Coming Home Again: Moving Back to Michigan During the Pandemic (and Landing an Agent)

When I graduated from high school at 18, I was set on getting as far away as possible from my small Michigan hometown. My parents were going through a divorce, and I channeled that heartache into writing my first (unpublished) novel the summer before college. I felt like a girl in between worlds—too old to be a child, too young to fully be an adult, though I was thrust into that world anyway. I coped the best way I knew how: by dreaming of escape through my imagination.

(Going Back in Time to Write a Middle-Grade Novel.)

I headed east to Dartmouth and ultimately began my career in finance on Wall Street. In New York City, I wore power heels and learned to speak in acronyms—EBITDA, KPIs, Q4 projections—while carving out early mornings and weekends to continue pursuing my writing dreams.

I knew I was meant to write, but I didn’t know how to break in. Years went by as I faced rejection after rejection from literary agents, but I never gave up.

I felt like a modern-day Hannah Montana. Corporate Lindsay by day, Creative Lindsay by night. The identities felt split, and I didn’t know how—or if—I would ever be able to integrate them.

Then came March 2020. The pandemic loomed larger by the day, and New York quickly became the epicenter.

“Come stay with me back in Michigan,” my mom said over the phone.

“I’m not going back,” I told her. “New York is my home now.”

But when lockdown hit and my investment bank transitioned to remote work, my 300-square-foot studio apartment began to feel like a shoebox of anxiety. Reluctantly, I booked a flight to Michigan. Just for two weeks. Then the pandemic would blow over, and life would resume.

How wrong I was. Those two weeks turned into six months.

At first, I felt like I was regressing—back in my childhood bedroom, surrounded by teenage relics and echoing memories. But slowly, something inside me began to soften.

I cooked meals with my mom. I walked in the woods. I journaled. I slept. I watched my overstimulated nervous system begin to exhale. I started to remember who I was beneath the title, the pressure, the relentless pursuit of “more.”

And one afternoon, while sitting on the back porch with a mug of tea, I took a Zoom call that would change my life—I signed with my first literary agent. That long-held dream I had nurtured in the margins for years finally began to bloom.

I still worked my day job remotely, but the pace was different. I wasn’t constantly exhausted. I had time—to think, to write, to breathe.

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Eventually, I even changed my dating app settings to Michigan, thinking: Why not? I ended up meeting someone. We dated for three years. It didn’t work out in the end, but that relationship—like that season—was a turning point. It grounded me. It reminded me that success doesn’t always mean acceleration. Sometimes it means stillness.

Later, I returned to New York, then moved to London, before making my way back to Michigan once more—this time not with reluctance, but with curiosity. I wrote my next novel, Summer on Lilac Island, a mother-daughter story set on Mackinac Island. It was inspired, in part, by that unexpected season of slowness and healing.

The book became a love letter to my younger self, to home, to the complexity of returning.

Do I think I’ll end up in Michigan for good? I’m not sure. When I stay too long, I still feel that familiar itch—the one that whispers, Go. Explore. Let your wild wings fly. Since the pandemic, I’ve lived in Los Angeles, and I’m now embarking on a new chapter in Texas.

But the difference now is this: Coming home no longer feels like defeat. It doesn’t make me flinch at memories of the girl I used to be. I’ve met her. I’ve forgiven her. I’ve realized she wasn’t awkward or too much or not enough. She was brave, big-hearted, and doing her best.

Life, I’ve learned, is an ongoing rhythm of leaving and returning. And how beautiful it is to have a place we can go back to—a place where we can swaddle ourselves in the coziness of youth, close our eyes, and rest for a while.

Not because we failed. But because we’ve succeeded on our own terms.

And sometimes, even for the girl who once swore she’d never go back, home is the very place she needs to grow.

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