19 Years Back Home

Pardon if I deviate this month from the typical Editor’s Page, where we usually preview the stories in each issue. Something else is on my mind that I’m more compelled to write about. This month, I’ll be celebrating my 19th year back home. I’ve been in Hawai‘i, Honolulu specifically, for 35 total years—16 years as a child/teen​ager, and now for almost two decades as an adult.

When I was in high school, like many kids in Hawai‘i, I was adamant about going away to college. The farther the better, I thought. I remember looking out at the ocean as a kid and feeling the distance, how far and separated I was from a more exciting life. I ended up more than 4,000 miles away in Evanston, Illinois. During my time in college studying journalism, I vowed not to go home after graduating. Peter Gabriel’s 1986 song “Big Time” spoke to me:

The place where I come from is a small town 

They think so small, they use small words 

But not me—I’m smarter than that, I worked it out 

I’ve been stretching my mouth 

To let those big words come right out 

I’ve had enough, I’m getting out 

To the city, the big, big city 

I cringe now at those lyrics, and my youthful attachment to them. I did end up living in big cities—Chicago, Los Angeles, New York—and smaller ones like Fort Worth, Jacksonville and Kansas City. At the time, there was a path in print journalism. You start out at small newspapers, then go to medium ones, then if you’re lucky, you get tapped for the big leagues. In my case, the “majors” was the Los Angeles Times, where I hustled as a staff writer for several years.

I returned to Hawai‘i in 2005, 20 years later, six months pregnant, and on the verge ​of ​divorce. Life ​had​ humbled me. I had been living in New York City, but with the realization that it was too much for me. Too fast, too money-centered, too competitive both in the workplace and​​ even in snagging a pole to hold onto on a crowded subway. In fact, that was what convinced me to leave: being visibly pregnant yet unable to secure a seat or a pole to balance against on a packed subway. Bewildered at the thought of raising my child there, I came home.

New York City cityscape at Sunset captured from a residential skyscraper in downtown. Photo: Getty Images, Aerial Views

My mother, sister and ex-husband helped care for my daughter. But mostly, I was a single parent, raising my girl and working as an editor for one of the local newspapers and at my own startup while freelancing and working other jobs. During that first decade of my daughter’s life, I was convinced my time in Hawai‘i would be temporary. I would stay until she got older, then return to LA and resume my life and bigger-time media career. I would eventually get back on track.

SEE ALSO: Protecting Hawai‘i’s Soul

The years passed, then a decade and more. Not only have I not left, ​​I’m living steps from my childhood home. Every day, I drive by ​​Waikīkī Elementary School, and aside from some new playground equipment, it looks exactly the same as when I went there. What’s changed is me. I’m grateful, and not because anything particularly great has happened, but because I have everything I need here—or anywhere. I’ve quelled the discontent and striving that used to jostle within me, replacing it with much-needed perspective. I no longer look externally for circumstances, people or things to make life better. And this happened in a place I vowed to disavow.

So, as I celebrate my 19th year back, I want to say thank you, Honolulu, for welcoming me back, for allowing me to grow, and for helping me to understand, finally, the privilege of being home.