I could go no further.

Fortunately, I had landed in Angers.

For the non-francophones among us, this is pronounced more gently than it looks to anglophone eyes: Ahnj-ay.

But I’d learned that the housing market in the city was tight—and, for reasons I explained in my last post, even tighter for foreigners like me. How hard would it be to find a place to call home?

The Ibanista team doggedly sent me listings that at least superficially matched my key criteria, but for two weeks, I turned every one of them down.1 Often it was because the apartment was just a little too far from the city center. As an introvert who’s happy to be left alone all day but nonetheless needs a certain amount of contact with humans to feel connected and alive, I knew that I must find an apartment within Angers’ coveted historic city center. And, after years with a yard, I’d learned how substantially my nervous system quiets when I write outside, and so a terrace, courtyard, or even a balcony large enough for a zero-gravity chair and a little side table was critical. I’d heard someone say that you can have “baguette or backyard” but it’s hard to find both, especially on a budget.2 In other words, you can live right in the city, where you can walk to the boulangerie, but if you want a backyard, you’re probably going to have to drive somewhere for your baguette. I wanted to be able to walk most everywhere, to use public transportation for things like getting to a pool, and to keep my expenses (and responsibilities) low by not needing a car. And dammit, I wanted a washing machine: I was 58 years old, well past laundromat age.

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It was a lot to ask, I knew, especially because I was looking for an apartment that would cost no more than 890€ a month in rent (around $1000 USD, depending on the fluctuations of our now-volatile dollar).

Fleetingly, in discouraged moments, I considered broadening my scope to include not just furnished apartments (which are more common in France than the US) but also unfurnished ones. But in France, “unfurnished” has a whole nother meaning that includes no fridge, no stove, and sometimes even no fixtures. And the stress of shopping for all those fittings on top of everything else just felt like too much for me.

And then, right when I was ready to give up on the washing machine in hopes that more options would pop up, the agency sent me a listing for a 50-square-meter (530 square feet, for the Americans among us) two-bedroom apartment in the city with a spacious white terrace and a washing machine. I was immediately smitten, and she scheduled an appointment for me to see it two days later.

The agent met me at the big blue door, a former carriage entrance, and we walked through the vestibule beneath the building, then under a brief glimpse of sky, and up seven steps to the apartment’s terrace gateway, and crossed the terrace into the narrow, gleaming kitchen. A large double window opened onto the terrace, with no screen to divide the indoors from the outdoors. This is common in France. I love being able to lean out of windows and touch the sky.

The agent showed me the induction stove, and opened the commodious (for France) fridge. Then we passed into the wood-floored central room, which was furnished with a plain round table, a small couch, and a large flat-screen TV. This room had French doors that opened onto the patio, and so did the bedroom next to it. The small second bedroom was windowless, and so was the bathroom, but the shower was roomy and modern, with a glass door, faux-marble walls (faux is, of course, the French for “false,” but it sounds so much fancier in French), and a large, sunflower-style shower head. Back in the central room, where, for the first time, I noticed the sealed fireplace, the agent told me the building was constructed in 1900.

There was no view, other than of the terrace, and that gave me pause. I am a woman who looks out of windows. But I felt so good in that apartment. And the terrace, a rectangle that filled in the ‘L’ of the apartment, was like another room. If I needed signs of life, I could get container plants, maybe a bee hotel. And from the kitchen window I could look up at a little square of sky framed by brick chimneys and the edges of rooftops. I could watch the clouds pass.

J’adore, I said to the agent. C’est tres, tres bien.

I asked how many more people were scheduled to view the apartment.

Two, she told me.

I told her I wanted it. But she was not in a position to make any promises.

As I walked away, behind me I heard the voice of a woman talking to the agent in French. I twisted my neck to steal a glance. A tidily dressed Frenchwoman a little older than me was the next viewer. If she wanted it, the landlord could easily choose her over me. I dialed my agent, who said she’d call the agency right away.

As soon as I got back to my Airbnb, I wrote a personal letter to the landlord. I told him I live the quiet life of a writer, and I would be doing much of my writing on that terrace. I told him that I planned to live permanently in Angers, a city that feels both tranquil and lively. And I told him (truthfully) that I loved the art he’d chosen the walls. Ibanista forwarded the email to his agency, which passed it along to him, along with the rest of my dossier.

When there was no word the next day, I felt sure the apartment had been offered to someone else. But forty-one nail-biting hours later, my agent sent me a hearty Congratulations!, and six days later I moved in.

***

But before I do could that, there was a flurry of activity getting electricity set up, and wifi, and renter’s insurance, which legally required in France. And then there was the walk-through, a remarkably detailed (and also mandated) event, in which the landlord’s agent showed me that she had photographed every small ding in the newly renovated apartment, and every fork and knife—an “entry condition report” to serve as a benchmark for comparison when I moves out. My agent had forewarned me that renters are often surprised by the painstaking attention to detail. She also told me that in France, tenants have ten days to notify the landlord of any additional concerns, so on day eight I sent her an email saying I could not get my showers hot enough and that a length of mortar at the edge of the fireplace had crumbled to the floor one day when I was in the other room. She sent an email to the landlord’s agency, and an hour later I got a call from a man who said he was a plumber, the landlord had sent him, and he could be over in a half-hour.

The plumber brought his father—also a plumber—and the landlord himself arrived with them, a lanky man with a friendly smile and piercing blue eyes. The landlord and the father got to work on the mortar issue, and the son—who spoke fluent English—taught me how to use the fancy new shower fixture to get the temperature to my liking. In a flurry of convivial activity, the threesome took care of a few other things around the apartment, and when they left, my landlord told me he lives just seven minutes away and to not hesitate to reach out if there were any problems. An apartment with a terrace in Angers’ historic city center, and a kind, responsive landlord…. How did I get so lucky?

It’s possible the other viewers simply didn’t want it. I didn’t think to ask whether my letter had made the difference.

***

The way it’s set back behind a building, with no view of the street, my apartment feels like a fortress, the kind I need right now as I recover from the crush and clang of life in America. I like how it closes in on itself, like an animal curled up in hibernation. I can walk through my bedroom doors to the terrace, then through another glassed door to the kitchen, then back around to the bedroom, passing the living room doors, which also open to the terrace.

From my bed at night, when I gaze through the French doors, I see the light on in the kitchen and it feels like I’m looking in on myself, not alone but seen... by me. I’m at home with myself.

People from the city of Angers and the broader Anjou region are called Angevins, pronounced Ahnj-e-venh. I think that’s such a beautiful word.

***

Here are some of the things I’m starting to notice:

I can catch a full breath.

There are spates when my creative self awakens and flows.

I’m usually not anxious, and when I am, it’s a fraction of what it used to be.

I no longer feel like America is shaking my innards like a wolf shaking a rabbit. I no longer feel infiltrated or consumed by America. I feel like America is far away. In some ways, of course, this is sad. In most, it’s a profound relief.

***

Two weeks after I moved into my apartment, a contingent of American authors from Paris arrived in Angers to visit the city, meet me, and tour the English-Language Library. I think it started when Paige McClanahan, a New York Times travel writer and author of The New Tourist: Waking Up to the Power and Perils of Travel, reached out to ask to interview me for her Substack. We had such fun talking, and she told me about her wonderful writing group in Paris, and later introduced me via email to Hilary Hodge, founder of the biannual English-language Angers Literary Festival. (I wrote about that last time.) Unfortunately, Hilary was unable to join us on our whirlwind tour of Angers, because she was on vacation somewhere even warmer and sunnier.

It’s all a blur now, but I think Paige talked with her writing group about our interview, and some of them were already readers of Recovering American, and none of them had been to Angers, which is just an hour and a half from Paris by high-speed train. Janet Skeslien Charles and I knew each other a little from Facebook. Janet’s the author of the New York Times bestselling novel The Paris Library, and several other popular novels that take place in Paris—and her latest, The Parisian Chapter, just launched May 5! She emailed me to tell me she’d be visiting Angers sometime soon and would love to get together, and somehow that turned into Janet, Paige, and Jennifer Steil—a novelist, and author of the memoir The Woman Who Fell from the Sky: An American Woman’s Adventures in the Oldest City on Earth—meeting up with me on the patio of La Cohue, a bookstore and café near the station and just a short walk from my apartment. We talked and laughed for a long time, but left in time to see the Apocalypse Tapestry (fitting, given the state of things)—which was produced in the 1300s and is the largest surviving set of medieval tapestries in the world, on display at Angers’ very own castle —before meeting with the director of the English-Language Library, Mandy Torsey-Guillet, who gave us a tour, and then we all went to lunch at Lait Thym Sel, the Michelin-starred restaurant around the corner from the library, and the food was amazing. We had just enough time to climb the steps to the Saint-Maurice Cathedral, which was a sight to behold.

I want them to come back. I think they do, too.

***

I’d like to tell you this is my happily ever after. But I know better than that, and so do you. Life goes on. Some days I’m walloped by the weight of all I’ve left behind, and spend the day grieving. I’m still surprised when I absentmindedly touch the ring finger on my left hand and find it bare. Something is not there. My husband. The life we had together.

The ankle I sprained in Metz has fully healed, but the other day I sprained a toe pushing a box with the same foot, so I’m limping again.

I’m still an insomniac.

And while many are fighting to save America’s democracy, the ones with the most money and power are successfully annihilating it. On the other hand, America is being shredded by the malevolent people in power, but countless others have joined together to save the country. And they still could.

