American YouTuber Safiya Nygaard has garnered over nine million followers with her quirky videos of mixing things and trying out new stuff.

However, since the past year, Nygaard has been posting infrequently and not as per her schedule. To clarify this, Nygaard took to her blog to explain the reason behind it.

Nygaard Was Homesick 

The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 turned the world upside down. With lockdowns and quarantine, people in the USA were forced to be at their homes and adhere to social distancing norms for their safety from March 2020 onwards.

Apart from coming across online negativity, being separated from her support system was the primary reason Nygaard posted at a lesser rate on her YouTube. In an article titled ‘Where have we been?’ on her blog, she opened up about her experience.

She revealed she was quarantined with her husband, Tyler Williams, but the feeling of isolation had manifested in them since their wedding. 

Nygaard and Williams got married in November 2019 after being together for over five years. However, neither she nor Williams are originally from Los Angeles (LA).

Nygaard is from Chicago, whereas Williams is from Philadelphia. But both of them have been living in California for over a decade.

The YouTuber said besides business contacts; they have few friends and family members who live in LA. Their close contacts lived in other parts, making it difficult for the duo to reach out to them owing to their hectic schedules.

However, their wedding was a blissful occasion for Nygaard since all their friends and family came over to LA, even if it was just for a few days. But the wedding’s aftermath took a toll on Nygaard. Even though she and Williams were there for each other, they felt low and sad when everyone left. 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

A post shared by Safiya Nygaard (@safiyany)

While they were able to relive some happy memories while editing their wedding videos, after some time, they experienced what Nygaard calls “serious post-wedding blues.”

The quarantine too started around four months after their wedding, making her efforts to bounce back futile.

Though she was homesick, she couldn’t go back to Chicago to be with her parents as her father was over seventy years old, and she didn’t want to be a risk to his health.

On July 15, 2020, Nygaard tweeted she was homesick for Chicago. She revealed she hadn’t been there since September 2017. Even though she has been living in LA for the past six years, she doesn’t consider it as her ‘home.’

Before the pandemic, the couple had made plans to go to the East Coast to visit William’s family during spring but; it got canceled because of the ongoing pandemic.

During this phase, the duo questioned everything about their life in LA, from being apart from their families and support system to the reason for their stay in LA. They said:

Why had we stayed in LA so long when we don’t *need* to be in LA to have a YouTube channel? Why had we felt the need to stay in a place where we felt so isolated, and traded that for somewhere where we could be near people who supported us?

Along with feeling homesick, Nygaard went through "General quarantine blues." The duo was not only separated from their families but from their business contacts and general daily routine too. Nygaard opened up that she fell into the pit of her thoughts and emotions, taking months to recover from it.

Despite an increasing demand for digital content, Nygaard, unable to produce more, ended up feeling worse about herself. At the end of the blog, Nygaard revealed a few steps that she and Willams have decided regarding YouTube uploads. She also mentioned their plan of leaving LA and moving back to the East.

The Couple Moved to the East

On March 28, 2021, Nygaard posted a video on her YouTube channel titled 'We Moved Across The Country.' 

In the 40-minute video, Nygaard and Williams vlogged their entire journey, including packing their entire things from LA to Philadelphia, where Williams’ family lived.

The couple started their journey at the end of December 2020 and celebrated New Year on the road to their new home in Raleigh, North Carolina. As of today, the video has over 3.9 million views and 291K likes.