Jacqueline Mendelsohn
- After 20 years in Washington, DC, we decided to move back to my hometown in the suburbs of New York.The pandemic made me realize that I wanted to raise my children closer to our extended family.Now, we've built a strong community and even built the confidence to have another child.
I spent two decades building a life in Washington, DC. I went to school there, met my husband, and eventually settled in the area with our blended family.
When we bought a home in Kenwood, a nearby neighborhood in the Maryland suburbs that felt like a Norman Rockwell painting brought to life, we thought we'd be there forever.
Then, the coronavirus pandemic hit. The quiet of those months made the ache of distance sharper: birthdays on Zoom, grandparents waving through screens, cousins growing taller without us there to notice. We wanted our kids to have real-life relationships with their family.
That desire only sharpened over time, and by 2023 — with one stepkid in college and the other having graduated from high school — the timing finally felt right.
We packed up and moved north with our toddler and preschooler to the suburbs of New York, where most of my family lives within a 10-mile radius.
I never thought I'd head back to my hometown, but doing so ended up reshaping my kids' childhoods — as well as my own sense of home.
We traded traffic for a small, walkable town — and got our weekends back
Jacqueline Mendelsohn
Back in the DC area, a lot of our "free time" was often lost to driving between playdates, activities, and errands across Montgomery County and the city.
My town in New York, on the other hand, holds everything within a square mile: school, temple, friends, extracurriculars, and even the beach. Instead of white-knuckling through daily traffic, we now walk or bike to the same elementary school I attended.
Now, our weekends are actually for rest and fun. We walk into town for breakfast, browse the farmers market, head to our local yacht club for a swim, and head to the park to climb the oversize boulders I used to scale as a kid.
We started a fresh chapter rooted in shared values
Leaving the DC area meant saying goodbye to steady friendships, many of which had been built around the rhythms of my 20s and 30s.
Those connections mattered, but as life shifted — marriage, a blended family, and now younger kids — I realized I'd become a different version of myself.
Here in New York, it's been refreshing to start anew. In a community where so many families moved after the pandemic, there's a shared openness that makes it easy to connect with new people.
My husband and I go out regularly with other couples, I've joined a book club, and my best friend here feels like someone I've known forever. Our kids mesh as effortlessly as we do.
We know the local shopkeepers, I've become active in the PTA, and on Fridays, we bike with neighbors to family Shabbat at our temple.
Our relationships feel broader, warmer, and more sincere than we ever imagined possible.
Family is now woven into the fabric of our daily life
The biggest shift has been how seamlessly family has folded into our everyday lives.
My mom's chocolate shop is just a block from school, so we stop in on the walk home. My dad and stepmom will swing by with bagels in the mornings, and my sister and I wrangle our five kids into frequent playdates.
We've also been able to host regular Sunday dinners — a beloved tradition from my own childhood. I love sharing this with my kids and helping them build real relationships with their cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents.
Our support system even gave us the confidence to expand our family in a way we never would have in DC: We had a third child in 2024.
With family always around, "one more" suddenly felt not just possible, but joyful.
Moving back gave us more than nostalgia — it gave us a future
Jacqueline Mendelsohn
Leaving our old neighborhood wasn't easy. We had close friends, a community we loved, and routines that worked. During our first few months, we wondered if we'd traded stability for nostalgia.
With time, though, we realized that being here makes it easy to follow our biggest values: community, connection, and family.
Moving here wasn't simply about returning home — it was about redefining what home means for our children's future. I learned that sometimes, the most transformative moves aren't about starting over, but about returning to what matters most.
