Slowly, but noticeably.

A bit of nervous anticipation silently fills the space around you. The sticky air of summer has started to dissipate. The mornings have a slight chill to them. The sun is setting earlier in the evening. The darkness of the next season is creeping in.

And with it comes a strange mix of emotions.

Some grateful anticipation for routine and structure. Some deep sadness for the time that has passed over the summer. An awareness that those days are behind you and won’t be back for almost a full year.

The late mornings sleeping in, cuddling up in bed watching Full House reruns. Late breakfasts of Nutella crepes and peaches from the garden.

The lazy afternoons playing “monkey in the middle” in the pool.

Squeezing lemons to create a lemonade stand in our little Provençal alleyway, hoping at least one person will walk by to buy one.

The boredom that kids actually got to feel, which sparked creativity a few minutes later when they built a tent out of bamboo sticks and put a sheet over it.

The late dinners on our patio under the stars and the string of lights that line the garden. No stress about bedtime.

The family road trip through Europe. Singing along to annoying American country songs like “Chasin’ Texas” while driving through the Italian countryside. The thoughtful questions they asked about languages and cultures as we crossed borders from France to Switzerland to Italy.

These middle years, the primary school ages, feel so incredibly special.

Young, sweet and innocent, yet growing into their own independent person.

As a parent, you’re still the center of their universe and that feels so good.

They go to bed asking you to cuddle them and rub their backs until they drift off to sleep, and then can’t wait to wake up and tell you about the crazy, strange dreams they had.

I know these days won’t last forever.

Life Back in the United States

Since we’ve moved to France, one of my goals has been to be present. To notice. To be aware of little things and to savor and live in moments.

Something I was not capable of doing well in the US. Not at all.

A few months ago, we bought a Skylight, a rotating picture frame. I uploaded hundreds of pictures and videos of the kids from their baby and toddler years back in San Francisco.

I told myself I did it so my kids could remember life back then. Their old house. Their old rooms. Maybe it would spark some memories.

But I think I really did this for myself. So I could remember. Because while I may have been physically there for some of it, I wasn’t mentally there.

I wasn’t able to be present.

Now, I find myself somewhat triggered by this Skylight in a sad, nostalgic way.

Not because those baby and toddler years are over. Those days were so much harder than life right now. But because I missed it.

I was a full-time corporate marketer with a high-level position. I worked and traveled a lot. When I was home, I was always just “getting through” things like their dinner or bath or bedtime so I could get onto the next. A few more emails to send. Dinner cleanup. Preparation for the next day.

My mind was always focused on the future.

I was there.

But I wasn’t really there.

And I didn’t know I was missing anything.

Normal Life, Right?

Part of what prompted our move overseas was to break this cycle. It’s hard to see it when you’re in. It’s just normal life. It’s what everyone around you does.

Looking back, I can see the signs. But I never really paid attention. I was too busy. Too caught up in what I thought I should be doing. What life required of me.

When we first moved to France, I didn’t even realize my lack of ability to live in the present moment was still following me.

For the first six months, I did what I always did. I focused on being productive and accomplishing what I could every day. I measured my day by what I got done. I transferred my work energy into creating a life abroad energy which I thought meant getting organized logistically. Bank accounts. Furniture. School administration. Visas. I essentially tried to create another type of job here in France.

Soon, the frustration set in. The society here isn’t set up for you to be constantly moving on to the next and quickly “getting stuff done.” Long lunches. Sunday closures. Major administration delays. Daily errands that required fifteen stops.

I think I would have let this continue to bother and infuriate me if I hadn’t experienced a specific moment.

Can You Play Barbies with Me?

“Mommy, you’ve been sitting there all day with all of those papers, can you come over and play Barbies with me? I promise it will be more fun.”

My four-year-old daughter said pleadingly as she was pulling my arm away from the desk and toward her dollhouse where she’d set up a swimming pool and little Barbie table and chairs.

So I did.

I sat on the rug.

We filled up the little pool with warm water, changed Barbie into her swimsuit and proceeded to act out their fun day at the pool.

I let myself actually enjoy it. I watched her deeply in play and listened closely to the storylines she was inventing.

Barbie talked to Ken in English, but the kids in French, which I thought was pretty cool.

I realized at that moment. This is it. This is what it’s all about. Noticing. Dropping the “shoulds” and the to-do list and being in the Barbie play moment with her.

Everything else could wait. It will still be there.

But my four-year-old daughter would not always be four.

And I would not always get another chance to sit on that rug.

This Summer Was Different

Fast forward three years later, my daughter tiptoed back downstairs after bedtime seeming a bit worried and sad.

“We only get three more mornings to sleep in and free days before school starts.”

I lifted her onto my lap and held her and said, “But look at how much fun the summer was and look what we have right now, a nice cozy bed and time together, let’s appreciate that and not worry about anything else.”

While I was also secretly sad that the summer was coming to an end, I was able to have gratitude and appreciation for it, not sadness or guilt that I wasn’t there.

I was physically and mentally present. Even for the most annoying moments. Which we all know can be a lot when the constant hunger, fighting and whining starts to really weigh on you.

I was there for all of it. And somehow that felt like enough.

The Gift I Needed

France gave me a gift. One I didn’t even realize I needed. Maybe it forced it on me.

Or maybe it opened my mind up enough to see a different way of living. I slowed down. I had to stop worrying about being productive and accomplishing as much as I could in one day. I had to learn that not everything needed to be efficient.

That an afternoon could be spent doing almost nothing.

That one little errand could take all morning.

That lunch could easily last three hours.

That sitting on the rug playing Barbies could be more important than whatever I thought I needed to accomplish next.

I realized something that feels maybe obvious to others.

The value of life is actually living it. Not getting through today so you can enjoy tomorrow.

Living it.

With my kids, at these ages, right here and now.

Before It’s Gone

The end of summer still makes me sad. I think it always will. Because I know these exact days will never come back.

My children will never be exactly this age, asking me to cuddle and rub their backs at bedtime, being carefree enough to build tents out of bamboo sticks, or climbing into our bed in the morning to tell me about their crazy dreams.

But this sadness feels different now. It’s not sadness that I wasn’t there. I was there for all of it.

The late dinners.

The annoying country songs.

The unsettled whiny boredom.

The constant “I’m hungry.”

The cute little homemade lemonade stand.

I remember all of it. Maybe that’s the gift France gave me.

Not the food.

Not the wine.

Not the fashion.

(Although all of that is amazing too.)

It gave me back the present moment. And maybe, in doing that, it gave me something even more precious. The chance to actually remember my own life.

So I’m choosing not to be sad about the end. I’m choosing to be grateful that I got to have this summer. All of these moments together. The beautiful ones and the annoying ones. The photographed ones and the ones no one will ever see.

And I’m even more grateful that I was actually present in them. At least most of them.

Because one day, these ordinary summer days will be merely memories I’d likely give anything to step back into.

And I don’t want to have to see them years from now on a rotating picture frame and wonder where I was when they were actually happening.

I want to remember.

Not just what my children looked like.

But what it felt like to be there. With them. At these ages.

In this summer. In this one precious life.

One where I was actually present enough to notice.

The questions I soon realized were part of the unspoken script at Harvard Business School that I would be asked on repeat.

“I’m sorry, I don’t think I understand,” I said, trying not to sound as clueless as I felt to the polite, polished girl at the Welcome Cocktails event.

She tilted her head, confused by my confusion, then quickly clarified. “Boarding school. Your family’s summer home.”

I could feel the heat creeping up my neck.

“Oh,” I said, forcing a laugh. “I grew up in Wisconsin. Catholic schools. My parents have a small cottage on a lake near Milwaukee.”

Her lips pressed into a thin smile. “That’s...nice.”

There it was. The quiet judgment. Not cruel, not overt. Just enough to make it clear: I was not from here. Not from this world. I wasn’t prepped. I was... uncultured.

What Matters at HBS

When you realize that you weren’t raised in the world that built this room, no matter how confident you may be, it’s inevitable that you will have considerable doubts.

An Admissions Mistake. They fail out the bottom 10% of the class. That will likely be you. You don’t belong here.

These thoughts take over. It makes it hard to feel like you’re ever going to survive. Much less be successful. So I did what I always did when I felt uncertain. I worked harder. Studied more. Made sure I was the most prepared person for every case study. If I couldn’t out-belong anyone, at least I could out-work them.

Then comes what really matters. Not the grades. The path you take after you graduate.

“I would strongly advise you to go back to Kraft Foods in brand management after graduation. Most students will go into management consulting or finance or start companies, but given you are on a full-ride sponsorship, it makes sense to stay the course and fulfill your two-year commitment to them.”

Stated my guidance counselor very matter-of-factly. There was an undertone of judgement in her voice. Her office smelled like eucalyptus and printer toner.

Apparently, it wasn’t okay to explore and question if your current career path is really right for you. I thought that was what graduate school was all about - to explore, to figure out the perfect career path for yourself. To spend some time deeply reflecting about what’s going to fulfill you for the next 40 years in a job.

Apparently, not for someone with a full-ride sponsorship from a company. It was more important to put your head down, clasp on your golden handcuffs and honor the commitment to the corporation.

Or maybe not for anyone at all at HBS, since most people seemed to have already decided to take one of the two most common career paths: management consulting or finance. Their biggest decision was deciding which of the top companies to pursue. These paths also tended to have the highest pay. Because getting the most prestigious company name and the highest pay mattered. A lot.

While I was confused by all of this, the lack of exploration and career options, I also felt somewhat relieved that a decision had been made. I wouldn’t have to navigate the uncertain terrain of figuring it out on my own. Someone else had drawn the map.

I would go back to Kraft Foods. I would be a good corporate soldier and fulfill my obligations. I didn’t question this decision. I didn’t ask myself if this was what I really wanted. I listened to someone who I believed knew better about what I should do with my career than myself.

I once again defaulted to someone else to decide which direction to take my life. I’m not sure I was even self-aware enough to realize I was doing this. It just seemed so natural to rely on other people to guide my path through life. Seeking, then listening to other people’s advice and then somewhat blindly following it became my modus operandi.

What I Thought Was Most Important

Fulfilling someone else’s dream. Making your parents proud.

“You did, hunny! I’m so proud of you. I never thought I’d be able to say that I have a daughter who graduated from Harvard.”

My Dad expressed happily as he pulled me into a bear hug, the kind that swallowed me up and made me feel ten years old again. His Brewers baseball cap was slightly askew, and his windbreaker smelled faintly of Cool Water aftershave and damp cotton. He held a crumpled brown paper bag from the campus bookstore in one hand, the new “Proud Dad of a Harvard Graduate” T-shirt peeking out of the top like a little victory flag. For him, this moment was monumental. It was proof that he had raised a great daughter and she had made it, she had risen to the ultimate challenge of one of the highest academic institutions in the world.

When they called my name, I walked across the slick wooden stage, my heart thudding under my gown. My heels clacked loudly against the boards. I shook the dean’s hand, smiled out at my parents. I felt a wave of something deeper than pride. It was relief. Awe. Maybe even a little disbelief. I had done it. Me. The girl from Milwaukee with a Kraft Foods background and a habit of second-guessing herself had just graduated from Harvard Business School.

Something inside me still felt as if this wasn’t happening to me, almost as if I were watching a movie. I pushed down that feeling and allowed myself to keep smiling. After all, I knew how to play the roles: the high-achieving daughter, the polished graduate, the capable young woman who could play this game with the best of them.

What Success Really Means

Looking back, I wonder what I thought success was supposed to feel like.

Did I do all of this so I could put Harvard on my resume?

Did I want to prove to myself that I could survive in environments that didn’t initially welcome me?

Did I want to make my parents proud?

Probably all three, tangled together so tightly I couldn’t have separated them at the time even if I’d tried.

I’m not afraid of hard work. I can outwork almost anyone and I used to wear that like a badge of honor. Hell, it was the reason I got into HBS. Not because I was as smart as everyone else there, but because I was willing to put in the hours and study to get the grades and the scores and everything that was required to earn that prestigious spot.

When you’re really good at working hard, you can postpone the harder question: what am I actually working toward?

I was so focused on proving that I could do something that I never stopped to ask whether I actually wanted to do that. I was so focused on climbing high in life that I never realized I may have been climbing the wrong ladder.

I know now that I was often making decisions based on what I should do. To make my parents proud. To look successful and accomplished. To have an impressive LinkedIn profile.

Back then, I never stopped to question if working hard all of the time was what I wanted to do or something I felt like I had to do to prove something to myself, my parents, society.

I still fight myself when I try to slow down or not be the most ambitious at everything I choose to do. I still struggle to choose something because it lights me up and may not look quite as impressive on paper.

But I also questioned what mattered back then. When I saw my Dad proudly wearing his “Harvard Dad” T-shirt after my graduation, I felt happy to have made him so proud. But I also wondered deep down, did this experience make me happy? Did my own happiness even matter?

Back then, that 26-year-old didn’t think it did. It mattered that I worked hard, earned a spot there, graduated in the top half of the class, got good and well-paying jobs and was successful at them - in terms of attaining promotions and more accolades.

I thought it was most important that I could now put “Harvard” on my resume. “I was told, ‘Be so happy you have this degree, no one can ever take that away from you and trust me there are a lot of things that can be quickly taken away from you in life.”

Choosing for Myself

Don’t get me wrong, I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity. I’m glad I had the experience, glad I graduated, glad it opened doors that wouldn’t have opened otherwise. I don’t regret it.

Harvard taught me how to think under pressure, how to strategize, how to lead a room full of people who intimidated me and still find my voice. And maybe most importantly, it taught me that people who may look like they belong aren’t necessarily any more confident or secure than the rest of us. In fact, the most polished, put-together people in that room were often carrying the deepest insecurities. They’d just had more practice hiding them.

One of the most valuable things I took away from Harvard had nothing to do with academics.

It’s this. You can work incredibly hard and get very good at achieving things other people value, and still have absolutely no idea how to value yourself, or know what you want from your life.

Today, I make choices that other people might question. Ones that don’t necessarily look impressive on my resume. I no longer climb the corporate ladder. I’ve completely reinvented my career. I live in a small community in the South of France. I spend more time with children. I write. I create. I share my story on my coucou podcast.

I built a life that my 26-year-old self may not have understood and probably would have questioned.

But now I understand something that I didn’t understand then. While it’s wonderful to make your parents proud, to work hard, to achieve success and to have external validation supporting all of this, it can’t answer the most important question.

Is this the life you actually want? Does it make you happy?

For a long time, I thought if I received these external accolades and proved that I belonged and could do it, then it was success.

I think about my Dad sometimes, holding that crumpled paper bag, wearing his old Brewers cap, so proud of a daughter who had climbed so high on the mountain the world told her to climb. I love him for that pride, support and encouragement and always will. I’ll never stop being grateful for it.

Now, I’ve had to discover a different kind of courage. Not the kind that gets you into Harvard. The quieter kind, the kind it takes to finally decide for yourself what your own life should look like, and then sit with the answer, and actually like what you hear. Maybe that’s the lesson. To stop waiting for someone to tell me what to do. And to be comfortable with my own choices even if the world around me may not understand it.

