How Do You Know if It’s a Calling – or Just a Beautiful Daydream?

A reader asked me if moving to France after 60 was wise, and it led me to the deeper question of how we recognize a true calling when it appears.

A comment landed in the thread of a public Note yesterday. The note was about my upcoming iPhone photography masterclass and the time-limited opportunity to receive it as a complimentary bonus with an annual subscription – but only until midnight tonight. But the comment was about something quite different. It was from a woman I'll call a fellow dreamer, though I suspect she'd smile at that.

“Hello dear Sif.

Question for you, and I would appreciate your honest, heartfelt answer:
Here’s the scenario: you love France. You’ve traveled there a few times and as a tourist loved most things French. However, you didn’t have any official business and had minimal interaction with everyday people. You’ve been in love with the idea of living a quiet and serene life in smaller towns in France. You started learning the language on your own and can speak at beginner level. Now, you’re over 60 and retired and the itch is getting stronger.
Is it wise to make the move?”

When I first read it, I genuinely didn’t know for a moment if she was describing herself – or me, before I made the leap. I had to read to the end to find out.

That told me something.

I’ve been asked this question in different forms more times than I can count. And I want to answer it properly. Not with reassurance, not with a cheerful of course, go for it! — but honestly. The way I would want someone to answer me.

---

Start here: your values

A few days ago, Olivia Wickstrom of Petal + Hearth interviewed me for her publication. One of her questions stopped me in my tracks: How did you build the life you have today, and what values shaped it?

I sat with that for a moment. And then I wrote:

“What I can tell you is that five values have quietly run the whole show, even when I didn’t have names for them yet: freedom, authenticity, creativity, meaning, and passion. These are not negotiable for me. I cannot do work that has no meaning in it. I cannot live in a way that doesn’t allow for passion and authenticity. And I cannot thrive without freedom – of time, of movement, of creative expression. Any life I’ve tried to build without all five has quietly collapsed from the inside.

The pivots came when those values were being violated. Leaving the safety of institutional work to write and photograph full-time. Launching retreats with no roadmap. Moving to France with a dog, a suitcase full of intention, and nothing but rusty school French and four months in Paris thirty years ago to fall back on.

Each one felt enormous in the moment. In retrospect, each one was simply me choosing myself again.”

I restacked that quote myself afterwards, and asked a handful of people what their five core values were. The responses were so revealing – not just what people named, but how long it took them to find the words, and how personal it felt to name them out loud. Many sent me a DM instead.

Because most of us haven’t named them. We’ve lived them, or ignored them, or quietly ached when life asked us to set them aside. But they’ve been there all along, shaping every choice, every longing, every itch that refuses to go away.

Nested inside my five are the sub-values that give them texture. Under freedom lives adventure, growth, and sovereignty. Under creativity lives curiosity, exploration, and learning. They form a kind of inner architecture – a blueprint for how I move through the world.

When I bought Maison Violette at fifty-three — a stone house in a medieval village in the Languedoc, in a country where I knew no one, in a language I was still learning – I didn’t find courage at the root of that decision. I found alignment. The move matched my values so precisely that the fear, while real, was never the loudest voice in the room.

So before you answer the question should I go to France, I’d ask you to answer a quieter one first: what are the values you want to build your life around in this chapter of your life?

Not the ones you admire in others. Not the life you think you should want. Yours. Name them – with pen and paper if you can. And then look at the decision through that lens.

---

If your values include safety, steadiness, and the familiar

Then France is not a no. But it asks more of you.

Because here’s what no one quite tells you: moving to a foreign country doesn’t feel like a holiday extended. It feels, at first, like being a child again – fumbling with language, misreading social cues, standing in a queue unsure of the rules. It’s humbling in a way that can be exhilarating or quietly exhausting, depending on your constitution.

But if you’ve lived a long life of steadiness and feel you’ve outgrown it — if something in you is pressing against the edges and whispering there must be more — then perhaps this is exactly the leap you need. Not despite your love of the familiar, but because you’ve earned enough of it to now want something else.

