{"id":43757,"date":"2026-01-24T19:41:29","date_gmt":"2026-01-24T19:41:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/i-moved-away-from-my-family-in-my-30s-when-i-called-crying-my-dad-dropped-everything-and-came-to-see-me\/"},"modified":"2026-01-24T19:41:29","modified_gmt":"2026-01-24T19:41:29","slug":"i-moved-away-from-my-family-in-my-30s-when-i-called-crying-my-dad-dropped-everything-and-came-to-see-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/i-moved-away-from-my-family-in-my-30s-when-i-called-crying-my-dad-dropped-everything-and-came-to-see-me\/","title":{"rendered":"I moved away from my family in my 30s. When I called crying, my dad dropped everything and came to see me."},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/6965322e64858d02d2182f7b?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Dad and daughter selfie\"\/><figcaption>Ruth Davis&#039;s dad dropped everything and went to visit her when she needed him.<\/p>\n<p>Courtesy of Ruth Davis<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>Ruth Davis is a 39-year-old mom who moved two hours away from her family in 2019 for work.<\/li>\n<li>Leaving her dad was harder than she expected.<\/li>\n<li>Although Ruth doesn&#039;t regret her move, she wouldn&#039;t advise her daughter to make the same one.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Ruth Davis, a Creative Director in LA. It has been edited for length and clarity.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>In 2019, I relocated with my 12-year-old daughter and fianc\u00e9 to Los Angeles, which is two hours away from the &quot;family village&quot; where I had grown up.<\/p>\n<p>All my family \u2014 siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents \u2014 all lived within 15 minutes of each other. I knew it was going to be a hard move for our nuclear family unit, but I was convinced LA was the right place for us to be.<\/p>\n<p>I didn&#039;t fully understand the impact it would have on me.<\/p>\n<h2>My dad is my everything<\/h2>\n<p>It was my dad whom I immediately felt I had lost.<\/p>\n<p>Before we moved, my dad was everything to me. He and my mom had split when I was young, so my dad had full custody. It was just the two of us all the time.<\/p>\n<p>When I had my daughter, my dad moved in with us and was there to help with all the practical aspects of raising a child. But he was also just there as emotional support for me. He made me complete.<\/p>\n<p>After we moved, we only saw him once a month, when he&#039;d take the train to visit us. I missed him and felt overwhelmed without him.<\/p>\n<p>In August 2025, I was grieving the loss of two family members, feeling overwhelmed with sadness, but also with life in general. I remember sitting on my bed, losing it, crying.<\/p>\n<h2>I called him, crying<\/h2>\n<p>My daughter was knocking on the door, asking me when we were leaving the house \u2014 we were going out for the day. I snapped at her. I couldn&#039;t leave the bed. I wanted to show up for her in that moment, but couldn&#039;t.<\/p>\n<p>In that moment, I felt like a failure compared to my dad. He had lived through so much grief and so many hard times, and yet I never knew because he managed to hold everything together.<\/p>\n<p>All I could think to do was to call my dad, crying as he answered. He listened to me and then told me he would call me right back.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;Everything is going to be OK,&quot; he said before hanging up. Dad has never been a &quot;words&quot; person.<\/p>\n<p>Not too long after, he called back and told me he had been to the train station to buy a train ticket to come visit the next day.<\/p>\n<p>Knowing he was coming felt like a double-edged sword. I felt incredibly lucky to have a dad who would come and see me at the drop of a hat, but I also felt self-doubt because my elderly dad could get it together, but I couldn&#039;t.<\/p>\n<p>The next morning, when I knew my dad was on the train, bound for my house, I was certain everything would be OK. My dad was coming. With him, life feels normal and complete.<\/p>\n<h2>I won&#039;t advise my daughter to move away<\/h2>\n<p>I don&#039;t regret the wonderful changes the move afforded me and the position in life it put my nuclear family and me in. But had I known not seeing my dad every day would wreck me as it has, I don&#039;t know if I would have done it the same way.<\/p>\n<p>I had bought into the modern idea that decisions should always be made with the nuclear family in mind, but the distance from him made me realize how much I emotionally value my dad in ways I didn&#039;t think imaginable.<\/p>\n<p>Knowing what I know now, I would never advise my daughter to move away from her village, even if it means she&#039;ll move closer to a partner&#039;s village, as I did. I think as a mother, I did her a disservice by moving her away from my family, her tight-knit community.<\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ruth Davis&#039;s dad dropped everything and went to visit her when she needed him. Courtesy of Ruth Davis Ruth Davis is a 39-year-old mom who moved two hours away from her family in 2019 for work. Leaving her dad was harder than she expected. Although Ruth doesn&#039;t regret her move, she wouldn&#039;t advise her daughter [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43758,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-43757","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43757\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}