The REAL Reason We Left the USA

eight months ago we packed up all of our remaining possessions and officially moved from the United States to the foothills of the Italian Alps we are restoring this old barn and creating our new home here in Italy leaving behind the country we were born in and establishing our new home halfway across the globe does not come without its challenges especially with young children so that begs the question why did we leave I'm Heather this is my husband Brady we have two daughters Alexa and Chloe every week we document our journey and share our lives here on YouTube but there is one question we have yet to answer that we will answer today why do we leave the United States lately I have been really really wanting to go back to the United States and we can't we literally can't we're not uh even allowed to leave the country we can't leave Italy which I know that sounds very strange and we can explain that later but just the fact that there is that strong desire to go back right now uh it certainly begs the question why did we leave and I know that a lot of people have been asking that especially lately and it's been on our minds so we thought this week we would attempt to explain the reasonings behind why we left the USA foreign [Music] [Music] so when we did our our video uh cleaning off the stone walls all that time ago so many people wrote in that we should sand blast them which is something that I had never thought about before so there's a process of combining sandblasting and power washing it mixes the water and the sand I don't really quite understand it but it seems like it will take the stones to the next level and is definitely something that we need to add to our mix the problem is is it kind of messes up our timeline because now we need to pause a few other things in order to get that in uh but that which has been a tricky part of this whole process making sure things are done in the precise right order so first we need to have someone come in and sand blast then we can do the pointing then we can move on to the flooring I just need to rearrange the order a bit if we're in a sandblast the walls we really should think about sandblasting the beams as well there's now that it's dry there's a huge difference between the sanded beam and the unsanded yeah it looks so much better it looks so much less orange I think that's what we need to do foreign [Music] thank you okay so first a like a 10 second recap um about two years ago we kind of more or less officially left the USA and we're traveling full time um both for the sake of traveling and to find a a new home a new country that wasn't the USA and a new place that we could establish our home base and raise our family there so after a year and a half we ended up settling here in the foothills of the Italian Alps in Northern Italy we bought this Old Stone cabin and we're now working through renovating it to be the home that we live in indefinitely uh but naturally when you move to another country you need a visa you need to be legally allowed to be able to live there uh at the time that we purchased the house the only Visa option that was available to us was a very non-traditional route and that meant applying in person in country and waiting for their decision what we didn't realize was that when we went and sent off that final paperwork that they would essentially tell us uh you're not allowed to go anywhere while we think about it and it's going to take us about eight or nine months to to make that decision so it took us a long time to get the paperwork together months and months so by the time they do make that decision we will be here not allowed to leave for one full year which is a very stark contrast to the life we lived before but it also means that we weren't able to go home for Christmas we weren't able to go back and see friends and family and that was a total shock and a completely unexpected yeah and we have been fortunate enough to have family come and visit us my parents came to visit us Bernie's mom was able to come and visit us and that was so so special but it's still not the same as us getting to go back and be in a familiar culture and see all of the rest of our friends and family that we miss so much and every week my mom babysits my two-year-old niece and me and the girls get to do like a little video chat with them and every week she asks us if we can come over and play and it just like when are you coming to play when are you coming over when you're coming over and she's just the cutest thing ever and it just breaks my heart because to be missing those very precious years is is a very hard thing for sure it is and in some senses right now you know that has been taken away from us that freedom to be able to go back which makes me want to go back that much more I think because is we're not in control we can't decide when we go back and and how we go back which is is difficult I think probably everyone can relate to um being trapped somewhere with what we went through with kovid yeah um and and not being able to see your family I think that's very relatable now um but that still doesn't explain why we left in the first place foreign [Music] foreign [Music] okay so why did we leave the USA it's gonna be a very hard thing for us to articulate I think that maybe sometimes it's often easier to say what it's not than what it actually is so people very quickly assume it was I don't politically motivated or we um hate something about the USA which we don't that's not true at all yeah that's not what this is yet at the same time for us we we have realized that it was not the healthiest place for us to live but I I guess I want to be careful in how I say these things like this is not some hit piece against the USA it's not meant to make anyone feel bad