Coming Home to New Hampshire

From the lake to the sea: how we found our way back home.

Our Family at Wagon Hill in Durham Last Fall | 📸 Caitlin Page Photography

When we travel around the world and people ask where we’re from, I often say, “North of Boston.” It’s true…but it always feels a little like a betrayal. I say it because most people haven’t heard of New Hampshire. And that’s okay. We like to keep it small.

But New Hampshire is my home in every possible sense of the word.

About a year after Logan was born, we moved to Massachusetts for twelve years. Mack’s family business is there, and for a while, we lived in the town where he grew up. Though, to be fair, he often says he grew up in New Hampshire too—at the lake. (Us New Hampshire natives know that Summer People are always Summer People… but I let him have that one.)

Here’s the honest part that I hope won’t offend anyone: I hated living in Massachusetts. We worked hard to create a home we loved, but without our people, it was never going to feel like it truly fit. Aside from a few friends and neighbors, there’s nothing I miss. It’s remarkable how different the culture can be just a hundred miles away.

Of course, my reasons are personal and specific to me. My maternal family—close, extended, and otherwise—has lived in New Hampshire for generations. The kids often joke that my ancestors were hobbits who crawled out of a cozy hole in England or Ireland, crossed the ocean, and found a new one in the Granite State that they never left. These roots run deep. And even now, living on the Seacoast, I’m the one who lives the furthest from everyone else—about thirty miles. When we lived in Massachusetts, it felt like another country.

My closest friends are here, too. I went to elementary school with two of my closest friends, who are married to two of Mack’s closest friends from the lake. We’re a tight-knit group with history that can’t be recreated.

To say I was homesick in Massachusetts is an understatement. We came back to New Hampshire every chance we got—summers, school vacations, long weekends at the lake. It felt like living two lives: one where we were forcing a square peg into a round hole, and another where we could just breathe. But those moments passed too quickly, and Monday always came.

Even the kids never fully settled or fit in down there. It wasn’t one big thing—it was a thousand little differences in rhythm, values, and pace. We moved slower. Our priorities leaned toward the quiet, and quiet was hard to find where we lived—everything you did, you were sharing with a lot more people, and you were always in a competition.

The cracks turned into chasms during the Covid lockdown. The moment it became clear that the world had changed, our instinct was to pack up the kids and head for the lake. We lived there for six months straight, while Mack commuted as much as he could. For the following school year, the kids went 100% virtual. And by the end of it, they told us they never wanted to go back.

That was the turning point.

In 2021, we started building a new life—one that led us to move to the Seacoast of New Hampshire, where we had both gone to college. It’s the perfect middle ground. Mack can still commute to Massachusetts when he needs to, and we’re close to family and longtime friends (some of whom are now literally our neighbors). Stepping outside and smelling the sea air (not necessarily low tide—but you know what I mean) feels like a dream.

The kids now attend an independent school that we love, and we’ve found a community that feels like it was waiting for us all along. The difference in them has been striking: they’ve come alive academically, socially, and even athletically. It’s like something unlocked in them once we came home.

We found our people. We found our place.

And that’s the thing about home—it’s not just throw pillows and paint colors. It’s who you share it with.