I (31F) have a close-knit family, mother, father, 2 sisters (1 with a 5 year old), and my grandmother.

My grandmother is old, frail, and not in great health. She is living with my mother, with mom acting as a full-time caregiver. She is not able to do things, and is completely bed bound.

My mother is very emotionally unstable, I've always been emotional support for her. Physically, taking care of my grandmother is tearing her apart. She has a bad back, and the bending and physical requirements are wearing her down. She spends half her days crying, and a lot of days she can't walk because of the pain in her back.

My sisters are well adjusted, but have their own problems.

I work in the tech sector, in a backend software engineer. I've moved from government contracts to start ups. Jan 2024 the start up I worked for failed; all employees were cut. I was out of work for a year (until Nov 2024). During that year, mom and dad helped significantly - they paid 90% of my bills, and kept me afloat. It was not a small amount of cash. It affected their ability to move out of their rental and buy a house.

While job hunting, I decided I wanted something stable and long-term. A career. I landed a good company, solid, large, stable, great hours, good benefits, the opportunity for actual retirement. There's tons of room for horizontal movement, I've already moved up in 4 months of working there! It took a while, my sector is overwhelmed with applicants (200-300 people are applying for every position). We are all hurting. But I got something, it ticks all the boxes even though the work isn't exactly enjoyable at the moment and the pay is decent with room for improvement.

So, the meat and potatoes: my family has ALWAYS been together - we live within 20 minutes of each other. I'm the outlier, I moved an hour away. But every weekend I drive me and my kid (4yo) to my parents for visiting and dinner. My mother had a huge attachment to my child, she cries when we leave, she has said on multiple occasions that the grandkids (mine and my sister's kid) are the only things keeping her going right now. When I take my son on a 2 week vacation to visit his other grandparents, or I forget to have him say goodnight to her she tells me I'm withholding him from her to hurt her.

My work is going for a Return of Office. This would mean I would need to move to Virgina for 1-3 years. It's about 1000 miles from where my family is. I am inclined to do this. I spoke with my father about it, and he said I need to tell the company to kick rocks - I should sell my house, move into my parents basement (me and my son would have our own rooms) and not disrupt the life of my surrounding family.

They would need to pay a bit of my bills - I would be jobless - and it will probably be a year (or more) before finding a new job. I've been applying since January and landing some interviews but I'm not amazing, nothing that has panned out.

Dad told me if I did this, I would ripping my family apart - I would be removing one of the only sources of joy from my mothers life who is already completely overwhelmed and unstable and needs all of the help and support she can get right now. Me moving is going to destroy her, I know this. She may never trust me again.

She already feels like everyone in the family hates her or thinks poorly of her (no amount of saying otherwise will change that). She is going to take this as a personal attack, and no matter how hard I defend myself I'm going to be the one ripping everything apart. Everyone is pushing for me to sell and go into the basement.

I think this move would be great; for me, for my family, for my career. It'll be painful, and difficult. I'm not blind to the difficulties; but I'm not prepared to be out of work again, someone else covering my bills, living in my parents basement with no insurance/retirement/etc.

But I can't stand the thought of being the one that kills my family.

Would I be the asshole for moving, knowing what that is going to do to my family?