To me, it was completely strange.

Three years later, it doesn’t faze me anymore. It has become normal. Living in France has helped me understand my own American behaviors.

Be Comfortable in Your Own Skin

Even the sea air is sticky. Humidity hangs suspended in the air from six in the morning to eleven at night. When the sun finds you, it doesn't lightly warm you up, it hits you hard. A warm, salty breeze rolls off the Mediterranean, and there isn't an inch of open sand, just towels, beach chairs, sandcastles, and bodies packed in close.

And it’s Monday. At 10am.

But this is August in Europe, it’s vacation month.

So this didn’t strike me as strange.

What did was the family of four in front of me, like literally about 5 feet (1.5 meters) from my family. The topless mother casually enjoying the day with her teenage children.

No one seemed to care or notice. But of course, as an American who was raised in a culture where it’s not “normal” to take your top off and be exposed, I couldn’t help but wonder, why do I find this strange? Why am I uncomfortable taking my bikini top off in front of the entire beach in the Cote d’Azur? No one was looking. No one cared. The only person judging my body was me.

Even if you choose to keep your top on, the majority of women in France wear bikinis. It doesn’t matter your age or your body type. A one-piece swimsuit (unless it’s in style) is reserved for much older women and even then it’s not unusual to see eighty-year-old women confidently wearing bikinis.

Having lived in the South of France for the past few years, I’ve come to see how much more comfortable French culture is with nudity, sex and openness about all of it. They place a high value on beautiful lingerie and matching lacy sets everyday - even if no one is going to see it.

I’ve had massages in France and they are not afraid to give you skimpy paper underwear, cover your entire body in oil and rub almost every part of you. This is meant to make you feel relaxed, at ease. So why do I find this strange and feel uncomfortable?

I’ve realized it’s because I was raised in a culture that now seems a bit “prudish.” Americans are taught, quietly but firmly, to cover up. To hide. And once you've lived somewhere that isn’t the same, you start to wonder who that hiding was ever really protecting.

Stop Obsessing Over Your Children

“Just leave them, you can go now, they will be fine.”

The camp counselor said somewhat reassuringly in French, but also somewhat puzzled. She was probably wondering…why is this mother lingering around and staring at her children?

I was dropping my two grade school kids off at a full day camp in a place they'd never been, and I'd been given almost no information. No packing list. No schedule. No orientation packet. In the US, a camp like this would have inundated me with welcome letters and permission forms and staff bios, all designed to make a parent feel reassured before they ever let go of their child's hand. Here, there was none of that. I told myself this was normal. I wasn't sure I believed it.

I watched every other French mother drop their kids off, ask no questions (except what’s the latest they can pick them up) and proceed to give their children a kiss and confidently walk out the door. Without even looking back.

That struck me as strange. Do the French just trust more? Do they worry less about their kids?

This isn’t the first time I’ve observed the French “laissez-faire” perspective when it comes to children. We were at a French dinner party that started at 7pm. Kids are almost always welcome at French parties (at least in the south of France). But their needs and wants aren’t the priority of the French host. Of course, she puts out toys, markers/paper and they can play outside in the yard, but their needs are equal to the adults. They will eat when it’s time to eat and not before. They were served dinner at 9pm. The adults were served at 10pm. No movie was put on for the children to all zone out in front of so the adults could enjoy themselves with wine and dessert. No, the kids were meant to figure out how to entertain themselves, even if they were hungry and tired. Do not obsess over the children. They will be fine. This seems to be the perspective of all of the French parents at the party.

And you know what? I’m sure the French kids were tired and hungry, but they didn’t hang on their parents and whine. Nope, not a single one. Except my American children of course, haha. My kids whined. My kids hung off my arm. Not because they're more fragile, I've realized, but because late dinner parties aren't part of their daily life the way they are for French kids, who grow up treating a nine o'clock dinner with friends as an ordinary weekend event, not an exception.

I started wondering whether I was actually calming my children…or calming myself. Maybe it’s okay for them to experience discomfort, boredom and even a little hunger? What if all of this hovering, checking, reminding, preparing and planning wasn’t actually for them? What if it was for me?

It still strikes me as strange, treating a child's wants as equal to an adult's rather than above them. But I'm starting to understand that strange, here, might just mean unfamiliar. Not wrong.

The Glass Isn’t Half-Empty

“C’est pas mal.” It’s not bad. This is one of the most common expressions in French. It’s used for everything. You hear it constantly here. To describe how someone’s day went. To give a kid feedback on a school assignment. To an American ear, that phrase lands somewhere close to an insult. If my boss told me my work was “not bad,” I would go home and worry.

Here, it means something closer to great.

That took me a long time to understand. Why not just say good? Why not say great, if you mean great?

These are just deeply rooted cultural differences. Growing up in the US, we’re taught to be optimistic. To believe that tomorrow will be better than today. We’re taught to embrace ideas such as constant self-improvement, reinvention and “you can do and be anything if you put your mind to it.”

The French are more realistic and also more skeptical. They will complain, argue, debate and critique much more regularly. With my French friends, if they are complaining or worried about something, I will often say “I’m sure it will all work out great, even better than you imagined.” They are more likely to respond with “we’ll see about that.”

What’s interesting is that the Americans aren’t necessarily happier than the French. They may seem to believe that there is a brighter day and future ahead, but the French actually enjoy the day that’s right in front of them. One isn’t necessarily better than another, it’s just that one culture is all about building, chasing, improving and the other is about making the present moments matter and enjoying what’s right in front of them.

Now I find myself asking a question I never expected to ask. Is American optimism actually a gift, or is it exhausting? Because if tomorrow is always going to be better, doesn't that quietly mean today is never quite enough?

There is No Normal

Every culture believes, without question, that its own way of dressing, acting, parenting, speaking is simply normal. That belief holds up perfectly, right up until the moment you leave your native culture. Then you realize normal was never universal. It was simply familiar.

These behaviors I find strange about the French could just as easily be reflections I’m having about my own culture. Things I never noticed growing up as an American. Maybe that’s what exposure gives us. Perspective. Appreciation. The tendency to notice differences. Not necessarily as bad.

It’s easy to judge another culture and think the way you were brought up must be “right” and “normal.” To believe that would be a shame. It would mean that you can’t appreciate how differences may look strange at first glance, but may just be outside of your own lens and vantage point. If you let yourself, you can leverage these differences as a chance to examine your own culture, beliefs and behavior. You may find that these are also strange. You may also come to appreciate theirs more than yours. Or you may stop comparing all together and just have gratitude for the ability to experience both.

Because once you've truly lived inside another culture, not visited it, lived it, it becomes almost impossible to believe, the way you once did without even noticing you believed it, that your way was ever the only normal one at all.

I thought for sure I knew what he would choose.

Maybe the catamaran through Greece, skiing in the Italian Alps, the museums in London, the multiple long weekends in Paris tasting the best croissants.

Surely it would be one of those. It wasn’t.

It was the night my husband pitched a tiny tent in our backyard.

They toasted marshmallows on the grill.

Snuggled in a big sleeping bag under the stars.

Five steps from his bedroom.

That was the memory.

Living an Extraordinary Life

When I lived in California, people were fascinated by living an extraordinary life. One you strived for. Worked hard to earn. It meant living big. The beautiful home with the pool or the seaside view. The grandiose, exotic vacations, a South African safari, a week skiing the French Alps. Everyone was chasing the next best thing, whether that was the day they signed on the second home in Lake Tahoe or the day they boarded the plane for the trip of a lifetime. Not much time was spent in the ordinary.

If someone asked about your weekend, you were supposed to respond with all of the cool things you did. The amazing new restaurant. The big charity event. The epic hike you crushed before nine in the morning. If you said it was quiet, that you’d stayed home, people would look at you strangely.

Almost disappointed for you.

Why would anyone want a weekend like that?

Weekends existed to live it up, to squeeze the extraordinary out of the only two days you had.

When I moved to France three years ago, I carried that exact mentality with me across the ocean. I wanted to maximize our time here. I spent our first week making a checklist of extraordinary things to do in the South of France, and scheduled them into the final days of summer before the kids started their new school.

What I didn’t understand yet was that our time would have been better spent that first month simply living. Ordinary and unscheduled. In Provence, of all places, land of long lunches and relaxing afternoons, and I still couldn’t slow down enough to notice.

Discovering the Ordinary

As an American who felt incredibly fortunate to have an opportunity to live in the South of France, “ordinary” felt like the wrong word entirely. Our plan was only to live abroad for one year, so I felt this pressure to make it extraordinary. Or so I thought.

That first summer, the question I kept asking was “where should we go?” Looking back, I should have realized that the better question would have been “what do we need?” Our children needed downtime, they needed space in their new home, in their new country. They needed to be able to discover the little things right in front of them and see what doors slowness might open for them. If I’m being honest, I needed the same thing, but didn’t realize it.

Something about observing the way the French live helps you understand how beautiful the ordinary can be. The way they perfectly organize their fruits and vegetables at the market in beautiful pyramids, a small gesture, but they make it meaningful. The way they can sit on a park bench and just be. No phones. No rushing to the next thing.

What Children Remember

It made me wonder whether children naturally know something adults forget. They remember what made them feel the most. Not how fancy or extravagant something was.

When I reflect on my favorite memories from the past year, so many of them were ordinary. Yes, I loved the beautiful travel we experienced as a family and I feel incredibly fortunate for that.

But some of my best memories were the night when my husband was out of town and the kids all slept in our bed and we projected a movie on the ceiling, cuddled our heads together and drifted off to sleep like that.

It was the afternoon we all went to McDonald’s in France and got happy meals and sat outside on a picnic table and enjoyed a taste of “America.” It wasn’t fondue in the Alps. It wasn’t gelato on the Amalfi Coast. It was simple, and familiar, and ordinary, and somehow it’s the one I keep coming back to.

I started wondering if what we do, where we choose to live, where we travel, what meals we enjoy are all simply a matter of finding and making that experience feel extraordinary.

Maybe this means finding the magic in simple joys.

Maybe it means being present enough to actually be in it and appreciate it.

The Photos We Don’t Take

This summer, back visiting family in the US, we did something different. Ordinary things. On purpose. No overplanning. No we should see this, we should do that. Nothing grandiose. This time, instead of asking where we should go, we asked how we can just be.

Just let the kids live in the dogdays of summer with their cousins and grandparents. Running through the sprinkler. Fishing with Grandpa. Catching fireflies by the lake. Playing Scrabble inside at the kitchen table while a hot humid thunderstorm brews outside the window. Laughing. Feeling. Relaxing.

When we got back to France, I looked through my phone and realized there were fewer photos than usual. Maybe because I subconsciously assumed if we weren’t doing anything extraordinary, then it wasn’t worth photographing. Or maybe because I actually slowed down and was present in those moments without my phone.

The photos my sister took are my favorites for exactly that reason. Imperfectly perfect. Our kids with popsicles dripping down their chins, tangled hair, grass-stained knees, mostly still in their swimsuits. Nothing posed. Nobody looking at the camera, lots of silly faces.

The Magic in the Ordinary

When we got back to France, I was tempted to plan amazing weekend trips to Italy or Spain or just days on the Cote d’Azur. Instead, I paused.

I asked “what do we need?”

I realized the kids needed time to be free. To draw. To build. To create. To slow all the way down and, dare I say it, even get bored sometimes. These are the non-photographed moments of summer. Picking peaches off our tree. Late night swims in our pool on these hot, balmy nights. None of this is luxurious. But it’s magical, in the most ordinary of ways.

“The enjoyment of leisure is something which decidedly costs less than the enjoyment of luxury. All it requires is an artistic temperament which is bent on seeking a perfectly useless afternoon spent in a perfectly useless manner.”

• Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living

The Simple Life

It’s important to show ourselves and our kids the magic hidden in life’s simple pleasures: the first bite of a juicy, bright red strawberry when it’s finally the season again, the comfort of holding hands walking through the alleyways just observing how the light hits the buildings and noticing the stray cats cautiously creeping along the window sills. The terrifying mundane, quietly compelling, profoundly ordinary days of summer.

The ones that don’t feel like anything while you’re in them and turn out to be everything once they’re gone.

Maybe we needed that first, overscheduled summer to stretch ourselves before we could learn how to notice, how to listen, how to actually feel something instead of just documenting it.

Maybe we needed to learn how to split a moment open and find its spark.

Maybe we needed to learn what it meant to find pleasure in a tiny simple joy as much as an extravagant one.

Maybe it’s not the size of the splash that defines an adventure, but rather how we choose to live in it.

I’ve learned that our greatest adventures can begin closer to home. They can unfold right where we already are, surrounded by a hundred small, quiet ways to make an ordinary moment feel rich and attentive and alive, if we’re willing to actually stop and let it.

I had to stop asking:

What’s the most extraordinary thing we could do today?

And instead start asking:

How can we be fully present for the ordinary one we’re already living?

Because one day, years from now, my son won’t remember the catamaran, or the Alps, or the museum exhibits in London. He’ll remember a tent in the backyard, five steps from his own bed, and his dad staying up late enough to toast marshmallows with him under a sky we didn’t have to fly anywhere to see.

Maybe a meaningful life isn’t built from extraordinary moments.

Maybe it’s built from thousands of ordinary ones we were finally present enough to notice.

I usually laugh. Because I never know how to answer. Yes. Kind of. Sometimes.

Until someone answers me back. Then it’s a real toss up.

Before moving here, I genuinely thought I’d “pick up” French. I’d studied Spanish. I’d lived in Spain during university. That was almost twenty years ago, and now I can barely order coffee in Spanish. Still, when we decided to move to France, some overconfident, younger version of myself whispered, you’ve done this before, you’ll be fine.

I figured language learning was like riding a bike.

Apparently it isn’t. It’s more like learning to walk again. While everyone watches.

Learning French as an adult has been three years of high expectations, grandiose fantasies, intense frustration, and enough embarrassing mishaps to write a book.

The First Wake-Up Call

Before we moved, I knew I needed at least a basic grasp of the language, so I enrolled in online classes once a week. Between sessions, I did the bare minimum, cramming homework thirty minutes before class started. I thought I was making real progress. Then we flew to France to scout schools and neighborhoods, to actually choose a life, and I was shocked.

I understood nothing. The speed people spoke at, combined with vocabulary I hadn’t touched yet, made comprehension impossible. And when I tried to speak, no one understood me either. Even the words I got right came out with an accent and pronunciation so far off that, as I’d later learn, it changes everything in French. Instead of conversation, we collected squinted eyes, furrowed brows, and the same question over and over: “Comment?”

It was a disappointing encounter, though looking back, it shouldn’t have surprised me at all. I wished I’d front-loaded more lessons before the move, but the sheer logistical nightmare of relocating a family abroad left no room for it.

So again, I told myself the same comforting lie. I’ll pick it up once we’re immersed.

