On Freedom, Fear, and the Choice to Leave

A Juneteenth reflection for the woman who’s dreaming of something more—for her family, and for herself.

Photo by Roger Hoover on Unsplash

Today is Juneteenth.

And while much of America is barbecuing or posting celebratory quotes, I’m thinking about what freedom really looks like. Not the kind written into laws or printed on T-shirts—but the kind you feel in your body. The kind you build, slowly and intentionally, for yourself and your children.

Because if we’re honest, freedom has never just been given to us. Not in 1865, and not today.

When George Floyd was murdered, we were living in Copenhagen.

Thousands of miles away from Minnesota, I stood in front of my TV in Copenhagen, Denmark, holding my daughters, heartbroken. The streets back home were filled with pain, rage, exhaustion, and something else, too. A collective voice saying, Enough.

I had chosen to leave America a few years earlier. We had moved for my husband’s job, but really—we stayed for the peace. The breath. The space to parent without hypervigilance. The way people in the park looked at our children like they were just kids, not targets. The healthcare. The freedom to walk through the world without that constant hum of tension in your chest.

But even oceans away, I felt the ache.

I felt it as a Black woman. As a mother. As a daughter of a woman who had once believed the American Dream was the only dream worth chasing.

And I felt something else, too—guilt.

Guilt that we had left. That we were okay, while my family and friends were texting me about curfews and sirens and fear.

And yet, in that moment, I also understood something deeper:

This was freedom, too.

Not freedom as escape, but freedom as creation. Freedom as choice.

The choice to raise our daughters in a place where Blackness isn’t criminalized.

The choice to breathe deeper.

To walk slower.

To build a life that felt expansive, not constricting.

I still carry America with me. I always will. But I no longer believe I owe it my peace. Or my children’s childhoods.

If you’re reading this and your heart is tired… if you’ve been dreaming about leaving but haven’t dared to speak it aloud… if you’ve wondered if choosing something different means betraying where you came from—

It doesn’t.

Choosing freedom doesn’t mean you don’t love your people. It means you love them enough to imagine more.

It means you believe in a future that isn’t built on survival.

It means you know that freedom—true freedom—isn’t something we wait for.

It’s something we build.