an-american-in-france

I just passed my one year anniversary of living in France. Spring seems to be when I move to foreign countries..and when I start life over again. In 1998, I left my CEO job, sold everything I owned, and packed up two suitcases and my two cats and boarded a plane to Florence, Italy. That too was in April.  I had an apartment rented for one month in the center of town but had no idea what I was going to do after that. I did not have a Permesso di Soggiorno (permit to stay past three months) and could not legally work. I spoke survival Italian. All I knew was that I had to get out of a suffocating and hellish job, away from a bad relationship, and out of Los Angeles. Italy is where I had been vacationing for 15 years, where I had studied as an undergraduate, and where I was happiest. So off to Italy I went! Surprisingly, I managed to survive and semi-thrive in Italy for two years. I lived and studied Italian in Florence, worked at the United Nations in Rome, taught English to 135 business people by myself at Italy’s largest insurance headquarters which was in Trieste, and traveled to dozens of towns and cities throughout Italy. I lived in Rome with five roommates from Ireland, Sicily and Russia - all much younger than me. I rented an apartment in a small town, San Dona di Piave, just outside of Venice. I learned about discrimination and narrow-mindedness in that small town. I worked for a greedy woman who lied to me, used me, overworked me, underpaid me and ultimately stold from me. She still owes me over $2,000. I learned conversational Italian and made some friends that I still have to this day. Most importantly, I learned what I was made of because those were two of the most challenging years of my life. I did it all alone with no help, no contacts, little money, no street smarts, and only basic Italian language skills. Ultimately, I returned to the U.S. for a consulting job offer, which turned out to be a good decision because my consulting business snowballed and I made a very good living for the next ten years, with autonomy and flexibility to travel. But I didn’t know that at the time, and when I returned to California in 2000, I was 40 and as a single woman starting life over again, I thought I was destined to loneliness and bad jobs for the rest of my life. I was oh SO wrong.

Now once again I’m starting life over, but at 50! This time I didn’t move to a foreign country because I was in love with it (like Italy), but because I was in love with a person…a very special person. In contrast to my move to Italy, this time I didn’t leave a bad job, but in fact, had a great consulting business that I truly loved doing (which I still do at 30% of what it was). I left a house that I had worked my whole life to buy. Geez, did I adore that house! But what I’ve learned over the years is that ‘things,’ jobs, and money will not make you happy. I also know that sometimes, often many times, taking risks pays off. I’ve never been one to jump into a dark bottomless abyss, but rather my style is to take big leaps off cliffs where I can see the bottom and with a parachute on my back. There are smart risks and there are stupid risks and you have to know the difference.

Admittedly, the first six months of living in France were particularly difficult, especially since I don’t really speak the language. And there was the stress of the move and the grief process of saying goodbye to everything and everyone I’d known for 26 years. I didn’t know or understand French culture, and of course, there were the adjustments that come with living with someone you had only known via a long distance relationship. Every hour of everyday was completely different from my life in L.A., and now I had two teens to care for too. I found myself spending 4 hours a day cooking, eating, and cleaning up afterwards, compared to about 1 hour a day in L.A.  And what was psychologically different with this move to France was that there was no Plan B. In Italy, I always had in the back of my mind that if it got too hard, I would return to the US, which ultimately I did. But my move to France was for keeps. There was no turning back.

Ultimately, I have found my way in France. I finally found a semi-intensive French class beginning in September, I’ve made a few quality friends, I’ve fallen even more in love with my Frenchman who I married three weeks ago, I’m learning about French culture and am adjusting to the lifestyle, I adore my ’step children,’ and love the traveling and motorbiking we do. The scenery could not be more beautiful. My final challenge will be to find a way to make a living in two years when my consulting contracts end. But I’ve been in worse situations and always manage to pull a rabbit out of my hat so I’m sure there’s still another rabbit hiding somewhere in that chapeau!  In the meantime, I’m trying to take each day as it comes and savour every precious moment I have in this new life - a life full of love, laughter, beauty, culture, constant learning, new experiences, foreign ways, and most days too much activity and work. It’s a challenging journey but worth the effort. After all, is there anything worse than boredom and too much familiarity? 

Thanks again to my readers who have chosen to join me on this journey. I use video to share my experiences with you because film is the best way to communicate the extraordinary beauty of the area and to share my explorations of what is to me almost another planet. I hope you find them as much fun to watch as they are for me to make.

I’ll end with two of my favorite quotes:

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” — Mark Twain

“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.” — Helen Keller

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