Immersion Is Not a Magic Word

We landed in France a few months later, and the shock hit again, harder this time. Almost no one spoke English. Somewhere in the back of my mind I had assumed that since English is the so-called international language, people would have at least basic skills, enough to help me manage daily life. Not the case. Outside of Paris, very few people in France will speak English to you, even if they technically learned it in school. The pressure crept up quickly. I needed functional French for daily interactions, doctor’s appointments, and my kids’ school events.

It wasn’t optional. It was survival.

I enrolled in a one month intensive program at Alliance Française. It gave me the basics. I could order a baguette at the boulangerie. I could book a restaurant reservation. I could exchange daily pleasantries. But understanding what they said back to me? Nearly impossible. Go to the post office, sit in front of a doctor, or try to chat with another mom at school pickup, and I froze. Too scared to speak, painfully aware of how little I could understand.

I pushed forward anyway, because I had to learn quickly that classes alone weren’t enough. Living in a country where everyone around you speaks a language you don’t understand is incredibly isolating.

You’re surrounded by conversation all day long, but you can only pretend to understand.

You hear parents laughing together at school pickup and wonder what they’re talking about.

You sit at dinner parties smiling while everyone else bursts into laughter and you have no idea why.

Even standing in line at the grocery store and not understanding the line protocol reminds you that you’re on the outside looking in.

So I built my own immersion. I listened to Easy French podcasts on school drop-off and pickup. I watched Netflix in French with French subtitles every single night. I invented what I called bravery challenges: force myself to start a French conversation with a stranger that day, even if it was only a handful of words, just to try to get over the fear of speaking out loud.

The Mishaps

The bravery challenges helped. But that doesn’t mean there weren’t constant mistakes and mishaps.

One afternoon one of my kids had a fever, so I walked to the pharmacy to buy Doliprane, the medicine every French parent seems to have in their cabinet.

I’d practiced the word in my head before I walked in. Doliprane. Doliprane. Doliprane. I waited my turn, smiled confidently and asked for it. The pharmacist nodded, disappeared into the back, and came back with a box. Success, I thought.

I walked home feeling oddly proud of myself. I had done it completely in French. Later that afternoon I looked more closely at the box. It wasn’t fever medicine. It was medication for diarrhea.

Apparently my pronunciation had been just different enough to send me home with the wrong thing. I remember sitting there laughing because what else could I do? Somewhere between feeling ridiculous and realizing this was probably going to happen a hundred more times.

Last Thanksgiving, when my parents were flying in from the United States, I wanted to throw a big American celebration in our French home. I carefully rehearsed what I was going to say before walking into the boucherie. I needed a turkey in six days. I smiled. I asked. The butcher smiled back and wrote everything down.

I walked out thinking, Look at me. I’m actually doing this.

Ten days later, no turkey.

Eventually I realized he’d heard seize instead of six. Sixteen days.

I was so upset that I had “ruined” Thanksgiving. Who knew that even something as simple as buying food for your family required so much mental effort.

The first December we lived here, it was my daughter’s 5th birthday and I wanted to order her a birthday cake. In France, there’s no browsing a bakery case for a cake covered in cartoon characters and bright icing. You pre-order, and you spell out, letter by letter, exactly what you want written on top.

I carefully spelled out her name for the baker. Lillian. I repeated it. Slowed down.

On the morning of her party, I opened the box.

“Happy Birthday, Lelleane.”

I just stared at it. It was still beautiful. She didn’t care. But I cared.

Because I wanted so badly to get one simple thing right.

Later someone explained that my pronunciation of the “i” sounded too much like an “e,” and because I hadn’t added the final “e,” they’d interpreted it differently. I also later learned you have to add a final “e” or the name defaults to its male spelling.

But the hardest place for me wasn’t the boulangerie or boucherie or even the pharmacy.

It was school pickup.

Every afternoon little groups of moms stood together talking while the children played. I’d walk over, smile, and catch maybe one sentence out of every four. Just enough to know everyone else was connecting. Not enough to join them.

Sometimes I’d think of something interesting to say or ask. But by the time I’d translated it in my head, the conversation had already moved on. So I smiled. Nodded. Said, “Bonne journée.”

And walked home wondering if they’d ever know who I really was.

I could fill pages with stories like these. And for a long time, each one felt like proof that I was failing.

What Happens Next

Eventually you realize you only have two options. Say screw it and give up on the language entirely, or take the mistakes for exactly what they are: normal mishaps, the price everyone pays for living inside a culture that isn’t originally yours.

Many days, I was so frustrated with myself for not “picking it up faster.” I’d sit in anger because I still couldn’t fully follow what someone was telling me, even after months of trying.

But holding onto that anger doesn’t move you an inch forward. It just makes the road longer and heavier. The only way through is to keep going, keep trying, and trust that in time, it will come. This path asks for patience, commitment, and, maybe hardest of all, kind self-talk on the days you feel like giving up.

By year two, my confidence started to shift. I began understanding maybe half of a conversation, sometimes less, sometimes more. So I kept pushing past my comfort zone. I started actually engaging with French moms at school instead of nodding and slipping away. I forced myself to make phone calls in French, book doctor’s appointments without hiding behind an app. None of it came easily. To this day, I dread the phone in French, because there’s no face to read, no lips to watch, none of the visual context I lean on so heavily in person.

Here’s what surprised me most, though. The biggest leaps forward in my French didn’t come from grinding harder. They came from stepping away entirely. Every time we visit the US for two or three weeks, I intentionally drop French altogether and let my brain rest in English. And every single time, without fail, I come back to France speaking and understanding more easily than before I left. It’s as if the mind needs quiet space to let everything settle, so that when you return to the language, the words are simply there, waiting, instead of buried.

Those jumps feel like magic. They’re the reason you keep going, because suddenly, for a moment, everything is a little bit easier, and you get a glimpse of how much fuller your life could be here once the language finally opens up. That glimpse is intoxicating. You want more of it. So you keep showing up for the lessons, the conversations, the grammar drills, the dictations, one more rep toward a life that finally makes sense in the language it’s lived in.

One day I realized I hadn’t translated anything.

I was standing in line at the boulangerie listening to two women complain about the weather.

Halfway through the conversation I caught myself smiling.

Not because of what they were saying.

Because I understood it. My brain hadn’t stopped to translate.

It had simply... understood.

Three years earlier I couldn’t even understand someone asking me whether I wanted a receipt.

And suddenly I was eavesdropping.

Then, people start telling you, unprompted, “your French is really good,” or “your accent is impressive.” It feels like winning a lottery you didn’t know you’d entered, like years of quiet, invisible effort finally cashed out all at once. The moment you stop translating everything in your head first, when the words just start arriving on their own, that is when it finally starts to feel good. Not easy. Good.

You can walk into a French dinner party now with little to no English spoken and mostly keep up. Wine helps. But it’s still exhausting. You’re listening so intently, and sometimes you’re still grasping for a word that won’t come, aware that you don’t yet have access to the full range you carry so effortlessly in your native tongue.

One trick has stayed with me through all of it. I still say, almost like a small offering before I speak, “Pardon, j’apprends le français.” Forgive me, I’m learning French. It disarms the moment. People soften. They slow down. They meet you halfway.

What I Actually Learned

Wherever you are in the process of learning another language as an adult, I hope someone tells you this: applaud yourself. Genuinely. This road is harder than anyone warns you it will be. It’s full of small humiliations and small triumphs, sometimes in the same afternoon. There will be days you want to quit, more of them than you’d like to admit, long before it starts to feel easier.

But is it worth it? Hell, yes.

Because somewhere between the diarrhea medicine and the turkey that arrived ten days late and the cake with the wrong name on it, something else was quietly happening. Somewhere along the way, I realized this wasn’t really about French anymore.

It was about learning how to be uncomfortable. How to walk into a pharmacy knowing I might embarrass myself. How to make a phone call knowing I might have to ask someone to repeat themselves five times. How to sound far less intelligent than I actually am.

That is incredibly humbling.

Especially as an adult who used to feel competent most places in life.

These days I still make mistakes. I still mix up verb tenses. I still ask people to repeat themselves. I still leave conversations wishing I’d remembered the right word.

But something has changed. The mistakes don’t embarrass me the way they used to. Because I finally understand what learning another language was really teaching me.

Not French.

Humility. Patience. Courage.

The willingness to keep showing up as a beginner long after everyone expects adults to already know what they’re doing.

Maybe that’s why learning a language feels so hard.

It isn’t because of the grammar.

It’s because every single day it forces you to be humble, to be okay not being perfect, to congratulate yourself anyway.

I brace myself for what’s ahead: three weeks of summer vacation visiting family in the US. Three weeks of being a visitor in the place I’m from.

The Reunion

I’m immediately struck by the mass of people milling around the airport in Vuori sweatpants, holding oversized iced macchiatos, engaged loudly in conversation. It’s a specific kind of noise. A specific kind of ease. I’d forgotten it.

As we exit the airport, I’m relieved to see my parents, who’d struggled to find the right gate to pick us up at, had finally arrived. And there it is again, that quiet gut-punch I feel every single trip: how much they’ve aged in the six months since I last saw them. More hunched over. More grey hair. It stings my heart. Guilt sets in, familiar and unwelcome, over living so far away and not being able to see them more often. We hug, and I notice how frail my mom feels, like I don’t want to squeeze too hard for fear she might break.

They remark on how much bigger the kids have gotten. And they have. But when you’re with your children every single day, you don’t see it happening. You only notice when the pants don’t fit anymore, or when someone else says it out loud. It struck me, standing there in the pickup lane, how time ages the people we love in opposite directions. My parents shrinking. My children stretching. Both of them changing while I’m not there to watch it happen in real time, only in these jarring, six-month jump cuts.

Learning to See My Own Culture

We head to my parents’ lake house just north of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where we’re meeting up with my siblings and their kids. We’re all gathered for the Fourth of July, 250 years of the US. Happy emotions collide with chaos and a constant hum of generalized anxiety that will fill the entire weekend. The time together feels soul-quenching and exhausting all at the same time. It’s always a shock to go from our quiet, tranquil life in Provence to one in America that is lived so much more out loud.

What struck me this time, more than any other trip, is that after three years of living abroad, I can finally see my own culture clearly. It’s like being handed a new pair of eyes and a little bit of distance. You become an anthropologist studying the place you used to simply live in, where every norm was just “part of life,” invisible because it was everywhere. Viewing it now as an observer, I try to stay unbiased. Non-judgmental. But it’s impossible not to notice.

I’ve realized that most of these norms are just outward behavior, the visible tip of deeply rooted beliefs most Americans carry without ever naming them. It’s the same in France, except the beliefs underneath are almost entirely different.

Onto the Next

Many Americans live with the mentality of “onto the next.” You may still be chewing your food when the waiter sets the bill down beside your plate. It isn’t meant to be rude. It’s meant to help you maximize your time. Time isn’t meant to be spent too long on any one thing. The goal is to fit as much as possible into a single day, even a weekend day, even a day that’s supposed to be about rest. Enjoyment, in the American mind, often means scheduling. Workout in the morning. Brunch after. Maybe the beach or pool. Then pre-dinner drinks. Then dinner. Then a concert or some after-dinner event.

Downtime is close to a foreign concept. The art of doing nothing, something I’ve come to genuinely love about France, reads as bizarre in the US. My dad listened to one of my coucou podcast episodes where I talked about this, and he told me, plainly, that he didn’t understand why anyone would want to do that. He said it sounded like a complete waste of time.

That sentence has stayed with me for weeks.

Time between activities isn’t valued either. Things get scheduled tightly, back to back, to squeeze the most out of every hour. This creates self-induced stress. Rush from one thing to the next. Rush to be on time for the next thing. I felt this acutely at the lake house. My dad had booked an early dinner reservation, 5pm sharp, so the little ones could still be in bed by seven. In America, schedules for babies and toddlers are sacred and rigid. No napping on the go. No flexibility on bedtime. So the adults build their entire evening around the children’s schedule. If you want a dinner out with kids, it has to happen before 5pm.

So we pull the kids out of the lake, where they’d been having the best time of their lives, splashing and jumping off the pier, and of course this is met with whining and tears, because no child on earth wants to leave that joy to shower, get dressed, sit in a car seat, and then sit still at a restaurant table. Once we’re there, they’re handed iPads or phones so they don’t have to feel the discomfort of being “bored.”

The Noise of It All

The meal itself is its own kind of sensory event. So much happening at once. Most modern restaurants have TVs mounted everywhere, sound on, or if not, loud music filling the space instead. Anyone who wants to actually talk has to talk over it. The second you walk in, you’re hit by the sheer volume, voices, plates clanking, screens flickering. It can feel overwhelming. And the only way to adapt is to start talking louder yourself. If you can’t beat them, join them.

You open the menu and there they are: calorie counts next to every single item, most hovering around a thousand, half a day’s worth in one plate. I’m always a little stunned by this now, because I genuinely haven’t looked at a calorie count since we moved to France. I don’t read labels at the grocery store. No restaurant menu would ever list them. Food isn’t discussed that way at all. People eat intuitively. Not too much, not too little, listening to their body. Vegetables and protein, yes, but also bread, croissants, the occasional pain au chocolat, without apology. Nobody in France seems to obsess over food or treat it as a constant burden. It’s meant to be pleasure, not stress.

Maybe some of that American stress comes from the fact that food is woven into nearly every hour of the day here. Going for a walk with the kids? Pack snacks. A ride on the boat? Bring snacks. I’ve gotten used to food being reserved for meals, eaten at a table, rarely on the go, rarely deployed just to stop a meltdown or fill a quiet moment.

Back at the restaurant, the portions arrive looking enormous. Prices are considerably higher too, so the meals grow to match, so Americans can feel like they “got their money’s worth.” A single entrée looks like it could feed a family of four in France. Leftovers pile up, or at least they should, because it’s far too much for one person. The waiter brings takeout boxes, incredibly common here. Those boxes get shoved to the back of the fridge, where they’ll sit for a few days until someone decides they’re no longer good, or no longer wanted, and throws them out.

Cooking, in a lot of American cities, has quietly become a lost art, too much to manage for busy, stretched-thin families. And even when a meal is made at home, so many Americans reach for paper plates and plastic forks, things you can just toss instead of rinsing and loading into a dishwasher. The paper and plastic aisle at an American supermarket is its own kind of shock to me now, aisle after aisle of cups and plates and flatware in every size, design, and texture imaginable. It’s a sharp contrast to Europe, where everything is glass or metal, never plastic. Every meal, whether at school, at home, or at a restaurant, comes on a glass plate with a glass cup. Even at a beach club, drinks come in glass. I’d started to take that for granted, and it caught me off guard how much less special a meal can feel when it arrives on paper, eaten with something meant to be thrown away.

The Kindness I’d Forgotten

But it isn’t only the food, the noise, and the schedules. I was struck, too, by the openness of American culture, its warmth, in a way I’d genuinely forgotten. Living in France, I’ve grown used to something more closed, more reserved. So when I was in downtown Chicago, an older man went out of his way, crossed the sidewalk, changed his path entirely, just to reach a door before me when he saw I had my hands full with my kids and two to-go coffees. He held it open, smiled, and said, “Happy to help, looks like you’ve got your hands full.”

