Three weeks to go until our move to France

This past week has been a doozy.

Somehow in the midst of trying to close up my entire life in the United States, my husband and I decided to start a podcast and record four episodes (to be fair, this was my idea), I have joined Threads (just one more thing, right?) and I’m trying to complete our French government “dossier” — an official digital folder of all the important financial and personal aspects of our life that will help our future landlord decide whether to rent to us or not. And that’s just three things.

My to-do list is pages long and our house does not look at all like someone is moving in three weeks other than the fact that

stuff

is

everywhere.

I don’t have any words of wisdom at the moment. I am simply taking each day one at a time.

Next week I will finish up work, closing up my psychiatric practice five years after I opened, bringing to a close a ten year career as a nurse. Not bad, for someone who has always seen themself as flighty. By July 1st I will no longer be a practicing nurse practitioner, and we will have exactly three weeks until a flight takes us across the vast Atlantic, eastward bound.

This whole, “I’m moving to France” phrase has suddenly become more real in the past week. But if you ask my body, it has become more real over the past two weeks. It was ten days ago that I began experiencing GI issues, bad enough that I believed I was experiencing gallstones or some other gallbladder issue. After an ultrasound at my doctor’s, the results came back completely normal. So normal in fact that she said my insides looked like her med school textbook. Fantastic news for the gallbladder, but clearly I am holding stress in my body and I know from my work the past five years just exactly how quickly that can turn south. Just today I began noticing muscle twitching in my ribs that only stopped when I took slow deep breaths.

So I spent two hours resting on the bed today. Relaxing, listening to French people pronounce easy French words, looking at rental properties with my husband, and truth be told, spent ten minutes clicking though our dossier.

My goals for the next week include:

1. more box breathing — one of many tools I find helpful when I start feeling overwhelmed

2. clearing one disarrayed area so that I have a place that is clean and calm to retreat to when feeling overwhelmed

3. daily morning walks once I am no longer working, for my health, my brain, and to create routine

And that’s it. Our schedule is quite busy as we say some of our final good-byes to friends, ready the house to rent, and try to figure out what to keep, what to get rid of, and what to ship.

This move is definitely helping me grow. And someday when I’m not quite so mentally and physically drained I hope to be able to write about it. I hope you have a wonderful week. I know mine will be memorable.

Hi, I’m Abbie. I’m currently a psychiatric nurse practitioner in the United States and am in the process of closing my private practice in preparation for a move to France this July. I’m living out my dream: move to France, be a photographer. And I’m writing about it here.