and I think that people often do take these conversations very personally um and I don't I don't want that to happen like it's okay for something to be not right for us but to be perfect for you yeah exactly and that's okay yeah one of the big reasons I think is the the work life balance kind of culture of always just putting your job first and working to make more money and and succeed and I think for you that wasn't necessarily something that I struggled with because I was a stay-at-home mom but like Brady you spent a lot of time working so hard focusing on working working working to provide for us I think that that strikes a good chord because like there's both really good and really bad news the America is a land of opportunity and that it that is so true like there is a lot more financial opportunity than most of the rest of the world for sure and the bad thing about that is it has then bred a culture where productivity is more important than than relationship um where your identity is found in your work where quite frankly when you talk to your friends and and you say how are you doing the only acceptable answer is I'm busy just so busy like and I got caught up in that like I was I did years of working 80 hour weeks when um when you were about to give birth to to Chloe yeah and like I was I mean I had a full month of 80 to 100 hour weeks and it was it was awful yeah and we got to the point where uh I mean I I got fairly sick from all of that work and physically um as well as otherwise and we began looking for an alternative option like we began feeling and thinking there must be something more to life than finding your identity in the work you do now work is of course very important but having there be a focus on relationships first and productivity and work second is what we were looking for when we left yeah and I think that leads to a reason which is what we've found here is a slower pace of life so we still work really hard we still do a lot of work and that's not really the point I haven't fixed the whole like work-life balance no I but it is a better but I don't think that the work that we're doing now you take it too far still sometimes that's you you do need to work on that but for the most part the work that we're doing is physical labor building with our hands building something with purpose and that's a different kind of work than the work that sure that we were doing it's creative it's creating a life here and it's so fulfilling and even if I do put in more hours than I should it's fulfilling in a different way than the work that I was doing before it's more of a Back to Basics kind of mentality of like long ago people were working long days growing their food making their own clothes like doing all these things it's more of a Back to Basics kind of way of life sure so we did say that this was not politically motivated and that is 100 true there's no reason like oh this guy got elected or whatever that we wanted to send you I sense a butt and that makes me nervous but there is a very divided culture that I do not like right now in the United States it's it's not a healthy thing that it's so divided and I think you know what I think it comes down to um it is a very it is a more lonely culture I think that's fair to acknowledge let's talk about some real stuff here please don't get offended it is a much more lonely culture than the rest of the world and it's because of people's identity being in work primarily it's more individualistic it's fear it's a very individualistic society and humans desperately need to belong to or heard like we need a connection heard creatures we need our tribe tribe is better that's a better word and I think that it's so much easier to belong to a tribe when you're throwing sticks and stones at another try that's what it's an easy way for you to feel like you belong and it's especially with the Advent of Facebook we just don't need to go down that road but like well all of all of social media all of this like society that we live in is such a rapid slippery slope that is astonishingly fast and it doesn't matter what side you're coming from I think everyone can see it yeah and I don't think anyone really likes it but we don't know how to back out of it so I think we're slowly getting to the big reasons the real reasons of why we left the USA But fundamentally it was about taking a step outside of the bubble yeah I think it's important to note that it's not about the bubble that we grew up in being good or bad it's it's all we ever knew so it's important to step out of that to to see things more objectively to see the good and the bad in a more objective way so that we can kind of heal and grow in a different way outside of that bubble because there's of course there are there are reasons that we'll talk about of the negative things that we've left but then being here now for seven months Looking Back Now we can appreciate the good things [Applause] with these are all beaten up oh yeah man it doesn't look very nice on here so our new Garden down here is really struggling I'm not sure what the issue is because our garden up closer to the house is actually doing really really nice there is a bit more shade up there so maybe that's the issue we also used a different mixer of soil so I'm not sure if that's the problem but down here it's things are not looking very good there hasn't been that much full sun aside from the first week after we planted and I covered heavy shade over everything to give the roots time to set and then for the last two weeks it's been very overcast and a ton of rain and it looks like everything's shriveling up and dying from sun exposure which is quite odd okay so finally the number one reason of why we left and established our home here and then we're gonna go jump into an ice bath oh