You don’t have to love your hometown. You can still be grateful for what it taught you.

Gratitude and affection come apart more often than people admit. A place can be too small, too closed, genuinely hard on you, and still be where you learned to work and to read a room. Admitting the second does not require pretending the first was not true. You are allowed to leave somewhere and still credit it.

Write down three things you can do because of where you grew up, without softening anything else about it. Keep the list short and specific. It makes leaving cleaner and visits less complicated.