and closing. Padlocks on playgrounds. It was so sad to see it all change so quickly. At the end of May, Rob looked at me and said, maybe instead of moving to FL in two years like were initially dreaming, we should think about a move this summer when our lease is up. That meant July 2020. Less than two months away. I knew in my heart of heart that he was probably right, but I wanted to resist. Within days, every objection I raised was removed and we felt sure that it was the right decision.
At that point only our family and closest friends knew that we were planning to move. I wasn’t sure if there would be a position for me to transfer to at my company so I started putting some feelers our there and networking in NYC and Miami. As July approached, we just shared with those we worked with that we weren’t sure when we’d be coming back. I began to feel bad that I was afraid to just be fully open about the decision and direction that we knew was right for our family so by August I had a frank conversation with my boss and thankfully he was supportive. I was able to continue working remotely supporting the clients I loved. We were living at Rob’s parents, starting to think about what it would look like to buy a house, and of course, I was still networking.
So, I’ll stop there for now… I shared a lot in this update from last summer, which you can check out if you’d like. We truly loved the life we had in NYC. We felt God leading us to leave last summer and when we got to Miami a lot of things fell in place for the girls that helps me know it was exactly how God wanted it. I have SO much more to share about Lucie, Rob, and Felicity before coming full circle back to my updates. I do feel whiplash from the move. Some days I miss NYC so so much. The move wasn’t what “my plans” were, at least not the timing… and some days my heart is still catching up.
All our love,
Los Hicksons