Recently, I changed my location on Google Maps from Portland, Maine, to Angers, France. Now, when I search for directions, I no longer see my Portland address, and what rises up, small but palpable, is a bereft feeling.

Meanwhile, the Weather Channel on my laptop insists I’m in West Bayside, which wasn’t even my neighborhood in Portland, and I have so far been unable to convince it that I live in Angers now.

***

Let me show you my new city.

Did you ever have a time when you could go no further? Where did you land?

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And if you like this post, please click the little heart. It’ll make me feel good, and it probably has other benefits I’m not even aware of yet. So glad you’re with me.

I like Metz, said my body. I feel calm here. I’m too tired to go on.

I felt like an apparition in weighted shoes. I couldn’t touch anything, couldn’t grab hold, and nothing touched me, not really, not the way you’d expect in a land where around any corner you might find a church older than America or Roman ruins in a public park.

I called my friend Kathryn, a poet who moved to France just a few months before I did, and she quoted Samuel Beckett: “You must go on, I can’t go on, you must go on, I’ll go on.”

She understood.

***

Like many French cities, including Besançon and Dole, Metz has prohibited most vehicular traffic from its historic center. I could find almost everything I needed on foot. A butcher shop with a shimmering crystal chandelier played American rockabilly while store clerks wrapped up pork cuts and lamb chops, and, at my bidding, pulled from the glassed-in cooler a robust beef stew that I went back for more than once. There were patisseries everywhere, including one that sold rice pudding, which is the kind of food you want when you’re tired in the way that I was.

Like my home state of Maine, Metz has four seasons, but I’d learned from Weatherspark.com that summers would be blessedly cooler and less humid, winters milder, and snow a rarity. Its several universities help keep the city vibrant. I found a wonderful functional medicine doctor there. And the public pool was not overcrowded.

I could live in Metz.

My only hesitation was that Metz (like Besançon and Dole) didn’t have much of an anglophone community. It will take years for me to become fluent in French; how would I find friends in the meantime?

From my research back in the States, I’d guessed that my top pick would be either Besançon or Angers. But really, there’s no way to know if you’ll like a place till you put your body in it. I liked Besançon and its people very much, but I found the boxy post-war architecture on the outskirts depressing, and the two public pools were both hellaciously crowded no matter what time I went, a detail which seems piffling, but as someone who swims three times weekly to calm a nervous system jangled by, amongst other things, crowds, it was a dealbreaker.

So although my body wanted to stop in Metz, I wanted to at least get to Angers before deciding my life’s fate. I knew Angers had an anglophone library, and that would mean I’d be able to find English-speaking people far more easily there than anywhere else I’d been. And besides, I’d already paid for my Airbnb and it was nonrefundable.

So, on the scheduled day, I dragged myself and my luggage on to Angers.

***

I was so out of touch with the news, I learned of the flood, which the French call an inondation, only a few days before my scheduled arrival, when a Facebook friend in Angers emailed to ask if I was still coming.

By the time I arrived, the floodwaters had fully receded. An Uber ferried me from the train station to my Airbnb. It was Thursday, February 26. We drove down a tree-lined boulevard with a grassy median, and as we passed the historic buildings and strolling pedestrians, I felt my body calm.

My genial host stopped to show me the high-water mark, an impressive foot and a half above the ground, against the building’s arched passageway. Powerful fans ran in the front entry, drying the place out, and I was thankful my apartment was on the untouched second floor.

All the next day, bone tired from travel and the exigencies of ME/CFS, I rested in my 1636 garret. When finally I ventured out, I discovered a patisserie, an epicerie, a pharmacy, and a produce market all just around the corner from my lodging. I cancelled my Nantes Airbnb the following day, just in time for a full refund, and reserved an Airbnb in Metz for March 31, thinking I would likely be returning. Thanks to climate change and the escalating worldwide influx of natural disasters, I didn’t want to live in a city as flood-prone as Angers clearly was, and besides, I’d heard its housing market was tight, and I pictured my body collapsing from the stress of the hunt.

I was so desperate for something to be settled that just three days after landing in Angers, I emailed Ben Small at Ibanista, the relocation agency I’d chosen, to tell him I had decided on Metz.1

The allergies hit March 4. Pollen: I knew not what kind. Only that I was congested and sneezing and even more exhausted than before. I took to my bed like a person in the throes of a terrible virus. Since I mask everywhere and wash my hands frequently, I knew that it could not be a virus. In the US, my allergies are mild and I just go about my day, but here? What was this fresh hell, and how long would it last?

Online, I found the heartening news that sometimes airborne allergies are worst in the first year in a new country. The body acclimates. This gave me comfort as I sprawled across bed, tissues close at hand.

On March 5, from my sickbed, I met with Ben Small online. By then I was second-guessing my swift dismissal of Angers. Not all of centre ville was on a flood plain. And maybe Ben could give me a less alarming assessment of the rental market?

This is exactly what he did. The team was in fact at that very moment helping someone else find an apartment in Angers. It’s nothing like Paris or Nice, he said. “We’ll send you three or four apartments a week to look at, and we’ll just keep going till we find a place.”

Ben is maybe in his thirties, so it feels weird for this 58-year-old to say this, but he has a fatherly energy. I felt in safe hands with him. My nervous system quieted as we talked.

Renting in France is entirely different from renting in the US. Your American credit rating means nothing to French landlords. Your proof of income will likely not be enough: you must also find a guarantor that contracts to cover your rent in case you fail to pay. An institutional guarantor inspires the most confidence in landlords, and charges roughly 3-5% of one year’s rent. I used Guarantme, a company widely recognized by French landlords.

Even with a guarantor, for complicated reasons having to do with insurance and France’s strong tenant protection laws, landlords are often reluctant to rent to people without French documentation. Part of what Ibanista does, Ben said, is build relationships with landlords receptive to renting to foreigners. He seemed genuinely excited about helping me find a place, and said my dossier would look good to a French landlord.2

I told Ben to hold off on starting a search in Metz. I wanted to get to the Friday morning Coffee House at the anglophone library, and to continue exploring Angers as much as my energy would allow.

***

Eight days after my arrival, I made it to the Coffee House—which is open to anyone who wants to speak English—and talked with a Frenchwoman who’d lived in Angers all her life and spoke proudly of the evolution of her city. I asked if, thinking back, she could see a turning point, and she said it was when Angers revived its tramway system in 2011, sixty-one years after the city’s original tram system was replaced by buses. Two more trams were put into service in 2023.

The trams are easy to use. On Google Maps, I discovered the A tram would take me to AquaVita, the largest of the city’s six public pool facilities. The nearest stop was close to my lodging. To pay, immediately after boarding I simply tapped my credit card (one with no foreign transaction fees).

AquaVita has several pools and a water slide, and lap swim is open for long spans of the day. The 50-metre heated outdoor pool reminded me of the one that brought me such joy in Dole, and although active, it’s not overcrowded like the pools in Besançon. Every time I turned my head for air, I could look up at the blue sky.

Three days after my first visit to the Coffee House, I talked to Paige McClanahan, a fellow Substack writer based in Paris, and she connected me with Hilary Hodge, a writer who lives in Angers and founded the biannual English-language Angers Literary Festival. Hilary has a goal of making western France a recognized literary hub, and if I decided to move to Angers, then I would share her other goal, which is to attract more anglophone writers to the area. It felt like a clincher. The next day I emailed Ben, subject heading: “It’s Angers”.

***

Later that day, I walked to La Poste, which I think is such a charming way to say “the post office,” and is the actual official name of the French postal system. I had just learned that since I was living in France, a European law called the General Data Protection Regulation granted me rights as a Facebook consumer that Americans don’t have. (You can read more about the unwarranted removal of my Facebook account here.)

I was carrying a letter requesting a full explanation for the disabling of my account, as well as a copy of all personal data associated with my account, a human review of the decision to disable my account, and, pending the results of this review, reinstatement of my account. For the first time since my Facebook was snatched away from me more than two months earlier, I felt like I had some power. I had a law behind me. A European law. One that American lawmakers have failed to replicate.

The allergies had abated by then, and I walked through the city in a state of wonder, admiring the fountains and the limestone buildings and their wrought iron Juliet balconies, thinking, This is my new city. Is this my new city?

I had chosen my city. But I still needed to find an apartment. Would the city choose me back?

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***

***

In other news, Gertie, the last surviving chicken from the first batch of chicks my then-husband and I ordered when we bought our house in 2010, has been certified by Guinness World Records as the world’s oldest living chicken, and the two of them made it onto National Public Radio!

Listen here.

And if you like this post, please click the little heart. It’ll make me feel good, and it probably has other benefits I’m not even aware of yet. So glad you’re with me.

***

The Facebook group for expats in France overwhelmingly recommended traveling light. The space to store luggage is small and the overhead shelf is narrow, they said. The elevators are often out, no one will help you with your luggage, the conductors will reprimand you.

I did my best to heed the advisors. Although at home I keep thirty pairs of underwear so I only have to do laundry once a month, for this trip I packed just seven. I packed only three long-sleeved shirts, one hoodie, a thick turtleneck, a silk undershirt for the extra cold days, two pairs of comfortable pants, one pair of dressy pants, a pair of slip-on shoes, and my favorite slippers. I packed four pairs of wool socks and, since I was packing for four seasons, four pairs of summer socks, and also two t-shirts and a pair of light pants. I packed my bathing suit, bathing cap, goggles, and the padlock I bought in high school and still use in the locker rooms of public pools, at least in the US. (Turns out this heavy item is unnecessary in France, as every pool locker appears to use either a code or key system.)

