Once, I started a Substack to write about being afraid and about how community and relationships were the antidote to fear and loneliness. I called it Open Door, Open Heart.
It was going to be personal and messy and honest: the first, and as it turns out only, post was about starting over in midlife, in a new town and a new career, in a farmhouse older than the country. I called it Fear Is the Mindkiller, which tells you something about my reading habits and my mood. I wrote it. I published it. Then I sat down a week or so later to write the second post and realized I was far more interested in where I had landed than in my own nerves. The lake in the morning. The people at the transfer station. Why a town meeting runs four hours and nobody leaves. That’s how Keys to the Lakes happened.
What I’ve learned about moves since that one lonely post is that the big feelings rarely show up as themselves. They dress up as something else.
Here’s what fear looks like when it shows up to a conversation about moving to the Lakes Region, and I’d guess about most rural places. It doesn’t say “I’m afraid.” It asks about hospitals. Or restaurants. Or cell service.
The costume party
People ask whether there’s a good hospital nearby. Whether the cell service holds. Whether the roads are passable in winter, how often the power goes out, what happens in a nor’easter. They ask in a perfectly reasonable voice, and they deserve straight answers, which I give them. But I’ve been listening for a while now, and these questions are almost never about the hospital. They’re about winter, and winter is really about being alone. Will someone come if I need help? Will I be stuck out there?
Then there’s the drive time to Portsmouth and Portland. Most people don’t plan to be in Portland every weekend. If they did, they’d be house hunting in Portland…or at least I hope they would be. What they’re asking is whether they’ll find their music, their food, the places who make them feel like themselves. That isn’t a question about mileage.
And then there’s the category of inquiries I’m not allowed to answer. Fair housing law is clear about what I can say about a community, and it got that clarity for really important reasons. So when someone asks about the political climate, or whether the area is diverse, or whether this person or that person will find community here, or whether everyone is old, or rich, I can’t characterize places based on those critera. And, honestly, I would never dare to think I could even if I were allowed to. What I can say is: please do your own research. The demographic data and statistics are public, and you can read them.
Then I tell them something I know to be true, which is only my own experience. In the day to day, most people are kind. People are people, here as anywhere, and we are mostly more alike than different. Don’t believe everything you read in the Facebook comments. You’ll find your people. It might just take a few extra trips to the farmers market, or the yoga studio, or the town meeting.
The question that surprised me the most the first time I got it was whether the locals hate newcomers. I’d never have thought to ask it. But I understand it, because it’s the same question as all the others, said out loud. Will I belong?
What the researchers say
There’s research on this, the way there’s research on everything. A moving company surveyed recent movers and found that more than half felt overwhelmed. I’m glad someone confirmed that moving is stressful. Also, in other groundbreaking findings, winter can be cold in the Northern Hemisphere.
More useful is a 2025 study of nearly 5,000 Dutch retirees who moved abroad, compared with Dutch retirees who stayed put. The ones who moved were more socially lonely, though not more emotionally lonely. In other words, they still had their partners and their closest ties, but the wider circle had thinned. The ones who felt they belonged, and who stayed in regular contact with their neighbors, were less lonely. It isn’t the same as a move across a few states, and I won’t pretend it is. But the shape of it rings true: you can get every practical thing right and still find that the broader web of people is the part that lags behind.
There’s also a small, hopeful finding from the social psychologist Nicholas Epley. People consistently underestimate how much strangers want to connect, and overestimate how awkward the attempt will be. Which suggests the first hello is going to go better than you’ve scripted it.
Here’s an article from the tail end of last winter, when I started to feel like I had unlocked that broader web of connections the Dutch researchers were talking about. How I’ve written KTL has changed a bit since then, but the observations hold.
How to Settle into Small-Town New Hampshire
You moved here for a reason. Maybe it was the lake. Maybe it was the quiet, or the space between houses, or the way you could actually see stars at night. Maybe you were ready for a life where you knew your neighbors’ names and your commute involved mountains and lakes instead of interstate gridlock.
My own list
When I moved up here, the thing I was most afraid of was the food. Real, specific, slightly snobbish dread about whether I could live somewhere without a decent bowl of something other than chili. I am about to start my fourth winter. This week a friend I trust dragged me to a hidden Thai restaurant in Alton, and I ate Thai noodle soup with crispy duck, and I have to admit that my snobbery was the only thing standing between me and that soup for the last couple of years. I’ll be a regular moving forward.
So the fear I was surest about turned out to be silly. The ones I thought were legitimate (winter, isolation, belonging) have mostly eased with time and a lot of showing up. The relationships and friendships I’ve formed here are amongst the richest of my life to date. What still makes me twitchy going forward lives in a humbler category. I’ll call it ignorance.
If the power goes out, will I be able to get the generator going? I have a generator. I have never needed it. But what if this winter is the winter we need it? Will we run out of oil because I keep putting off the trip into the spiderweb-festooned basement to check the gauge? And will the ancient tank make it through one more winter? I don’t expect to feel comfortable with either until I’ve gotten through another half dozen winters. And then there’s the fear I’ll admit is most acute: my two favorite local breweries, Beveridge in Wolfeboro and FrostHeave in Brookfield, never seem to be open on a Monday or Tuesday night, which is exactly when I want a beer and some company.
Sorting the fears
Here’s what I’ve noticed about my list.
Some fears you solve by learning something. The generator is one. I can read the manual, I can start the thing once on a nice day, I can go look at the gauge. It’s only frightening because I’m avoiding it. But an even better strategy might be to take my neighbor up on her offer to come by first storm and help me get it started.
Some fears you solve by going to see: the food, the market, the town meeting, the hidden restaurant. And some fears only time solves, which are the belonging ones. You can’t research your way into being known. You can only show up, again and again, until one day someone says your name before you’ve said theirs.
The trouble is that all three types of fear show up in the same costume, as a question about cell service.
So if you’re mid-move, or mid-wondering, and you’ve caught yourself lying awake over the roads or not knowing how to start a generator, try asking what the question is really asking. Then sort it. Look it up, go see it, or give it time.
Here’s to unpacking our fears so we know what’s really underneath them.
🧭 Jenn
Keys to the Lakes
