Letter #6: What If Somewhere Else Feels More Like Home?

Good morning, darlings.

As I write to you this morning, I’m sitting on my yoga mat beside the swimming pool.

The day is only just beginning.

The air is still, the mountains are stretching out in front of me, and I’m looking across a view that, even now, sometimes makes me wonder how on earth this became my life.

And this morning, I’ve been thinking about something.

How different life can look when we make different decisions.

Because I think, sometimes, we get stuck.

Not necessarily desperately unhappy.

Not necessarily wanting to run away from everything.

Just… stuck.

We find ourselves living a life that feels as though we somehow ended up in it, rather than consciously chose it.

And I think one of the places we see this most clearly is in where we live.

The country. The town. The city. Sometimes even the house.

We can begin to believe that this is simply where we’ve been put.

This is where the universe landed us. And therefore, this is where we stay.

Perhaps we’ll move to a different house in the same town. Maybe we’ll venture a few miles further away. Occasionally a job, a relationship or a family circumstance will take us somewhere completely different.

But how often do we stop and ask ourselves a much bigger question?

If I could choose anywhere… where would I actually want to live?

One of the things I’ve discovered since moving to France is that life here has a slightly different rhythm to the UK. It isn’t so wildly different that I feel as though I’ve landed on another planet. But it’s different enough.

There are little nuances in the culture, the communities, the way people live, the pace of the day, the things that seem to matter.

And discovering those differences has made me realise something rather wonderful.

If France feels a little different from the UK, then surely every country has its own feeling. Its own rhythm. Its own energy. And the further we travel from what we know, perhaps those differences become greater still.

There must be places in this world that would feel so completely different from the life we know that stepping into them would feel almost like walking onto a film set.

And yet, wherever we are born, we bring our own little ecosystem with us.

Our values.
The things we care about.
The things that make us feel safe.
The things that make us feel alive.
The amount of noise we enjoy.
The amount of space we need.
How much community we want around us.
How much solitude we crave.
The mountains or the sea.
Busy streets or empty roads.
Late nights and bustling restaurants, or early mornings where the loudest sound is the birds.

We all have our own internal compass.

And I wonder whether somewhere in this enormous world there are places that align with that compass far more closely than the place we happened to be born.

Perhaps there are towns, countries — continents even — where the culture, energy and way of life fit us better.

And I think there is something incredibly exciting about that. Because when you find somewhere that fits you, something shifts.

You wake up differently. You breathe differently. You feel different. There is this strange sense of recognition. Almost as though you’ve come home to somewhere you’ve never lived before.

As I sit here on my yoga mat this morning, looking across this beautiful corner of France, I’m still learning about the country I now call home.

There is so much I don’t know yet. But I do know how my soul feels here.

There is an alignment. A quiet sense of yes… this suits me.

Is this the only place on earth where I could feel like this? Absolutely not. I’m sure there are others. There may even be somewhere that fits me better. But this is where I have landed for now. And I’m very happy to be discovering it.

So perhaps today, I can persuade you to do a little exploring of your own.
Think about the places you’ve visited where something inside you came alive.
The places you’ve left and immediately wanted to return to. And perhaps even the places you’ve never visited, but have always felt strangely drawn towards.

You don’t need to sell your house tomorrow and disappear to Bali.

Your journey might simply begin with curiosity.

A holiday.
A city break.
A book about somewhere you’ve always wondered about.
A film set in a place that fascinates you.
Or simply opening a map and allowing yourself to imagine.
And then perhaps do a little exploring internally too.

Ask yourself:

What would actually suit me?
Would I like life to be faster… or slower?
Would I like more people around me… or fewer?
Would I choose a bustling city or a tiny village?
Mountains or sea?
Restaurants and nightlife or peace and open space?
More cars or fewer cars?
More convenience or more nature?
More excitement or more stillness?

Forget, just for a moment, about where you should live. Forget where your life happens to be right now.

Instead ask yourself:

If I were designing a place for my soul to live, what would I put there?

Start making a list. Notice what comes up. Because perhaps the place that feels most like home isn’t necessarily the place where you started.

Maybe it’s somewhere you haven’t found yet.

And maybe finding it starts simply by allowing yourself to believe that you’re allowed to look.

I’ll leave you with that thought this morning, my darlings.

I have a yoga mat waiting for me, a pool beside me, and another French morning just beginning.

À bientôt, my friends.

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