It was December when I left, wearing my fall teal swing jacket, a pashmina scarf, and the beloved teal knit cap that I would lose in my first weeks in France. Fortunately, I had packed a backup hat—maroon velvet—that I’ve been wearing on cold days ever since. I also packed a rain hat that doubles as a sunhat, a collapsible umbrella, and a small, light rain poncho.

I packed a canvas courier bag for those days I might want to carry my laptop and a magazine to a cafe. This turned out to be a good move, because the clasp on my purse broke on the train from Besançon to Metz, and I have yet to find someone who can fix it. So now my courier bag is my purse, and now I carry my purse in my suitcase instead.

I also packed a very light, very thin, quick-dry towel. (They’re a thing!) And of course, the standard toiletries.

Those were the basics.

Nonetheless, it soon became clear I was going to need a very large suitcase.

***

On the platform to catch my train from Metz to Angers, the woman in line behind me saw that I was about to haul my giant suitcase over the gap between platform and train and offered to help. I accepted, warning her in English and some quickly improvised body language that it was heavy, and she picked up part of it and we wrangled it over the gap.

Inside, there were two descending stairs and I balanced my suitcase crookedly at the top to thank the woman, who exclaimed Lourd!, a word I’d never heard before, but from her big eyes and the ‘O’ of her mouth I knew exactly what it meant. Heavy. Heavy! (Not to mention, Lord! That’s heavy!)

Strangers marvel at the size and weight of my suitcase.1 None have conveyed judgment—at least, not to my face—but still, I feel guilty, as though I am overindulgent.

***

I bought my small roller bag just days before I departed America, so I didn’t have a chance to try it out, but I loved it immediately. It’s plum in color, boxy in shape, perfect for packing all my magazines, papers, books, and both laptops (the primary and the backup). It has a multitude of pockets for pens and sticky notes, my e-reader, noise-canceling headphones, and other such paraphernalia.

Too late, I learned that this roller bag—which should be pleasingly wieldy compared to the giant suitcase—rocks to and fro when I roll it behind me. I don’t understand the physics of it.

But this is how things go when you travel. You can carefully curate your packing, plan an itinerary and prepare for all the things that can go wrong, but in the end you can’t fully orchestrate a life on the move.

***

By the time I boarded, there wasn’t room in the baggage compartment for my suitcase. I needed to move a piece of luggage and put my suitcase in its place, and hope I could find another spot for the stranger’s bag. On my first train back in December, from Paris to Dole, I hesitated to touch anyone’s belongings, uncertain of the cultural protocol, but I asked a Frenchwoman what to do, and she waved away my concerns, saying people move each other’s luggage all the time.

Now, on this train that would take me to another train that would take me to Angers, I could feel I was holding up the line behind me. My suitcase was a little over 50 pounds, and I was struggling to get it where it needed to go. The man behind me graciously offered to help, and took over. The owner of the other bag came over, looking a little aggrieved, and I said pardon because on the spot I couldn’t remember désolé, a better word for such circumstances. I love that the French word for “sorry” sounds like the English word “desolate”.

The man who was helping me spoke amiably to the man whose bag I had moved, while I pulled ahead with my little plum rolling bag and my backpack and my courier bag to get out of the way and locate my seat.

I find in the solo seats that I can straddle my small rolling bag and pile my cPap machine bag and my courier bag and my water bottle against the wall, and then put the backpack on my lap, and it all works quite fine.

***

Here are the luxuries I packed.

One hundred bags of my favorite jasmine tea (very light!), plus my beloved purply sheened insulated travel mug and two ice cube trays, so I can start my days with the same comforting routine I did in the US: iced tea.

One plastic container of Trader Joe’s Sea Salt & Turbinado Sugar Dark Chocolate Almonds to savor in my early days in France, as I will probably never taste those tiny delights again.

A dish towel and cloth napkin because I take my meals in bed, and these prevent the staining of the chest area of my shirt.

Every packet of tissues I had in the house. They’re light, and they tide me over till I can find a whole box of them when I land in a new city.

My favorite feather pillow.

***

When I travel, I bring my illness with me. I have a neuroimmune disease called myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, or ME/CFS, and that means my energy is low and my nervous system tends toward high alert. And then there are the co-occurring conditions. The luxuries I brought were few and light compared to the items necessary to meet my body’s health needs.

My cPap machine is too big to fit in my suitcase, so I hang it from the telescopic handle of the plum rolling bag. I packed two extra plastic masks in the suitcase, however, and an extra tube, not knowing when or how I’d be able to find the right ones for my machine in France, only that the country sells my brand, which bodes well for someday being able to get what I need.

I packed my compact travel lightbox, a life-changer for seasonal affective disorder.

And my small portable white noise machine to help with the insomnia.

And my KN-95 masks in a selection of purple, green, or turquoise, because I am at higher risk of long Covid and if I have to protect myself from Covid-19 every time I’m in public spaces, I can at least do so in color.

I packed my knee brace, in case my knee goes off-track again, and two wrist braces, which I need for my right wrist when typing on my laptop.

Unfortunately, I didn’t pack my ankle brace, ignorant as I was of the fact that I would sprain my ankle in Metz. That I bought at a pharmacie, and now wear any time I leave the apartment.

In my backpack, which is capacious and also multi-pocketed, I stuffed into one compartment a plastic bag with a three-month supply of meds in it, and into the other another plastic bag with a three-month supply of supplements.

I have a French doctor now, but still, with France’s unfamiliar pharmaceutical distribution system and all this traveling around, I continue to carry three months’ worth of meds.

***

I had to change stations in Paris, and though there is a bus that ferries passengers from one to the other, with all my luggage and my flagging body I chose not to risk it and took a cab, where I sat in comfort and watched the scenes of Paris pass by my window. It was lunch hour, a warm spring day, and people packed the sidewalk cafés, zoomed by on their electric bicycles, or sat on benches soaking up the sun. We passed the Louvre Pyramid, its glass and steel jutting out of the earth like a diamond.

The driver had no choice but to let me off in a construction area. I asked if the ascenseur, elevator, was nearby, and he pointed to where I could see a short escalator to the first floor. I trundled doubtfully in that direction, where I found only the escalator. It seems dangerous to balance all my luggage on an escalator, but it appeared I had no choice. I stood for a moment at the bottom, devising my plan, recalling the last time I was in France, when I’d foolishly placed a different giant suitcase in front of me on a descending escalator—then tripped over it, Jerry Lewis style, somehow managing not to fall—and a Frenchman asked me if I was okay, which I was.

Adjusting my courier bag and backpack for maximum balance, I rolled the small plum roller bag onto the first step, which rose up, and then I stepped onto the next, and balanced my giant suitcase on the one behind me. I felt sturdier than expected, and before I knew it the short ride was over and I rolled my luggage out of the way like a boss.

***

The Airbnb’s webpage prepared me for a self check-in, but when the cabbie dropped me off, Antoine, the host, was standing at the door to greet me. He had a warm, friendly face, and, blessedly, took the giant suitcase and carried it over the cobblestone walkway, over the threshold, and up, up the stairs.

***

I am now ensconced in my garret, sheltered under slanted walls that are framed by wooden beams hoisted into place almost 400 years ago. Its floor is of square brick tiles—so solid under my feet, so abiding—each crafted from clay dug out of the earth somewhere not far from here, each its own wonder of ding, splotch, and hue.

My body feels calm in Angers. The centre ville is old and walkable, even if I can’t walk as far as I’d like. There’s a patisserie around the corner from my lodging, and a grocery store just beyond that. A 10-minute walk in the direction of the river will land me on the doorstep of the anglophone library.

My suitcase is tucked away in a closet. I’ll have to pack it again. At least once.

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And then there he was again, delivering me to my train to Metz, which, he looked up, has a population of 120,000, just ten thousand fewer than Besançon.

I’m three-quarters Norwegian, but the ancestors from my mother’s father’s side hailed from France, Germany, and Ireland. When I was clearing through papers in preparation for leaving the US, I found some printouts my mother had sent me about our ancestry. My great-great-great grandparents, Christophe and Marie Anne Bour, emigrated from Metz to New Orleans sometime around 1849. I had not heard of Metz. I looked it up on Youtube, watched some videos. The city looked beautiful. I added it to my list of cities to visit, possible homes.

***

As someone with ME/CFS, my primary symptom being a disabling fatigue made worse by stress and overexertion, I have learned to travel on Tuesdays. I don’t like crowds, and Tuesdays are the best day to avoid them. I travel first class, which is not much more expensive than coach. In first class, I can reserve a seat on the lower level so I don’t have to haul my suitcases up to the second flight. I try to reserve a seat facing in the direction we are going, because sitting backward, watching the terrain slipping away, makes me a little sad.

I used to feel guilty about paying more for such luxuries, until I heard that disability rights activists have a name for this kind of spending: “disability tax.”

***

On the first leg of my trip, I felt deeply calm watching the green fields pass by my window, and the fallow fields, the bare trees, the rivers and ponds, the towns and their community gardens. I felt better than I had in a long time.

