Moving Cross Country or Stay Within Driving Distance

We used to live in Michigan but we moved a little further south for two reason:

1. Dealing with the ex and the hostilities related to that situation was too much. We didn't want our other children growing up in that environment; it wasn't fair to them. They deserved a safe and healthy home environment.
2. Dealing with some of my family was too much. Growing up in a highly dysfunctional family, I didn't want that for my kids so we thought putting distance between them and us would be good for our family.

We've lived away from the toxic situations for nine years and I know we made the right decision for our family to move away from toxic relationship and big cities. It was their best chance at a "normal" upbringing.

We had a choice to either move within driving distance of my stepkids (but outside their state) or to agree to cross country moving. We chose to stay closer to my stepkids to maintain visitation more easily. We knew the ex would make putting them on a plane extremely difficult. If she couldn't let them go for a drive two blocks away (where we used to live near her) or a couple hours away (where we lived after that), we knew she'd make an airplane trip impossible for them. The point was to make this easier on all of the children so we stayed closer.

Sometimes I wonder if we'd moved southeast, if it would have been even better in many other ways. I guess we won't know.