On January 3, 2023, Shauna Rae zipped a bag shut in Long Island, loaded it into a car with her younger sister Rylee, and drove toward Brooklyn. She was not moving out. Not yet. She was testing her own life, cameras along for the ride, to answer one question: could she live like an adult on her own terms?
The Idea Came From Her Own Parents
The trial run did not start with a fight. It started with a suggestion. In the Season 2 episode that aired on December 27, 2022, Shauna had just passed the driving test in a car fitted with hand controls, and the family had gathered for a photoshoot at a sunflower farm. That was when her mom Patty and stepdad Mark floated the idea: try living in New York City for a while and see how it feels.
The timing was deliberate. Shauna was weighing whether to apply to the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, and a trial run in the city would answer the practical question underneath the dream: could she handle the commute, the stairs, the crowds, and the ordinary machinery of a day?
Two Sisters, One Small Flat, One Migraine
A week later, the Season 2 finale, “Should I Stay or Should I Go?,” opened with the move itself. Shauna and Rylee set up in Brooklyn together. Then a migraine arrived and threatened to dampen the whole milestone.
Over the whole experiment hung a second decision. Shauna had to choose between fashion school and travel the world with Dan, the boyfriend who had flown 3,000 miles to meet her. Brooklyn was the rehearsal. The choice was the performance.
The Choice Was Never Really About Brooklyn
Look past the boxes and the flat, and the trial run was never about an address. It was about who gets to decide what adulthood looks like for a 22-year-old woman who is 3-foot-10 after childhood brain cancer treatment left her with pituitary dwarfism. The show spent two seasons calling her trapped in the body of an 8-year-old, a line she has since rejected herself. On the Unplanned podcast in early 2025, she put it simply: “I’m just a human being. I’m just short.”
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The show ended with its final episode on October 1, 2023, and TLC has never announced a Season 3. That leaves the Brooklyn story unfinished on screen, and it is worth being honest about what the episode was: a TV trial run, not the move itself. Shauna went home to Long Island afterward, and the cameras went quiet.
The real move came later, off camera, on her own schedule. In early 2025, on the Unplanned podcast with Matt and Abby Howard, she corrected the assumption that she still lived with her parents: “No, I live with my boyfriend,” she said, describing the arrangement as “technically alone.” On that same appearance, she also spoke about leaving an abusive relationship, a chapter of her life the show never filmed. Three years off the air, she talks to more than a million followers on TikTok under @shaunarae99 and runs Fitclusion, the label she launched in December 2023.
That is the ending Brooklyn was rehearsing for. The trial run lasted days. The life it pointed toward is the one she lives now, without a camera crew and without asking permission first.
So here is the question Brooklyn left behind: was the trial run Shauna’s bravest move, or was the bravest move the one no camera ever filmed, when she quietly moved out for real and announced it on her own terms? Team Brooklyn or Team Real Move — which one proved she was ready?