It was such a small thing. It took him maybe four seconds. But it landed on me like something much bigger, a reminder of a kind of unguarded, easy kindness that gets exchanged here all the time, in small doses, without anything expected in return. Not everywhere. Not always. But often enough that I’d forgotten how much I missed it until a stranger held a door.

Living Between Both Cultures

None of this is meant as judgment. One culture isn’t better than the other. They’re just different answers to the same question of how to live a good life, and I’ve come to feel lucky, genuinely lucky, to stand with a foot in both. Some days I feel entirely American in my mindset. Other days, entirely French. I like to think I get to keep the best of each, the spirit and generosity of one, the slowness and intention of the other.

But I’ve also learned, the hard way sometimes, that you can’t live a European life while standing on American soil, and you can’t expect Europe to act like America either. An American who arrives in France expecting it to run like home will only find frustration. So instead, I try to hold onto what I’ve become through all this moving and missing and returning: not quite one thing or the other anymore, but something more useful. An anthropologist of my own life. Someone who watches both worlds closely enough to love them for exactly what they are, instead of what I wish they’d be.

And maybe that’s the real gift of leaving home. Not that you learn to love some other place more. But that you finally learn how to see the place you came from, and the people waiting for you there, with the kind of clear-eyed tenderness you could never quite manage while you were standing too close to it. My parents will keep getting smaller in my eyes every time I land at that airport. My kids will keep growing in the gaps between my visits. And I’ll keep flying back into the noise and the warmth and the rush of it, grateful, every time, that leaving taught me how to finally see it.

The Aix-en-Provence market on Saturday morning overflowing with fresh fruits and vegetables and incredible flowers. The crisp rosé at lunch at the bistro. The cobblestone streets and the light hitting the terracotta rooftops at six o’clock in a way that doesn’t look real. The croissants. The fromage. The spontaneous weekend in the Italian Riviera because it’s just there, two hours away, why not.

I know it looks like a dream.

A lot of days it genuinely is.

But I’ve been living in Provence for three years now and I think it’s time to show you the other photos. The ones I don’t post. The ones most of us living abroad don’t post, because they’re harder to explain and easier to leave out.

Every person living abroad who smiles and says “it’s amazing” when someone asks, is quietly carrying something much more complicated underneath.

It’s Not All Sunshine and Spritzes

It’s also 20 hours of flights and driving just to get to a small city in the US. Because it’s where your parents decided to live and there are zero international flights. Jet lagged, exhausted children who are trying their best to keep it together. The overwhelming thoughts that go through your head during these travel days.

This would be so much easier if we just lived in the US.

If I have to haul all of this through one more airport, I might lose it.

I know we should visit more, but this is really not easy.

It looks like doing the math on time zones before you can call your mom, desperately wanting to tell her something only to realize she’s still asleep, and sadly putting your phone back down. It looks like sitting across from someone at a dinner party and having a personality that simply cannot get out. You are funny and warm and articulate in English. In French, you are a toddler with good intentions and a limited vocabulary, desperately hoping someone will just understand what you mean.

It looks like the mishaps nobody warns you about. The cultural rules you break before you even knew they existed. The moment you do something completely normal by American standards and watch the faces around you go still with polite confusion.

It’s not all sunshine and Aperol Spritzes and spontaneous trips to Capri.

That is the curated version. And most of us living abroad know exactly what we leave out when we post it.

You Bring Yourself With You

Here is something I wish someone had told me before we moved.

Your problems come with you.

Every worry, every anxiety, every unresolved thing you were carrying, it crosses the ocean with you. The country code changes. The emotional baggage does not. It is still yours, still waiting, still asking to be dealt with.

Many of us left hoping for a fresh start and found instead a fresh location with the same interior. Which can be disorienting, because you did everything right. You took the leap. You chose the alternative path. You were brave.

And you are still yourself.

Which is not a failure. It is just the truth of being human. The work we must do to discover our true selves and then not be afraid to listen to that voice inside of us.

Never Fully At Ease

There is a particular kind of disorientation that comes from living long enough abroad that you no longer fully belong anywhere.

You don’t feel completely American anymore. But you are not French. You will never be French, and most days you have made your peace with that. But it means you exist in this permanent in-between. Not fully at home in the country you left. Not fully at ease in the country you chose.

Even if you become fluent. Even if you know the customs and follow the rules and buy your bread from the same boulanger every morning until he finally starts to recognize your face. There are still layers of belonging you cannot reach.

That is hard to reconcile. Living in that constant in-between can some days feel lonely in a way that is difficult to explain to someone who has never felt it.

What We Worry About Our Kids

If you are raising children abroad, you are tempted to only share the version you think people want to hear.

Yes, Sophie speaks three languages now.

Yes, our kids are very aware of different countries and cultures and have friends from everywhere.

This is all incredible and truly amazing. I mean that genuinely.

But here is what I also think about, quietly, when nobody is asking.

My kids are being raised in a different country where the traditions, celebrations and mentality are all very different.

For example, they are in a French school system that is rigid in ways that sometimes worry me. Strict. Academic. Heavy on conformity and light on creativity. The entrepreneurial spirit that American schools actively try to cultivate does not exist here. Art and innovation and thinking outside the lines are not exactly encouraged.

As an American parent who moved from California, this becomes concerning over time.

Then, there are the smaller things that catch you off guard.

My kids think “football” only means soccer and have never been to an American “football” game. They thought “March Madness” meant people were going crazy back in the United States and didn’t understand how this was associated with basketball. When we recently went back to the US, I realized my 9 year old son couldn’t tell a dime from a quarter.

When Thanksgiving comes around every year, my kids go to school. No one celebrates in France. Why would they? When I try to re-enact the holiday here, it comes with more questions than I can even answer. Who were the Pilgrims? Why did they eat turkey? How come only Americans celebrate this? The list goes on.

I don’t always know how to answer. It is a strange feeling to be the keeper of their native culture which they are slowly growing away from.

And underneath all of it, the bigger question I sit with: how important is an American university education, and how do you navigate that from here?

I think it’s important we share these conversations too because they are real. And raw. And difficult.

How We Show Up

Living abroad also quietly asks you something about identity.

Do you adapt? Do you hold onto your American habits because they are yours and you have every right to them? Do you wear your Alo workout clothes through the city even though nobody else does? Carry the giant Owala water bottle? Talk at full American volume in a restaurant where every other table is a soft murmur?

Maybe you don’t care. That is completely valid.

I do care, personally. Not because I am trying to pretend to be French. But because trying to adapt, even imperfectly, makes me feel less like a permanent tourist in my own daily life. It makes me feel like I am choosing this place, not just passing through it.

That is a personal choice. I’m not making it for anyone else.

But I think it’s worth asking ourselves: how do we want to show up in the country that is letting us live inside it?

The Constant Comparison

I know the frustrations. I have felt every single one.

The slowness of everything. Having to go to four different stores to find what one American grocery store would have in a single aisle. The way nobody smiles at you passing on the street. The bureaucracy that makes the American DMV look efficient.

I have complained about all of it.

But we also have plenty to complain about back home. Plenty. And the people around us in our adopted countries did not ask us to come here and narrate everything that annoys us about the way they live.

At some point you have to decide: are you going to keep comparing this place against the one you left, or are you going to actually let yourself be here?

Both places have beauty. Both places have frustration. The only thing you can actually change is your mindset and perspective.

The Full Picture

So this is my plea.

To the people back home: the life is real and it is genuinely very good and I am grateful for it every day. And it is also hard in ways that don’t photograph well. It is mascara-stained airport departures leaving family and time zone math and a son who doesn’t know which coin is a dime. It is homesickness that arrives without warning and a language that still sometimes defeats me after three years of trying.

To my fellow Americans living abroad: let’s show the whole thing. The rosé in Cap Ferrat and the crying in the kitchen. The school drop-off in a language we’re still learning and the Sunday markets that make us feel, briefly, like we got something right. The beauty and the disorientation and the strange grief of quietly evolving who you are and who you want to be in your adopted country.

It is all one life.

One big, complicated, sometimes breathtaking story.

This is the honest version. The whole picture. And I’m still choosing it, even on the hardest days.

It is almost embarrassing to write this. These were real thoughts that went through my head, only about three years ago when we lived in Marin County, California, a pretty suburb over the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco.

A little bubble where appearances matter, but we pretend they don’t. A wealthy area where friends are really more like acquaintances and small talk is really just to understand exactly how wealthy your family is. It carries this somewhat “faux” hippy vibe, caring about composting, the environment, water conservation, and living consciously. And yet shelling out thousands on sneakers without even blinking. It’s a place where you’re likely to bump elbows with billionaires at the kids’ school events.

A place where you pick up a five year old from school for a playdate with your son and the first thing out of his mouth is: “So where’s your Tesla?”

I remember standing at a school fundraiser surrounded by people discussing venture capital rounds, their second home in Tahoe, “feeder” private schools and which summer camps were really going to change your kids’ life. I was smiling. Nodding. Participating.

And yet I felt completely invisible.

Not because nobody could see me.

Because nobody was talking about anything real.

Keeping up the facade mattered. A lot.

How you felt on the inside? Not all that important.

Were you genuine and real? Were you a good soul? Sure, that’s nice, but not a requirement.

Were your kids happy and allowed to just be kids? A goal maybe, but words and actions spoke differently.

This was my life for almost eight years. We played the part. A tech investment banker husband. My Harvard Business School diploma and big corporate job at Sephora. Our kids were accepted into a great private school. The country club membership. The house in the right neighborhood with a white picket fence.

Yes, check. Check. Check.

I was so driven by how well we played the part and succeeded at it, that I ignored how I felt inside.

The strange thing about the fake empire is that nobody thinks it’s fake while they’re inside it.

In fact, it often feels like success.

It feels like finally getting the things you spent years working toward.

When It Cracks

One morning, I went for a run across the Golden Gate Bridge.

If you’ve never been there, it’s hard to explain how breathtaking it can be. The red color of the arches disappeared into the fog. The sailboats below. The mountains as a backdrop. Tourists stop every few feet to take photos. People from all over the world come here just to stand on this bridge for ten minutes.

That morning, the weather was doing what it always does there.

The sun was shining in Marin, but as I got farther onto the bridge, the fog rolled in thick and cold.

I remember looking out at the water and feeling this tightness starting to well up inside me.

Warm tears started streaming down my face.

At first, I tried to keep running. Quickly wiping them away so I could keep going.

Then I couldn’t.

I stopped.

Right there in the middle of the bridge.

Surrounded by joggers and tourists and cyclists.

And I cried.

Not the kind of crying where a few tears slowly slip down your cheeks.

The kind where your chest hurts and they start flowing uncontrollably.

Where you suddenly realize how exhausted you’ve been.

How lonely you’ve been. How stressed. How your husband was barely home. How much you missed your kids.

How long you’ve been pretending you’re okay.

Because the truth was, I wasn’t happy.

I felt disconnected from almost everyone around me.

I was surrounded by people, yet starving for real connection.

So many conversations revolved around schools, houses, promotions, investments, vacations, renovations, etc.

Everyone seemed to care only about keeping up these appearances.

And apparently so did I.

I was spending so much energy trying to hold everything together that I couldn’t even hear myself anymore.

And standing there on that bridge, watching the fog swallow the towers ahead of me, a song came on my Airpods from The National and the lyrics seemed to be sent from above because it perfectly described my life.

“We’re half awake in this fake empire.”

I was the “we.” From the outside I looked awake, but really inside, I was sleeping. Dormant to who I really was. How I really felt. What I really wanted from life. How my soul was crying, begging for change.

The Problem Wasn’t Marin

The place was not the problem. I could write this exact essay about Manhattan. About Chicago. About certain corners of London, Singapore, Sydney, and the list goes on. The fake empire is not a place. It is not a zip code or a tax bracket.

The fake empire is what happens when external markers become the primary way you measure whether a life is working.

When you stop asking how do I feel? and only ask how does this look? When the gap between those two questions gets so wide you stop noticing it exists.

The fake empire is every story we tell ourselves about what will finally make us feel successful, important, enough.

One more promotion. One more house. One more thing to check off the list.

France as Distance

Thankfully, I wasn’t alone. My husband was also feeling the cracks of this so-called idyllic life. He suggested we make a change. Not just a small one. A big bold one where our lives could be dramatically different. Where we could raise our kids with a new perspective and not just unconsciously subscribe them to the American rat race.

We got out. Of all of it. We took a big risk. We let it all go. We said goodbye to the perfect facade and moved to France. To unravel it all. To become who we were meant to be in this world. To build something real. To deeply feel and connect. With each other. With our children. With a community we were yet to meet.

When we moved to France, nobody knew who we had been.

Nobody knew my title. Nobody cared what neighborhood we had lived in before. Nobody asked where my kids had gone to school. Nobody wanted to know what my husband did for work, at least not as a way of figuring out where to place us.

Nobody cared.

At first, that felt unsettling.

I caught myself trying to establish context. Dropping references to my old job or graduate school. Mentioning San Francisco in a way that implied a certain life. Reaching for the familiar tools of the fake empire only to find they didn’t work here. Nobody was measuring me by them, which meant I had to figure out what was left when I put them down.

Then it started to feel freeing.

Then, slowly, it felt something closer to heartbreaking.

Because if nobody here cared about any of the things I had spent years building and protecting and worrying about, then why had I given so much of myself to it? Did all of it essentially become invisible the moment I crossed an ocean?

What had I actually been working so hard to maintain?

And for whom?

Waking Up

I don’t think I was unhappy because of where I lived.

I was unhappy because I had fallen asleep inside a life that looked good from the outside.

I had become so focused on building something other people admired that I had stopped asking whether I admired it myself.

Moving to France didn’t cure me. Distance gave me clarity. And clarity is both a gift and a grief, because once you see something honestly you cannot go back to not seeing it.

The fake empire wasn’t Marin.

The fake empire was every story I had believed about what would finally make me feel like enough.

And maybe waking up isn’t what we think it is.

It’s not this big “ah-ha” moment.

It’s a slow unfolding of years of conditioning about what truly matters. It’s learning who you are without the facade.

I still hear that lyric sometimes.

“We’re half awake in this fake empire.”

It doesn’t make me sad anymore.

But it does make me pay attention.

It reminds me how easy it is to fall asleep inside a life that looks right from the outside. I still get reminders when I hear friends and family members say things such as:

“We want to have a party so we can show off the new house.”

“Our kids have to get into this amazing summer camp so they don’t feel left out.”

“The Black Range Rover is a perfect car, you must get one.”

I don’t say anything.

I just recognize it.

I recognize the woman behind the comment. The one comparing schools and worrying about titles and trying to keep up and smiling at fundraisers while feeling completely invisible. The one who believes, somewhere underneath all of it, that the next thing will be the thing that finally makes her feel like enough.

I was that woman.

I was crying on a bridge in the fog, completely unable to explain why.

France didn’t save me.

But leaving gave me something I couldn’t have found by staying.

Distance.

And in that distance, I could finally see it.

I’m not cured of any of this. I want to be honest about that.

Some mornings I still catch myself comparing and worrying. LinkedIn is such a trap for me. I still feel the old pull toward what looks impressive over what feels true.

