How it Started
It was the last week of February 2020. My 25-year-old daughter hopped on a plane headed for New York City with all of her belongings packed into two suitcases. Living in NYC was her dream for as long as I can remember.
Having grown up in San Diego, many wondered why Alex would leave the wonderful weather and relaxed Southern California vibe. But she craved the excitement and energy of the Big Apple. So she moved across the country with dreams of building a new life.
Ten days into her brand new job in the heart of Manhattan, her company sent her home with a laptop for what everyone thought would be a few days of working from home.
How it Went
Instead, the city went into lockdown.
Alex stayed with her only friend in the city for the first two weeks, who soon after left to stay with family. Then for the next three months, she sublet a room with roommates in a three-bedroom apartment. Her roommates also left early in the lockdown to stay with family, leaving very few cleaning supplies and only one roll of toilet paper.
She was alone in the most populated city in the country throughout the shutdown, supply shortages, and protests. The only people she spoke to face-to-face were the clerks at Trader Joes for sixty days during the shutdown.
And yet, she located and moved into a studio apartment in June, of 2020, while learning a new job and negotiating an unknown virus.
How it’s Going
And now, three years later, she lives in a studio apartment of her own working full time but with a hybrid schedule.
When I tell this story, people comment about how terrified I must have been. I was worried, yes. Who wouldn’t be?
But I knew if anyone could succeed through uncertain times, it would be my daughter.
How did I know this? Well, it’s not because we were perfect parents. Or that she had an amazing GPA in college. Or even that she had unlimited funds.
What she had, and still has, is resilience, determination, agility, and a belief in her own ability to find a way.
One thing we did, however, as parents is instill a sense of independence and autonomy.
We always trusted her to find her own path, even when we may have chosen a different one. I believe it is that trust, combined with her tenacity, that gave her the confidence to make her way through tremendous obstacles to become the young lady she is today, even if she is 3,000 miles away.
