Going through divorce

[SheilaT]

3. I am in SantaFe, NM.

I moved here from Overland Park, Kansas.

This has been a very good place for a somewhat older woman (I was 60 when I moved here, 64 now) to be. I never had a career, meaning when I needed to look for work I was looking at entry-level jobs. Those kinds of jobs are, in my experience, reasonably available. There's a good cultural life here, several colleges which means you can take classes if you want, or just go to the kinds of things and speakers and events they have.

People here complain that Santa Fe is terribly expensive. It's not. It's nothing like New York or San Francisco or Washington DC. It's somewhat more expensive than Albuquerque, which is the only thing people here know to compare. The high end of housing is VERY expensive, but I bought a place that is about half of the median price of a home here and I'm satisfied. It's a two bedroom, two bath townhome about 900 square feet in a perfectly nice, if unfashionable part of the city. I love the altitude and the climate here. I love it that the night sky is brilliantly beautiful.

If you are any kind of a church-goer there are plenty of churches here of many denominations, and there's a very strong inter-faith tradition. I am not such a person, but I have some very good friends who belong to a Presbyterian church here, and through them I get to help out with such things as feeding the homeless.

Once I knew that divorce was in my future, I was pretty sure I wanted to move to Santa Fe, having been here before, and having partially grown up in Tucson, AZ. But I made two other trips, one to Oregon, and another long driving trip to the east coast to check out some other places before I made the final decision. And while this is a wonderful country with fifty wonderful states, and I saw several places I could seriously consider, for the the choice of Santa Fe was the right one.

I know that for a lot of people, moving to another part of the country is not a realistic option, but when it is, more people should (in my opinion) seriously consider it.