The second leg was as hellacious as the first was heavenly: I had miscalculated. The train change, in Nancy, fell at rush hour. The train was crammed, standing room only. As it jostled over the tracks, I did my best to keep my suitcase from rolling into the mousy young woman on the jump seat beside me. It would be just over a half-hour till my stop. I began counting the minutes, then stopped, because that seemed to be making everything worse. I got hot, untied my scarf, shoved my hat in my pocket. Sweat beaded down my spine. I felt woozy with fatigue. How would I hold my body up for the rest of the trip? I had visions of sudden collapse. No one here knew me. If I fell, I would be merely a body in the aisle.

I decided to do something I’d never done before. Excusez-moi, I said to the mousy young woman, and she looked up at me nervously. J’ai un disabilité. Her eyes were blank. I said it again, more slowly, carefully enunciating disabilité with my best French accent. Still blank. I gave up. I was frightening the girl. The next stop was five minutes away. Perhaps she would get off.

Later, I learned that what I had actually been saying was I have a blah blah BLAH blah blah. Disabilité is not a word in French. The word, here, is handicap.

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At the next stop, she did indeed get off. I had failed to ask correctly, but still, a seat had opened.

***

As we pulled into Metz, I stood, shouldered my heavy backpack, and gathered my roller bag and suitcase, ready to exit as soon as the doors opened. Hordes pressed behind me, wanting off. Hordes on the platform waited impatiently for us to clear. I leapt, and swung my giant suitcase over the gap—but there were too many people for me to drop it directly in front of me. It slammed into my legs, and my right ankle rolled. I did not fall, but I knew the ankle, already vulnerable from a previous injury, was sprained. I pulled myself and my bags out of the crowd, assessing as I walked. It did not hurt yet. I could get myself to my Airbnb.

Green squares of stained glass curved over the arched station ceiling. One passageway was decked out like a library.

I exited the station at dusk, and heard a mob of crows cawing as they settled into the bare trees. Their calls were lower in pitch than the crows I am used to, more gutteral. Maybe that’s because French crows say crôa crôa rather than caw caw.

When we pulled up to my Airbnb, my Uber driver, a cheerful young woman who spoke English, exclaimed, “It’s right next door to my orthodox church!”

In France, the second floor is what we in America would call the third floor. The first is called the ground floor here. The driver, who did not know I had sprained my ankle, insisted on helping me get my luggage up the narrow spiral staircase. We lugged the smaller bags up the stairs first, leaving the heavy suitcase at the bottom. On the way back down, she said she knows the family that lives next door, where her church meets, and she was going to see if the son could help with my suitcase. I peeked out my building’s doorway as she knocked. The door opened, she said something to a woman, and a brawny young man appeared.

Merci! Merci! I said, and he smiled. I went up ahead, and when I turned around he was climbing the stairs behind me, hugging my 50-pound suitcase to his chest like a carnival teddy bear.

***

Conveniently, somebody left a rayon scarf behind and I used it to wrap the also convenient reusable ice in, tying the scarf around my ankle. I took the Tylenol and Advil I carry in my purse, and unpacked my bags before elevating my foot.

I ordered some groceries and a meal from Uber Eats. The driver arrived by electric bicycle , asked for my code, and handed my bags to me with a smile. Noting my accent, he asked, in English, where I’m from. America, I said. I try not to cast my eyes downward when I say this, but this time I failed. He told me he’s from Afghanistan, and then he lived somewhere else, and then somewhere else, and then London, and now here. Wow, I said. How many languages do you speak?

Seven.

I thought about the distance a person must travel to gather seven languages.

The pain was kicking in, and I hobbled back up the stairs, gripping the railing with my left hand, carrying my bags in my right.

I stayed in—appropriately medicated, compression sock on, foot elevated, ankle intermittently iced—all the next day. I was in remarkably good spirits, given the circumstances. There are many things that can go wrong on a trip such as this: my suitcase, with all of my clothes in it, could be stolen; I could lose my wallet or passport or both; I could, distracted by the sights, be hit by a bus; I could catch Covid and then develop long Covid, as those with pre-existing illnesses like mine are statistically more likely to do; I could have a catastrophic relapse like the one in 2018 and wind up unable to leave for the next city, unable to leave my bed, even. A sprained ankle was an inconvenience, not a disaster.

***

The next day, I limped to the nearest pharmacy, where a pharmacist fitted me with an ankle brace. I bought acetaminophen and ibuprofin. Pharmaceuticals here—even prescriptions—come in boxed blister packs with braille punched into the cardboard. Even meds we can buy off-the-shelf in North America are kept behind the counter in France.

You don’t see the pharmacists counting pills. They don’t count pills. They stand at the registers, ready to help. They disappear out back and return with boxes. They’re even trained to distinguish between edible and poisonous mushrooms, so that people can safely forage.

***

Another set of great-great-great grandparents, Florentz and Caroline Spitz, emigrated to the US from the Alsace region of France, which is about 125 miles west of Metz, on the German border. My mother, who researched this ancestry, wrote that they spent three months at sea. A quarter of a year carried by water, uncertain when they would reach land.

Were it not for my ancestors, and my mother’s diligent labor, I would not have known Metz existed. I am here because my ancestors crossed. I am an immigrant from a nation of immigrants, and though I am uprooted, unmoored—sometimes lost, often lonely—so far this city feels most like home.

***

I remember the exercises my physical therapist prescribed last time I sprained my ankle. Standing on one foot, using the muscles around my ankle for balance, I build strength. Writing the alphabet in the air with my right foot, I improve mobility. Wearing my brace, I walk. I find my way on the streets of Metz. I let the city carry me a little.

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The Citadel Steps

The higher I climbed toward Besançon’s Citadel on the hill, the more I thought I might actually have a heart attack. I checked my phone to make sure I had it set to my French number so I could swiftly call Emergency. I considered digging out my note with different French emergency numbers on it—because they don’t have 911 here: it’s (note to self) 112.1 But I stopped short of that. I sat down on every available bench all the way up—waiting for my heart rate to go down while I looked at the scenery and considered my mortality—and thankfully, the benches were many and well placed.

I thought about soldiers fitter than I, hauling themselves upward under the weight of shields and mail, arriving at the top already emptied out, and understood in my body why the Citadel was built so high. How could anyone have anything left for fighting once they reached it?

Even on the flat parking lot across from the arched entry, I found it necessary to sit down and catch my breath on three non-bench surfaces. I knew the Citadel was closed for the month, but thought I would peek in to see what I could see. I was surprised to find a man sitting behind a window, and when he informed me the Citadel was closed, I think I said Thank God, and I think I said it loud enough for him to hear. I was spent.

On the way down, a man jogged past me, heading up. He was in regular jogger’s garb, without sword or shield, and I glimpsed only the slightest grimace on his face. Who would choose this? I thought. And then he passed me on his way down. I wanted to call out, You’re very fit! You’re fierce!, but I didn’t know how to say it in French. The best I could come up with was Vous êtes très fort—You are very strong—but that didn’t capture the half of what that runner was. So I said nothing.

The Cheese Stand

I have an odd confession: cheese intimidates me. In the US, I occasionally ate cheddar, and eventually discovered Gouda Robusto, which I love, but I am no aficionado. Combine that with my poor French, and even though I live in the land of cheese, I was scared to go to a fromagerie. But I did do a little research, and learned that while French cheese shops don’t tend to carry Robusto, there are similar cheeses I could try.

Finally, on my first visit to Besançon’s covered market, I found a large cheese stand that wasn’t busy, screwed up my courage, pulled out my phone to consult Notes… and asked if they have Comté. The customer standing next to me, a man just a little older than me and wearing a flat wool cap, burst into laughter as he pointed me to the giant wheel of Comté taking up the full corner of the stand. He said as much in French, I gathered, and then switched to English when he realized I’m an Anglophone. I laughed, too. Sometimes the things I say or ask here in France are ridiculous. And sometimes, such as in the case of a certain cheese, they would be equally hilarious in America.

It feels good to laugh. I need it.

The man behind the counter strode to the Comté corner and cut me a small slice, and then a slice from a different part, passing them over to me one at a time. The customer translated, explaining they were different ages. It all happened so fast. I liked the first one, which surprised me with a pleasantly nutty aftertaste, and the vendor cut me a small wedge, and I thanked my kind translator, who clearly enjoyed his role immensely.

The Poster in the Bathroom

In the bathroom, partially hidden when the door is open, hangs a framed poster of a 1934 photograph by Robert Doisneau called “La Sonnette.” The first time I sat down on the toilet facing that wall in my Besançon Airbnb, I barely registered the poster. The next time I looked at it, I was delighted by the shot of grinning French children running down the street in packs, while a smaller girl in a bowl cut and a gingham dress looked on. I loved the photo, so full of motion and mischief.

The next time I sat down, I realized the boy closest to my line of sight, on the move like the rest of them, had paused briefly on his right toe to ring a doorbell as he ran. In my childhood in Ontario, we called this prank “nicky nicky nine doors,” which isn’t nearly as good as what it’s called in Maine: “ding-dong ditch.” La Sonnette, I learned, means “The Doorbell.”

At first I felt a nostalgic fondness for that little bugger. I had played this game with the kids in my Peterborough neighborhood, and it provoked so many giggles I wouldn’t be surprised if once or twice I wet my pants. And the kids in my Portland neighborhood went through a phase when they did it to us, which was only mildly irritating at first, because of the nostalgia, but then became increasingly annoying. We learned to ignore the doorbell. They’d get bored of the game and find other ways to occupy their time, like using our hose without asking or blasting each other with noise-enhanced electronic water guns that called to mind school shootings.

