It all started harmless enough. I was in my office and felt a bit bored. So I scrolled through messages by chance. In an article about CNN internationally, I stopped about a German woman who had lived most of her life in California. Since I had lived in California sixty years, my interest has been awakened.
Her husband had died and since her adult children had moved to Germany for their work, she decided to return to her home country.
But the woman was not satisfied with how Germany had changed and she missed the relaxed friendliness and optimism of her adopted California culture. She was miserable in her new – yet old – home.
I couldn't help but contrast her experiences with mine.
When I moved to France in 2001, my circumstances had hardly been less favorable. I mourned my husband's loss four months earlier and was seriously ill.
There is a reason why astonishing 70 percent of nurses over 70 years of the patient die. At the time of my husband's death, I was 79 years old and had cared for him for almost a decade. I felt that I was about to leave this world.
If that wasn't enough, I moved from a beautiful house surrounded by trees that I loved. In addition, I had to dispose of almost all of my possessions, which were collected for a lifetime, almost all of my possessions. And I would soon be separated from geography from long -term friends that I loved, friends who were more like family than families.
Although these were the grim circumstances that I had left, my initial life in France was even more terrible. I moved from a spacious house in the forest to a tiny, tormentingly hot furnished studio apartment in a city road in an urban area.
The only virtue of the studio apartment was that I was close to my family that could help me take care of my medical or nutritional needs. Neither they nor I had the choice – we had to live near each other, and free accommodation of all kinds was difficult to get.
I would not have survived alone in Nevada City, no matter how hard my new arrangement was, it allowed me to continue living.
In these difficult months, my son, his French wife and two children raised my mood. My suffering was made easier for my needs from its constant care and attention for my needs. We all believed that the future could only get better. And later I became part of her extended French family and enriched the experience.
My circumstances improved when I moved four doors from my family to a house with three bedrooms a few months later. My house was small compared to many French houses from the USA.
A kitchen conversion made cooking more pleasant and less a fight to find the counter room. The air conditioning system helped me to cope with the heat of the Mediterranean summer. An awning in the rear terrace in the mail size reduced summer heat. This and a dozen large and small improvements over time transformed my house into my home.
The importance of friends
Without question was what my mood was most raised, French friends. My limited language skills were a big barrier, but somehow I found women who could communicate with me, even when I spoke Pidgin French.
I could have joined the American Expatriates clubs and could have deleted American culture in France. But I decided to keep myself with my French friends most of my social life. It was more important to integrate myself into French culture than to have a full social schedule with other native English speakers.
At home is where The heart is
When I read about the misfortune of the German woman after her return to Germany, I was reminded of the words of the decorative pillow that I brought to France: “Blower where you are planted.” The pillow was a thank you from Eleanor Kenitzer when I sang in her Cornish Community Choir when the Cornwall group toured. Before we traveled to Cornwall, I sewed reversible collars for the singers, so that we cut and cut hair of the members in the United Methodist Church (mainly for men).
After taking the pillow's philosophy into account, I sent Tamara Hardingham-Gill, the CNN reporter who wrote the article about the German woman. I confirmed that despite my age, I had happily reinvented myself in France and wrote four novels. I was bloomed where I was planted.
Imagine my surprise when she answered immediately and asked questions. I immediately answered your questions and later to inquiries about photos. The next day she planned a zoom call. As a result, an article about me on CNN International was published on June 15, 2025.
The article contains my move to France and how I was done. I immediately remembered my former tennis coach Greg Cicatelli, who joked with me when I started a weight loss in a makeover on the front page in the Union, our local newspaper, our 60 pound makeover. (Although he or I knew it at the time, this event would finally lead to the collapse of the Nevada district.)
“They make a diet and it makes news,” Greg blame me. When Greg reads the CNN article, I do not doubt that he makes a similar teasing remark: “You move to France and it makes international messages to CNN.”
He is right, do you know? I am an ordinary person who occasionally writes about my life experiences. That summarizes me. But I have advice for others who like me like the need to move.
Some of them, like me, had to move closer to children for medical reasons. Or maybe you have lost a spouse and found that your big home is too much or too expensive to maintain it. Or maybe you have forced health reasons to get into an assisted life agreement.
Whatever forces us to move us, it is good to remember that, wherever we are planted, we have to bloom if we want to be happy again. Thank you, Eleanor, for this council.
A note: The CNN article appeared internationally and also in the USA in AOL and Yahoo. A week later it appeared in the French Courrier, an international newspaper that circulates in French -speaking countries. Then the article appeared in the USA newspapers. The idea of reinventing yourself at any age apparently has its own life.
Carole Carson invites you to share her reaction to this article. If you want the first chapter of Caroles fictional autobiographical novel Blackbird, send an inquiry to carecarson41@gmail.com.