But now I notice it.

And noticing, it turns out, is everything.

Because you can’t wake up from something you can’t see.

So maybe that’s the only question worth sitting with:

If nobody else were watching, would I still choose this life?

I live among you. I observe you. I admire your culture.

I walk your markets on Saturday mornings carrying the most beautiful strawberries that bruise too easily in those paper bags. I stand shoulder to shoulder with you at the boulangerie waiting for just out-of-the-oven baguettes. I sit at café terraces with a Spritz pretending I understand every word floating around me when really I catch only fragments.

Sometimes, I may even look like I belong here. I shop at your gorgeous boutiques. Sezanne, Soeur and so many others that I love.

Until I open my mouth.

Then everything gives me away.

My accent.
My hesitation.
The way I search for vocabulary mid-sentence like someone fumbling for keys in the dark.

The overly enthusiastic “bonjour.” The way I don’t quite land the “r” correctly.

The accidental verb tense disasters. The fact that I used “tu” instead of “vous.””

The panic in my eyes when you respond in rapid French and I realize I understood absolutely nothing after the first three words.

And suddenly, there it is again.

That look.

The furrowed brow.
The squint.
The tiny pause.

Not cruel exactly. Just… confused.

Like your brain is trying to solve a puzzle.

I know you are not trying to be rude.

I know French is a beautiful language, and hearing it butchered probably feels painful at times. Like nails on a chalkboard.

But I want you to understand something.

I am trying so hard.

You do not see the thousands of hours I’ve spent trying to learn your language. All for one small interaction that may still turn awkward at the pharmacy.

The French podcasts playing while I fold laundry.
The French children’s books I attempt to read because adult novels still feel too difficult.
The French subtitles while I watch my favorite French series: “L’Agence” and “Dix Percent.”
The verb tenses I try to memorize while making coffee.
The moments I rehearse an entire sentence in my head, only to forget one key word the second it is my turn to speak.

You see one clumsy interaction.

I feel the weight of every single one.

And maybe that is what I wish I could explain most clearly to you about being an étrangère.

It is humbling in a way I never experienced in America.

To sound less intelligent than you are.
Less funny.
Less sharp.
Less yourself.

To have your personality trapped behind vocabulary you cannot fully access yet.

Some days it feels like being reduced from a capable woman into a gesture.

A smile.
A nod.
A hopeful “merci beaucoup.”

And still, I keep trying.

Because living in another country without learning the language feels like standing outside a house pressing your face against the window, watching life happen inside.

I do not want to just observe your culture.

I want to understand it.

And in many ways, I have fallen in love with it.

I love that meals still matter here.

That lunch is not something inhaled over a keyboard while answering emails.

I love that children are expected to sit at the table and participate in life instead of running around it with snacks and screens.

I love that your cafés stay full because people here still believe conversation and togetherness deserve time.

I love that you protect pleasure here. Fiercely.

An apéro in the sun.
Fresh bread every day.
A proper vacation in August (and many other times too).
A long dinner that stretches late into the evening before anyone even thinks to ask for the check.

You have taught me that life is not something to constantly chase.

Americans are always trying to improve life.

You are often trying to enjoy it.

That difference changed me more than I expected.

But since we are being honest with each other, there are also things I wish I could gently say back to you.

Sometimes the rigidity here feels exhausting.

The rules.
The structure.
The invisible social codes everyone seems to know except you.

Lunch from twelve to two. Not later.
Dinner after seven. Never before.
Aperitifs before dinner only.
Goûter for children, usually something sweet. Usually served between four and six in the afternoon.

Sometimes I want to put my arm around you affectionately and say:

What if we just ate dinner at five because the kids are tired?

What if we drank champagne in the middle of the afternoon, outside of a meal or apéro?

What if we smiled a little more at strangers simply because life is hard and human warmth matters?

Americans can be loud, excessive, overly cheerful, and painfully unaware sometimes. Trust me, I see it too.

But there is also something beautiful in our openness.

We will tell strangers our life stories in a checkout line.
We will compliment someone’s shoes with genuine enthusiasm.
We will be casual about our meals.
We will smile because we mean well and like the exchange.

Sometimes I miss that ease.

And yet, living here has made me softer in good ways too.

Slower.
More present.
Less rushed through my own life.

I notice things now.

The way sunlight hits the terracotta roofs around six o’clock.
The sound of your language mixed with live music and clinking glasses on a terrace near a fountain.

The ritual of buying fish from the same market vendor every week until eventually he remembers your face, smiles at you and starts handing you free lemons.

There is beauty in repetition here.

Beauty in restraint.

Beauty in not constantly trying to become someone else.

So this is not criticism.

It is simply what it feels like to live inside another culture while still carrying your own inside you too.

To belong partially to both places and completely to neither.

And maybe that is what being an étrangère really is.

Not rejection.

Not loneliness exactly.

But existing in the space between understanding and misunderstanding every single day.

Still, I am grateful.

Grateful for your country.
Grateful for the life my children are experiencing here.
Grateful that living among you forced me to question so many things I once accepted automatically about my own culture and myself.

You have changed me.

But here is what I have come to believe.

We are not so different in the ways that matter most.

We are just people. Humans trying to make a good life, find meaning, raise children who turn out okay, love the people next to us, and squeeze as much out of this one life as we possibly can.

You do it with elegance and discipline and a commitment to pleasure that I deeply admire.

I do it a little louder, sometimes with a giant water bottle and a glass of wine before apéro (maybe even as early as 4pm).

Maybe there is room for both.

To my French co-habitants: I see you. I am grateful for you.

And if you ever want to have dinner at five, I will gladly pour the wine and make sure it coordinates perfectly with the meal.

Avec respect,
An American woman still trying her best in Provence

A slight furrowing of the eyebrows.
The straightening of the mouth.
A tiny shrug.
Sometimes a soft “bfff” under their breath.

Not angry. Not exactly judgmental either.

Just… deeply puzzled.

The first time I experienced this was three days after moving to Aix-en-Provence from California.

It was August. The kind of southern France heat that makes your shirt stick to your back before noon. We had two young children who were sweaty, jet-lagged, hungry, and rapidly approaching meltdown territory.

We found a little takeaway pasta place and ordered buttered noodles with parmesan because it felt safe and familiar for the kids.

Across the street was something called “French Tacos,” which I naïvely assumed meant tacos like we ate in California. Instead, we opened the container to discover fries, fried chicken, melted cheese, and unidentified chopped meat fused together in a strange glorious pile.

We carried our food to a bench beside the fountain in the main square.

Wooden forks. Wooden knives. Kids spilling parmesan everywhere.

And then came the looks.

An older man slowed as he passed us. Looked down at the pasta container balanced on my lap.

“Bon appétit,” he said with a tiny sarcastic laugh before walking away.

At the time, I thought:

Wow. The French are rude.

Now, three years later, I understand what was actually happening.

To them, we looked bizarre.

Not because of what we were eating.

Because of how we were eating it.

Eating Is Not Meant to Feel Efficient

In France, meals are not something to squeeze in between errands.

You do not inhale pasta from a cardboard container with wooden cutlery beside a fountain while checking your phone and wiping sunscreen off your child’s face.

You sit down.

You use real silverware.

You pause between bites.

Even lunch on a random Tuesday is treated like something deserving of attention.

If you absolutely must eat while walking, it should be something held in your hands. A sandwich. A folded slice of pizza. A crêpe.

But pasta with plastic forks on a public bench?

Très bizarre.

And honestly, I get it now.

The Things Americans Carry Around

One of the fastest ways to spot an American in France is the oversized water bottle.

The giant Stanleys. The brightly colored Owalas. The emotional support hydration jugs.

The French seem fascinated by them.

Not in an admiring way.

More in a: Are they crossing the Sahara Desert later? sort of way.

You rarely see French adults carrying water around all day. Water belongs at meals. Served in glasses. Usually room temperature. Never packed with ice cubes the size of golf balls.

The first few months we lived here, I kept placing my giant water bottle on café tables like an accessory.

Now even I can see how absurd it looked next to a tiny espresso.

The Smile Incident

One American friend told me about her first corporate event in Paris.

She smiled warmly at a man she had just met. Big American smile. Friendly. Open.

Later that evening, he approached her at the bar and asked if she was a prostitute.

She was horrified.

But in France, overly enthusiastic smiling at strangers can read as flirtation or invitation, especially from women toward men.

This was shocking to me at first.

In America, smiling is practically social currency. We smile while passing strangers on hikes. We smile apologetically in elevators. We smile while ordering coffee, while uncomfortable, while angry, while exhausted.

The French reserve warmth differently.

It is not immediate.

It unfolds over time.

Busy Is Not a Personality Trait

One thing the French consistently seem confused by is our obsession with rushing.

Running to the métro.

Eating while walking.

Scheduling weekends so tightly they resemble military operations.

Back-to-back activities. Sports. Birthday parties. Errands. Productivity layered on top of productivity.

In France, if you tell someone you had “such a busy weekend,” it is not necessarily received with admiration.

Sometimes it’s met with concern.

Why would you live like that?

The waiter who ignores you for twenty minutes after you sit down is not failing at his job.

He assumes you are there to enjoy yourself.

The table is yours. He will never bring your check unless you ask for it.

No one is trying to flip it quickly for profit.

The meal is the point.

Loud Talking

Americans often don’t realize how loud we are until we move abroad.

I remember sitting at a café terrace in Aix one afternoon when I heard a familiar sound before I even turned around.

An American table.

You could hear every detail of the conversation from halfway down the street.

The volume. The animated storytelling. The oversharing. The huge reactions.

“Oh my God STOP.”
“Literally NO WAY.”
“Wait, tell me EVERYTHING.”

Meanwhile, every French table around them sounded like a soft murmur.

The French speak more quietly in public spaces. Especially in restaurants, trains, boutiques, and cafés. Conversation is meant to stay mostly at your table, not become part of the atmosphere for everyone else.

It’s not that they are less expressive. They simply value discretion.

This applies beyond volume too.

Americans tend to reveal personal information very quickly. Relationship problems. Salary complaints. Therapy breakthroughs. Family drama. The French usually unfold more slowly. Privacy is considered elegant. Mystery is respected.

At first, this felt cold to me.

Now, I actually find it refreshing.

Not every thought needs to be announced.
Not every moment needs to become content.
Not every silence needs to be filled.

There is something calming about realizing you can exist in public without constantly broadcasting yourself.

The Part That Changed Me

At first, all of this felt inconvenient.

Slow service. Closed stores. Long lunches. Fewer smiles. No customization. Less urgency.

But over time, I started realizing something uncomfortable.

Maybe they weren’t doing life wrong.

Maybe we were just living very differently.

Maybe Americans have become so conditioned to convenience, speed, optimization, self-improvement, efficiency, and endless productivity that we no longer notice how exhausting it feels.

The French notice.

That’s why they look puzzled.

Not because you are bad or wrong.

Because to them, some of our habits look strangely stressful.

And honestly?

Now many of them look bizarre to me too.

That feeling like you just got punched in the chest the minute you see her name pop up.

Slack. Email. Text. Sometimes all at once.

You could be standing in your kitchen packing lunches, tying a tiny shoelace, or sitting down for dinner trying to be present… and there it is.

Her name.

Your stomach drops before you even open it.

The Things We Push Away

The sadness we push back every morning kissing our little ones’ soft foreheads goodbye.

Their arms still wrapped around your neck for a second longer than usual.

“Stay, Mommy.”

You laugh it off gently, peel them away, promise you’ll be back soon.

Then you turn quickly so they don’t see your eyes.

For the next eight to ten hours, you belong somewhere else. Whether you like it or not.

Back just in time, hopefully, for the witching hours before bed. When they’re overtired, you’re depleted, and everyone is running on fumes.

The Dread We Normalize

The dread that consumes you before the day even starts.

It’s in your body before your feet hit the floor.

It follows you into the shower. Into your commute. Into your first meeting.

You become acutely aware of how many days are left until the weekend.

Sometimes even how many hours.

You start doing quiet math in your head.

If I just get through today…
Then tomorrow…
Then it’s almost Friday…

The Voice We Try to Silence

These moments feel small on their own.

Annoying. Inconvenient.

We wish they would just go away so we could focus, perform, get through the day like everyone else seems to.

But underneath them, something else is happening.

The questions start creeping in.

Is this really it?
Why does this feel so hard?
Why can’t I just handle this like everyone else?

And then comes the fear.

What If Fear Isn’t the Problem?

I listened to a meditation recently that said something I haven’t been able to shake.

When fear keeps showing up, gripping your chest, tightening your breath, refusing to leave… it is not there because it was invited or pleasant.

It is there to send you a message.

It will keep coming back until you acknowledge it.

Until you listen.

It doesn’t care if it’s convenient for you.
It doesn’t care if the timing makes sense.

It just keeps tapping. Louder and louder.

The Questions That Turn Into Chains

But instead of listening, we negotiate.

Is it really that bad? Other people seem to handle it just fine.
Maybe I should just wait for the promotion. I must be close.
The money is good, so why would I give that up?
I’ve worked so hard to get here. Why would I throw it all away?
What would I even be without this job?
What would people think?

These questions sound responsible.

But slowly, they become something else.

Chains tightly wrapped, so heavy it’s hard to move.

They become the reason we stay.

So… Do We Have to Break?

I started asking myself this recently.

Do we actually have to reach a breaking point before we make a change?

Do we have to wait until something inside of us fully collapses before we finally listen to what we already know?

We hear those stories all the time.

The burnout. The breaking point. The moment everything becomes too much. And then the leap.

And eventually, the happy ending.

So is that the only way?

The People Who Don’t Wait

I don’t think so.

I think there are people who leave before the breaking point.

People who have built enough trust with themselves to recognize the signs early.

They don’t wait for the collapse.

They feel the misalignment.
They quiet the noise.
They listen.
And they act.

But if I’m honest, I wasn’t one of those people.

What It Looked Like for Me

I stayed far longer than I should have.

I told myself my boss’s behavior was normal.

The late-night messages.
The constant pressure.
The bipolar moods.
The way I never quite knew what version of her I’d get that day.

I told myself it didn’t matter how much it was draining me.

I ignored the tears in the morning.

Ignored the tight grip in my chest as I held onto the subway pole, bracing myself for the day ahead.

Ignored the way I would reread messages three times before responding, trying to get the tone exactly right so I wouldn’t set something off.

Looking back, it feels obvious.

But at the time, it wasn’t.

When You Have No Perspective

When work is your identity, you don’t see clearly.

When you’ve spent years proving yourself, climbing, achieving, you don’t question the system.

You just try to survive inside it.

Every thought feels real.
Every excuse feels valid.
Every reason to stay feels heavier than the feeling telling you to go.

And so you stay.

Holding onto the hope that things will get better.

Like a life preserver. Saving you from sucking in too much water and eventually drowning.

My Breaking Point

My story didn’t end with a brave, clear decision.

It ended with circumstances forcing my hand. Forcing my “I quit.”

COVID.
No childcare.
A startup running out of money.

