3 Reasons Why Leaving the Place You Were Born and Starting Over Could be the Best Thing You Ever Did

I promise your horizons expand.

Photo by Jordan Wozniak on Unsplash

Since I was 15 years old, I wanted to leave Lansdale, Pennsylvania, the working-class town that fate chose for me to born in. It took me over 25 years to leave for good. When I made that decision, the journey called life only got better.

If you do the same, it can only get better for you.

Here’s why.

1. You learn other people’s perspectives.

When we live in one place our whole lives, we tend to only see from that vantage point. We tend to forget that a whole world exists beyond our little corners. I know being born in the North shaped a view of the South that was biased into my adulthood. I didn’t realize until I moved here how biased I was.

Those biases were based on television and film stereotypes I was bombarded with throughout my childhood. I rarely had contact with a southerner in my day-to-day life, so I had no way of knowing how diverse the South can actually be until I moved here.

Before that, I traveled here many times. When I took a southern solo road trip in 2015, I kept in mind that I am a brown woman who isn’t Christian roaming around. Of course, my fear didn’t stop me. The immutable truth about fear is, you have to face it to overcome it.

Seeing how kind people were to me on that trip, subsequent trips, and when I moved here moved me beyond focusing on any fear.

The way to do that is to move past your own narrative, your little nook, and to venture into someone else’s.

2. You may discover some deeper truths about yourself.

On one of many jaunts to Asheville, North Carolina, I saw living examples of who I used to be at different points in my life. Hanging out in a bar having a drink, I sat in the middle of two people I realized were different versions of me at separate junctures in my life.

The woman on my left was just sad and perfectly content to be sad. I’m a friendly person, so I tried talking to her. She oozed sadness, and, as the conversation progressed, I realized nothing I said was going to move her to be less…