An american family's life en francais

The repatriation question: Should I stay or should I go?

It's been a year since we bought one-way tickets to France, unsure if or when we’d be returning to Virginia. Would we stay just a year, and return to the U.S. refreshed and ready to settle back into our familiar routines? Or would we get a taste for life abroad and decide to stay — maybe a bit longer? Maybe forever? The answer wasn’t clear at all when we left our home at the end of 2023. We were opening ourselves up to the experience of living abroad, confident that we’d figure it out along the way. 

We knew we had a very big decision to make, but we promised ourselves that we’d set it aside at first and just try to enjoy our new lives in France without the heavy burden of planning our future. I wish I could say that we kept that promise, but we failed miserably. Within weeks of moving, we were having deep discussions about what was next. We were loving life in France and we could see a long-term future here. We started seriously looking at real estate in Bordeaux, and thinking about letting go of everything back home. 

And that’s when things got complicated. While Todd’s enthusiasm for our new life plan increased at a rapid pace, my own excitement wavered — and soon almost completely dissolved. The thought of selling our home, leaving our friends and family and everything we knew behind forever? It made me feel incredibly sad and anxious and lost. I realized that wasn’t at all what I wanted. It was clear that Oli felt the same. The thought of not returning made me deeply miss home, and I fell into a depression that wasn’t at all helped by the gray winter weather of our early days in France, or the isolation I felt as I struggled with the language barrier. 

For a few months, Todd and I argued a lot. He tried to pull me back into the dream we’d shared of starting a new life in France, but I kept resisting. He was having no trouble settling into our new routines — biking Oli to school, making friends, his French improving quickly. And I was struggling, day after day. Struggling to communicate, to get around, to do even the most basic tasks. For the first time in my life, I felt completely incompetent and out of place — and I hated it.

I kept waiting for things to get easier, but as winter turned to spring, even as I became more comfortable, I found that I still felt deeply unsettled. Like a part of me was missing. Like I was just floating, unmoored, waiting for the day when I could return to the security of my dock and sink my anchor back into familiar ground. 

It was not an easy time — in fact, it was one of the most challenging periods of my life. What made it harder still was how wonderful our life was in France. We were having spectacular experiences every day, truly living our dream. I would often walk around in awe that I was living in France with my family, living the life that had been a fantasy for so long. Our days in France felt extraordinary, but what I was craving, more and more, was the ordinary. I realized that extraordinary is exhausting, that there’s a limit to how much extraordinary I can take. And I felt so guilty about this that I doubted my own feelings and wishes. I sometimes felt like I was losing my mind, I was so disoriented.

After five months, we had a few family visits, which helped ease the homesickness but also highlighted just how important they are to us. Witnessing Oli’s joy at reuniting with his grandparents followed by his heartbreak when they left was especially eye-opening. I think that was when it clicked that seeing our loved ones once or twice a year is not enough. Not when they are the single most important part of our lives. They matter more than politics and healthcare costs, more than all the stupid stuff we love to complain about back home. That part of me that felt so empty was filled up by those too-brief visits from our family. I realized that I won’t feel whole again until we have our family, our friends, our community back in our lives. 

I feel silly now for underestimating their importance. For thinking an occasional visit and Facetime could possibly replace the Sunday suppers with family, weekend visits from my Dad, babysitting my niece, brunch with friends, or hanging out on the front porch with our neighbors. I had thought that we could rebuild a community here, but even as we’ve made new friends and acquaintances, I’ve recognized that it can’t possibly compare with our community in Virginia — a community that we spent a lifetime building. 

This life in France is everything I’d hoped it would be. It is unfathomably beautiful here, with a quality of life that is sometimes so hard to imagine leaving behind. Our son attends a wonderful, affordable little school, we don’t have to worry about healthcare costs, and we don’t have to worry about shootings. We eat fresh baguettes and drink good wine and travel around Europe easily and cheaply. Life in France is like a dream, but it’s one that I realize I do want to wake up from, eventually. In my own bed, at home in Richmond. 

There are days when Todd is very sad, thinking about leaving all of this behind, so disappointed that it hasn’t turned out the way we hoped. I’m sad too sometimes, disappointed in myself, that I couldn’t settle in here the way I wanted to. That I’m not the person I thought I’d be here. 

But I’m also grateful, because I finally have a clear answer where, for years, there was a big question mark. And despite the current divide between us, working through this together is making us stronger. 

Was moving to France a mistake? In the words of Edith Piaf, je ne regrette rien — I regret nothing. Moving to France has been an incredible adventure for our family that has enriched our lives and brought us closer together. And while I’ve realized that life in France isn’t right for us right now, living here has also deepened my love for this country, and I won’t rule out a return here — someday. 

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