boy okay so the the hus traveling the world is our passion and the way that we are strategically located here sets us up to be able to do that so much more affordably so much easier because we can take twenty dollar flights anywhere we want in Europe which basically like if you're an American that's something to focus on like because if you fly in America it's 350 round trip a minimum to get most places but once you're in Europe you literally can find 10 flights 30 flights like or there's trains or there's all sorts of different ways to go across Europe uh specifically being here in Northern Italy allows us to be in Germany in a couple hours of a drive or in Switzerland or in Austria and you can in a single day experience such a wide range of cultures and that's that was very important and is worth the sacrifice that we're going through for us and how important that is so surprise surprise I injured my back to be honest I have no idea how it happened but the last week I've been stretching taking some time off work and icing so we're gonna do an ice bath today um yeah oh I don't want it this way let's do it okay three two one okay five minutes five minutes let's mix rice okay it's cold it's not very deep but how you doing we could we could pass the time entering some other questions I'm kind of just focused on I want to do I'm gonna do five five minutes yeah you better start if you want to answer questions you better accept The Fray run out of this oh hold on I gotta grab my phone no no you don't move any water do you remember how you told me that if I can have if I can birth children exactly then I can that's cold oh that hurts Okay so no I gotta like scroll back to the conference and this is much easier than however all right so questions why are we doing all of the work ourselves we don't plan to we fully plan to have Crews come in um there's actually quite a lot of the work that we're not allowed to do ourselves um it's just we're not at that stage yet and we're waiting for a few other things to this helps you want to answer some questions takes my mind off um why not simply buy a finished house or knock this one down and build a new one oh now that is a little bit offensive to me to be honest because I love I love our Stone House it's gorgeous it's a piece of History do not touch me with that or you will be in serious trouble um but we actually thought about buying a little house that didn't mean any work and traveling from there but this just seemed like such a better adventure to be honest it it fully knocked us out of our comfort zone possibly a little bit too far and um we just love the idea of restoring it bringing it back to life yeah and building a house next to it and leaving it as a barn it just doesn't that's not the path that we wanted like I know that makes a lot more sense to a lot of people but that's just not the path for us and when we're done it'll all make sense it will definitely make sense um how do we support ourselves um well you're contributing to that currently every single person that watches we get out of revenue from that it's something like a small fraction of one cent per person um but it all adds up um we of course have other um ways of making money such as patreon for those who are supporting us on patreon that means the world because YouTube is so uh finicky YouTube picks what it thinks you will like so if we make a video that's slightly different then even to our most loyal viewers they will not show the video to them because it thinks oh you're not gonna like this because it's not is so specifically the niche that we're in or something like that like next week actually yeah we have a really exciting video coming up and likely YouTube will not show it to you because it's a little bit different like we are so excited about it it it's gonna be just a brilliant video super exciting all right do not touch me with that I I'm confident that YouTube will decide you don't want to watch it so if you want to watch it let's um let's put a link in the description for an email list yeah let's and then we'll send out a blast to let you know that the new video is here or just remember next Sunday to go to our channel search raising voyagers like if you search for us you'll find it but if you're just scrolling YouTube I promise you they're not going to show it to you yeah but our patrons allow us to be more creative because we know that regardless of what we decide to create you guys have our backs yeah um if you aren't familiar with what patreon is it is a platform where you can go on and choose to support us at whatever level you want there's varying levels and there's some rewards for those levels and you can set a maximum I want to support one video per month or four videos per month um that's that's completely up to you and yeah I would I wouldn't love you you guys to at least go check it out and um I'm going numb what's the time I forgot I forgot to start a clock let me see when I press oh we passed five minutes we didn't fight I did five minutes I don't think I've done more than 30 seconds in an iPhone but do not move because that hurt when I moved like once you get in you're just exactly right you told me once you get in get through the first 30 seconds you're fine all right okay are we done yet I think we're done okay thank you for watching this video we really appreciate it and we can't wait for our next week's video it's gonna be so great and we'll see you guys next week oh goodness oh my goodness okay I couldn't feel that

Channel: Raising Voyagers

Views: 567,307

Keywords: Raising Voyagers, Leaving USA, Why we left, Renovating, Renovation, Renovating an old stone barn, old stone barn, stone house, cabin, stone cabin, italy, Italian alps

Id: wqDO4y5zGYE

Length: 23min 9sec (1389 seconds)

Published: Sun May 28 2023