Part I
For a lot of reasons, my Blaxit from the U.S. has been a long time coming. As a young girl growing up in New York City, I would often journal about how my life would be when I grew up. My dream was to become a corporate lawyer and live in New Zealand by the time I was 26. Pretty big dream for a young Black girl who at that time hadn’t even ventured beyond the Tri-State area, let alone to a country 8,939 miles away. Nevertheless, moving to New Zealand was my childhood obsession.
True to my forward-planning nature, I’d walk to the Co-op City library and read books about New Zealand, gobbling up as much information as I could about the country and its people. To this day, I can’t quite remember what sparked my fascination with this small island in Oceania. My best guess is that while spinning the globe in my bedroom to pass the time away, I landed on New Zealand. Either way, those were the plans of young Chrishan.
“If you’re always trying to be normal you will never know how amazing you can be.”
Maya Angelou
By the time I turned 26, my life wasn’t that far off from my original plan. I’d just completed grad school with a Master’s Degree in Social Work and was working for the Speaker of the New York State Assembly as a legislative analyst for five years. Not a lawyer exactly but close enough. The biggest change from my original plan wasn’t that I was still in New York, it was that I was pregnant with the first of my two loves—my son Miles.
I poured my heart and soul into being a mom. In order to give my son the absolute best, I took on another job working in television and purchased my first home at 28. I’d begun to lay what I thought was the foundation for designing a new life and quietly said goodbye to any plans for a life abroad. Then came Operation Shock and Awe.
