There are two kinds of people who move abroad:
People who do it because they are brave.
People who do it because they are mildly unwell and romantic, and they mistake stress for ‘character building.’
We were, respectfully, the second kind.
If you’re new here: I’m Kamille. We left California for rural France and accidentally adopted a life that requires paperwork, patience, and a sense of humor. I write about the culture shocks, the small joys, and the very real chaos of restoring an old château while raising kids.
My husband and I (with two little ones in tow) moved from California to France in 2023, and I’d love to tell you it was all linen dresses and crusty bread and me casually frolicking in the lavender fields.
It was also me standing in front of a printer, whispering “why” like it’s a prayer, because a form needed to be printed, signed, scanned, uploaded, re-printed (single-sided only), and then…mailed. To a building. With a door. In the year of our lord 2023.
But here’s the strange part.
Somewhere between the paperwork, the phone calls, and the feeling that I had become an unpaid intern for the French administrative state, something changed.
Moving abroad makes you feel invincible.
Not in a “nothing can hurt me” way. More in a “my nervous system has stopped pretending every minor inconvenience is a personal threat” way.
And that is a kind of superpower.
The myth: you move abroad and become a new person
The reality: you move abroad and become a new version of your old person.
You don’t wake up as a glowing, effortless European character who floats through markets holding a bouquet and a moral advantage.
You wake up as yourself, but now you also have to:
interpret a school message written in French, using words you’ve never seen
find the correct office for the correct document
understand why the correct office is closed for lunch, and then closed on Wednesday, and then closed “exceptionally”
spend hours scanning the supermarket aisles searching for the French equivalent of cream cheese
At first, it’s humiliating. Genuinely.
In the U.S., competence is invisible. You’re used to being able to do basic life tasks without a performance review.
You know how to:
call the doctor
understand the bill
handle the contractor
solve the problem with a website and two clicks
In France, you still solve the problem. But first you must prove you are worthy by enduring a small trial.
Often, the trial is a phone call (in rapid French, with no patience for your ‘elementary’ French). Or snail mail. Or faxing.
Why it changes you
Living abroad is like strength training, except the weights are: bureaucracy, social awkwardness, language mistakes you can’t take back, and the constant sensation that you’re missing a rule everyone else learned at birth.
At the beginning, you’re sore. Constantly. Spiritually.
Then you notice something: You’re not dying.
You’re just…uncomfortable. And once you realize you can survive discomfort, your brain stops treating it like an emergency.
You stop spending all your energy trying to avoid looking foolish. Because you already have looked foolish.
A lot.
And somehow you’re still standing. Still functioning. Still finding your way home. Still feeding your children. Still making friends. Still living an actual life.
That’s the invincible part.
Not perfection. Proof.
If this is your kind of essay, subscribe so the next one finds you. I write here in real time, from inside the move, the culture shock, and the slow restoration of a very old, very opinionated, French château.
The kids become little gladiators (in the nicest way)
I see this the most in our kids.
Starting school in a brand-new language with zero prior experience is not “cute.” It’s epic.
They had to walk into classrooms where they couldn’t understand the rules, the jokes, the songs, the instructions, or the emotional tone.
They had to become comfortable being beginners in public.
And the wild thing is, children can do this better than adults (as long as we don’t panic on their behalf).
Now they translate things for us sometimes. They pronounce words with a confident native accent.
They’ve learned that you can be new, confused, and still be okay.
Beginner Energy
Moving abroad forces you into a state that most adults avoid like the plague: beginner energy.
In the U.S., we spend a lot of our lives trying to appear competent. Even when we’re not. Especially when we’re not. We want to look like we’ve got it handled. We want to feel fluent in our lives.
And then you move to a place where you are not fluent in anything.
You are the person squinting at the school message. The person asking the same question three times. The person who smiles too much because you’re not sure what you just agreed to. The person who gets home and realizes you accidentally bought three kilograms of something you thought was flour and is absolutely not flour.
And the first instinct is to shrink. To apologize. To feel embarrassed. To avoid situations where you’ll look stupid.
But you can’t. Not if you want a life here.
So you learn to be a beginner without making it a character flaw.
You learn to separate your worth from your performance.
Also, inconveniently, the science is not on Team Comfort. Humans tend to be happiest when they’re growing which usually looks like struggle (with a better title). Not misery. Not burnout. Just the steady feeling of: I’m doing something hard, I’m getting better, and my life is expanding.
Moving abroad is basically that on hard mode. You’re collecting tiny wins all day long and eventually your brain starts to trust you again.
And once you do this, you become weirdly brave in other areas too. Not because you’ve “found yourself” or “reinvented your identity.”
Because you’ve stopped treating awkwardness like danger.
How France Accidentally Trained Us for a Château
We have no prior renovation experience. None. We did not grow up operating power tools or flipping houses.
And yet, we are renovating a French château.
Not because we’re naturally fearless, but because we’ve already trained for uncertainty.
We’ve already learned how to:
be patient without falling apart
ask for help without dying of shame
do complicated things with imperfect language
keep going when the system makes no sense
and survive long stretches where progress is nearly invisible
Renovation is the same muscle. It’s not confidence so much as it is endurance.
(also, it’s paperwork).
How to borrow this “invincible” feeling even if you’re not moving abroad
If you want the strong-version-of-yourself benefits without relocating your entire life, here’s the real mechanism:
Do hard things on purpose. Small ones. Regularly.
Not to suffer. Not to prove something.
Just to remind your brain: “We can handle this.”
A few ways to practice:
Pick one weekly “hard thing”
A phone call you’ve been avoiding. A form. A conversation. A task that makes you procrastinate.
Get comfortable being a beginner in public
Take a class. Speak the language. Try the thing. Be bad at it. Live.
Build a tiny “friction ritual”
In our house it’s basically: breathe, translate, laugh, try again.
You can create your own version.
Keep a small list called “Evidence”
Write down the moments you handled something that used to scare you.
Your brain forgets. Make it remember.
Because the truth is: Invincibility isn’t a personality trait or something you’re born with.
It’s a receipt.
And moving abroad hands you a stack of them.
Not all of them are pretty. Some are printed, signed, scanned, re-printed, and then rejected for being double-sided.
But they add up.
And one day you realize that you’re not the same person you were before.
You’re stronger. Your kids are stronger. Your marriage is stronger (or at least more battle-tested). You’re less fragile around discomfort. You’re calmer under pressure.
And when the next big dream shows up, looking unreasonably large and mildly terrifying - like renovating a château - you don’t flinch the way you used to.
You just think:
Okay. We’ve done harder.
Subscribe if you want more essays like this, plus our ongoing France life and château chapters as we live them.
And if you want the renovation decisions and real behind-the-scenes, Castle Diaries is the paid layer.
À bientôt,
Kamille
New here? Start with these two:
Start Here: who I am and what this publication is
The Awkward Art of Becoming a Local: my favorite “life in France” chapter so far
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“You learn to separate your worth from your performance.” - This line will stay in my heart for a while. Thank you so much for sharing!
This is exactly what I've been trying to articulate about moving abroad. The invincibility doesn't come from confidence, but surviving enough discomfort that your brain stops treating it like an emergency. And the beginner energy piece is the real growth!!