Moving Out of My Childhood Home

The truth hurts, but it’s time for me to face it — we’re selling my childhood home in Manhattan Beach, California. A few weeks ago, I got to spend a whole week there, soaking up all the memories my family and I created within its walls. When my dad and I pulled into the driveway after he picked me up from the airport, I felt a knot in my stomach at the sight of the giant For Sale sign planted in the grass of the front yard — the same grass where my cousins and I had water balloon fights, and where my mom taught me how to do a back-walkover one summer.

I’ve lived in that home since I was two years old. The four blue walls that now hold the beachy vibe of my bedroom once were pink and covered top to bottom with Taylor Swift posters. The queen bed that sits in the center of the room used to be a crib, then a twin bed, leaving just enough space, of course, for an air mattress on the floor for my first ever sleepovers.

I think about how the same walls that watched me as a toddler standing on my crib railing also saw me as a little girl asking my mom to read me “just one more story,”  while she sat at my desk. Those walls saw tears fall in high school when Grandpa died. They saw my closest college friends come through the door, and my first boyfriend when he visited for the first time and met my family at eighteen. Over the years, those walls seemed to gather a little more color (well crimson red), and a little more life, even as the room slowly emptied out… aside from my brother now trying to turn it into his office.

What I sometimes forget — and what breaks my heart a little — is that down the hall, all those years, my parents were growing up too. My big brother, just two doors down, was quickly maturing and becoming the sweetest, most joyful person you’d ever meet before my eyes. That house held laughter upon laughter, with friends and family always coming over. We were that house — the one with the fun parents who wanted to know all the “tea” and kept the best snack drawer (iykyk). 

A few weeks ago, I made a poll out of curiosity, asking how many people still lived in their childhood home or if their parents did. The results revealed that a lot of people could relate to the feeling of losing the place they called home for so many years. Or maybe some of you moved around so often that this all sounds a bit dramatic.

When my mom called me one day feeling emotional about the sale, I gave her the same pep talk I’ve been trying to give myself: that it wasn’t the house that made the last 20 years so special, but the people in it. And while that’s mainly true, that house on 19th Street will never be just a home. It was a place of love, growth, and comfort — and that’s what makes it so hard to say goodbye.

One day while I was home this month, my brother and I took the dog for a walk while a family toured the house — our house. From a distance, I watched as they stepped out of their car with huge smiles, almost like it was happening in slow motion. A little boy hopped out into his mom’s arms, followed by a baby girl carried by her dad. My heart felt heavy as I realized how much they resembled my family twenty years ago. I wondered if that’s how we looked, full of excitement and hope, seeing the house for the first time.

Maybe you moved out of your childhood home long ago and you remember the emotions, or maybe — like me — it’s happening at a time when it all feels surreal and a bit numb. It feels like saying goodbye to childhood itself, and it hurts. I just hope the pictures last a lifetime and that I never forget the tiny details that made our home so perfect.

My family and I laugh because we’re convinced that if we had just five minutes to meet the potential buyers and tell them about the house, they’d be submitting a down payment on the spot. If only we could share just how special the home and neighborhood really are, and how lucky my brother and I were to grow up there, with all these years to prove it.

I’m so grateful God led our family to that home back in 2004. I can’t imagine growing up anywhere else of course, but I’m thankful I didn’t have to until now, at 23.

I hope this post resonates with anyone who’s gone through something similar — because this kind of goodbye really is emotional. Writing helps me process the thoughts and feelings I can’t always put into words. I write this hoping it warms the heart of anyone who has lost a piece of theirs to a house now filled with strangers making their own memories inside it. Or maybe that I can put the emotions you felt at that time into words. But I think ultimately, I write this hoping it helps me when I land at LAX airport six months or less from now and drive through streets I no longer recognize on the way to a brand new place we’re supposed to call home.

I’m trying to focus on the excitement this new chapter holds for my parents — a new home filled with opportunity for even more memories. This time, they’ll be walking through its doors not with toddlers, but with a 23- and 25-year-old (and hopefully some day, families of our own too… unless I can convince them to move to the south sooner).

I am filled with peace knowing that while the walls may be changing, the people and the love that filled it all those years will always follow. In a way I am thankful to be experiencing this at an age where I can fully absorb it, and learn the true meaning of home not being a single place but people that go with me wherever I go.

I can only hope to one day create a home for my own family even half as special as this one was for us. A place where stories are told late into the night, friends who visit feel welcomed and just as “at home”, and where leaving one day will hurt in the same way — not because of loss, but because of how deeply it was lived in.

That seems to be where the real beauty is found in saying goodbye to your childhood home: it reminds you just how lucky you were to have something so hard to leave. It’s the proof that you grew up surrounded by love, by roots deep enough to make you ache, and by memories strong enough to last a lifetime. I know that kinda thing isn’t just handed around to everyone.

As my parents start this new chapter and I continue along my own, I find comfort in knowing even though our house on 19th Street won’t be “ours” anymore, it will always be the place that built us — the place that taught us how to love, how to grow, and how to find home again wherever life takes us next.