CW: This post talks extensively about mental health and mentions pregnancy.

Three years ago, my husband and I sold our house in Maryland and headed to New York City. I had just been accepted to Columbia Business School for their Saturday Executive MBA program. I was newly leading the Mozilla Hubs team, having re-joined Mozilla after a brief stint at AWS. I thought that living in San Francisco would prepare me for the pace of being in a city. Zach and I adapted to crowds and noise, and I worked tirelessly for a year with no breaks as I struggled to balance a full time Director job with a growing team and full-time course loads designed to be completed on weekends and evenings.

The first year in NYC, I was also fighting a nasty battle with my mental health. A (very disengaged) psychiatrist in Maryland had diagnosed me with bipolar disorder and put me on lithium, an anti-depressant, and an anti-psychotic. (Reader, I do not have bipolar disorder.) This misdiagnosis and the subsequent over-medication made it even harder than it would have been to adapt to a new city, new role, and new course load. I felt like walking dead most of the time, unable to really connect with myself and understand who I was or what I was doing to my body.

I met some incredible people at Columbia that first year, but struggled to figure out how to navigate the world of business school networking. I don’t drink, and by the end of our 12 hour days (and facing an hour long subway commute back to Brooklyn) I was overstimulated and incapable of carrying on conversations as everyone else went to the Manhattanville bars. I loved them, but couldn’t figure out how to bring that love out of me and show up when I wanted to.

By the end of the first year, I had found a new psychiatrist who got me safely off the medication I had been put on and determined that I wasn’t bipolar, I was just under an enormous amount of stress and had reacted badly to the first antidepressant I had been put on. Coming off of those medications brought a new life back into me as my brain started to work again. I moved into an IC role after the lack of executive support for my growth as a team leader became too much for me to handle emotionally. At school, we moved from our core curriculum classes into electives. I formed close relationships with a few of my professors, who served as the professional mentors I had always wished that I had. My husband and I moved from Brooklyn to Astoria. I traveled to London for an exchange class at London Business School – and that’s where I found out I was pregnant.

My first trimester was debilitating. I made the decision to take a break from school after the exhaustion and stress of work sent my mental health into the realm of prenatal depression. I was physically ill for months, with a bone-deep exhaustion that I couldn’t shake no matter how much sleep I got. I struggled to wrap my head around my changing identity and relationship to my work, which had always been the source of my perception of value and motivation. I built an overpowered AI computer.

I had my son.

This is my last week in New York City. I finished my courses at Columbia in February, and have a lot of complicated feelings about it. It’s the most beautiful time of the year to be in Astoria, where cherry blossoms and magnolia trees are blooming pink and white throughout newly green streets. Out of the chaos of school, I’m noticing the beauty in this chaotic, loud, and infinite city more than ever. I’m aware of each time something is my ‘last’ – my last subway ride to my sister and brother-in-law’s apartment in midtown. My last Levain cookie. My last Pad Thai from Hero Thai. My last time in the office in Times Square.

It doesn’t feel like goodbye, though. When discussing our next move, my husband and I have had the mantra over the past year: “our next move, not the last move”. I am leaving NYC older, wiser, weaker in some ways, stronger in others, and happier than I came to it, largely because of our toddler, who brings joy and perspective in ways that I had lost sight of during my myopic Silicon Valley years. I feel, in a vague and celestial sense, that my older self returns to NYC. I don’t know when, but there is a quiet contentment in my bones that leaving for some much-needed rest and quiet is the right thing after the three busiest, most challenging, and most rewarding years of my life.

Every move has been the right one. I’m sure that this one is, too, but I feel like I’m leaving more behind than ever before.

I’ll be back soon.