The next time I sat down, there was that kid, still ringing the bell. Damned rapscallion, that’s what he was. Although he was wearing a great pair of argyle knee socks.

Now, every time I sit on the toilet, there’s that boy, taunting me with his indifference to the social contract. The girl with the bowl cut is watching him. Watching and learning. Someday she, too, will be terrorizing innocent people just trying to get the ironing done or the table set for supper.

Some Things About France

In France, and I gather in much of Europe, there is no top sheet on the bed. There’s a mattress cover, a fitted sheet, your body, and a comforter. This doesn’t make sense to me. Isn’t it a lot easier to wash a top sheet than a comforter?

The wifi here at my Airbnb is slow and my online calls sometimes freeze up or drop out, even when I’m just five feet from the router.

I’ve asked at five pharmacies and searched one supermarket, and I cannot find distilled water (eau distillée) for my cPap machine anywhere.

The curtains are white, even in the bedroom, so the light oozes through them. There’s a security light in the courtyard garden that switches on multiple times in the night for no apparent reason. I have to wear my eye mask to black the light out. Then I don my cPap mask. And finally, of course, the earplugs and the mouthguard. I must armor up for sleep.

Mr. Handsome Caught a Mouse

On our most recent video call, Frank told me that the other day Emerson, aka Mr. Handsome, caught his first mouse. Emerson is an indoor cat, so yes, he caught it in the living room. It was just a baby, not even fully furred, and when Frank asked him, “What you got there, bud?” Emerson dropped it… probably to tell Frank he had a mouse. And the little critter scampered away, presumably back to its family under the floor.

In Maine, life goes on without me.

In France, seven weeks in, everything is a long, arduous climb.

A Day In the Life

What did I even accomplish?

I tried to call the hospital, as my new doctor recommended, to see if I could get an appointment with a dermatologist for the reappearing basal cell carcinoma. I tried and tried, and for some reason my phone wouldn’t let me make the call. There are some texts from the phone company on my phone, but they’re in French and I have no idea what they say. I still have eleven days before I have to re-up.

I looked, then, for dermatologists in Metz and Angers—my next two destinations—who speak English and take appointments through the Doctolib website… with no luck.

Maybe I don’t need an English-speaking dermatologist. All I have to do is point. They can figure out the rest. Basal cell carcinomas are not overly concerning, but I just want this itchy growth off my body, pronto.

I found a new bakery and although there was nothing there that really excited me, it felt rude to leave empty-handed, so I bought a flaky pastry with little chocolate chips in it, and ate it on a bench, watching the ducks in the river.

I bought two more ebooks for my Kobo. I think we can now safely say that I have my emotional support pile of ebooks.

The Feeling I Didn’t Expect

This YouTube video, “Moving to France? The 30-Day Reality No One Warns You About,” appeared just when I needed it.

“Around one month in, a strange kind of remorse can show up. It’s not like dramatic regret, not like, Oh, we should never have moved here. It’s like a quieter feeling that can be a little bit awkward to admit to. I guess it’s homesickness.”

At this, my eyes welled up.

It took me off guard. Me, homesick?

I was homesick.

And not just for my little home with Frank in it, and the animals, and not just for Portland, my vibrant little city, or for Maine. I was homesick for America. An America that exists somewhere underneath all the wreckage.

When Home Feels Far Away

I’ve been closely following the news from Maine—which, for the record, has one of the lowest crime rates in the country—because last week ICE descended on Portland, ostensibly to pursue a mission to capture the “worst of the worst” criminals who are in the country illegally, but more likely because our governor talked back to Trump.

Until I left on December 1st, I lived in one of Maine’s most diverse neighborhoods. A friend tells me ICE agents were on our street last Wednesday, taking people. Our city’s newspaper reports that those arrested include a civil engineer with no criminal background who’s in the US on a work visa; a contractor with no criminal record, in the US legally as an asylum seeker; and an 18-year-old accounting student from a family of asylum seekers. Another asylum seeker, a mother of four with no criminal history, was arrested shortly after dropping off one of her children at school.

A little over a week after an ICE agent in Minneapolis shot and killed Renee Good at point-blank range, and a week before ICE agents in Minneapolis fired ten rounds into Alex Pretti, who was already tear-gassed and on the ground, the DA in my county said she will prosecute unlawful use of force by the federal agents on their way to Maine. “My concern,” she said, “is that I believe that ICE agents have been given the impression that they have absolute so-called immunity, and that they seem to be acting with the idea that they are not accountable.”

The Privilege of Leaving

I did not live under threat of being snatched and sent to a detention center, but my body told me I had to leave, and I could leave, and I did. Distance helps.

In relative terms, my trials here are small. Laughter boosts my resilience. I know I’m in a process of transition and that things will get easier.

America is also in a process of transition, our democracy perilously close to collapse, and grave harm being done every day, with worldwide repercussions. Someday, maybe those who stayed—and survived—including asylum seekers and people there on work visas, will build a new and better America.

What Remains

In my second post, which went up two weeks after landing in France, I said I couldn’t remember anything I loved about America. I asked for help, and a couple people brought up our glorious landscapes, and someone else celebrated our diversity, and another the way people show up for each other, but I think a lot of Americans are feeling as hard up as I was. How do you love a country that rounds people up based on the color of their skin and sends them off to detention camps? So many of us are so worn down. And yet, Americans are on the streets pointing their cameras at masked ICE agents in action, taking food to people who can’t safely leave their homes, carrying their signs of protest, shouting their dissent.

I still can’t tell you what I miss, not yet, but the other day in the Uber, the radio played a Carpenters song about being on the top of the world. It’d been a long time since I’d heard those superstars from my childhood.

“Karen Carpenter,” I said, trying to bridge a gap. My driver took a moment to process what I’d said. Then he replied, “Karen Carpenter.”

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At the time, I treated “culture shock” and “adjustment crisis” as interchangeable. They’re not.

Culture shock is about the outside world – the disorientation that comes when the unfamiliar replaces the familiar. An adjustment crisis is more interior – a fraught time when expectations collide with reality and recalibration begins, ultimately moving us toward acclimation.

I’m not writing as an expert. I’m writing as someone trying to understand what’s happening while it’s happening.

And for the purposes of this Substack, maybe the terminology matters less than the lived experience.

Here’s what I know: On December 30th, Meta abruptly “permanently disabled” my Facebook account for no discernible reason. I’ve been fighting ever since to get it back. The process has consumed an absurd amount of time and a great deal of emotional energy – so far, for naught.

I know that as a platform, Facebook has many drawbacks; I’m not going to get into them here. I did consider ditching it once or twice in recent years, but always determined the loss of community would be too great. I was right.

Facebook is how I stay connected to a large writing community, and to an immensely helpful group for immigrants to France. It’s how I keep in touch with friends I don’t have another way of reaching.

When I was contemplating whether I could move – alone – to a country where I don’t speak the language, I knew I had three protectives against isolation.

• A Signal group for people with chronic health conditions like mine, where we pair up daily for a structured practice that helps regulate our nervous systems.

• Zoom or FaceTime with friends and family.

• And Facebook.

Losing Facebook didn’t just cut me off socially. It lowered my resilience just when I need it most.

This isn’t the first time something like this has happened. When I was 21, I moved from Canada to Maine, thrilled to finally be launching into my adult life, happy in my new city where, like here, I knew no one. When, a month or two after arriving in Maine, I was moving into my first apartment, somebody, likely from my new building, stole the boom box and bag of toiletries and jewelry I’d left by the elevator as I ferried my belongings from my car. I’d been hanging in until that moment, clipping job listings from the newspaper and learning my way around the city. But I couldn’t afford to replace that boom box – the only way to play music in those days before the personal computer. And because my birth control pills had also been in the bag, my hormones went haywire. I’d been holding it together until then. After that, everything got harder.1

Now, Meta has robbed me of my Facebook community – and years of writing along with it. It disappeared me.

So yes, I believe I’m now in the midst of the adjustment crisis. But I don’t think I’d be here yet if it weren’t for this loss and all its collateral demands. I often feel heavy-hearted. Sometimes lonely. The sparkle is harder to access. Fortunately, I still have my Signal community, I can still Zoom, and, thanks to Substack, I still have a voice – and am building a new community here.

I’m sharing this because I want to be honest about the emotional terrain of moving to another country. If you are considering it, or are in the process of making such a move, I want to prepare you for the full range of emotions you are likely to have. These fluctuations are a natural part of the process, not a sign that you’re doing it wrong.

I said goodbye to Dole and arrived in Besançon – half an hour east by train, just an hour by car from the Swiss border – on January 6. Here’s a map.

I’d been anxious about the trip – about standing on the wrong platform, about finding a place for my fifty-pound suitcase on a crowded train. Instead, the car was nearly empty. I felt myself relax as I gazed out the window at the hills and fields, dusted with snow. The announcements were clear and reassuring.

I began to think that with all my traveling this year, maybe I would get used to the transitions and stop being such an anxious traveler.

There was a cab idling in front of the train station, and I showed the driver the address for my Airbnb. The old city center, enclosed by a horseshoe bend of the Doubs River, is gorgeous, peaceful, and very walkable, with little traffic – other than cabs and delivery vehicles – allowed on its streets.

