How it all started...

                                             

June 15th, 2013

So here we are. I’m starting a new blog, a family blog, because our family is embarking on an adventure that we hope will mark us forever, that we hope will bring us closer together, and will change our life for the better. But the truth is, this was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make! Because truly, we have loved it here.

We feel like we grew up here. Our friends feel like family. We love our community. We live in an awesome place with great neighbors, we have everything we could wish for… Things are going well, really. 

My practice is at its peak and I am starting to really build a reputation among professionals. My clients refer their friends to me and I love what I am doing. My kids go to great schools, our oldest goes to a great TaeKwondo studio that is shaping his character, we have a wonderful church that is awesome for the kids as well, we make decent money, we can go surfing, sailing, hiking every weekend… So why leave?

The truth is, I have asked myself that question so many times this year… And on the flip side, the other question I have asked myself is, “Why not?”. Over the 12 years I’ve been here, my heart has probably been split between two places for at least 8. Until finally, about 3-4 years ago, I went home after a long stretch of 2.5 years, and told everyone there that I felt at home in LA, that this was it, I felt great there, and didn’t see myself coming back.

Well geez, that didn’t last very long! That sweet spot where you finally feel integrated, like you’ve reconciled the two parts of you… About two years ago, it started to hurt again. This longing, this yearning for my country, my culture, my language. Perhaps it was the kids growing up and not really speaking French, watching my oldest becoming a little American, being influenced by his friends at school and watching my culture slowly die in our family… Or perhaps it’s approaching the forties, and going through a midlife crisis. I started having flashbacks of my childhood, memories of things I did as a kid, and longing for my children to have those experiences: building cabins in the forest with sticks and leaves, picking grapes in the vineyards in the fall, going skiing in the winter and building snowmen outside our doorstep, learning those childhood songs that I sometimes sing to them at bedtime, and most of all, spending time with family.

Watching my kids grow up with their cousins, celebrating birthdays with grandparents, aunts and uncles, sleepovers with cousins, all these things I have felt robbed of for them, for years… Continuing to live our increasingly comfortable but increasingly stressful life in LA felt increasingly painful. I felt grief, in the deepest parts of myself. I panicked. I got angry. I did not want this family to loose my cultural heritage, and the way this was going, that’s what was happening.

One day, as I was having a meltdown after an argument with my kids over speaking French, my husband said: “why don’t we just go for a year or two, live with your parents, I work for your dad, the kids go to school, become bilingual, and then we come back?”. And that felt right. And I felt happy and excited. So we started moving towards that, until we bumped into walls and obstacles and fears and “what about this” and “what if” and thoughts about everything we had to loose. It was a headache. Like having a constant migraine for 3 months. And I couldn’t take it. So I dropped it and decided to give it another year, give ourselves more time to figure it out.

Well, the thing is, with those things, when it’s the right thing to do and you turn away from it, it doesn’t go away. It comes back around. And so it did. It’s a long story, which we’ll spare you, but basically, in February, some things happened that made us realize this: If we don’t do this now, we will regret it. What are we afraid of? Yes, there are risks. Yes, there is much to loose. But we feel in our hearts that this is what is right for our family now, this is what we are supposed to do. We feel that God is leading us that way. So with 5 months left to plan, we started moving in that direction. This was the first journal entry about this process, which I saved for later, when we’d have time to start our blog. We have since jumped with both feet into our new life here in Switzerland. There will be ups and downs. Will you join us along the journey?