And me, sitting on a Zoom call, breastfeeding my baby while trying to hand snacks to my toddler just out of frame so he would stay quiet.

Smiling. Nodding. Trying to appear composed.

Something had to give.

And it did.

What Comes After

I wish I could say it was easy after that.

It wasn’t.

There is a long recovery from burnout that no one really talks about.

There is a process of unlearning.
Of peeling back years of conditioning.
Of figuring out who you are without the thing that defined you.

And yes, eventually, there is something beautiful on the other side.

There usually is, if you’re willing to follow what’s actually in your heart.

What I See Now

My journey is far from over.
But I notice things differently now.
I pay attention sooner.

This morning on the train to Paris, I looked out the window and saw the sky almost in a battle.

Bright sunlight stretching across the countryside on the train tracks ahead.
Dark storm clouds gathering behind it, moving fast.

For a moment, they were both there. Intertwined.
Light and heavy.
Clear and uncertain.

And just off in the distance, barely visible at first, there was a faint arc of color beginning to form.

The kind you could easily miss if you weren’t really looking.

The Signs

Life is not one or the other.
It’s both.

Most of the time, the light and the storm are happening at the same time.

And maybe that’s where we get confused.

We think clarity means everything feels good.

But sometimes clarity is just noticing what doesn’t.
Noticing the tension.
The pull.
The quiet contrast between what is and what could be.

Sometimes, that contrast is where something new begins to take shape.

You Don’t Have to Wait for It to Break

If you’re in that stage right now, where the questions are loud, where the feelings are strong, where something inside you keeps whispering that this isn’t it…

You don’t need to wait for the breaking point.

You don’t need everything to fall apart to justify a change.

You already know.

You just need the courage to listen.

So let the storm clouds move the way they need to.

But don’t ignore the light trying to break through.

And don’t miss what can exist in between the two.

And don’t miss your own rainbow forming.

It’s already there. Patiently waiting for you.

Your LinkedIn profile.

That tiny word beside your last title: Present.

You stare at it longer than you’d like to admit.

Your cursor hovers over the edit button.

You almost cannot bring yourself to delete it.

Because deleting one word feels like deleting an identity.

If I remove “present,” am I no longer on the path?

That moment hit me almost three years ago.

I had walked away from the corporate career I’d spent twenty years building.

Twenty years of promotions, strategy, performance reviews, org charts, titles, annual raises, carefully timed moves.

Twenty years of arranging my life like a puzzle I believed would eventually click into place if I just kept finding the right pieces.

One more role.
One more title.
One more new industry to diversify my experience.
One more impressive company.

But I had started asking questions I could no longer unhear.

When is the puzzle ever complete?

At CEO?

At retirement?

At the moment former colleagues are impressed?

And more unsettling than that:

Who was I building it for? Myself? My family? My parents?

What was I trading off by focusing so much on this professional puzzle?

I did not know anymore.

The Rules We Follow Without Question

For most of my early career, I accepted the script as reality.

You graduate college.

You get the best job you possibly can. You go to an impressive graduate school.

You keep climbing.

You keep proving.

You keep earning.

Happiness, irrelevant.

Passion, optional.

Dread, part of adulthood.

Sunday scaries, normal.

Counting down the hours until Friday, expected.

You tell yourself everyone feels this way.

You tell yourself this is maturity.

You tell yourself gratitude means not complaining.

And if something aches in you, you call it stress and keep moving.

Because what is the alternative?

It feels too late to start over.

Too irresponsible to step away.

Too risky to disappoint people.

Too financially scary to just leave.

So we stay.

Many people stay for life.

The Breaking Point

My breaking point came when I had two children under two.

Every morning felt like a dreadful race.

Bottles packed. Diapers. Snacks. Tiny coats over squirming arms. A baby who had been up half the night. A toddler melting down because his banana squished in half.

Then me.

Throwing on an outfit, praying it looked pulled together. Makeup done with one hand while holding the baby in the other. Louis Vuitton laptop bag overflowing with half-highlighted decks I needed to finish reviewing. Breast pump bag over the other. Coffee already cold, taken like a shot.

I would kiss their little soft foreheads goodbye while warm tears formed in the corners of my eyes.

I can still see them at the window of our small house in San Francisco.

Small hands pressed to the glass.

Waving.

Watching me leave.

I would wave back and then turn quickly so my mascara would not run. Smile through the sadness.

Then inhale.

Then brace myself for the workday ahead.

At the office, I became someone else.

Sharp. Composed. High functioning.

It did not matter if I had slept three hours because the baby was teething.

It did not matter if preschool called because my son cried all morning.

It did not matter if my body was exhausted and my heart felt split in two.

My job seemed to require the first position in the hierarchy of my life.

And for a long time, I obeyed that order.

Until one day, I simply couldn’t anymore.

The Day I Quit

People sometimes imagine life-changing decisions arrive with clarity and pre-planned speeches.

Mine came as exhaustion.

I went in one day and said:

“I quit.”

Just like that.

I know it felt abrupt to them.

But for me, it had been building quietly for years.

The goodbye tears every morning.

The short shallow breathing.

The way entire Sundays were ruined with anticipation of the week ahead.

I knew if I gave myself time to think, I would talk myself out of it.

So I blurted it out before fear could intervene.

And that was it.

The Relief…At First

At first, I felt panic.

What had I done?

There was money to consider.

Childcare to unravel.

Schedules to rework.

But beneath the panic was something stronger.

Relief.

Immediate, physical relief.

As if eighty-pound weights had been lifted from my shoulders.

The pains that used to dart through my chest suddenly stopped.

The breath I’d been unconsciously holding for years finally came out in one long exhale.

I remember thinking:

Oh.

So this is what my nervous system has been trying to tell me.

The Honeymoon Phase

For a while, life felt delicious.

I filled my calendar with everything I had not had time for.

Music classes and swimming lessons with the kids.

Midday yoga.

Tennis lessons.

Long grocery store trips where I could actually read labels.

Warm coffee in real mugs.

Sunlight on weekdays I was usually too busy to notice and feel.

It felt heavenly.

And then something shifted.

The Part No One Shares

Everyone glamorizes this part and that’s what we all dream about.

But, here is the secret no one tells you when you step off the corporate path.

Even when it is the right decision, you will struggle.

You will feel lost.

You will question yourself.

You will feel strangely anxious in the space you once begged for.

Because slowing down can feel terrifying when speed has been your go-to.

You will have moments of freedom so sweet they feel like heaven.

And then, just as quickly, those moments can be followed by a gnawing ache:

What now?

What is my purpose?

What am I doing with my life?

If you are achievement-oriented, hardworking, externally validated, and used to measuring yourself by output, these questions can become relentless.

You may feel meaningless if you are not making money.

Invisible if you are not “in the game.”

Behind if others keep climbing while you stand still.

You may know intellectually that this is societal conditioning.

Yet, it can still feel like truth in your body.

How I Got It Wrong

I approached finding my next chapter the same way I approached corporate success.

Be the best you can be. Solve it like a problem. Quickly find answers.

I read almost every self-help book.

Listened to every podcast.

Bought journals with pretty pens.

Engaged in many types of therapy.

Researched “how to find your purpose.”

Tried to optimize healing.

I treated self-discovery like a project with deadlines.

I wanted answers. Pronto.

But the deepest answers do not come when you’re anxiously pursuing them.

They come when there is finally enough silence to hear them.

The Secret Sauce

Moving to France helped me understand this, but you do not need to move anywhere or do anything dramatic.

Here’s the secret:

You do need to slow the f*ck down.

Your desire will be to rush. To quickly figure out the next thing and jump in both feet first. Resist that.

Sit with yourself. In silence. In discomfort. Let the grief come up.

Cry over the years you overrode yourself. Cry over the dreams you postponed. Cry because you are exhausted. Cry because you may not know who you are without a title.

You need to let yourself get bored. Don’t try to fill the time with your phone or any other distraction. Just be bored and feel it.

You need to do get off screens. Delete LinkedIn, Instagram and any other social media app that throws you into “self-induced comparison.”

You need to take long walks alone (without your phone), sit in nature, garden, cook or do whatever feels good to allow your mind to slow down.

You need to spend time alone. I mean, really alone. Take a solo trip if you can or sit alone at a cafe or restaurant repeatedly. You need to learn to love your own company and even start to crave it.

You need to write, paint, draw, record - whatever method works for you - about what comes up. What little sparks keep resurfacing? Note those.

Do not rush this. I repeat. Do not rush this.

Do not expect anything. Patience is your best friend.

Start to develop trust. Trust in yourself that you will land in a better place. Trust in the Universe that good things are coming your way and there are higher powers working through you.

Be nice to yourself. Stop the negative self-talk. Make yourself a little mantra, as silly as it sounds, and say it yourself every morning in the mirror. Don’t stop until you actually believe it.

The Quiet Return to Yourself

For me, the sparks were always there.

Writing.

Storytelling.

Connecting deeply with women.

Honest, raw and deep conversations.

Helping others feel less alone in their questioning.

These were not new interests.

They were old truths buried under noise.

That is often what purpose is.

Not something invented.

Something remembered.

What Life Looks Like Now

I’m sharing all of this because I’ve been on this journey for the past three years and can honestly say, it’s been working.

I have found passion in writing and podcasting.

I have found meaning in helping women who are standing where I once stood, in a state of questioning and trying to figure out what’s next.

I am not going to lie and say every day feels blissful.

It doesn’t.

Monday mornings are still the worst for me.

When everyone is rushing somewhere and I am not, there are moments I still question and doubt myself.

That’s okay. That’s normal.

There are days I work harder than I did before.

But now it is effort in a direction that makes me excited to get out of bed every morning.

That difference changes everything.

If You Are Standing at the Edge

If you are miserable on the path you’re on, listen carefully.

Misery is information.

Dread is information.

Chronic chest tightness is information.

The fantasy of escape is information.

It does not always mean quit tomorrow.

But it does mean something in you is asking to be heard.

Take little steps toward the sparks.

Little steps become big steps.

Big steps become new lives.

But only if you can hear them.

And that requires something most ambitious people avoid:

Stillness. Slowing down.

Your head has had the microphone for long enough.

Let it get quiet.

Your heart has something to say.

The Truth I Wish Someone Had Told Me

I don’t have all of the answers, but I can share my experience and wisdom that’s come from it.

I can tell you that there is a kind of relief that comes when you stop betraying yourself every day.

I can tell you that when things finally begin to align, it does not always look dramatic from the outside. Sometimes it looks like sleeping better. Laughing more. Feeling lighter in your own body. Waking up with energy instead of dread.

I can tell you that there are moments when you will feel something inside you come back to life, and it is so powerful you will wonder how you lived so long without it.

I can tell you that getting off the corporate path was the best decision I ever made. For myself. For my marriage. For my family.

If you are in a season of questioning, of restlessness, of knowing something is off but not yet knowing what comes next, trust that feeling.

It may not be anxiety.

It may be the first sound of your real life calling you forward.

You will figure it out.

And one day, you may look back at this uncertain version of yourself with gratitude for having the courage to listen.

One was in her late twenties. One was somewhere in her eighties.

The younger woman’s skin was porcelain, not a wrinkle in sight. A cropped tank revealed just enough of her perfectly toned stomach. Across from her sat a tanned, almost lifeguard looking man who absentmindedly ran his hand through thick dark hair while he spoke with a thick Australian accent.

If I had been her age, my eyes might have been fixed on him.

But hers were not.

They kept drifting to our table.

To me. To my husband. To our two children covered in sunscreen and sand, arguing over whose turn it was to hold the tiny green plastic shovel.

When our eyes met, she gave me a soft smile.

And there it was.

That look.

The look of a woman imagining a future she wants very badly.

Marriage. Children. A family of her own.

I recognized it immediately because once upon a time, I wore that same expression.

At the table on my other side sat a couple in their eighties.

She had pulled her walker close to the chair. Reading glasses hung from a beaded chain around her neck. Her hands trembled slightly as she tried to open the magnetic clasp of the menu. Her husband leaned over to help her, slowly and tenderly, the way people do when they have loved each other long enough to stop pretending impatience.

She looked up and caught my gaze.

We smiled at each other.

In her eyes, I saw something different.

Comfort.

Warmth.

And maybe, just maybe, a trace of longing.

That look startled me too.

Because between the wanting of the young woman and the remembering of the older one, I suddenly felt placed in the center of something I had not fully appreciated.

Maybe this time right now is the sweet spot.

Maybe these are the prime years.

The Life I Once Wanted

For so long, this was the life I hoped would happen.

A husband I loved.

Sweet children who still reach for my hand.

Family vacations where afternoons disappear into sandcastles, wet swimsuits, and pleas for one more gelato before dinner.

The kind of evening where the sun turns everything honey-colored and you pour a glass of white wine and the kids beg for some music.

So you put on Golden for the millionth time.

You dance barefoot in the hotel room before dinner.

You jump and spin while your kids giggle and ask for another twirl.

Your body still able to do it without anything aching or getting too out of breath.

Then you glance at your husband.

He still has a full head of somewhat dark hair. Skin tanned by vacation sun. Lines at the corners of his eyes that somehow make him more attractive, not less.

And you think, quietly:

This is good.

This is very good.

And Yet

To say this season is beautiful does not mean it is easy.

Some days I feel wrung out by motherhood.

Some days I am touched so much, needed so much, asked for so much that by evening I want silence more than anything.

Some days I snap at the people I love most, then feel ashamed.

Some days I miss versions of myself I thought I’d outgrown.

There are days when the future feels like fog.

Who am I becoming as my children need me less?

What work matters now?

What does the next chapter ask of me?

There are moments I feel deeply grateful and deeply unsettled at the exact same time.

For years, I thought those feelings canceled each other out.

Now I think they are simply called life.

The French Understand This Better

There is a phrase I hear often in France:

C’est comme ça.

It is like this.

Not said with defeat, but with acceptance.

Life can be beautiful and complicated.

You can adore your children and need a break from them.

You can love your marriage and still miss old versions of yourself.

You can feel lucky and lost in the same week.

You can stand in the middle of a gorgeous vacation and still worry about aging, purpose, money, your parents, your body, your future.

This does not mean something is wrong.

It means you are alive.

How “Prime” Has Been Sold to Us

The word prime usually comes packaged with images.

Youth.

Tight skin.

Peak fertility.

The best body you’ll ever have.

The years when heads turn as you walk into a room.

Society loves to hand women a narrow timeline and call it truth.

As if life rises sharply in your twenties, peaks somewhere around thirty-two, then quietly declines.

As if our greatest value is physical and temporary.

As if wisdom, self-respect, discernment, humor, depth, and inner peace are consolation prizes.

I no longer believe any of that.

When I was younger, I may have looked fresher.

But I was more anxious.

More desperate for approval.

More likely to confuse attention with self-worth.

More likely to chase lives that looked impressive but did not feel right from the inside.

I had youth.

I did not yet have myself.

What Prime Feels Like Now

Now, I feel something I rarely felt then.

I like who I am.

That sentence took decades.

I know what drains me.

I know what lights me up.

I know that external milestones do not guarantee fulfillment.

