Jeanie Sullivan called Cottonwood home for a number of years.
A few months ago Sullivan moved down to Gilbert.
Last Thursday, however, Sullivan was back in the Verde Valley, catching up with friends and giving her two dogs Bella and Chundol the opportunity to run around the Cottonwood Dog Park near Riverfront Park.
The dogs seem to be enjoying life since Sullivan got them out of shelters.
Sullivan said she’s pretty much been a dog person all her life.
She was enjoying the nice weather outside while her canine companions also took the opportunity to catch up with some of their friends, both old and new, as well.
Sullivan had a couple of days off, so it was pretty much her weekend.
Work has been good to Sullivan.
Right now she’s working at a hospitality house in the Valley of the Sun that works primarily with cancer patients.
“I love my new job,” Sullivan said.
When she was still a Cottonwood resident, Sullivan worked at the Sedona Mago Retreat, the center off of Bill Gray Road just north of Cottonwood that’s self-described as “a place for spiritual awakening and holistic healing.”
She worked a number of jobs before that, including one that brought her to Arizona in the first place.
Originally from New Jersey outside of Philadelphia, Sullivan had been living in Boston before her move to the desert a few years ago.
It was a bit different here than in a large city but Sullivan said she feel like she ended up adjusting pretty well.
“I remembered the day I finally felt adjusted, it was two years to the day I moved here,” Sullivan said. “I had a two-minute conversation with the cashier at Safeway about my shirt I had bought at J.C. Penny and then it clicked.”
Sullivan said that in New England, strangers don’t usually talk to each other.
“It’s not that they’re being rude, it’s just how people are,” Sullivan said. “When I first moved here I thought everyone knew each other because everyone was always talking to each other.”
While she misses things like the rivers, lakes, trees and the ocean that she was used to back east, Sullivan said she liked the friendliness and the pace of life that comes from being in a place where everyone isn’t all crowded together.
She still goes back from time to time, however, to get her fix.
It’s not just the different scenery.
“I love some Jersey corn and their tomatoes,” Sullivan said.
Well, it is the Garden State, after all.
Sullivan said she moved to Gilbert to be with her boyfriend, also from Boston.
The two didn’t meet until they were out West, however.
“We talked about it and realized we probably walked past each other on the street in Boston because of where we worked,” Sullivan said.
After the move, Sullivan said she found her new job and everything really seems to be coming together.
