Welcome to my blog – Midlife Crisis… in France.
My name is Carinne.
COVID struck everyone pretty hard in so many different ways.
COVID for us was perhaps the ‘last straw’. We lived in a beautiful farmhouse in the middle of nowhere and had a relatively good lifestyle. Not rich, not poor, but average. And happy. But then I reached 46. I started to work in a retirement home in a closed Alzheimer’s Unit. COVID hit. There was around a 45% death rate in the unit due to the fragility of the residents. After you have prepared the third body for the funeral home you start to ask yourself “life questions”.
Greta Thunberg at the time was talking to our children, who in turn were forcing us to realise the bubble our lives essentially were. My daughter, after just six months lockdown, shared with us that all she wanted to do was to see someone, anyone, other than us.
Harsh realities had to be faced. In essence a midlife crisis, or a complete meltdown with the whisky! Our adventure in France had reached a fork in the road. Extremely hard decisions, personal and private ones at the time, were taken.
The first step
The first frightening step was taken in July 2021 as we sold our farmhouse and immediately bought a terraced village house in the Pyrénées mountains, our new family home, the total opposite of what we had ever known before!
Since then my husband and I have changed our jobs, got rid of a car, and are on the next step of our new journey, perhaps in some ways the hardest leg, towards a more sustainable lifestyle.
For a year we will be recording our progress as a family, as we try to drastically change the way we live, eat and travel, within reason financially and socially. We will discover how much our carbon footprint will have hopefully reduced in 2 years, and whether we are successful in becoming a zero-waste family. It might not be pretty, we will probably fail numerous times, but even through the light fuzz of alcohol and heaps of chocolate wrappers, hopefully we shall have some successes!
Join me as we move not only mentally from one lifestyle to another, but also physically from mainland South of France close to Toulouse, to a renovation project in the French part of Catalonia in the depths (or the heights) of the Pyrénées. Perhaps in hindsight not the best choice of location for an acrophobe!
Budding Author
I have been writing since a child; fiction, non-fiction and poetry. As the time has passed, I have found middle age leaving me with no patience and less inhibitions, an unfortunate combination at times, particularly with a bottle of wine in hand! *Sigh* It has however given me the impetus (or madness) to finally finish off projects, and venture into the world of the ‘published author’ under my real name.
Please bear with me as I start to publish my notes and begin presenting my work in the ‘Shop‘ section.
Online English Teacher and Homestays
I am a qualified and experienced Online Language Teacher specialising in Business English, but also ESL English and MFL French.
We also offer language immersion holidays in the Pyrénées for one or two weeks at a time, for either groups or individuals. Please contact me for more details if you are interested.