The owner of this Airbnb speaks French and, thankfully, English. She was warm, friendly, and curious, and gave me a big hug as soon as she saw me. She told me she loves that this city is that it’s both quiet and vibrant. With three university campuses and several other higher-education institutes, the city’s many students keep the city fresh and creative. The first-floor apartment has a view of a courtyard garden.

I keep wondering, Am I home? Am I home?

Just now, as I’m writing this, the church bells chimed – long enough to feel ceremonial.

In the first half of 2025, when I was busy contemplating how to leave the US and where I would go, Meta deleted 10 million accounts worldwide. This was purportedly to remove “spammy” content, but it’s hard to know the true motivation, given America’s negligible oversight of monopolies like Meta.

It’s impossible to know how many legitimate accounts Meta is deleting, but I personally know at least four people this has happened to. Half got their accounts back; the other half gave up and started over. One subreddit, called MetaLawsuits – for people who are considering or actively suing Meta in small claims court to recover disabled and/or hacked accounts – attracts 4600 visitors weekly.

From personal experience, I can tell you that Meta has put a sanity-defying quantity of hurdles in place for people like me who are just trying to get their legitimate accounts reinstated – even when those people pay money for Meta Verified so they can reach an actual customer service agent.

As I was researching all this, I learned that in 2022, Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg sent an internal email with the dystopian suggestion that one way to boost engagement on Facebook would be to delete the friends of all Facebook users so they would have to start over.

Fortunately, this idea was shot down.

I left the US to escape the cruelty of America’s rapacious culture of capitalism – which impacts everything from how we elect our legislators and whose interests they serve to our economy and our safety – but it got me anyway.

My next step, I’ve learned, is to find a Maine lawyer to send a letter threatening small claims court. One friend got her Facebook back a month after Meta received such a letter.

Since arriving in France, I’ve lost a hat, a glove, and – mysteriously – two tops I know I had when I was in Dole. Like in a dream, I keep looking for my lost things.

But today I found something: a small green park that contains the ruins of a Roman theater. I stood there in quiet awe. For a few minutes, everything else fell away.

Naturally, I went looking for a framework. That’s how I found Sverre Lysgaard, a Norwegian researcher who, in 1955, studied students traveling to the US on Fulbright scholarships and described three phases of cultural adjustment.

Honeymoon Period

First comes what Lysgaard called the introductory phase, now more commonly known as the honeymoon period: delight, fascination, and excitement about the adventure of being in a new culture experiencing new things. This phase is evident in all its glory in my last post. It can last for weeks or months – or, for some unfortunate souls, only days.

Adjustment Crisis

Next comes the “adjustment crisis,” otherwise known as the “Rude Awakening Stage,” when ordering coffee no longer feels like an achievement, but intimacy still feels out of reach. When the differences that once felt charming begin to feel draining. Homesickness creeps in. So can loneliness, irritation, even depression.

Acceptance and Adaptation

Eventually, the crisis resolves and people begin adjusting to their new cultures.

Other researchers have subsequently added a final stage: Happiness and Feeling Settled. I don’t know that happiness is a given. As my high school English teacher used to say, “No matter where you go, there you are.” But at the very least, people can reach a feeling of being settled in their new home.

Not everyone experiences all of these phases, and the stages aren’t linear, so people might cycle through them in any order until they ultimately reach equilibrum or return to their home country.

I am curious how this will play out for me.

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When I was 20, I traveled to Belize through a program called Canadian Crossroads International, a shorter-term cousin of America’s Peace Corps. I was placed as an assistant teacher in a small Mayan village not far from the Guatemalan border. The father of my host family taught at the school – a short walk from the house, visible from the backyard.

The days were steamy. The toilet was an outhouse. My shower came from a bucket of water, warmed over a fire by my host mother, Elena, and poured over my head in an outdoor stall with a concrete floor. Once, I opened the door to find a tarantula inside, and the eldest daughter killed it with kerosene and a match.

I loved animals. I would have preferred relocation to execution. But we had been trained – emphatically – to respect the culture we were entering rather than impose our own values. My job was not to intervene, but to learn.

I never experienced culture shock in Belize. I’d been well prepared, yes – but I wonder if it was simpler than that: entering with curiosity rather than resistance. With an expectation of difference, not comfort.

I found those children to be exceptionally grounded, and they seemed happier than North American kids. One afternoon, the youngest in the family – six years old and relying solely on his own imagination – constructed a grasshopper out of sticks and elastic bands. The entire family gathered around him, chuckling at his ingenuity. There was no television in that village. No consumer hum telling these children they were lacking. They were sustained by community and an intimate connection to the world around them.

Once, a student brought me a sweet lime from a tree in his yard, explaining that I could peel and eat it like an orange. I had never heard of such a thing. It was delicious. I’ve never seen one since.

Another time, I was invited to the birthday celebration of Mary, the brightest child in my fourth-grade class – and the youngest. When it came time to take the cake outside, she carried the platter herself, beaming with joy and pride. But as she stepped carefully through the doorway, the platter tipped, and the cake – so beautifully iced – slipped to the ground.

For a moment, time stopped. I expected tears. Instead, everybody laughed, including Mary, and her mother picked up the cake and brushed the dirt off, and we ate it anyway.

***

When I returned home to Canada, staying with my father and stepmother for a few months to work and save money to move to Maine, I did experience reverse culture shock – something the program had warned us about. The jangle of daily life felt abrasive. Consumer culture was so much more complicated and superficial than the rich culture I had experienced in that little village in Belize.

Little did I know, it would be far worse in America.

I want to live in a place that aligns with my values – and my nervous system.

So here I am in France. Capitalist, yes, but with brakes: laws that ensure limitations on monopolies (and that don’t allow Amazon to undersell brick-and-mortar bookstores); five weeks of vacation a year; a 35-hour workweek; maternity and paternity leave; and of course healthcare for all.

Three days after my arrival in Dole, I lost my teal hat – the one that went perfectly with my teal swing jacket, the only coat I brought with me. It was hand-knit, one-of-a-kind, purchased years ago in a small shop in Portland, Maine, where I lived for 36 years. It had a little felt flower. It tucked easily into a pocket. It felt like home.

My French-American friend Mandy tells me the French have a saying when one makes a major life change, such as leaving a relationship or moving to another country: On perd des plumes. One loses feathers.

Despite the loss of my hat, I’m still in the honeymoon period. My digital life, however, seems to be having its own adjustment crisis. Doctolib – France’s medical booking system (and you can even filter for providers who speak English!) – told me it had my French phone number on an account, but not my email address, and nothing I tried could get me in. Only after an email exchange lasting days did customer service finally solve the problem: apparently my number had once belonged to a guy named Adam, who must have gotten a new number. With a signed statement from me, they removed the number from his account, liberating me from the purgatory so I could finally open my own account and get myself a doctor before my pharmaceuticals ran out. Then there was the hassle accessing my credit card online, and now for some inexplicable reason Facebook has, as the email bluntly put it, “permanently disabled” my account. Just tonight, a glitch in the system caused Uber Eats to double-charge me for my pizza, and I can’t figure out how to fix it.

For flesh-and-blood me, however, I wonder whether or not an adjustment crisis awaits. Rich Kagan, who writes Le Simple Sudiste on Substack, tells me he never experienced culture shock moving to France with his family. He says he feels more aligned with the French lifestyle than with today’s America and the trajectory it’s taking. I believe that, like Rich, and despite the language barrier, I am more constitutionally suited to France than the US.

Time will tell.

This is not to say I don’t grieve the life I left behind. Thankfully, my soon-to-be-former husband1 and I Zoom once a week: we are still connected by love, pets, and a certain je ne sais quoi. But I miss my pets, especially Emerson, aka Mr. Handsome, aka my boyfriend. Like any kind of grief, the tears can come suddenly. I let myself feel what I’m feeling, so the emotion can move through me instead of getting stuck inside.

What I do know is this: the world I’m living in right now – beautiful, old, seemingly enchanted – is not a fairytale. It’s real life. France has its own fractures and shortcomings. I want to be here with my eyes wide open.

Even on the honeymoon.

What about you? Have you ever experienced culture shock or reverse culture shock? What was it like, and what happened next?

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I was afraid of the language barrier – afraid I would feel stupid all the time, that people would be irritated with me, and that I would shrink in response. I feared I would never experience a sense of belonging, that I’d remain, permanently, an outsider in France.

Almost three weeks in, my French still terrible but improving, this has not been my experience.

On the drive from the Charles de Gaulle Airport to my hotel near the Paris train station, where I planned to rest before my final leg to Dole, the cabbie told me that although he studied English in school, what really helped him was watching American television. I asked his name. It started with an R, and I confessed I’ve never been able to roll my r’s. I tried anyway – and, improbably, succeeded.

He laughed and offered advice: Practice the sound in front of each vowel over and over again, like a mantra. By the time he dropped me off, I felt unexpectedly fortified.

Three days later, when I arrived at the Airbnb in Dole, the hosts, Claudine and Gérard, met me at the apartment and showed me around. They both spoke about as much English as I do French, which is to say very little, but we managed, threading our way through a shared tangle of both languages. They offered to take me for a little walk around town, and I said yes.

They showed me the laundromat, and pointed out the nearest bakery, adding that there were two more just up the street. We walked through a small Christmas fair, where vendors sold crêpes and hot chocolate and children skated on a plastic rink. Back at the apartment, Gérard, who looks a little like Jonathan Pryce’s High Sparrow from Game of Thrones – minus the ominous undertones – showed me how to work the tricky lock on the door.

