If you had told this California girl 10 years ago, that she’d be moving to the country where the horses run and the sun sets at 7 PM on the rolling hills, I would not have believed you. But I do now. And I still pinch myself. Because Franklin, Tennessee is my home, and home is where this California girl’s heart is.
Born and raised in Southern California, just south of Los Angeles in a quaint beach town called Naples, you would think it took a severe earthquake and some massive aftershocks to get me to move to the Southeast at the tender age of 29. But as life would have it, maybe it wasn’t exactly an earthquake, but a good breakup turns out, makes for a good country song.
In truth, I just needed to get out of LA. After some wildly huge success in the music pop world as the member of an all girl group named Eden’s Crush, it was the downfall of the music business combined with the realization that wearing leather pants and opening for acts like NSYNC and Jessica Simpson wasn’t exactly the road I was meant to be on forever.
Enter Nashville.
After licking my breakup wounds and heading South, I found myself immersed in an ultra friendly community of creatives, a town where people offer directions to the interstate and actually lead you there, and an array of wonderful, kind women who I could call friends after only one quick conversation. This city quickly became my home and my refuge.
After the heartbreak passed and the stories of my life were written in song, I found myself in love with Tennessee. It wasn’t long before I also found love in a new husband and shortly thereafter, a daughter I had always longed for.
And as fate would have it, my husband found his dream lot in Franklin just around the time we found out we were pregnant with our second. Turns out, God had a bigger plan. Not only would we be moving to Franklin, we would be having identical twin boys.
The move and the surprise, was everything we hoped for.
From the sprawling space we have on our property to the warm faces we see in downtown Franklin at our favorite restaurant Cork and Cow, home is definitely here and here to stay. From the tremendous schools, to my favorite shopping at my friend Holly William’s store Whites Mercantile, to our local Starbucks, Franklin living is our living. From Sunday’s farmer’s market, to donut trucks, to our must have Italian Zola’s for our Friday night dinner, home is where our heart is and all my California friends and family agree.
I am so grateful to have found a little slice of heaven here in Franklin, TN. And I hope when my kids get older, they’ll agree wholeheartedly. And also never leave.
** Just a few weeks before this went to press, Maile and her husband sold their beloved home. They are still in Franklin and are currently building their forever home.
Maile is a blogger and writer/curator at Maile-Misajon.com and still writes songs part time when she’s not chasing her twin boys in the backyard. She’s the mama of two wild twin boys who are five and a nine-year-old daughter who is her spitting image. She is married to songwriter/producer and publisher Jeremy Stover of Red Creative Group. Find her on instagram: maile misajon or her site Maile-Misajon.com where you can subscribe to her weekly posts discussing everything from marriage to parenting to saving face serums.