I know that some of the dreams I chased were based on too many “shoulds.”

I know how to leave a room, a role, or an expectation that does not fit.

I know how to recover faster from disappointment.

I know how to savor ordinary joy.

Coffee in a quiet kitchen.

A child leaning against me on the couch.

A walk at dusk.

A conversation that tells the truth.

I am not perfect.

I am not finished.

But I am more at home inside myself than I have ever been.

That feels like a kind of prime no one talks enough about.

When I was younger, I was admired more.

Now I am understood more.

And the second is infinitely better.

Maybe They Weren’t Looking at My Life

Later, I thought again about those two women.

The younger one.

The older one.

Maybe they were not looking at my husband or my children or my circumstances at all.

Maybe they were sensing something less visible.

Contentment.

Groundedness.

A woman who has been cracked open enough by life to stop pretending she can control it.

A woman still in motion, still becoming, but no longer at war with herself.

Maybe what they saw was not my stage of life.

Maybe they saw peace.

And maybe peace is one of the most beautiful things we can grow into.

The Part I Still Resist

I still dislike the phrase prime years for one reason.

It implies expiration.

It suggests that after a certain age, life narrows.

That joy belongs mostly to the young.

That relevance has a deadline.

That desire fades, beauty disappears, adventure closes, and wonder belongs to people with smoother skin.

I refuse to believe that.

Living in France has helped me challenge this.

I watch women in their sixties and seventies walk through town with silk scarves, lipstick, posture, and complete indifference to whether anyone approves of them.

They laugh out loud.

They sit at a bar enjoying a glass of wine.

They order dessert.

They travel.

They begin new relationships.

They carry themselves as if life still belongs to them.

Because it does.

A Different Definition

Maybe prime was never about youth.

Maybe prime is when you finally stop abandoning yourself.

Maybe it is when you know who you are, what matters, and what no longer deserves your energy.

Maybe it is when gratitude outweighs comparison.

Maybe it is when you trust yourself more than the crowd.

Maybe it is when you stop begging the future to begin and stop romanticizing the past.

Maybe it is when you can hold joy and uncertainty in the same pair of hands.

Maybe it is now.

Before It Passes

If you are in a season with young children climbing onto your lap, a healthy body carrying you through ordinary days, a partner beside you, dreams still tugging at your sleeve, questions still unanswered, laughter still easy to find...

Look up.

You may be standing in years you will one day long for.

I don’t say that to make you feel guilty.

I say it to make you more aware.

To help you notice the sticky hands reaching for yours.
The body that still runs up stairs two at a time.
The person beside you who has quietly loved you through ordinary Tuesdays and hard times alike.

These moments often feel small while we are inside them.

Later, we understand they were enormous.

And if you are beyond this chapter, your prime has not passed.

The woman with the walker reminded me of that.

There was tenderness beside her. History across the table. A face lined not by loss alone, but by years fully lived.

Prime does not disappear.

It evolves.

At twenty-eight, it may look like longing.
At forty, gratitude.
At eighty, wisdom soft enough to smile confidently at strangers.

Every season holds something the others cannot.

The mistake is thinking life peaks only once.

It does not.

If you are here now, in whatever age or chapter you occupy, there is still something beautiful asking to be lived.

Look up.

This, too, may be one of the best years of your life.

And now, I’m happy to say I’ve even befriended them.

French women.

The way their hair looks like they just woke up like that. The way their makeup is subtle, yet somehow makes them look more like themselves, not less.

The way they walk like they are on their own runway in cool jeans, sneakers, and a perfectly oversized blazer.

I still catch myself staring sometimes.

Sitting at a café in Aix-en-Provence, watching a woman in her Celine sunglasses sip a red Burgundy like she has nowhere else to be. Slowly cutting into a perfectly cooked magret de canard. Finishing with Brillat-Savarin and a petit café.

And this is lunch.

No laptop.
No rushing.
No sense that she is squeezing this in between “more important” things.

Just… fully there.

And I remember thinking, almost immediately after we moved here:

How are they doing this?

Because this version of “balance” felt completely foreign to me.

The Life I Thought Was Working

Before this, my life looked very different.

I lived in New York City and San Francisco.
I worked in fashion and beauty.
I had two young kids.

And I was trying to do all of it well.

I’ve scarfed down a salad at my desk between meetings.
I’ve woken up at 5am for Barry’s Bootcamp or Pilates just to feel like I had control over my schedule.
I’ve spent entire weekends at kids’ activities, telling myself that’s just what good mothers do.

I thought this was balance.

Or at least, I told myself it was.

Because what was the alternative?

Slowing down felt like laziness.
Not maximizing my time felt irresponsible.
Wanting space for myself felt selfish.

So I kept going.

And I got very good at it.

But something about it always felt slightly off.

The Shift That Happened Slowly

When we moved to the South of France almost three years ago, I didn’t come here looking for a different way to live.

I thought I was just changing location.

But something started happening.

At first, I noticed the differences.

Then I judged them.

Then I got frustrated by them.

And then… slowly… I started questioning myself instead.

I started having conversations. Mostly in Frenglish.
Awkward ones at first.
Then deeper ones.

And over time, real friendships.

(Not easy as a foreigner, trust me.)

And what I began to realize is that this wasn’t about style or aesthetics.

It was about an entirely different relationship to life.

They Have a Healthy Relationship With Food

There is no “diet” culture.

Yet they eat three courses at lunch.

They are well-known for their rich butter, foie gras and perfect pastries.

However, their obesity rate is significantly lower than the United States. It is very rare I see an overweight adult or child in France. This confused me, until I started really paying attention.

They don’t snack.

They stop eating before they are full.

They pause between bites.

Meals can take up to two hours. The portions are much smaller. The food is pure and real, not processed.

Food lives at the center of the culture and is meant to be enjoyed, not scarfed down just to fill the hunger void and provide energy.

There are no extremes. They don’t overindulge and then deprive themselves. They simply eat well and enjoy it everyday.

Walking matters. The French walk a lot. It’s part of the culture and they enjoy it. This helps with weight and digestion.

For children, they have goûter after school around 4pm which is when they enjoy a sweet treat like a crepe or chocolate inside a baguette. This is often in place of dessert after dinner. No sugar spike right before bedtime.

They Choose Quality Over Quantity

This goes far beyond food.

They would rather have one square of incredible chocolate than an entire bowl of mediocre ice cream.

A few beautiful, well-made pieces in their wardrobe instead of closets overflowing with fast fashion.

They would rather have a few meaningful, high quality meals outside of the home than a lot of mediocre take out meals or heaven forbid, fast food.

They even choose high quality lingerie and buy just a few matching sets. It’s inconceivable for them to not have their bra match their underwear. Every single day. So, unlike many Americans, they don’t have an underwear drawer that’s overflowing with a million different colors and brands and only a few select favorite bras that go with everything.

It sounds small, but it’s not.

It’s a mindset.

Less, but better.

They Let Go of Perfection

This one hit me hard.

Because I was trying to be everything.

The best at work.
The best mom.
The best wife.
The best friend.

They don’t try to be perfect at everything and for everyone.

They aren’t people pleasers.

They value the concept of “good enough” to achieve balance. It’s better to be a balanced mother, employee, wife than striving to be perfect at all of these.

They don’t spend hours on their hair or makeup. The messy look is acceptable and preferred. Makeup is never meant to be overdone. Don’t get me wrong, they make an effort. Looking good is very important, but not meant to take hours or be super time consuming.

When they have people over for apéro dînatoire, this is not meant to be a performance and they don’t even use the word “entertaining.” Instead, it’s meant to be simple food and drinks where conversation and connection take center stage. The host is actually present and relaxed, engaged in the conversation. They’re not trying to please everyone or put on a show to impress the guests.

Their Life Doesn’t Revolve Around Their Kids

This one was uncomfortable to admit at first.

Because I had built so much of my identity around being a mother.

In the U.S., everything felt centered around the kids. Weekends are jam packed with kids’ sports and activities.

Here, it’s different.

Playgrounds are simple, not overdone. Almost shockingly so. My kids don’t even ask to go to them. Franky, they’re not that fun. Because they aren’t meant to be a central gathering place for families.

French women believe in pursuing activities that provide enjoyment for them too. Long lunches. Wineries. Beach days. Museums. Gatherings with friends.

These may or may not be fun for the kids, but that’s okay, it’s not about catering to your children at every free moment. And they learn to be okay with that.

They learn to be bored. To adapt. To exist in a world that doesn’t revolve entirely around them. They aren’t given screens to occupy them or snacks to keep them quiet.

Parents aren’t hovering or orchestrating every second.

And slowly, I started to see something I hadn’t before.

The mother doesn’t disappear here.

Work is a Component, But Not Their Sole Identity

Work is a means to live a beautiful life. They value their work and take pride in it and are ambitious, but not at the expense of their well-being and lifestyle.

The country also makes it easier for French women to set boundaries. The government has only a 35 hour work week with at least 5 weeks of paid vacation. There is no evening work culture. In fact, in 2017, France passed a law giving employees the “right to disconnect” from emails, cell phones or any electronic shackles once they’ve logged off from their workday.

In a statement, the Ministry of Labor said:

“These measures are designed to ensure respect for rest periods and … balance between work and family and personal life,”

Yes, this makes it much easier to work to live and not the opposite way around.

However, we can all learn to set better boundaries and manage our own schedules so someone doesn’t do it for us.

They Trust Themselves. They Don’t Compare Themselves to Others.

They have a quiet confidence in themselves and don’t need to look to others for what they should value or how they should dress or what kind of car they should drive.

None of that matters as much as how they feel about themselves and their life.

If you are wealthy, it’s meant to be hidden, not flaunted. The French don’t drive fancy cars or buy mansions to show off and prove their wealth. They enjoy the finer things in life through experiences without feeling the need to flaunt them to others.

Social media is not as prevalent and pervasive which reduces the comparison culture. Most Millennial French women don’t post or spend a great deal of time on social media. They say they are private people and don’t need to be inundated with what everyone else is doing.

In short, they don’t believe in “self induced pressure.”

They Believe in Slow Living. Not Rushing and Over-scheduling.

One activity on a weekend is often enough. There is no cramming in as much as you can.

Weekends are meant to be savored for slowing down. Long walks. Big lunches. Strolls through museums. Not errands, catching up on housework or working.

They will sit on a bench and read a book. They will walk slowly to enjoy their cigarette and admire the city.

They don’t feel guilty for slowing down.

Their well-being matters and is prioritized over being busy or productive.

Friendships Are Like Fine Wine. They Get Better With Time.

The French won’t immediately befriend you or even be nice and welcoming when they first meet you. It doesn’t mean they are being rude. It means that they value allowing the time to get to know someone before opening up.

They believe it’s fake and inauthentic to immediately smile or give a woman a compliment upon first meeting her.

Like a fine wine, they let the relationship breathe and take time before going all in and indulging.

This leads to deeper, more lasting friendships. Plus, once you’re in, that friendship is as valuable as gold and is meant to be invested in and nourished continually over time.

The Truth About Balance

What I’ve learned is this:

Balance is not something you achieve and then keep forever.

It’s something you practice.

In tiny, daily choices.

In how you eat.
How you spend your time.
What you say yes to.
What you allow yourself to let go of.

French women are not perfect.

But they are anchored.

In themselves.
In their lives.
In what actually matters.

What You Can Take From This

You don’t need to move to France.

You don’t need a different country.

But you might need a different lens.

A willingness to question the way you’ve been living.

To ask yourself:

Where am I rushing that I don’t need to be?
Where am I overcomplicating things?
Where am I trying to be perfect instead of present?

Because balance isn’t about doing everything well.

It’s about deciding what actually deserves your energy.

And having the courage to let the rest fall away.

Even just a little.

It doesn’t announce itself loudly.
It sits quietly underneath your life.
A low hum. A subtle ache. A sense that something is missing, even when everything looks full from the outside.

And because it’s so hard to face directly or even properly identify it, we try to fill it.

With work.
With achievement.
With our kids.
With anything that promises to make us feel whole again.

But the truth is, this kind of void is blind.
It knows what it wants to feel, but it does not care how it gets filled.

So we reach for whatever is closest.

The Ways We Learn to Fill It

For years, I filled mine with work.

I chased validation in the form of promotions, bigger roles, more responsibility, more money. I wanted proof that I was good at something. That I mattered. That I was enough.

And it worked. Temporarily.

Each milestone gave me a brief high. A moment of relief.
But it never lasted.

Because the void was still there.

Just waiting for the next hit.

When Love Becomes a Clutch

Then, when my kids were younger, something shifted.

I started filling that space with them.

Their need for me.
Their love for me.
The way they reached for me, depended on me, wanted me.

It made me feel like a good mother.
But more than that, it made me feel worthy.

When you meet your children’s needs, you are also meeting your own need to be needed.

And that is where it gets complicated.

Because it feels like love.
And it is love.
But it is also something else.

Something quieter.
Something more fragile.

The Moment It Starts to Break

Because children grow.

They are supposed to.

They begin to need you less.
They reach for you less.
They pull away.

And when that happens, if you have built your identity around being needed, it doesn’t just feel like distance.

It feels like loss.

It can feel like rejection.
Like something is being taken from you.
Like the very thing that made you feel whole is slipping through your fingers.

And sometimes, it hurts in ways you don’t expect.

A little hand pulled away on a walk.
A hug that is forced as they run away instead of little hands gripping so tightly around your waist.
A “no” where there used to always be a “yes.”

Small moments.
But they land heavy.

Like something inside you is being scraped raw.

When We Hold On Too Tightly

If your self-worth is rooted in your children, you will try to hold on.

You will want them close.
Not just physically, but emotionally.

You will beg them not to go too far away to university.

You will guilt trip them to buy a house down the street.

To call more often.
To choose a life that keeps them within your reach.

It can look like love.

“I just want them close.”
“I don’t want to miss them.”

And those things can be true.

But underneath it, there can also be fear.

Fear of what happens when they no longer fill the space inside you.

The wings that children are supposed to be given are clipped because of the fear that they will use them to escape the nest and fly too far away.

And when that fear leads, something subtle begins to shift.

The roles reverse.
The parent becomes the one needing.
The child becomes the one holding.

And that makes it harder for them to become who they are meant to be.

Letting the Water Flow

I keep coming back to this image.

Kids are like flowing water.

When they are little, you can cup them in your hands.
They stay there. Close. Contained. Safe.

But slowly, almost without noticing, the water begins to slip through your fingers.

At first, just a little.
Then more.

Until one day, you are left holding only droplets.

And it’s tempting to tighten your grip.
To try to hold on harder.

But water was never meant to be held that way.

On the other side, it is becoming something else.
Expanding. Moving. Taking shape in ways it never could have inside your hands.

Let it flow.

Not with sadness.
But with reverence.

The Work That Actually Heals

The hardest truth I’ve had to face is this:

No external thing can fill an internal void.

Not work.
Not success.
Not even the people we love most.

Because what we are actually craving is meaning.
Purpose.
A sense of connection to ourselves.

For me, this meant turning inward.

