After all the planning, saving, stressing, applying for visas…we had finally made it.

We were living in Toulouse, France. My plan was to stay there. Possibly forever. Well, if we liked it that is…

And of course I loved it just as much as I thought I would. Neal was not quite as convinced. Mostly because of the language barrier, which I’m not saying wasn’t a huge deal. Because it was. The other big deal? We didn’t magically figure out how to make enough money online to support ourselves.

So back to the United States we went. (If you’re thinking - hey, what about that year in Toulouse? You can read all about it in our book, Breath of French Air (the e-book version or the real hold-in-your-hands version) which is a compilation of all the blog posts we wrote while we lived there.

We arrived in Sacramento, California in June of 2016. Does that year ring any bells? It was the Trump - Clinton election. I was all ready to celebrate our first woman president, and then…well you all know what happened. I was truly devastated - for our country, and especially for women in our country. Right before we left France, our friends there were terrified of the possibility of him becoming president, comparing him to Hitler. We had reassured them that it would never happen. And yet…

I tried to settle into our new life in Sacramento. Settle into the country that I now had much less respect for. Our fun adventure in France was over, and now it’s time to get back to being a responsible adult - where I was a citizen and had a passport, AND spoke the language. But the love of France never completely went away. I kept dreaming. And researching. Oh sooooo much researching.

And then 2023 came (don’t you love how fast time goes in blog posts??) and my husband mentioned that he didn’t want to work forever. Or much longer at all, in fact. He’d had enough. We both had.

So a new plan went into effect - save as much money as we possibly could, and move to France in 5 years. This time we would move for good. We’d mostly retire, making some money online if the opportunity arose. But in France, we could live very simply, and on very little. That certainly seemed appealing to both of us. Suddenly the language barrier didn’t seem quite as huge. And we did have 5 years to learn French…right?

More research began. Where is the perfect place for us? What size town do we want this time? Which region?

We developed a list of criteria

Which I won’t bore you with - let’s just say, some spreadsheets and Notion pages were developed. If you ARE interested in this process, please don’t hesitate to reach out or leave a comment. If enough people are interested, I’d be happy to write a post about it.

I started doing research trips…

…to explore some towns on our short list: Bergerac, Perigueux, Libourne, Agen, Niort, Saintes, Cognac. And somewhere in between my trips, the timeline changed. It went from 5 years to 4 to 3 and then…1. Uh, what? You want me to condense my timeline to 1 year??!!! In between being ecstatic, panicked, and overwhelmed, the plans were changed. Columns were removed, timelines were condensed, saving escalated.

Since this is just an introduction to our new Breath of French Air blog iteration, I won’t go into details on all the lovely towns that were involved in our research - yet. But they are certainly worthy of future blog posts, so stay tuned!

Perigueux, France - a *VERY* close contender!

At this point, we had 1 year to completely upend our life in Sacramento and move our family to France (we have an adorable, lovable, but slightly neurotic dog who will also be coming to France - Maggie).

Our sweet Maggie - not looking very neurotic here, but I think you get the idea of just how spoiled she is 💕

What would that involve exactly? Well, let me summarize for you: sort everything into ‘get rid or’ or ‘bring to France’ piles, get rid of everything not coming to France, prepare our house to sell and then sell it, decide on a town that would be our new home in France, find a place to live in France (ideally a house to buy with the proceeds from our house sale in the U.S.), buy the house in France once we find it, re-establish residency in a more tax friendly state, get our visas, get Maggie’s health certificate. Oh and continue to work at our full time jobs.

OK I’ll stop there. That is not an exhaustive list, but it was exhausting - to write, and likely to read. And certainly to do.

Suffice to say, it is now mid-July and we are making progress. Many things on the list have been checked off, but there are oh so many things still on it.

As I recount our adventures, woes, and joys I do realize that we are incredibly fortunate to talk about this, and to have the luxury of being stressed by it all. I’m grateful every day for our current path, even on the days that it completely stresses me out.

If you’re intrigued and would like to follow along, welcome to Breath of French Air. If you’re here because you followed me at PhotoFluent, and wondering where my photography business is going… Well, I’m so glad you asked.

I’ll continue to offer online classes and coaching, and occasionally a live workshop. Something new that I’m going to offer is a print shop, where you can purchase my photos to decorate your home with captured moments from around the world (OK, I think we know they’ll mostly be in France).

The other exciting project on the horizon is a Breath of French Air podcast. I’m not really even sure where the inspiration came from, except that I absolutely LOVE any podcast that has to do with living in France. And I ran out of them. And then several people told me “you should have a podcast!” When one person says it I think OK…sure…that’s nice. But when 3 or more say it? Then I figure I should listen. So stay tuned for the first podcast episodes…they’ll be rolling out soon(ish)!

I would also love to hear from you. I truly don’t want this to be a one way communication - what is your connection to France? What do you love about France? Where is your favorite city, town, region? Let me know in the comments. And I’ll be back here with the next post to update you on how our move is progressing!

À bientôt (see you soon) 😊