Surviving a cross-country move

When I was preparing to move last fall, my plants were of great concern. In particular, I had one HUGE plant that was absolutely thriving. It came from a cutting from one of my mom's plants and we always just referred to it as "the purple plant." The only real choice I had to move it was to cut it way back and hope for the best. I let my mom do the honors and into the back of the moving truck it went. In our new apartment, I set it up in our new living room and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Waited some more.
After several months, it looked like this:

Argh. Despair. My living room back on Long Island didn't have a ton of light, and neither does ours now, so I thought it would be comparable. But no signs of life. I decided to move it to the back room with more sun. Waited a little bit longer, then FINALLY, in January of all times, it started to come back to life. And now, the purple plant is thriving once again and I couldn't be happier: