Retrospective: Why I Moved to France

Before my September 2016 move to France, I fully intended on keeping a blog (oops!) and thus wrote my first post a month before boarding my plane to Paris. It has been collecting digital dust stowed away in my Google Drive, so now is the time for me to share it. Without further ado, here is the story of why I chose to come here, as written in late August 2016.

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When I tell people I have booked a one-way ticket to Paris, the reactions vary quite a bit. Comments and questions range from: “Oh my gosh that’s so amazing!” and “You are going to have the best time eating the most delicious food” to “But is that safe right now?” While the concerns of my friends, family, and complete strangers (since I will basically talk about this to everybody) are nice, nothing could deter me from embarking on this journey at this point in my life.

“But Emily, you have a stable job and your networks are all in America!” Yeah that’s true, but I don’t really care. Here are the reasons why I am moving to France despite all of that.

Reason 1: France is in my blood. My grandfather, a French-American, fought at Omaha Beach before my mother was even a gleam in his eye. I can’t help but feel the pull back a land that not only holds his roots, but a land that he helped to liberate. This experience will be my own personal liberation, as I worry about getting stuck in a rut.

Reason 2: The language is a part of my childhood identity. My mom used to teach French at a local community center and would speak it around the house when I was a child. I understood nothing, but the silky sounds and rolling rhetoric stuck with me. I don’t think I even had to make a conscious choice when we could select a language to study in the 6th grade.

Reason 3: I was a French major in college. That degree was pretty darn expensive and I would like to put it to good use.

Reason 4: France and I both need healing, and I think we can help each other out. One week before I studied abroad in Paris in 2013, I got dumped in a major blindside, and my beloved dog died. I temporarily became a shell of myself. I was worried about enduring 2 serious losses before going to a place where I would essentially be starting fresh, but that was exactly what I needed. In the end, I not only filled that void, but ended up overflowing. What is happening in France right now, namely the tense political climate and upsurge in terrorism, is way more important than what I experienced, and I think there is a place for me to be a change-maker in all of that. I don’t know  yet what that is, but I look forward to figuring it out and keeping you posted.

I could continue this list, but in the interest of at least being somewhat pithy (not always my specialty. Ask my friends and students), I am going to cut it here. In my next post I will tell about what I will actually be doing in France, but for now I wanted to open myself up a bit and let you all know that I have never felt so called to do something and I am so terrified and ready to head back to the City of Light.

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Well, there you have it. The 2016 version of myself was both yearning and hopeful, and surprisingly self-aware of feeling a little bit lost. France has fulfilled (and is fulfilling) a lot of what I had hoped it would, but I’m certainly still finding my way. Sometimes I feel like the path is illuminated, and other times I feel like I’m just stumbling along in the dark, 3 wines deep. I was a bit naive to think that a new country would magically yield answers, because if anything, I have more questions now than before (to come in a later post). However, my approach to working through these questions has changed for the better. There is nothing like successfully-ish moving across an ocean to make you feel like a powerful bad**s, and smack you in the face with the fact that, if you want answers, sometimes you just have to figure them out yourself.

Next week I’ll talk more about my job and day-to-day life, and how I’m doing with the goals I mentioned in “Reason 4.” For this week, I wanted you to gain more insight into my decision to come to France and understand that, despite my occasional complaints (like, why on EARTH is everything still done on paper here?!), it is one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.