Mom’s severe anxiety makes her trade LA ‘hustle’ for Arizona desert life

By Lauren Wilkin

After crippling anxiety left her afraid to even visit the grocery store alone, an LA "hustler" swapped city life for the Arizona desert.

Jen Podany, 41, from Omaha, Nebraska, moved to LA when she was 18 to begin her career in dermatology.

She lived city life for 20 years, but when it started to feel like the world was closing in around her, she and her family moved to the desert for life of solitude where their nearest shop is a 10-minute drive away.

Once crammed into a small city-center house, she now lives on a ranch with 20 chickens and four goats. And instead of facing hours of traffic everyday, her and her husband work remotely in the quiet of their desert sanctuary.

"In LA, leaving the house would consist of traffic, homelessness and just not knowing what you're going to get," she said.

"Here, we go for a three-mile walk in nature, and don't see a single person."

When Jen first moved out of Nebraska to LA, she was attracted to the endless opportunities the city offered.

"I worked in skincare and dermatology," she said.

"It's a very ego-driven industry. But I loved the hustle culture. In LA there's always something to do, and so much opportunity.

"I was out networking constantly, and I loved the nightlife."

She started her own skincare business, Bluestone Sunshields - a sun protection brand that designs UPF 50+ accessories.

But it was when she was raising her three boys in the middle of the city that she started to experience anxiety.

"It was during covid, and it felt like the whole city was falling apart, we had fires constantly.," she said.

"I didn't even want to go to the grocery store on my own with my babies. Something just felt wrong.

"I remember sitting in our backyard which had beautiful, lush trees but then seeing all these powerlines over us and chem trails.

"I looked up at the sky and thought this just doesn't feel right. It just felt like the world was closing in on me.

"I didn't even want to do the simplest things. It was an anxiety that was just building. I'd never experienced that before.

"It's a crazy thing. I never thought I'd feel like not wanting to go out at all. There was a constant fear of just doing daily things. It was unbearable."

In 2024, Jen and her husband knew something needed to change.

"We'd been vacationing at a little town called Snowflake in the middle of the Arizona desert," she said.

"And we just thought finally, we can do this, we can move here.

"It's in the high desert, it's all red rock, the sunsets are amazing and you can just see for miles."

The pair bought a beautiful house on an acre of land, with another 100 acres of land down the road - for the same price as their house in Burbank, LA.

"We have a couple of houses now dotted around the land, and we've just bought another home across the road for when people come to stay," she said.

"Now we've also got chickens and goats. It's a piece of heaven."

Jen says the boys, who were 9, 7 and 3 when they left LA, are thriving. They spend roughly the same amount of money per month as in LA, but now they have space, nature and animals to care for.

"We've all got smiles on our faces. In nature, we're just so much more fulfilled," she said.

Jen says she spends her evenings watching the sunsets, brushing her goats and looking after the chickens.

And with the boys being home-schooled, the family spends their time in relative solitude, aside from occasionally seeing their neighbors on walks around the land.

"The community is amazing," she said.

"I know every single person who lives in this five acres of land. In LA I wouldn't even know the people on my street."

Since the move, Jen has noticed her anxiety almost completely disappear.

"I'm so much calmer and more confident now. It feels natural.

"I'm not overridden with anxiety, or worrying who am I going to see, and who do I remember, or anything like that.

"All of that stuff is wiped clean."

The family hope to build more on their land and share it with even more animals, saying now they're in tune with nature, a life back in the city seems exhausting.