Why We Left Crosslake… and Why We Came Back

If you read my last blog, then you already know… moving to Crosslake the first time felt like one giant leap into the unknown.

And leaving it?

At the time… honestly felt like the right decision too.

Because when we moved back “home,” it made sense.

And when I say home… I mean our original home.

The place we grew up. The place we loved. The place where our roots ran deep.

We weren’t running from some terrible hometown story.

Quite the opposite.

We truly loved where we were from.

We loved the people. Our families. Our lifelong friendships. The comfort of familiar roads, familiar faces, and the kind of small-town life where you really do know almost everyone.

It was one of those places where your history lives on every corner… and there’s something incredibly special about that.

So when we moved back, it wasn’t some sad fallback plan.

In many ways… it felt like returning to something beautiful.

We went back to what we knew. What was comfortable. What felt safe when the rest of the world felt so uncertain.

Steve stayed with the same job. I went back to mine. Linkin went back to the school where he had gone to preschool. We still had our house. Our people were there. Our routines were there.

And after everything that 2020 had thrown at us… familiar felt really, really good.

For a while, life kind of slipped right back into place.

Or at least… it looked like it did.

From the outside, everything was normal again.

And honestly?

There was so much to love about being back.

Because home will always be home.

But here’s the thing no one really talks about…

Sometimes you can deeply love where you came from… and still realize another place has somehow captured a different part of your heart too.

That was the surprising part.

Because we weren’t expecting Crosslake to become that for us.

We came from a place we genuinely loved. A smaller community. A place filled with good people, strong roots, and so many memories.

So the fact that Crosslake somehow became more than just a place we once tried…

That was a really big deal.

Because while we had gone back home…

Part of us had left our hearts in Crosslake.

At first, we didn’t fully admit it.

We’d just head up on weekends. You know… “just because.” Just to get away. Just for fun. 

Except… it started becoming very obvious that it wasn’t just for fun.

Crosslake had become something more to us.

It wasn’t just a place we had lived. And it definitely wasn’t just a fun summer lake town anymore.

It felt like us. It felt like our family.

So every weekend we could, we’d go back.

And every time we did… leaving got a little harder.

There was just something about it.

Something that’s honestly hard to explain unless you’ve felt it.

Crosslake has this weird magic to it.

And what made it even more incredible?

It wasn’t replacing where we came from… it was somehow adding to it.

Because we already knew what loving a small-town community felt like.

We had that.

So for another place to come into our lives and make us feel that again?

That says everything.

It’s in the air. In the water. In the people. In the small businesses. In the random conversations. In the way community events somehow always seem to happen exactly when your family needs them.

It’s beautiful, obviously. Like… ridiculously beautiful.

But it was more than that.

It was the feeling.

The feeling of safety. The feeling of community. The feeling that family life mattered there.

It felt like one of those rare places where people genuinely show up. For their town. For small businesses. For each other.

The kind of place where maybe you don’t know everyone… …but somehow you still kind of do. 😂

And for our family, that started to matter more than we realized.

Back home, life was truly good.

But in Crosslake?

Life felt fuller in a different way.

It felt like possibility.

And somewhere in the middle of balancing my full-time job again, mom life, and doing more and more side marketing work for other businesses…

I started realizing something else.

I wanted more.

Not because what we had wasn’t enough.

But because I could feel something growing.

I was pouring so much energy into marketing and creative work on the side that eventually I started thinking…

“Maybe I need an office.”

A simple office. A little creative space. Somewhere to build something of my own.

So naturally…

I started looking.

And because apparently Crosslake had already fully sunk its claws into me…

That search led me right back there too.

And what started as “maybe I’ll rent a small office…”

…eventually turned into me finding a building in Crosslake that I absolutely fell head over heels in love with.

A building that, looking back now, truly changed the entire direction of my life.

But that story?

Ohhhh… that deserves its own blog. 😂

Because today is really about this:

Crosslake called us back.

Not because home wasn’t wonderful. Not because we stopped loving where we came from. And definitely not because the people there meant any less.

But because sometimes… you can love where you started… and still discover another place that feels deeply, unexpectedly right too.

Crosslake became that place for us.

A place that somehow gave us:

Beauty

Opportunity

Community

Family memories

Small-town charm

Big dreams

It gave us lake days… but it also gave us belonging.

And once we realized weekend visits weren’t enough anymore…

Well…

You can probably guess what happened next.

 

We came back.

And this time?

It wasn’t just a move.

It was the beginning of everything.

Coming Next:

How One Building in Crosslake Changed My Entire Life

Because what started as looking for an office… turned into something I never saw coming.

Stay tuned....