Why I Left the United States and Moved to France - MY STORY | Slow Living in France

Everyone has a story of why they left their home country. What caused them to give it all up. And here is mine. My name is Helena. I'm 26 years old. And I'm originally from Southern California. Both my husband and I are American. And three years ago, we decided to leave the United States and move to France. Growing up, I was shown that praise and love are given when you achieve great things in life. And as a kid, I was endlessly praised for working really hard and achieving recognition for something that once started out as a fun hobby. When I was 18, I took the $2,000 I earned from working various theater gigs throughout high school, packed up my bags, and moved to New York City. Living in New York was great in the beginning. I was young, full of energy, and had a mighty heart of ambition to make the people back home proud of me. I loved singing, dancing, and acting growing up as a kid. But when I moved to New York, I quickly realized that just because you love doing something for fun, and even if you're really good at it, it doesn't mean that you should make it your career. And I wasn't living there and chasing the dream to make myself happy. I was doing it to fulfill an identity that I created. And I identified my worth and my value in what I did. A lot of us stick with things for years, not because we want to, but because we feel guilty if we quit. And that's what happened to me. I began to hate the shallow, fickle nature of the entertainment industry. I abhorred the way higher-ups talked about actors when they weren't in the room. The constant noise, the stench of the city, and the skyscrapers forever blocking my view of the wide-open sky. I felt stuck, trapped. After five years in the city, I found my natural, joyous self slipping. I was becoming angry, jaded. I was becoming someone I didn't like. But I remember thinking, what else is there? What else can I do? And then, my dad died. And it crushed me. It made me realize how precious and fragile life was. How fleeting it all could be. Life was too short not to take chances and have fun and enjoy the time that we're given. And I couldn't go on living a life others wanted me to live. As if by magic or destiny, it was at the same time that I met my husband and found photography. Picking up a camera and meeting someone who valued life the same way that I did saved me. And in our first year living together, we realized that the structures and systems in place in the United States didn't resonate with our own values and what we wanted out of life. And let's be real, it's difficult to live well and comfortably in the U.S. when you are content working entry level. I loved babysitting, dog walking, and waitressing late into the night. And I felt the most fulfillment working as a shop girl in various boutiques. But it's also practically impossible to live slowly in the U.S. when the minimum wage is barely enough to cover your cost of living. You end up having to work weekends, 12 hours a day. Disenchanted, I no longer sought after the American dream and I yearned for a life that was simpler. It was on my 23rd birthday while sitting on the grassy lawn in D.C. that I made my birthday wish to leave the United States and live abroad by the following year. Luckily, my boyfriend also loved the idea and being an ESL teacher, he applied for countless jobs all over the world. And the job he landed was in the beautiful city of Strasbourg, France. And all within the span of a month, we decided to take the job, sell all of our possessions, get married, and move to France. I wanted to escape a healthcare system that punishes rather than protects the sick. An educational system that shuts out bright students from learning no matter how many scholarships and financial aid they receive. And I didn't want to live a second longer in a country where living to work was more prioritized than enjoying life. There was also the extremely high cost of living. It was in a small town in Virginia where my boyfriend and I were both constantly working between four and six part-time jobs just to get by that we realized that daily life in the U.S. didn't fit what we wanted out of life. We yearned for a slower life. A life with more simplicity, more ease, without having to worry about getting in a bike accident and not being able to afford the health clinic bill. We rarely had time to slow down, spend time with one another, and enjoy the simple things. In the U.S., everything was a means to an end, and the quality of life just wasn't there. In the U.S., work is valued above everything else. Hustling and investing time in your job is more celebrated than the quality of your relationships and mental health. Marrying my husband and leaving the United States was the best decision I ever made. But it wasn't easy. I had to say goodbye to my friends, my mom, my photography business, and all my clients that I spent years photographing and building relationships with. Applying for jobs abroad was tedious, the visa application even more so. And there will always be things that I miss about the U.S. But the quality of life in France far outweighs our desire to ever move back. The French reject this idea of your worth being in your work. Here, your identity and value as a person is not tied to how much money you earn or what you're seen doing. Excessive materialism and flamboyant overconsumption is also not big here. With the exception of some living in Paris, French people truly live a slower, simpler life. The workday ends promptly, on the dot. The French close their shops and restaurants in August to relax. They make sure their employees take their full lunch breaks away from their computers. And the constant fear of not being able to afford health care or an education no longer keeps us up at night. To this day, my husband and I together make very little money. We make just enough to cover our monthly expenses, with just a little bit extra for weekend road trips. But the cost of living is far lower here in France, and we're happy because of it. We're comfortable living a simpler life. There's more free time and less anxiety. We need to demolish this culturally programmed belief that your worth is in your work, that what you do is more important than who you are. And most importantly, we need to get rid of the narrative that success equals happiness, that wealth and recognition lead to a state of mental well-being, that what you have is evidence to your success in life. Moving to France won't be easy for most people. There's a lot to give up when choosing a life abroad. It isn't glamorous, and there's a lot of stress and struggle to get settled here comfortably. But knowing that somewhere out there is a different way to live life, that there is more to existing than just working hard to pay off mortgages and student debt, and knowing that most countries outside of the United States do indeed live this way, with more simplicity and more ease. I hope you feel inspired to change your life if it's something you also desire. It is possible, and it can be done. Today we live in Corsica, a small island on the Mediterranean Sea. My husband and I live simply and frugally in a house in the mountains, our only dream being to live life to its fullest and experience our life together, just the two of us, in different countries with different cultures. My husband loves teaching, and my desire for artistic self-expression hasn't faded as I spend my days connecting with nature and creative inspiration. It's moments like these, when I look back at my own life, that I realize how simple it all is. What if, over time, we don't really change all that much? Perhaps we stay exactly the same. It could just be that, like Michelangelo's work on the Statue of David, we simply need to remove the layers that cover our spirit's truest desires, our truest nature. What if all we have to do is eliminate the excess? Underneath all of the beliefs we've accepted as our own from societal conditioning is just a natural desire to live simply and to be present, to live and notice the simple joys that are always right around us.