- I moved my family to Puerto Rico for my job — we were excited about the warm weather and beaches.
- Once we moved, we struggled to adjust and we felt a lot of loneliness being far from family.
- We went back to Pennsylvania after a year. I wish we’d thought about the move more before doing it.
In 2015, the opportunity to move from Pennsylvania to Puerto Rico presented itself by way of a job offer with a med-tech company.
I’d lived there when I was younger and my wife at the time and two younger daughters were excited to move somewhere new. We fell in love with the idea of living on an island, having warm weather year-round, and being close to the beach.
So, I took the job and moved the first week of April. In June, my daughters finished their school year and the rest of my family joined me on the island.
My company hired movers to pack and ship our belongings and my then-wife’s vehicle. We were put up in a hotel since our belongings would take several weeks to arrive.
I could feel the tension in the family begin to build up in our new home
Although the hotel was spacious, it was nothing like the home we had just left in Pennsylvania.
My then-wife’s car hadn’t arrived yet and there was nothing within walking distance so my family stayed in the hotel until I came “home” from work.
Toward the end of July, our belongings arrived to our rental home in a gated community in Cataño, but the car was still on the way.
Until it arrived, we had to share my vehicle. She was used to doing all her errands during the day, and now she had to wait for me to get home. This caused a lot of tension and arguments.
Then, two days after we moved into our new house, I turned on the faucet in the kitchen and no water came out. I asked my neighbor if he knew of any issues — he told me the island was experiencing its worst drought in decades, and water was being rationed.
Each week, we now had to make sure to store enough water to cook and bathe once it was turned off. We’d never experienced something like this before and struggled to adjust.
The move also put a strain on our social lives and really impacted my youngest daughter
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We enrolled my youngest daughter in an online high-school program since she didn’t speak Spanish, Puerto Rico’s primary language.
However, the physical isolation and having to do schoolwork independently affected her grades and social life, driving her to tears on several occasions. She was close to her older sister, but she was flying back to the mainland to start college soon.
Really, living in Puerto Rico was a lonely experience for all of us.
We used to have family a short drive away and even some we could visit after a few hours of driving. Now, our nearest family members were at least a four-hour flight away.
Although I made connections at work with my colleagues and employees, they didn’t extend outside of work. All my close friends were back on the US mainland.
We also didn’t have much of a social life. During the weekends, I tried to fight off the loneliness and lack of social connection by exploring different parts of the island, but it was short-lived. Once Monday came, I was off to work again.
After about a year of stress and tension, we returned to the States
We lasted in Puerto Rico for about a year until my family and our belongings headed back to Pennsylvania. I stayed on the island by myself for four months until I could find a new job.
Although we enjoyed our proximity to the beach and mountains and the island’s warm weather, I feel like we didn’t think the whole move through. We didn’t spend enough time considering the impact that such a significant shift could have in our lives.
We undermined how important community was and how difficult it could be to adapt to a new place — especially one I’m not sure we researched enough.
If I had to do it all over again, I would weigh the pros and cons of such a move, research current events in our destination, and then make an informed decision rather than an emotional one.
