Toledo as Home

In 2016, I moved to northwest Ohio and in 2017, we bought a house in the Old West End neighborhood of Toledo. I had never imagined that I would live in the Midwest of the United States, let alone in a mid-sized, rustbelt city like Toledo, but like many of the changes that have happened in my life, here is where I ended up. After landing here, though, I started to settle in and really can see myself living here for long run. Fast forward to 2020, and I can’t imagine making it through this year anywhere else.

Toledo would never have been my first choice of locations to live in the world. It is the Midwest so it is not particularly sunny, or warm. I lived for about 6 years in the Caribbean, in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic where the sun shined most days and winters were only a few degrees cooler than summer. Toledo is flat, but I did get more used to that living in Cajun country in Louisiana for four years where a small dip in the road was considered a hill. Toledo is not a small town, nor a big city. I grew up in small towns in New York state and lived in Boston for many years. I have also travelled to and spent long periods of time in some of the largest cities in the world, including Mexico City and Johannesburg, South Africa, as well as visited London, New York, Toronto, Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Houston, Miami, and Shanghai to name a few. I love cities and the diversity of people shoved into small spaces.

Toledo is like none of the places I have lived before, and yet it has aspects of each of these places. As I work on this blog and produce the podcasts, I hope to share a glimpse of why it has become special to me and is now the place I call home.