Go slowly. Test before you buy. Feel before you commit.

---

If your values include freedom, curiosity, and a taste for the unknown

Then you probably already know the answer.

The itch you describe is not restlessness. It’s your values speaking – and your soul too. They’re telling you that you are not quite yourself yet in the life you’re currently living. That there is a version of you waiting in a French market, or at a table in a village café, or walking a lavender path at dusk, that you haven’t met yet.

She is worth going to find.

---

On fear — because it will come

Fear doesn’t disqualify you. I want to say this clearly, because I think many people mistake fear for a signal to stop.

When I made my leap, I felt fear. Of course I did. But fear was not in the driver’s seat. Excitement was. And those two things can travel together perfectly well — fear can join you on the journey without preventing you from embarking on it.

The question isn’t do I feel afraid. It’s what is louder — the fear or the pull?

---

On practical wisdom — the steps between dreaming and doing

You don’t have to choose between your old life and a new one in a single dramatic moment. There is a gentler architecture to this.

Consider renting first. Three months. Six months. Find a small town that matches the France in your imagination — not Paris, not the tourist trail, but the version you’ve been quietly dreaming of. If you own a home, rent it out while you’re gone. Let it fund the experiment.

What is the worst that can happen?

This is the question I asked myself before I bought Maison Violette. Not dismissively – with real curiosity. I walked through the worst-case scenarios one by one and found that most of them were survivable. Some were even surmountable. At the end of the exercise, what remained was this: I could most probably sell at a small profit if I needed to. There was no permanent damage waiting on the other side of a wrong decision. Only experience.

That’s often what we find when we look honestly at the risks. They’re smaller than the fear made them.

---

On being alone – and then not being alone

You mentioned minimal interaction with everyday people during your visits to France. I understand that concern. I moved to a village where I knew no one.

Here is what I’ve learned: if you arrive open – curious, undefended, willing to be a little vulnerable, people come.

And here, on Substack, you are already not alone. This platform draws people who make exactly this kind of choice: who leave the expected path, who trade the familiar for the alive. France is perhaps the most common destination among them. You will find your people here. I’ve found some of mine this way, and they have become real friendships – the kind built quickly because they’re built on shared values rather than shared history.

---

So, is it wise?

Wisdom, I’ve come to believe, is not the same as caution.

Wisdom is knowing yourself well enough to recognize when a pull is coming from genuine readiness – and when it’s coming from somewhere that needs more tending first.

You’ve been learning the language. You’ve been imagining the life. You’ve been feeling the itch get stronger.

That’s not recklessness. That’s your values asking to be lived.

Allow yourself a moment of time travel. Sit quietly and imagine yourself at ninety, looking back at this exact crossroads. Which version of the story would you rather have lived — the one where you whispered “what a shame I didn’t do it”, or the one where you smiled and thought “my goodness, I am so glad I took that leap”?

That feeling knows something your logic doesn’t.

The wise question isn’t should I go. It’s what would I need to feel at peace with going. Answer that, and your next step will reveal itself.

And whatever you decide – I’ll be here, writing about all of it. The leaving and the arriving and the living in between. Because that’s what this place is for.

And if you ask me personally – yes. With everything I have, yes. I am so glad I took the leap.

With love,

---

One last thing, before I go

For a few more hours, there is an open door of a different kind.

When you join the Inner Circle at Letters from Maison Violette as an annual member – at €61,75 for the year, a rate that locks in permanently even as prices rise, my iPhone photography masterclass comes to you as a complimentary bonus.

How to Shoot Magazine-Worthy Photos Like a Pro – With Your iPhone is priced at €67 on its own. This means that the masterclass alone is worth more than the annual membership – so this is, quite simply, a rather lovely window ✨

It releases at the end of May. The moment the doors open, you’ll receive a private email with your personal access link – no searching, no waiting.

This particular offer closes at midnight tonight. After that, it quietly disappears.

If you’ve been considering joining – if something in this letter has spoken to something in you – this might be the moment to simply say yes.

You’ll find the link below. I would be genuinely honoured to have you.