Photo credit: Quintin Sally
In 2020, my husband and I packed up our apartment in Los Angeles and drove to Colorado, where we’d both grown up. I’m a screenwriter, and my husband works at an augmented reality startup — both unpredictable, high-pressure jobs. LA had always made sense professionally, even when it stressed us out personally and financially.
Since moving to the West Coast in our early 20s, we had never been out of LA for more than a few weeks at a time, but with the rise of remote work, it felt like the right moment. We thought we’d be there for a year at most — long enough to do some hiking in the summer and skiing in the winter. It would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be close to family and the splendor of the Rocky Mountains for more than just a quick weekend or holiday trip.
But when I got pregnant, we started asking ourselves some big questions.
We started to wonder if we’d ever move back to LA
What would it be like to raise a child in LA? Could we keep up with the cost of housing, childcare, and healthcare? Given the tumult in the entertainment industry and the uncertainty of a tech startup, could we rely on steady work?
We crunched the numbers. We could do it, but we’d have to make some sacrifices. A small apartment. No margin for overspending. Our baby’s college fund or our retirement funds, but not both. And paying for daycare was out of the question, which meant one of us would have to quit our job to be a stay-at-home parent. Was the proximity worth it, and was the stress?
And the biggest question of all: When we thought about raising our family, what image came to mind?
Then, when we broke the news about my pregnancy to our respective parents, their unbridled joy confirmed what we had already been feeling. We wanted to raise our baby surrounded by that joy.
Staying in Denver was the right move for us
So we signed an 18-month lease for an apartment in Denver. The cost of living was still high, and both of our careers remained unpredictable. But we had something invaluable: support. Two sets of grandparents, both within driving distance.
When our son was born, they showed up with enchiladas and apple pie, with confident arms willing to rock the baby to sleep at four in the morning, with the tender blessings of someone we wholly trusted, saying, “Go lie down, I’ve got it.”
There were days I worried we’d taken a step back by not returning to LA. That we were pressing pause on our careers, especially for me as a screenwriter, with the industry so concentrated in California. But as the newborn haze began to lift, I started to see it differently.
In many creative fields, especially as a freelancer, there’s no HR department, no paid parental leave, no road map. A startup doesn’t offer much certainty, either. What we needed — more than a city, more than a scene — was a support system.
This isn’t a story of everything magically working out. Daycare in Denver can be prohibitively expensive, but we’ve figured out a childcare schedule that works for us and the grandparents so we can do our jobs. Work opportunities ebb and flow, and the hustle is much harder all these miles away. And truthfully, I miss the momentum of LA — the energy, the industry, the hunger.
But then I step outside and gaze in wonder at the mountains on the horizon. I see my baby’s tiny hand wrapped around my dad’s finger, and I feel it in my chest: this is the life we couldn’t afford in LA — not just financially but emotionally.
We get to raise our child knowing he will have a close relationship with his grandparents. We’re not stretched to the point of breaking. We haven’t had to choose between our work and our child. We get to be present. That kind of presence — that kind of joy — is worth everything.
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