I was prompted to write this post by a thread on a post on Farrah Storr’s Substack - Things Worth Knowing. She asked her readers if there was a mantra or piece of wisdom that helps to gets them through in life. The thread was full of fabulous, inspirational pieces of advice shared from woman-to-woman, passed down through generations, or learnt through motherhood or bereavement. Wonderful, wise, heartwarming words that help make life that little bit more fathomable.
It pulled into my mind a few simple words that made all the difference to us when we were making the wild and rash decision to buy a tumble down house in the French woods. Words that have really shaped our lives here and continue to work their magic on our decisions everyday.
There are so many what ifs when you leave one life for another. So many moments when you question what on earth you are doing; whether you are about to ruin your life by risking everything you’ve ever worked for, whether your children will thrive or wither because of the decisions that you’ve made?
These fears boiled and churned inside us for months. There were times when I wasn’t sure if what I was feeling was sheer terror or excitement. Times when the unknown of it all got so much that I just had to go somewhere and cry for a little while.
We had to risk everything for this adventure. Sell a home we loved, give up our jobs, leave everything behind. We did it with an almost blind conviction that everything would be ok. There was some unspoken belief between us that this was just what we were meant to do.
You could call it foolish, or naive, and it was probably both. Some people call it brave, but it has never felt like that to us. What made this life possible, what made us keep moving past the doubts that keep other people standing still, was that we stopped believing in failure.
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