Letters #2: When the Dream Stopped Being a Secret

Bonjour, my friend,

In my last letter, I told you where the first tiny seed of this dream began.

How France had always been woven through my life in some way. Childhood holidays, long car journeys, unfamiliar supermarkets, warm bread, little villages, and that feeling that life somehow moved differently here.

But a seed is still only a seed.

For a long time, the idea of moving to France was just that. An idea. A quiet little thought that lived somewhere at the back of my mind. Something I would occasionally dream about, but not necessarily something I had any real plan for.

Then, as my business began to change, so did the possibilities. Be When I moved from teaching and working in person to building more of my business online, I suddenly realised something quite important.

I didn’t have to be in one particular place to do the work I loved. And once I had realised that, the dream started to feel a little less impossible.

At first, I think I said it almost casually.

When people asked me, “What’s the goal?”. I would say, “Ultimately, we’d love to move to France.”

When someone asked, “Where do you see yourself in five years’ time?” . I would say, “Hopefully living in France, with the business coming with me.”

And little by little, it stopped being a secret thought. It became something I said out loud. And I think that matters. Because there is something powerful about giving your dream a voice.

Not in a dramatic, shout-it-from-the-rooftops kind of way. But in a quiet, steady, this-is-where-I-think-I’m-heading kind of way. The more I said it, the more real it became.

Of course, this wasn’t just my dream.

I had a husband. I had a family. I had children. I had a life that had been built in one country, and I couldn’t simply announce that I fancied moving to another one and expect everyone else to catch up overnight.

This had to become a shared vision. And that meant talking. A lot of talking. It meant asking questions, listening properly, imagining different versions of our future, and giving the idea enough space to either grow or quietly fade away.

My husband needed to come on the journey with me. Not because I was trying to persuade him into my dream, but because if we were going to do this, it had to become our dream.

So we started exploring.

Not in a serious, spreadsheet-out, decision-made kind of way at first. More in a “shall we just have a look?” kind of way. And that “quick look” became hours and hours spent scrolling through French property websites. We looked at houses we couldn’t afford. We looked at houses in regions we’d never heard of. We looked at stone barns, little cottages, strange layouts, huge gardens, swimming pools, outbuildings, shutters, terraces, land, villages, towns, and places that made us say, “Imagine if…”

And honestly, at the beginning, a lot of it was just for fun. But something started to happen. The more we looked, the more we realised that life in France could look very different from the life we had in the UK.

Not better in every way. Not easier in every way. But different.

More space. More land. More light. A different pace. A different kind of home. A different way of imagining our everyday life.

And before long, I realised something had shifted. He was no longer just humouring me. He was in it too. He was imagining it with me.

That was the moment the dream started to grow legs. But, of course, there were still real-life things to consider.

My two boys were 26 and 16 when we eventually left for France, and I won’t pretend that part was easy. My youngest had only just finished school. He was starting an apprenticeship. The original plan had always been that we would wait until he was 18 and had properly left home.

That felt like the responsible timeline. The sensible timeline. The one that made the most sense on paper. But life doesn’t always move according to the neat little timeline we create in our heads.

The more we talked about it as a family, the more reassurance we had from him that he was okay. He was going to live with his dad, and he was very clear that he didn’t want to be the reason we waited.

And that was huge.

Because until that point, I think that had been the invisible permission slip we were waiting for. Once we knew he was genuinely okay, something changed. It was as though we went from travelling at 20 miles an hour to suddenly joining the motorway. The dream was no longer something we might do one day.

It became something we were actively moving towards. And that is the part I really want you to notice.

Not the moving to France part. The moment where the dream moves from fantasy to possibility. Because I think many of us have things we talk about as “one day” dreams.

One day, I’ll move.
One day, I’ll change careers.
One day, I’ll write the book.
One day, I’ll start again.
One day, I’ll build a business that gives me more freedom.
One day, I’ll stop living around everyone else’s expectations.

But “one day” has a habit of staying beautifully vague. It asks nothing of us. It doesn’t require a decision. It doesn’t need a timeline. It doesn’t ask us to have awkward conversations. It doesn’t force us to look at money, family, logistics, fear, or what other people might think.

But the moment you start saying it out loud, everything changes. The dream begins to ask questions back.

What would need to happen?
Who would need to be part of this?
What would have to change?
What would we need to release?
What would we need to build?
What are we waiting for, and is that reason still true?

For us, the dream of France didn’t become real because we booked a removal van.

It became real long before that.
It became real in conversations.
It became real on the sofa, looking at houses online.
It became real when we stopped treating it like a fantasy and started allowing it to become a possible future.

And maybe that is where all big life changes begin. Not with the leap. But with the first time you say, “I think I might actually want this.”

So, my question for you today is this:

If you were to imagine a different version of your life three to five years from now, what would need to change between now and then?

Not just the obvious things. The real things.

Would you need a child to leave home?
Would you need to sell a house?
Would your partner need to retire?
Would your business need to become more flexible?
Would you need more savings?
Would you need to change the way you work?
Would you need to have a conversation you’ve been avoiding?
Would you need to give yourself permission?

Write them all down. Not as reasons why it can’t happen. Just as pieces of the puzzle. Because once you can see the pieces, you can start to understand the timeline.

And once you understand the timeline, the dream stops floating somewhere in the distance.

It begins to move a little closer.

À bientôt, my friend,
Deb
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Letters from France

Stories, lessons, and reflections for entrepreneurs building a business that gives them more than income... it gives them freedom.