About 1500 miles from where I was born, but we didn't live there very long. I live about 10 miles from where I lived from age 6.

About 370 miles.

About 80 miles. Never had any desire to live elsewhere.

About 170 miles. I grew up on the Texas coast and now I live in East Texas. I love both places.

1,400 miles driving; 1,200 miles straight-line.

I was born in a hospital in the city, but my parents took me home to a house in the suburbs. For the past 48 years I have lived in a house about 800 feet down the road from there. It's a house my grandfather built around 1910 and my father was born in this house.

About 1200 miles now, but for the first 62 years I stayed within about 90 miles except for university and law school.

2474.4 km or 1539 miles

About 25 miles

Born in a small Midwestern town, now live in the heart of New York City. So I'd say, a world away.

611 miles.

about 120 miles ... south

I'm 35 km or 21.748 miles away from the hospital I was born in. Not a happy childhood in that town for me but I did love to be so close to the Lions mountains. Which I call my Sister Lions. I call it that because I believe the indigenous people here call it the sisters and the settlers here call it the Lions. I like both names so I have taken poetic Liberty.

4,350 miles approx, as it spans the atlantic ocean

"Place"?? State---five east of there. I have no idea what hospital/house haven't been there since. Military took us far far from there.

1390 miles according to google. I'm from the Houston area and now live in Ohio.

440.7 miles.

About 450 miles from where I was born but only 25 miles from where I lived from age 8 to 37 with a few short stints elsewhere.

Currently, trying to return home from Kelowna to the Ottawa area. This, after living in Alta, and then Boise. People laugh, since Kelowna is where many Canadians desire to retire, whereas we are returning to long, snowy, cold winters, where grandbabies will keep us warm. Oh, and winter travels to sunny Fla. too!

About 90 miles now. For about 20 years it was 200 miles and then for another 20 years 400 miles. At retirement we wanted to get closer 'home' so we placed ourselves in the same town as our daughter which happens to be about equidistant from our remaining siblings back in our home state. Brothers and sisters, 4 of them, are all about 40 miles away in one direction or another.

10 miles as the crow flies......

I'm about 25 miles north of the hospital where I was born. I grew up about eight miles west of that hospital. The hospital in my hometown was built 25 years too late for my DM and me, but it's where our two grandchildren were born.

Also grew up military and lived loads of places.

My step mother (for more than 40 years, so more like my "other mother"), was birthed under stairs during a bombing. Her mom ran within minutes of giving birth through rice paddies, but now lives around the other side of the world.

Meaning? Close or far, are both good and bad. I don't see why any judgements about distance are meaningful? shrug

From Boston, MA to San Jose, CA is 3,128 miles.

I live about 35 miles from where I was born. I lived here and there, but never outside the state, and happy to stay here.

I truly don't understand why some people feel you have to move far away from their home area to have a better life. Life is what you make it, not where you live.

About 35 miles.

"I truly don't understand why some people feel you have to move far away from their home area to have a better life. Life is what you make it, not where you live."

Yes and no, I think it depends. It's like people who say "I hate this, won't eat it. I hate that, won't get near it". Then, in response to "have you ever tried it properly prepared?", the answer is "No".

I think life is greatly enriched with learning, adventure and new experiences and I think the majority of people would agree with that notion. People might move for better employement opportunities or a change of weather. Often people go away for college and settle in that area. Or pursue exciting job opportunities or have jobs that require relocation. More places, more experiences.

Those that haven't experienced other places and other things aren't really making a choice. The outcome is the default of having not tried alternatives. The comments above that I think are the most open minded are like "I tried here and there, settled on here" or describing moves in adult years. Choices made without being anchored to the same old, same old.

Everyone tries to find their happiness in different ways.

"I truly don't understand why some people feel you have to move far away from their home area to have a better life. Life is what you make it, not where you live."

I don't know if anyone feels they have to move (as an adult), but a lot of times people feel they want to. While I agree that life is what you make it, you can often make it better or worse, depending on where you live. Where you live will affect your options for dating/marriage, it will affect your options for education, it will affect your options for work and income.

In these days of internet and international travel, one need not live in a lot of different places to experience different people/places/ideas, but there's no getting around the reality that some places offer fewer options than others. If you're a person who likes the available options, that's fine, but if you're a person who accepts the available options but doesn't really want any of them, a move could dramatically increase your satisfaction with your life.

An example I saw in some acquaintances: a small town that revolves around farming, school football, and gardening. It's a great place to live, if you're a farmer, and/or you like football (playing or watching), and/or you like gardening. But if you hate football (or have kids who hate football) and don't want to talk about plants, there's not too much else to on weekends, and not too many other people to hang out with. You could stay and spend a lot of time doing things you don't really enjoy with people you have little in common with, or you could move somewhere that offers a more diverse group of people and activities, to increase the likelihood that you'll find things to do (and people to do them with) that you enjoy.

Well said, Toronto vet.

i grew up in a very large suburban tract development. no one had lived there for long because all the houses were newly built. lots of military and federal employees so families came and went frequently.

the town i live in now has the university that i graduated from. its a town with a lot of history and families go back generations. i find this nice.

i moved away from where i grew up, and far away from where i was born but living in the same place where previous generations lived offers context and richness all its own. it can be nice (if you dont hale from axe murderers).

My father changed jobs as often (it seemed at the time) as the oil change on the car. Thus, I have figured out that I have live in my 75 years at 46 addresses! Sometimes, one cannot control what happens.

What is scary is that in a couple of those places, I have lived at 10+ years or more!! So take away those 20+ years from my 75 and still, I have 44 addresses. Yikes. What a nomad I am.

I live 21 miles from where I was born. But that’s not saying I've never moved away. I‘ve lived in several different places for work and education. Just so happens work brought us back to this area.

