It’s been quiet around here for a few years. I’ve had some significant life changes, and I wanted to share them before diving back into writing about the properties.
In 2022, we learned my husband’s cancer had returned (he had his first diagnosis in 2020). Shortly after that, I got pregnant. Almost everything else took a backseat as we navigated his treatment and made some tough decisions about our lives.
He cycled through treatments — something would work for a while until it didn’t, and then we’d move on to the next thing. One thing I did differently this time was seek second opinions immediately. Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York was able to see him and laid out his options. At the time, he could get similar treatment in Seattle, so we stayed.
Right around the time I gave birth to my daughter, my husband ran out of treatment options in Seattle. Fortunately, he was accepted into a clinical trial at MSKCC, but that meant traveling back and forth to New York. It was exhausting, and he didn’t want to be away from us. So in late 2023, we made the decision to move. We didn’t know how long we’d stay, so we kept all of our properties in Washington and California. Shortly after we arrived, we decided this was where we wanted to raise the kids.
We arrived just before Christmas and had the best holiday. My husband was doing alright until we all got a stomach virus in late January, and he never quite recovered. He was in and out of the hospital through February, coming home at the end of the month. Although his cancer treatment had been working, he was so weak by then. He died in March of 2024.
Since then, I’ve been in New York with my two kids — my son is seven now, and my daughter is almost three. I purchased a condo in Manhattan, and we’ve settled into life here in a way that feels permanent. I’m still very involved in managing the Seattle and California properties, though I work with a property management company now. I’ve also been slowly working on a few projects in the new place, so those may show up here too.
I’ll write more about how my approach to real estate has changed in a future post. For now, I’m glad to be writing again.
