TVNZ Breakfast Appearance

Yesterday, Jon and I made an appearance as the token Americans on a New Zealand morning news show called the Breakfast. To check out the Facebook post with the clip, click below:

First off, it was a fun thing to do, and I absolutely love the hair and makeup team there. They made me look like a put-together adult, which I obviously do not feel like half the time, hence the blog name, “Bumblemom.”

Secondly, it was impossible to convey all of the information we wanted to in the short segment. We weren’t sure what direction they were going to take the interview. The pre-interview questions covered everything from why we moved, what our transition was like, what we think of the next election, would we move back, and how has covid affected us. How on earth were we supposed to get all of this in in 5 minutes? Honestly, I would love to do a longer-format interview that covers these topics more in depth, but that wasn’t going to happen on a breakfast show.

I would’ve loved to go into all of the nuance behind our decision to move. How we were appalled at the divisive Trump campaign. How we were terrified of the lasting impact he would inevitably have on the judicial system. How that would have impact across the board when it came to women’s rights, environmental regulations, and business and banking safeguards. How we didn’t like how he preyed on the basest fears in our society. How he seemed incapable of understanding the complexities of, well, anything, and how that might have disastrous consequences if there was a real problem. How the US election system is flawed and we’ll continue to have problems into the future without some major changes.

All of these thoughts and fears were tumbling around in November of 2016, but at the same time we had our rainbows-unicorns-and-sunny-days scenario. More realistically, we thought a big move was going to be a great adventure for our family. Our kids would get to grow up in a multicultural, optimistic society. We thought we would look back on this decision and think, “what an amazing, international adventure we got to do with our kids. They got to experience a childhood so much different than ours. Imagine where it will take them!”

I didn’t get a chance to go into any of that detail and instead focused on what we saw as the light New Zealand could provide our family because this was a breakfast show and we had five minutes. We are saddened to see that many of our fears at the time of our decision are coming true and many things we never could’ve predicted are happening and hurting the US.

So please enjoy the hair, and if you want to hear a little bit more about our move, you may like to listen to my guest spot on the Big Dreams, Bold Moves podcast or watch our RNZ interview. And let me know if you’d like to learn a little bit more about why we took a giant leap of faith. Would you do it if you could?