In the doorway, we said goodbye. Then Gérard paused, met my eyes, and said in careful English, “You are home now.”

The words landed with unexpected force. My eyes filled. I hadn’t realized how braced I was until something in me let go.

The other day I passed a woman on the street who implored me for help. An older woman, she wore a scarf over her head. I wanted to tell her: You don’t want me. I don’t speak French. I just arrived. But I didn’t know how to say that in French, and anyway, she was desperate; she wanted me, and somehow we were going to have to figure it out together.

She was trying to ring her doctor’s doorbell. I imagine she was in a rush to get to her appointment in time. On a small digital screen beside a large building’s entrance, she frantically pushed a button, showing me that names scrolled by, like a digital ticker-tape. Then she pointed to her eyes and said something in French, and I understood her eyesight was too poor to read the names. She gave me the name of her doctor. I pushed the button again and again, scanning the list. And then suddenly there it was, a Doctor E-something. I read it aloud.

“Oui, oui,” she said.

I think I did a little Snoopy dance on the sidewalk. I had helped a French person! Me!

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It’s always mattered to me to get words right. Here in France, I’m learning a different pleasure: the puzzle of finding a workaround using words I do know to construct a sentence similar in meaning to the one I am trying, but unable, to say. I’ve had to let go of perfectionism and accept that my grammar will be atrocious. Perhaps there will be some boon in this. Like fluency. The grammar can come later.

There’s also the charades element, which emerges naturally. I don’t think anyone – myself included – is quite aware we’re doing it.

One of the things I love about Dole – and I believe this is true of much of France – is that I can just walk anywhere and find what I need: an épicerie (small grocery store), several patisseries (bakeries – I think I’ve tried pastries from seven so far, all discovered on foot), two boucheries (butcher shops). Refrigerators are smaller here. People shop more often. When everything is close, shopping folds easily into the day.

At the boucherie recently, I saw a prepared meat dish in a serving bowl, and did not recognize the French for the animal listed on the tag. Qu’est-ce que c’est? I asked.

The butcher – who remembered me from my first visit, when I told him I’d moved to France from America – grinned and lifted his arms to his head, fingers splayed like antlers. Then, just in case I didn’t get it, he turned and pointed to a picture of Santa on the wall behind him, said the French word for, presumably, deer, and put his arms up to his head again. How could I not smile? How could I not love him a little?

As I’ve stumbled along in my French, shopkeepers have asked, in French, where I’m from, then guessed before I could answer: England? Germany? Non, non, I reply. Je suis Américaine. I guess terrible French sounds the same no matter where you’re from.

Here, they don’t say “indoor market,” but “covered market.” The covered market in Dole is open four days a week and usually closes around 1PM. One morning, I finally made it in time. Inside were cheese sellers, butchers, and stands piled with produce.

Je voudrais has come to be one of my favorite phrases. “I would like.” You say it, and then you try to pronounce the name of the thing you want, and if all else fails, you point. I think I smile a lot when I’m shopping. Maybe that helps me feel less stupid. Like I’m in on the joke. And the joke is my French grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. It’s hilarious. The shopkeepers smile with me. They play along. In most cases, they really want to help this poor little bird, so newly fledged.

At the produce stand, a jovial man with salt-and-pepper hair came to assist me. Here, you don’t choose and bag the produce yourself; you ask the shopkeeper for what you want and he bags it for you. The man gathered up for me some carrots, some green beans, a spectacular romanesco cauliflower, some clementines, and two apples. He bagged everything for me, placing it all into a reusable shopping bag – no charge. After I paid, he said something I translated as “Wait a minute,” and disappeared around the corner.

I wondered if I’d understood right, repeated his words in my head, translated them again, and waited. When he returned, he held out an orange. With a combination of gestures and French, he explained that inside, it was red.

It was a kindness, a gift. But it was also love. Love for the orange, and a desire to share that love with me. (And, of course, good salesmanship, too.) In that moment, I felt, deeply, that in France I’ve landed where I need to be.

A week later, I returned to the market. I spotted the jovial man helping another customer, and felt suddenly shy. Would he remember me? (I am, admittedly, pretty recognizable as the only person in town who wears a purple KN-95 mask.)

He noticed me as he crossed the floor, smiled broadly, and said something I didn’t understand. Seeing my confusion, he said it differently. He was asking how my week had been. He did remember me.

Bien, merci, I said with a smile, and he gave me a wave, then crouched to offer a tiny red apple to a delighted little boy.

A tattooed teenager rang up my vegetables. In broken English, he told me to have a good weekend, then interrupted himself, thought for a moment, checking his English for clarity, and said, with a smile, Have a good weekend. He looked pleased with himself for getting it right, and I grinned back and said, Merci! Et vous! (Thanks! And you, too!)

Only later I did I realize I’d missed my chance to ask, “Comment dit-on ‘Have a good weekend’?” He would have taught me.

But there will be other chances.

Do you have a memory to share of a cross-language gaff or a recent small, sweet moment that happened wherever in the world you live? Please post in the comments!

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In this post, I want to answer the questions I’ve been asked most often — about why I’m leaving, why I chose France, and how I made this decision. These answers are personal, shaped by my health, my values, and the moment we’re living in. I don’t expect everyone to agree with them. I offer them simply as an honest account of how this choice became necessary for me.

Q: But what if you want to come back?

A: I’m not coming back, not to live. Ever. Even before this administration took power and swiftly obliterated everything we held sacred about our democracy, America was in trouble. The gap between rich and poor has widened to record levels, and this has multiple negative impacts on the country, including poorer health outcomes and increased gun violence. Americans are 26 times more likely to be shot than people who live in other wealthy countries.

Even before Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) began pulling brown-skinned people of the streets and sending them to detention centers – whether they were US citizens or not – racism’s imprint on this country ran deep and wide. The United States was built on land taken from Indigenous peoples and on the labor of enslaved Africans, and those origins continue to shape its institutions and policies.

And of course, we’re the only industrialized country without some kind of universal healthcare, and the percentage of those without coverage, currently 8%, is about to skyrocket, thanks to the Republicans’ so-called “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” which slashed Affordable Care Act subsidies.

I grew up in Canada, and I know in my body what it feels like to live in a country the recognizes healthcare as a human right. The message it sends is this: We take care of each other here.

There’s much that is beautiful about America and Americans. But to be honest, right now I am so burnt out on America that it’s hard for me to access the beauty I know exists there. I suspect I’ll be able to write more about the good things about the US when I’ve had more time to recover from living there.

Q: Well, since you’re a dual citizen and could easily return to Canada, why not Canada?

A: It’s true that Canada’s ideals are more in alignment with my own. And, like France, the life expectancy there is about five years longer there than in the United States, despite the fact that the US spends far more per capita on healthcare.

But Canada just feels too close – geographically and psychologically. When Donald Trump threatened to make Canada the 51^st state, most Americans, including me, initially dismissed it as typical Trump bluster. But the Canadians didn’t, and conversations with several Canadian friends helped me understand the threat is real.

In addition, ICE has detained Canadians crossing the border with work visas. How much worse is it going to get? Nothing is predictable about this regime.

Finally, if I have to uproot my life and leave everything I know and love behind, then at least I want to have an adventure. It helps temper the grief.

Q: Why France?

A: While researching the ties between stress and capitalism for my book American Breakdown, I learned a fair amount about France. In France, the motto, “Work to live, don’t live to work,” is reflected in policy as well as culture. Full-time workers receive five weeks of paid vacation per year, plus holidays; work a 35-hour week; and live within rhythms that often include a 2-hour midday lunch break. And, like every other wealthy country in the world, other than the US, France has universal healthcare.

Although as a self-employed writer in France on a long-stay visa, I would not be directly eligible for all but the last of these (see more about France’s healthcare system below), I expect to indirectly benefit from the slower and more connected way of life these policies make possible.

France’s landscape is beautiful and diverse, and you can view the green, rolling hills from the country’s efficient train system, which is vastly superior to America’s.

I feel better in and around historic architecture, and in France you can walk through entire villages, towns, and city neighborhoods that are older than America. The building I’m currently staying in is a renovated former cloister that was built in the 1500s.

Oh. And the pastries.

And in many parts of France, other than Paris, Nice, and some of the larger cities, the cost of living is significantly lower than in the US.

Oh, and unlike Australia, where my brother is a naturalized citizen, or other English-speaking countries like Scotland or Ireland, France would take me.

No country is perfect, and France is having its own economic problems, and, like many nations, the far right is on the rise, along with racism and both anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish bigotry. But compared to America? I’m all in for France.

Q: Wait… Did you say just say that France will cover your healthcare?

A: Yes! After three months here on my long-stay visa, I can apply for the carte vitale (which, I can’t help but note, translates literally, I believe, to vital card or card of vitality, or maybe both) which entitles me to the same access to healthcare as every French citizen. France is notorious for its bureaucracy, so it could take months for the application to process, but when it does, I’ll be reimbursed retroactively for my approved healthcare expenses. (The French system doesn’t generally cover psychotherapy, which is unfortunate.) The carte vitale reimburses 80% of costs, and the rest is out-of-pocket unless you choose to pay for private insurance, which is a fraction of the cost of health insurance in America. And in any case, most French healthcare costs are significantly lower, so if I have to pay out-of-pocket for something, it will not break the bank.

Q: How did you qualify for a visa?