I live in a town with a well regarded liberal arts college that was a big draw to our community for many years (not sure its status this day and age). I cannot tell you how many people I've met who moved here from the east to attend the college, selecting it because it was as far away from their families as they could get in the lower 48. Not all stayed, of course, but many, many did. Then, many of their families followed them here. Came to visit, loved it and moved, too.

Until college I was right there, then an hour away for about six yearss, then 10 mins and back very close, now I am a whole 20 mins in farm traffic

"I truly don't understand why some people feel you have to move far away from their home area to have a better life. Life is what you make it, not where you live."

You are very lucky. Obviously you've never been subjected to discrimination and harassment that you would not have if you lived in another location. Many places in the world are a lot more dangerous than others - some people are strong enough to stay and fight, but other people prefer peace.

" Life is what you make it, not where you live."

Actually, I agree with this part of the statement. Life is what you make it, and that most definitely can include exploring new and unfamiliar options, expanding horizons, moving out of one's comfort zone. Some people can find fulfilment and security where they were born; others cannot. For me, moving around, living in many different places, mingling with different cultures and histories, has been part of the essential fabric of my life. And, after all, if humans hadn't been prepared to move on in search of better futures there would be no USA or Canada or Australia; we'd all still be living where we originated, in Africa.

I was born about 45 or 50 miles from where I live. I was born in my Aunt's house as my parents were living with her. I live now about 12 miles from where I grew up.

Sue

840 miles I was happy to move to California after I was married, though sad to leave my mom as she was a widow by then. I had hoped to move back to the PNW but by the time the kids came along, we were well established here and I've always had a tough time with cloudy/rainy skies. Maybe that's not a problem anymore.

" Life is what you make it, not where you live."

For women in Afghanistan, it is extremely difficult to make life pleasant, and it is likely to get worse for them. Under Taliban rule, their lives are not what they themselves make, but what others force them to live. If you are not allowed to make choices, then you have very limited options for making your life your own.

Where you live matters. I would not have had the same opportunities for my career if I had not moved to Los Angeles.

Lars - exactly my point. Moving - whether away from discrimination, poverty or war, or towards new or better opportunities, is in fact doing exactly what that poster suggested even though it's the opposite of what she meant with that comment. For many people, living somewhere other than where they were born is making more of life.

180 miles

About 600 miles. My parents decided to leave Ohio for NC in their mid-50s, because they were tired of the winters. I was just finishing high school, so it was a foregone conclusion that I would move, too. I enrolled in college, met my DH there, and here we still are. We've been to a lot of places, but have no desire to live anywhere else.

What an interesting question! My answer? about 1300 miles. Lars' and Jmms' comments are resonating -- thank goodness in the US we can pretty much live where we wish and do as we wish, because in other times and circumstances, that was not possible.

My Mom/Grandma/Family were sent to an internment camp -- that was pretty far from where they had chosen to live and where my Mom was born. I don't have "grandma's china" or anything else -- if she had any in the first place, it was not useful enough to be dragged to a camp. They did choose to return to their home after the government allowed it (which was quite a bit after the war) and their home had been completely looted, so it was a start over from scratch. During the war, my Mom was sent even further away (2500 miles) for an opportunity to get out of the camp and get a high school/trade education...with no idea of if/when she'd be allowed back, or what would really happen to her (she was about 16 then). Sometimes circumstances push people to make tough choices.

My Dad left his country of birth for better opportunities, and did the best he could; we moved a fair amount when I was a kid to pursue better opportunities for our family.

I was born in Ohio. We were a family of 6 kids, nomadic when I was growing up - my father was an engineer, but changed jobs frequently because of his alcholism. We lived in Ohio, Indiana and Michigan. I was a good student - Valedictorian, National Merit Scholar, and got scholarships to attend college. I left home when I was 18 and only went back one time the first Christmas of my freshman year. I created my own life. I trained as a Master's level audiologist. I met my husband in graduate school at Ohio State. He is from Massachusetts. We have lived here since 1979. He is a mathematician and systems engineer he worked for the Department of Defense and a 10-year NATO project. His work has taken us frequently to Europe and we lived in the Netherlands for several years. We're reitred now and live in our vacation home on Cape Cod. I could never live in the midwest again. Too conservative for me. Not my politics.

I was born in San Francisco. I grew up 55 miles south of SF. Now I live 55 miles north of SF.

I was born and raised in Los Angeles, and now live 100 miles north in Santa Barbara. My parents went much further, my mother was born and raised in Swansea, South Wales in the UK and my father was born in Leeds, Yorkshire, UK and raised in London. They both ended up in Los Angeles, which was 5,300 and 5,500 miles away.

Where I live was a very conscious choice. I wanted to keep the weather, outdoor lifestyle and opportunities of Los Angeles and leave behind the impersonal nature of such a large city, as well as the traffic and crime. Thirty years on and I realize what a great choice it was.

I have lived all my life in Los Angeles County -- from Lake Balboa in the San Fernando Valley, West Los Angeles, Topanga Canyon, to the beach at Venice. I'm about 20 miles from where I was raised, yet light years away.

All four grandparents came from Italy at different times and settled in the Los Angeles area -- including the then-rural San Fernando Valley, and the newly developed immigrant-friendly community of Boyle Heights in East Los Angeles.

Same city, about a 15 minute drive away. Maybe less.

That's an ironic name to go with the comment.

Born in Wisconsin north of Green Bay. Now, almost 1,000 miles from there and growing up was a bit over that. I love to travel outside the country and lived in France for a bit less than a year. I have lived in four different states, each for a long period of time. Loved the Philadelphia area best-it will always be home, although living outside DC now (since the early 1990s) is wonderful due to its diversity and vibrance. I have met so many people from so many places which has been just marvelous.