It meant sitting with the discomfort instead of avoiding it.
Asking harder questions.
Letting the answers come slowly.

Through therapy.
Through journaling and meditation.
Through long stretches of quiet where I had no distraction to hide behind.

And eventually, something began to shift.

Returning to Yourself

What I found was not some grand, life-altering answer.

It was simpler than that.

It was remembering.

What made me feel alive before I learned to measure my worth through achievement or approval.

Writing.
Storytelling.
Creating.

The things I loved as a child.

The things that felt too impractical, too uncertain, too far removed from the life I had built.

And yet, those were the very things that started to close the gap inside me.

Not perfectly.
Not all at once.

But slowly.

Like something being mended from within.

The Void Doesn’t Disappear Overnight

Even now, it still shows up.

In small moments.

When my son prefers to hang out with his friends instead of me.
When my daughter closes her door and chooses to be alone.

There is still a flicker of something.

A brief ache.
A whisper of that old emptiness.

But it doesn’t consume me the way it used to.

Because I no longer expect those moments to fill me.

I let them be what they are.

Part of the natural unfolding.

Part of the letting go.

A Different Kind of Wholeness

If there is a void inside you, pay attention to it.

Not to fix it quickly.
Not to silence it.

But to understand it.

Ask yourself what you are reaching for.
And why.

And then gently turn inward.

Because the only thing I have found that truly fills that space is this:

A life that feels like your own.
A sense of purpose that comes from within.
A connection to the parts of you that were never meant to be outsourced.

That is the work.

And it is not easy.

But it is the only thing that has ever made me feel whole.

That is what I remember most about our last night in California.

Not the excitement. Not the logistics. Not even the goodbyes.

Just the weight of it.

Fear. Excitement. Sadness. Anger.

All of it sitting in my chest at once as we prepared to board a one-way flight to France the next morning.

Almost three years later, people still ask me the same question.

Would you do it again?

Would you make the same decision?

My answer has never changed.

Yes. Absolutely. Without a doubt.

And still, there are things I could never have understood until I lived them.

I share this for the version of me who felt completely alone in that moment. And for anyone standing at the edge of a life that feels both expansive and terrifying.

You Will Never Feel Fully at Home Again

You will waffle back and forth between loving where you live and missing your home country so much.

You will likely cry at more airports than most people have visited in a lifetime.

You will constantly question your decision over whether it was right to move so far away from what’s familiar and from your family and friends.

You will think about “moving back” and may or may not.

You will always feel slightly pulled in two directions.

When you are abroad, you will miss home.

When you go back home, you will miss your life abroad.

You will count down to visits. Then quietly count down again to leaving.

You will question your decision. More than once.

You will wonder what “home” even means anymore.

And slowly, you will learn to live in that in-between space.

Not fully here. Not fully there.

But somehow belonging to both.

You Will Become More Comfortable Being Uncomfortable

When you’re in your home country, you know how things work.

You know the cultural norms, you know how to get around, you know what to expect and can pretty much predict how most days will unfold.

Abroad, even the smallest things feel uncertain.

Buying groceries becomes confusing. There are forty types of flour and none of them say “all-purpose.”

You realize you need a coin just to use a shopping cart.

There are no stoplights anywhere, just constant roundabouts.

There is little predictability about how your day will unfold. A random street performance may block your entire route (the only one you knew how to take).

You try to speak, unsure if you will be understood. You listen, hoping you will understand.

But over time, things surprise you less and don’t aggravate you as much.

You come to expect that life is more unpredictable and don’t get as worked up when you’re uncomfortable.

You gain quiet confidence.

A realization that you can figure things out.

That you can exist in uncertainty and be okay.

The Lows are Low and the Highs are High

There will be some really hard days.

Days when you’re more frustrated and angry than you thought possible.

The language barrier. The administration of getting or renewing your Visa. The lack of sidewalk etiquette.

You will settle for some things you wouldn’t have in your home country because it’s easier than trying to return something or argue in your non-native language. Maybe pork shoulder can work the same in this recipe as pork tenderloin? You will get frustrated by little conveniences you took for granted.

Amazon Same-Day Deliveries.

Automatic ice makers.

Your Barbie-sized washer and dryer seemed charming at first, but the daily multiple loads of laundry will start to weigh on you.

But then you have days where life feels like heaven.

It’s a high you’ve never felt before. It’s the magic of experiences and the way all five of your senses can be awakened at the same time.

Biting into a warm buttery crusty pain au chocolat. Smelling lavender as you gaze up at the brightest, prettiest color blue sky you’ve ever seen in your life.

You smile to yourself as you listen to your kids sing in French in the bath.

You watch them giggle with their friends as they ride their scooters through little alleyways, seamlessly flowing their conversations between French and English.

A stranger stopping you to ask for directions because they think you look native.

Moments where you pause and think, this is my life.

And you feel it in your body.

The contrast is what makes it so powerful.

Everything You Thought Was “Normal” Will Shift

Americans can be pretty self-absorbed. We pledge allegiance to the flag of our country. We are taught to believe that America is the best country and everyone wants to live there. If you never live anywhere else, you may believe this all to be true.

But when you surround yourself with people from all over the world, your perspective completely changes you. What you assumed was “right” or “normal” suddenly seems strange.

Why do we rush so much?

Why do we always want more?

Is enough actually enough?

The questions start to come up in almost every aspect of your life.

You begin to see your home country more clearly. With more nuance. More honesty.

And you start to choose more intentionally what you carry forward.

It’s really interesting when kids start to ask questions that are very deep and insightful, things most children under 10 years old wouldn’t even think about. They ask about families from different countries and why they eat certain foods or follow certain religious traditions.

They even start to ask questions about their home country. They don’t have a blind assumption that the country they were born in is the best. They recognize differences, not as bad things, but more as things that are meant to be respected and appreciated. In short, they are learning at a young age to be more open-minded and adapt to different people and circumstances.

Not Everyone Will Understand Your Choice

When you start sharing your news about the decision to move, you may expect people to be excited and happy for you.You want them to pop a bottle of champagne and celebrate with you.

What you may often find is the opposite reaction. People will tell you you’re crazy. They will think you’re running away from something.

Often, their reactions are less than ideal or downright cruel.

I’ve learned that they are not trying to hurt us or say these things intentionally.

It is not usually about you.

It is about what your decision brings up in them.

Fear. Distance. Sadness. Maybe even their own unchosen paths.

Try not to let this sway your decision or to make it the only reason you decide to come back if you’re not ready.

This is so much easier said than done. The pressure, guilt, anger or sadness from those we love the most can hurt like hell. I know this firsthand.

But I try to remember that this is my life and I have my own family too. All we can do is make the best choice that lives in our hearts and stand inside that decision anyway.

You Will Collect a Lifetime of Moments

Life abroad is not just a place. It is a collection of moments.

The small, everyday ones.

The stories you bring home and laugh about at dinner.

The mistakes. The surprises. The things that go wrong and somehow become the best memories.

And the bigger ones too.

The ability to travel when you live in Europe is absolutely incredible. So many countries require very little travel time and offer a completely new world. Some of our best family trips were the ones where we just packed up the car with no plan, drove over the border to Italy or Spain and discovered things along the way.

The kids remember the unexpected things, like when we didn’t charge an electric rental car enough and had to get towed (they actually tow you still sitting in your car in Europe)!

The kids remember these mishaps more than the big trips where we tried to check every “must see” in a short period of time. Slow travel. Big memories. Lifetime experiences.

There Is No Perfect Place

“Even paradise gets stinky.” Natalie Goldberg said it best in her book, Writing Down the Bones.

It’s easy to feel like you’re on vacation when you first move abroad. It’s new, it’s exciting and you get to do things you’ve never done before.

But life is life no matter where you are. You bring yourself, your problems, your insecurities and your relationship challenges everywhere you go. Changing this is an inside job and it doesn’t matter if you’re living in paradise.

Over time, the culture that looked so cool, different and interesting when compared to your own will begin to show its true colors as you peel back the onion. You will begin to see the problems, the mentality and how this affects the way their society operates or how they school their children.

Over time, every place reveals its complexities.

And you begin to understand that fulfillment is not about finding the perfect place.

It is about how you choose to live wherever you are.

What I Know Now

If you are standing on the edge of this kind of decision, wondering if you should leap, I cannot give you a clear answer.

But I can tell you this.

It will stretch you.

It will challenge you.

It will change you.

And it will give you a version of your life that you could not have imagined before you lived it.

For me, it has been one of the most beautiful, disorienting, expansive experiences of my life.

And yes, even knowing all of this, I would still choose it again.

Even knowing how hard it can be.

Even knowing the homesickness, the discomfort, the questioning.

Because it has expanded my life in ways I could never have imagined.

It has changed how I see the world.

How I see myself.

How I want to live.

And that is something I wouldn’t trade.

The alarm goes off and before my feet even touch the floor, my mind is already racing.

The to-do list begins forming automatically. School drop-offs. Emails I should answer. Work I should make progress on. Groceries. Laundry. What the kids need this week.

By the time I reach the kitchen to start the coffee, my body is still waking up, but my mind is already miles ahead of the present moment.

It used to be worse.

Back when we lived in the United States, the mornings carried a layer of rushing anxiety. We were racing to get two kids ready while also getting ourselves out the door to full-time corporate jobs.

Living in France has softened that part of life. I no longer rush to a corporate office every morning. I feel grateful for that every single day.

But the racing mind never fully left.

Even now, my conditioning still whispers the same message every Monday morning.

Be productive.
Get ahead.
Accomplish things.

For the past two years, I’ve tried to interrupt that pattern.

After the kids leave for school, I come back inside and give myself fifteen minutes. I light a candle. I turn on my favorite instrumental piano music. I sit in my favorite chair with my coffee. I take three deep breaths and open my journal.

No editing. No agenda. Just writing whatever comes into my head.

This morning, as I filled the pages, something struck me.

Even after all this reflection and all the life changes we’ve made, I still fall into the same quiet traps.

The difference now is that I can finally see them.

And once you see these traps, it becomes harder to keep living inside them.

Trap #1: Believing Your Worth Is Measured by Your Productivity

This one runs deep.

Most of us recognize it in our professional lives. Did I finish everything I needed to do? Did I do it well? Did people recognize my work?

But for me, I’ve realized it spills into nearly every part of life.

Did I cook a good dinner?
Were my kids happy today?
Did I finish the laundry?
Did my daughter study enough for her spelling test?

Some days it feels like my mind is constantly measuring and evaluating.

Am I accomplishing enough?
Am I doing it well enough?

Living in France has made me question this more deeply.

French women do not seem to measure their worth this way. Their confidence feels quieter and more internal. Less dependent on external validation.

Meanwhile, I still feel the pull to be the best possible version of every role I occupy.

The best mother.
The best wife.
The best employee.
The best daughter.

But I’m slowly realizing something important.

My self-worth cannot be determined by how much I accomplish or how well I please other people.

It has to come from something steadier inside me.

And that is something I have to remind myself of often.

Trap #2: Believing You Need Permission to Slow Down

This trap is closely tied to the first.

If your worth is tied to productivity, slowing down will always feel uncomfortable.

Even taking a short break can trigger guilt.

You hear the voice immediately.

You should be doing something.

There is always something left unfinished.

Living in France has forced me to confront this mindset again and again.

Here, life is structured differently. Stores close in the middle of the day. Long lunches are normal. People linger on benches deeply engaged in conversation. Very few people are head down on their phones.

At first, this drove me crazy.

Now I see it differently.

Slowing down is not laziness. It is space.

Space to notice life as it is happening.

Space to connect with people.
Space to breathe.
Space to experience gratitude.

And it turns out we do not actually need permission for any of it.

Sometimes we simply need to stop. Even if it’s just for a few minutes a day.

Trap #3: Believing Happiness Exists Somewhere in the Future

This is the classic one.

“I’ll be happy when…”

When the job improves.
When the kids are easier.
When we move somewhere new.
When life finally settles down.

It is such a seductive belief.

But it is also a trap.

As Sophie Beatrice writes in This Is How It Feels to Be Seen:
“The goal is not to be happy. The goal is to live. Happiness is a byproduct.”

That line stopped me the first time I read it.

Happiness is not something we chase down. It appears in the small moments when we are actually present for our lives.

A walk with a friend.
A conversation that makes you laugh.
A big hug with little hands wrapped around your waist.

People sometimes ask me if moving to France made me happy.

The honest answer is no.

A place cannot do that for you.

But the experience of living here has changed how I move through my life. And that shift has made space for more happiness to appear naturally. I am much happier on a daily basis here, but it’s a byproduct of my actions to live more intentionally.

Trap #4: Believing Your Logical Mind Always Knows Best

We are trained to trust logic above all else.

Rational decisions. Strategic thinking. Practical plans.

But beneath all that noise, there is often a quieter voice.

Your intuition.

Sometimes it shows up as a whisper you try to ignore.

Sometimes it shows up as a persistent feeling that something in your life needs to change.

Our minds are very good at dismissing that voice.

They label it irrational or unrealistic.

But I’ve learned that our thoughts are not always reliable narrators.

Many of them are just habits.

When I observe my thoughts now, I try to imagine them like clouds passing through the sky.

They appear. They shift. They change shape. They move on.

Not every thought deserves to control the direction of your life.

Sometimes the deeper clarity comes from listening to the quieter voice inside of you.

Trap #5: Believing You Must Control Everything

This one took me years to understand.

Control often feels like safety.

If I plan enough.
If I prepare enough.
If I anticipate every possible outcome.

Then maybe nothing will go wrong.

But control is really just our attempt to eliminate uncertainty.

And uncertainty is part of life whether we accept it or not.

The more tightly we try to control everything, the more anxious we become when life inevitably moves in a different direction.

The only alternative I’ve found is trust.

Trust in myself.
Trust in the unfolding of life.
Trust that things often work out in ways we could never have predicted.

When my husband first suggested moving to France, my instinct was resistance.

Too much uncertainty.

Too many things I couldn’t control.

Letting go of that resistance was not easy. But it opened the door to a life experience far richer than anything I had planned.

Trap #6: Choosing Familiar Misery Over Unfamiliar Possibility

There is a phrase I think about often.

Your mind will choose a familiar hell over an unfamiliar heaven.

Our brains are wired to keep us safe, not necessarily to make us fulfilled.

So they steer us toward what is known, even if what is known is not actually making us happy.

The unknown feels risky.

But it is also where growth happens.

Every time I take a small step outside my comfort zone, something interesting happens.

The world gets bigger.

And the version of myself I thought I was slowly begins to expand. The next step feels less scary and slowly I’m no longer living in a comfort zone that wasn’t fulfilling me.

The Real Work

The strange thing about these traps is that they never disappear completely.

Even now, they still show up in my mind on an ordinary Monday morning.

The difference is that I see them now.

And seeing them creates a small but powerful space.

A moment where I can pause and ask myself a different question.

Is this thought helping me live the life I actually want?

Or is it just another story my mind has learned to repeat?

Most days, the answer becomes clear.

And then I take a breath, close my journal, and start the day again.

Just a little more aware than before.