I sat with this one for a long time before deciding to write it. If you are thinking about dropping your kid off at college, becoming an empty nester, starting completely over somewhere new and alone, or fantasizing about just driving into the sunset and starting over, this one is for you. Fair warning. It is a lot.

I drove from Texas to Oregon with two small dogs, a teenager, and a business to run along the way. Five days, five states, one nightmare hotel in New Mexico, one dog fright fest, and one smelly situtation. This is the honest unfiltered story of what a cross-country move actually looks like when you are starting completely over as an entrepreneur.

What does the final stretch before a cross country move actually look like when you are still running a business, still parenting, still showing up for the people and places you are about to leave behind? Eighteen days out, here is an honest look at the adulting logistics that nobody warns you about, the unexpected moments that catch you off guard, and what it actually takes to keep moving forward.

Twenty nine days. Four weeks. I pulled up the Pod website and it said your pod is coming in 24 days and I genuinely wanted to throw up. Like horror movie projectile vomit. This is the final month. The graduation. The goodbye hugs in see through nightgowns. The Gravity Falls themed road trip nobody asked for. And the CEO babe with a ruler who refuses to let any of it derail the business.

Five weekends left. Last week of school. Two weeks to my final nonprofit fundraiser. Six podcast episodes a week. A cross country move counting down in real time. And somewhere in the middle of all of that I found out my one person on the west coast is getting deployed right before I arrive. We officially reached the week I cried.

I had a hellish week. A client threw every red flag at once. My furniture will not be arriving when I do. My favorite llama mug is gone. The couch nearly took out my back. A project pivoted. And my twelve year old flat sheet finally gave out while I was standing there holding it at midnight. You know what I did? I laughed. Here is the full story.

I went looking for someone who had done this before me. Someone who had navigated a massive fresh start while running a business, being a solo parent, becoming an empty nester, and restructuring their entire identity all at once. Nobody had. So I am pioneering it myself and apparently you are coming with me whether you signed up for that or not.

My mom said my life was like a car on cinder blocks. She called back to make sure she had not hurt my feelings. She had not. She was right. This is the story of how one zoom call, one full ride scholarship, and one very honest friend changed absolutely everything.