TL;DR: Seven Years Later (we're moving to France)
post by Jill
We're about to celebrate our 8th wedding anniversary in less than a week. Eight years ago, we were getting ready to tie the knot, and because we've always been a little crazy, we were also preparing to hit pause on our entire lives and travel for a year. This blog started during that time, documenting how and why we made that trip happen.
Something we took away from our big trip was that we deeply wanted to access the ability to do that again----pick up and go, explore, and expose ourselves to the rich variety of the human experience----as we re-designed our life at home. We wanted to be thoughtful about our next employment moves, where we lived, and how we prioritized our time, with the intention of making travel a major pillar of our lifestyle.
There was a five (or less) year plan of moving abroad, as well.
We got home from the big trip in late October of 2019. We reunited with family and friends, got the jobs that were necessary to start building back our financial resources, and enjoyed the holidays. We temporarily moved in with our dear friends, Melina and John----the couple that we'd lived with between college and the trip----this time, with their delightful toddler Ollie.
We started shopping for a sailboat, dreaming of creating a life where movement was literally built into the function of our home, even as home base was set to be in Commencement Bay.
I think you all remember what changed as winter turned into spring, early 2020.
Boat shopping became apartment hunting. Andrew's brand-new job in his industry dissolved before he'd found his footing. There was no way to sub in schools that were closed, or teach paint-and-sip classes for locked-down art studios.
Our apartment was beautiful. The landlords gave us permission to paint the walls if we wanted, so we went all-out. My best friend Leanna scored me a job offer at the animal rescue she worked for, in the equine department. A few months into that, Andrew joined the team at another facility as a general "handyman." We went through the strangest year of our lives, in our little pandemic pod.
(This is not a blog about the absolute insanity of mid-2020 to mid-2021, but you can ask us about it in person some time if you're in the mood for real-life stories that sound completely made up... set at an animal rescue.)
As the world starting shifting back to what we may collectively refer to as "normalcy," our new normal was evolving, too. We bought our first house, with the plan to rent it out when we moved abroad someday. Andrew reconnected with his professional trajectory in a government role, bringing us a sense of stability, and I went back to grad school to study mental health----the field that art, teaching, and horses were ultimately leading me to. We got a puppy.
My longtime friend and mentor, Laura, offered me a teaching role at her barn, and enough hours of barn chores work to allow me to limp along through school while filling my cup with horses in the best way. I chipped away at my classes, all online, and got to do part of my internship with a local equine-assisted psychotherapy program, graduating in December of 2023. Going into 2024, Andrew had shifted from working for the state to working for the city, I started my private practice, and our mini Aussie Emmett was continuing to tag along to the new youth horsemanship program that Laura was enabling Leanna and I to scheme up together. I was quickly becoming addicted to the new-to-me riding disciplines of ranch sorting and team penning.
Through all of this, the conversation never changed around eventual plans to return to exploring. While some doors felt like the wrong battle to try to re-open, we kept track of the keys to others; "moving abroad" was always theoretically on the table.
When we made decisions around home improvement projects, it was within the lens of, "When it becomes a rental..." When I was tempted to accept Laura's offer of selling me Cupcake (my equine soulmate), I turned it down, because I was prepared to figure out how to move my dog to another country, but not a horse. (Yet...) Part of my justification for starting my own practice so early in my career as a therapist was the ability to have total ownership and control over my work life and client load.
Even though it took more years and more detours than we'd originally pictured----our vision of living on a sailboat so far away, it feels like a different timeline----we're nothing if not committed. We set a goal of mid-2026 just over a year-and-a-half ago, and set a date by buying plane tickets last winter. On September 15th, Andrew, Emmett, and I will board a direct flight to Paris, France, to start the next chapter of our lives.
Some frequently asked questions....
Why France?
This will be thoroughly explored in future posts, I'm sure, so for now I'll keep it brief: Andrew and I have visited France no less than 5 times together, and he'd been there himself 4 times before we'd met... It will be cheaper for us to just stay for a while than to keep doing this!
Is Emmett coming with you???
YES, he most definitely is! We keep telling him he'll love the French. I hope our cultural read is accurate, and that the local strangers may attempt to pet him a little less frequently than Americans. (Emmett doesn't like strangers, or pets.)
Will you be working? Do you have jobs there?
The answer here depends very much on the precise language of the question. We will NOT be working "in France," with French jobs, on French soil, for French clients, at least on our current visas. Both of us have businesses registered in the U.S. that serve Washington State-based clients. I provide telehealth services, for example, and with telehealth, the service is considered to have taken place where the client is located, and not the therapist/provider. My license does not allow me to provide virtual sessions while clients are traveling out-of-state, actually, because I am only licensed in Washington.
Both Andrew and I will be maintaining the function of our businesses remotely, and therefore receiving income from them, yes. It is on our radar to look into what it would take to transition to a different visa type that would allow for us to work on the ground in France, but we're not there yet.
We did disclose the existence of our businesses and that income from them will contribute to our financial means while living in France when we applied for our visas.
How long will you stay?
We don't entirely know yet! Our current visas are valid for one year, and we will have the option to renew them. This is what we currently expect to do, and are operating under the assumption that we'll be in France for a two-year minimum. We don't know what we don't know, however, and it's hard to predict what we'll want a year or two from now. We may come back in a year and a half, we may pursue more permanent residency and buy property and create a long-term life there. Or maybe we'll move to another country, and keep exploring. Or maybe we'll spend half the year there, half a year in Washington. Or maybe....
Where will you live?
We booked 4 months of accommodation through Airbnb to get us somewhere to land, in Paris. In the first few months, we'll be looking for a longer rental term in something fully furnished, most likely within the Paris city limits or just outside. We are not considering property ownership yet, but hope to learn more about what that process might entail once we're on the ground.
Will Jill still ride horses?
I really, really, really hope so! Believe it or not, ranch sorting and other western riding sports are growing rapidly internationally, and there are already some active sorting and penning associations in France, in addition to a whole European Reined Cow Horse Association that is affiliated with our own NRCHA. My dream world is to find a cow horse to lease, and connect with some ranch sorters who don't mind partnering with a foreigner; I can at least say the numbers 0-9 in French!
As this post suggests, the blog is coming back----we'll be chronicling our new adventures, and offering our experiences for any curious minds or those looking to do the same.
Allons-y!
How incredibly exciting. I’m looking forward to reading about all the adventures y’all have and just navigating building a new normal there. Happy for you!