The Story You Haven't Heard

Most of you have come to this newsletter in the past two years, since my viral post shared by Elizabeth Gilbert:

You’ve followed the ups and downs of my journey to create an audacious creative life for myself in the UK, earning a Master’s in Creative Writing and settling into a lovely cottage by the sea. (And I’ve been so glad to have you along for the ride!!)

But you haven’t heard the story of how it all began, in the Fall of 2022, when I left my old life with a one-way ticket to Paris and spent a year traveling across Europe.

I learned early that women weren’t supposed to head off into the world on their own. Like most, I grew up with stories in which boys went off on life-changing journeys. Girls stayed at home.

For generations, women were told that the meaning of their lives was home, love, relationships (while men defined themselves through their work). Then the women of my generation, Generation X, were told something new. We were to be Superwomen, defining ourselves through family, love, and work.

But I wondered, who are we when our children don’t need us anymore, when home is no longer our raison d’être? What comes after we have sacrificed ourselves on the altar of the Superwoman ideal?

To find out, I left everything behind: no husband, no career, no home, no hometown, nothing to define me anymore. Nothing, in fact, but myself and my suitcase. I was a nomad, an expat, a traveler, nothing and no one, and thus free to reimagine myself and my life.

The memoir I wote remains unread on my computer. (After my agent failed to sell the proposal, I learned that the market for memoirs is very tough if you aren’t already a celebrity or have a massive social media following.)

On the surface, FLIGHT is a travel story, full of (mis)adventure. Really, though, it’s about figuring out what to do after you fall to pieces—should you glue yourself back together or make something completely new with those pieces? I decided to give myself a year to figure that out.

Travel gave me the opportunity to explore both outside and inside as I rebuilt myself, rather than just rush into the next new thing. Over the course of a year, I traveled around France, England, Sicily, Germany, and Scotland, meeting people and exploring where and how I might like to live.

I climbed Europe’s most active volcano in Sicily.

I walked in the footsteps of Simone de Beauvoir through the streets of Paris and on the tall cliffs overlooking the Mediterranean outside Cassis, France.

I faced my own history and Germany’s in Berlin, where I met a man who grew up in East Germany and hadn’t caught up with the present.

In Cornwall I took a wild boat ride to the lighthouse that inspired Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse.

In Scotland, I stood on the shores of the Isle of Iona, where St. Columba arrived in 563 (not a typo!), and where, they say, the veil betweenq this world and the next is very thin.

I also confronted my fears, opened myself to new ways of living, dated men of different nationalities, and rode a roller coaster of emotions.

I had no idea where I would end up. I didn’t know who I was anymore. I only knew that I had the same basic needs that all humans have—love, home, and happiness. But those ideas had all been perverted for me.

Love had meant marriage and compromising my authentic self.

Home had meant incessant labor and caring for others while submerging my own needs and desires.

And happiness was a never-reachable ideal of thinness, sex appeal, and domestic perfection.

Starting over meant, more than anything, defining love, home, and happiness for myself.

As I moved around Europe, staying a few weeks or a month in each place, I poked and prodded at my desires.

• Should I go on Tinder, as a woman I met in Paris told me to?

• Or should I try to build some kind of female community and forget about men altogether?

• Or should I focus on connecting to nature or to a God I wasn’t sure I could believe in?

• Could I find a home in the UK, France, Italy, or Germany? Should I live in the city or the countryside?

• Should I find a new job, vocation, or mission? Should I try to become a writer, as I’d always wanted to? Or was that a recipe for too much solitude?

What was necessary to my happiness? The possibilities were dizzying.

Guiding me along the way were the life stories and writings of early-twentieth-century women writers and artists—all of whom had seized on new opportunities for travel and/or serious artistic or literary careers, breaking with tradition and experimenting with the shape their lives could take.

They include the well-known—such as Simone de Beauvoir, Virginia Woolf, Muriel Spark—and the considerably less well-known—such as expat writers Kay Boyle and Janet Frame, artists Dora Maar and Tove Jansson, photographer Margaret Fay Shaw, and the ancient poet Enheduanna.

Their stories grounded me while my whole life was up in the air, helping me chart a new path, as I learned about how they resisted the conventional molds of women’s lives and created lives of passion and meaning on their own terms. Their stories helped me chart a new path for myself.

While I’ve continued my journey, that first year was the real journey of discovery and experimentation. I’m excited to share it with you!

I’d love to hear your thoughts, as always, so do share in the comments section, or feel free to reply to this email if you’d prefer.

Until next time,

Anne

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If you missed the opening scene from my book proposal about my time in Sicily, you can read it here:

Announcing the Serialization of FLIGHT

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May 9

To mark the approaching fourth anniversary of my flight from the U.S., I’ve decided to serialize the memoir I wrote about my first year of travel across Europe: FLIGHT: One Woman’s Adventures in Search of a Passionate Life.
I will share it here in this newsletter for those who have upgraded their subscriptions.

Learn more about me at my website, or read my transformation story from academia to a creative life: