I Met a Mum in Montclair Who Left London Behind

I love sharing inspiring stories from fellow mothers so couldn’t miss on this one (names have been changed).

I was in New Jersey for work last autumn (fall), killing an hour before a train, and got talking to a woman in a coffee shop about the state of her toddler’s shoes. Reader, we talked for two hours.

Hannah grew up in Muswell Hill, worked in publishing in central London for a decade, married an American, and now lives in Montclair with two children under seven. She is funny, blunt, and refreshingly unsentimental about the whole thing.

She kindly agreed to answer my nosy questions and agreed to me publishing them if names were changed! 

How on earth did a London girl end up in New Jersey?

Not romantically, I’m afraid! My husband’s job moved and we had six weeks to decide.

I said yes because I thought we’d be in Manhattan, all fire escapes and yellow taxis. Then we did the math on a two-bedroom apartment with a baby and I burst into tears in a Pret.

We looked at the suburbs instead, which felt like admitting defeat at the time. It absolutely wasn’t.

I’d never heard of Essex County before we started looking. Now I could give you a tour.

What’s it actually like living in Essex County?

Busier than people expect! It isn’t the sleepy commuter belt I’d imagined at all.

Census data puts the county at around 881,500 people packed into roughly 126 square miles, which is genuinely dense. There are 22 towns and every single one has its own personality and its own opinions about the others.

Montclair itself feels closest to home. Independent bookshops, a proper high street, an art museum, people who will talk to you in the queue.

There’s also a slightly ridiculous amount of green space. County park records show the first county park system in the United States was established here in 1895, which I find quite lovely for somewhere twenty minutes from Newark Airport.

What confused me at the start was how differently the towns priced and felt. A guide from New Jersey Real Estate Network laid out towns and commutes side by side, and it was the first thing that made moving to Essex County feel like a decision rather than a gamble.

I sent it to three other British families afterward. Two of them are now my neighbors.

What was the biggest culture shock?

The school run, without question.

Nobody walks. I was the mad woman pushing a buggy in the rain while everyone waved from their SUVs. I’ve since bought an SUV, so the joke is on me.

Also the sheer volume of admin. Immunization records, forms in triplicate, a school calendar with days off I still don’t understand.

And bake sales. So many bake sales. I once made 48 cupcakes at midnight while genuinely questioning my life choices.

What do you miss about London?

Marks and Spencer. Proper crisps. Being able to get a train somewhere without planning it like a military operation.

Mostly I miss the shorthand, though. That thing where you don’t have to explain yourself because everyone grew up watching the same programs and complaining about the same weather.

My children have American accents. That still catches me sometimes, usually at bedtime.

But I’ve stopped grieving it. My mum comes twice a year and we’ve built something here that’s ours.

Where do you spend your weekends?

Outside, mostly, which I did not expect of myself.

The parks here were largely shaped by the Olmsted firm, and the Park Service notes that Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux were invited to Newark as far back as 1867 to look at potential parkland. You can feel it when you walk around them. They’re beautiful in a way that feels deliberate rather than accidental.

There’s a waterfall about fifteen minutes from my house. A proper one, in the woods. I still can’t quite believe it.

Otherwise it’s the farmers market, somebody’s birthday party, and the train into the city roughly once a month when we can face it.

And the hardest part, honestly?

The property taxes. I’m not going to pretend otherwise.

State tax figures put the 2024 average residential bill in Montclair at $21,635, against a county-wide average of $13,615. That’s a number that stops British people in their tracks.

You do get a lot for it. The schools, the parks, the services are all genuinely good. But it’s an enormous line in the household budget and it doesn’t go away when the mortgage does.

My advice to anyone moving here from the UK is to look at the tax bill before you fall in love with the house. Not after. I did it in the wrong order.

What advice would you give the woman who got on that flight?

Stop treating it as temporary.

I spent the first eighteen months half-unpacked, emotionally speaking. I didn’t join things. I didn’t make plans past Christmas. I was waiting to find out whether it counted.

It counts. Wherever you are is your actual life, not a rehearsal for the one you’ll have when you get home.

The day I joined a book club was the day it turned around, and I say that as someone who was extremely snobbish about book clubs.

Finally, happiness is…

A Friday afternoon in October, the kids on the front steps, someone’s dog wandering past, and my husband bringing out two coffees.

Nothing remarkable. That’s rather the point, isn’t it? I spent years thinking happiness would arrive with a postcode attached. It turned out to be entirely portable.

I just had to stop looking over my shoulder for it.

Thank you so much to Hannah for being so wonderfully candid. I came away from that coffee shop thinking about how many of us are quietly building lives somewhere we never planned to be, and doing it rather well.

Have you moved abroad and made it work? Or are you weighing it up right now? I’d love to hear about it. And if you know a wonderful woman I should feature, do send her my way!