Can moving to another country change your life? I say yes.

In 2020 I lost all three of my jobs when the entire hotel industry shut down. I could no longer afford my tiny apartment in Los Angeles, and I didn’t know how long it would take for my old jobs to come back–I wasn’t sure that I’d still want them anymore anyway.

It would have been easy to move in with one of my sisters and pick up various freelance gigs while struggling to keep up with health insurance, car payments and everything else, in the hope that one day I could rent another tiny apartment for only 30% more than I paid before. But I’ve never been a fan of the easy route.

I was 43, childfree, with only a small amount of savings, but I still had big dreams and vivid memories of a promise I had made to myself more than two decades earlier. Oh yeah, and I also had one invaluable resource–an Italian passport. Within a few months I had sold everything I owned except for two suitcases and a very spoiled cat, booked a one-way flight to Turin, Italy and never looked back.

This isn’t the first time I’ve reinvented myself–moved to a new city, with a mission to inject some new life into my old one, hoping to transform into a new, improved version of myself. It might not be the last time either. But its my first time moving abroad, and the first time I’ve been bold enough to share my adventure with the world.

I hope that my story will inspire someone else to follow their own long-forgotten dream. Maybe it will be you?