A: While it’s hard to get a visa to work in France unless you get transferred by your employer, for retired and self-employed people it’s easier to get in. Policies seem to be changing quickly right now, but when I applied in September, I had to prove that I brought in the monthly equivalent of the French minimum wage, which, at the time of my application, was about 1400 euros per month. It also helps if you can show you have some savings. My husband and our friend and tenant Annie bought me out of the house, so I added that information into the documentation I provided for my application.

Here is more information, if you’re curious about the process: https://www.welcometofrance.com/en/fiche/long-stay-visa. When considering a move to another country, a top priority, of course, is determining whether they’ll take you. Every country has its own criteria.

Q: Do you speak French?

A: Despite eleven years of study as a child and teen in Canada, I regret to say my French is terrible. I was a teen who dreamed of being a polyglot, but it turned out that no matter how hard I worked, I couldn’t really speak or understand French. I concluded that I’m bad at learning languages. But what I’ve come to realize is that I don’t learn languages well through rote verb conjugation and vocabulary memorization. I do better with contextual learning. That’s much more engaging to the creative parts of me. But in my eleven years of French, only one conversational class was ever on offer.

While I’m sad about the hundreds of hours I put in studying French with little to show for it, I am deeply grateful that I have that foundation inside me. I have a basic understanding of how French grammar and pronunciation work, and I do remember some words, and this will make it easier for me to learn the language.

I’ve been studying with a wonderful French conversational tutor through italki, and now that I’m finally here in France, my learning is more rapidly expanding. I feel more hopeful about my ability to learn this language! And, unexpectedly, it’s kind of fun.

There’s no getting around it: learning a new language is hard. But it’s easier and more fun when you figure out your learning style

Q: Have you ever been to France before?

A: In 2018, I was fortunate to spend a month as a fellow in the Maison Dora Maar artist residency in the medieval hilltop village of Menerbes in the South of France. I fell in love with the French landscape and the beautiful historic architecture, and I’ll admit I even fantasized about buying a house in Menerbes. But because my life revolves around the nuances of language, I never thought I would live in a place where English isn’t widely spoken.

Q: Where are you going in France, and how did you decide?

A: I watched a lot of YouTube videos (regular people just show you around the city! Here’s Dole!) to identify places I liked the feel of, and also researched criteria like cost of living, climate (I’d like to find someplace that doesn’t get as hot and muggy as Maine does, and it would be a real bonus if I could see snow fall two or three times a year), access to a range of medical providers, presence of at least one university, and proximity to a river I can swim in. Since I don’t like crowds, I also don’t want to live in a place that’s mobbed with tourists. This is not to say that each of the below cities (and one town) fulfills all my criteria. That may not be possible.

My plan is to spend about a month in each place before deciding where I’d like to rent a furnished apartment for a year to make sure it’s the right fit before committing to an unfurnished apartment. The main reason this is not a whirlwind tour is because traveling is stressful and exhausting, and, as someone with ME/CFS, my energy is limited. A month gives me time to recover from each trip and explore the location in small doses, with lots of rest in between.

Do you want the list? Here it is, with populations, and the department and region in parentheses.

Dole (Jura, Franche-Comte): pop. 26,000

Besançon (Doubs, Franche-Comte): pop. 129,000

Metz (Moselle, Lorraine): pop. 124,000

Angers (Maine-et-Loire, Pays De La Loire): pop.168,000

Saumur (Maine-et-Loire, Pays de la Loire): pop. 26,000.

Vannes (Morbihan, Brittany): pop. 54,000

Douarnenez (Finistere, Brittany): pop. 14,000

Limoges (Haute-Vienne, Limousin): pop. 141,000

Pau (Pyrenees-Atlantiques, Aquitaine): pop. 78,600

Bergerac (Dordogne, Aquitaine): pop. 28,000

Q: Is your husband going with you?

A: My husband, Frank, did not want me to leave. And I wanted him to come with me. But thanks to our mutual commitment to care, and some very hard work with a skilled couple’s therapist, we were able to navigate our differing ways of coping with what’s happening in the United States, and come to a place of equanimity.

One thing I love about Frank is his steadiness. He loves his life and his home and is generally averse to upheaval. I loved our life, too, but as a highly sensitive person, I found that staying in the US was no longer bearable. I think of it as a situation similar to what’s faced by a couple when one person wants a child and the other doesn’t. The difference between us wasn’t a failure of love; it was an irreconcilable difference in what each of us wanted and needed.

Since I will not be moving back to America and Frank will not be moving to France, we’re setting each other free. But our divorce is amicable, and we plan to Zoom weekly. I am so grateful for that.

Q: What about your pets?

A: We have a 2-year-old Great Dane named Maisie; two cats, aged 14 and 15; and Gertie, a blind 15-year-old chicken who lives in a large crate in the house, (and three hens who live in the backyard). Frank is keeping all of them. Since I’ll be moving to a new city every month for about a year, searching for where I want to put down roots, the animals are all better off with him.

The hardest one to leave is my cat Emerson, aka Mr. Handsome, aka my boyfriend.

He adores me, and I, him. But travel terrifies him so much he can’t even make the 15-minute drive to the vet without, well, without losing his shit, literally. And his pee.

The last time I returned home after a month away, Frank and Emerson, the only males in the household, had bonded even more. Frank showed me their “man cave” under the covers of the bed. He lifted the covers, and they crawled under together, and then he let the covers drop around them. Eventually, man and cat emerged from the other side. Emerson loved it. That’s when I knew for certain it was right to leave Mr. Handsome with Frank.

Q: Where do you consider home now?

A: Well, as Woody Guthrie sang, I kinda feel like I ain’t got no home in this world anymore. It’s a little unsettling, being unmoored, but also a little liberating.

Still, my beloved Portland, Maine, is a home in my heart, even if America is not a safe harbor. In a similar way, my hometown of Peterborough, Ontario, is kind of home. And each place I stay here in France is home till I move on to the next one.

Ultimately, I know that France will come to feel like home. In fact, I have a friend who moved to this country just two and a half months ago, and on returning to the US to pack the last of her stuff, she felt, as she put it, “engulfed by the heartbreak and terror” of being back in the US, and found herself thinking, “I can’t wait to go home.” She meant France. She added, “Home used to be America, but that has been taken from me.”

Home can be found in countries other than where you were born or grew up.

Q: Nobody’s said this one out loud to me, but I admit it haunts me a bit, that refrain from the time of Trump’s 2016 election: You should stay and fight.

A: To all who choose to stay and fight for democracy and social justice, I celebrate you. Thank you.

Some of us cannot continue without breaking. I experience America right now as a place that feels increasingly hostile to the human spirit. As a chronically ill, burnt out former psychotherapist who spent twenty years writing a book that takes a hard look at how America’s policies are harmful to human health, I’ve reached the limits of what I can sustainably give. I’m choosing to go where I believe recovery and renewal are possible.

I wish for every American the choice between the hardship of leaving or the hardship of staying.1

Q: Do you think there’s no hope for America?

A: Do I believe America is beyond redemption? No.

Regimes collapse. Countries rebuild. History shows us that periods of extreme inequality and corruption are often followed by reform – not automatically, but through sustained collective action.

Reading Rebecca Solnit’s Hope in the Dark reminded me that cynicism excuses inaction, while hope creates the possibility of change.

I know these answers won’t land the same for everyone, and that’s okay. We each respond differently to pressure, loss, and uncertainty, and none of our responses exists in isolation from our health, our histories, or our limits.

For me, this move is an act of care – a way of choosing steadier ground so that I can recover, remain open-hearted, and continue to engage with the world rather than shut down from it. I leave the United States with grief for what has been lost, gratitude for what shaped me, and hope that, through the many forms of courage and connection people choose every day, repair remains possible.

Next up: I’m working on a piece about the unexpected fun of negotiating the language barrier.

Help me out, people. Tell me what you love about America. I’m probably not the only one who needs a reminder.

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And if you like this post, please click the little heart. It’ll make me feel good, and it probably has other benefits I’m not even aware of yet.

Instead, I am in France. And I am so relieved to be here, and so grateful.

I’ve left it all behind.

On that grim November 2024 morning when I awoke to the news that Trump had been re-elected, my whole system commenced its unceasing admonition: GET OUT. GET OUT. GET OUT.

I knew Frank did not want to leave. He’d told me so days before the election when I asked what we would do if the worst happened.

I didn’t want to leave Frank. I didn’t want to leave everything I know and love.

But there it was, my body’s imperative, spoken in my body’s language, with a deep urgency I could not ignore.

I live with a chronic illness. I’ve learned how important it is to listen to my body. So here I am. In France. Starting over.

I watched a lot of YouTube videos and read reams of articles to come up with a list of nine small to mid-sized cities and one town that I think might feel like home to me in this country. For this first year, I’ll be spending about a month in each of these places, and I’ll be writing my observations about French and American culture and including vignettes from my experiences here, like the sweet moment my lodging host, just before parting, said something to me that brought tears to my eyes. (You’ll find that story and more in upcoming posts.)

In the months it took me to sort through every paper and every single thing that I own, packing up fourteen boxes to be shipped to me in a year or two, plus, for my travels, one large suitcase, a backpack, and a rolly bag, I told friends and beloved healthcare providers about my plan. Along with their congratulations, some expressed their own longing to leave. They all had questions.

My intent was to respond to some of those questions in this dispatch. But I am still recovering from the long journey to get here. So I’ll be answering questions in the next post. If you have any for me, feel free to leave them in the comments.

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