Taking the leap: Moving to Portugal.

Call it a decade long crisis.

Maybe that is exactly what it was: a crisis. Possibly, it was a bit premature to call it a midlife one. Particularly because it began in my mid twenties and lasted well over a decade. But here we were: in full crisis mode.

It was right after my thirty-sixth birthday I began to panic. This panic had been acclimating for years, but something about being on the downwards slope to forty threw my consciousness into a five alarm fire. Finding myself in my mid thirties, not old by anyones standards, but certainly old enough to be recommended a good eye cream and a few units of botox. No one was any longer asking, “what do you plan to do with your life?” Somehow, on the grand timeline, I was no longer in the dreaming and planning portion, but in the doing and settling in for the long haul.

This scared the hell out of me.

Conversations over coffee and cocktails with friends always resulting in me lamenting over not being where I want to be in life. Did everyone feel this way? Or am I just dramatic? After all, I was married to my best friend, we had two wonderful kiddos, a gorgeous home which was building insane equity, and I was the owner of a flourishing commercial photography business I had built with my two hands from the ground up. Yes, I must be dramatic. Maybe I was one of those people who was never truly satisfied.

Yet late at night, I would lay awake knowing a critical piece of myself was missing; I was comatose.

It wasn’t as if I wanted out of my life. My marriage was great, my kids were healthy. I wanted these people in my life forever, and I wouldn’t trade them for anything.

Yet, I felt like I was settling. My marriage was settling. My family was settling. Was it wrong to want more out of life? We had hit a comfortable decades- long- groove that was depressing me. There was no adventure. There was no growing. There was no challenge to make us better people. Everything was just so… comfortable.

Maybe my privilege was showing.

I kept mapping out our future. What was ahead of us? Maybe a yearly vacation to some cushy spot? Maybe I would take on some even bigger clients. We didn’t need a larger house, we were already swimming in space. What were we working towards?

I could see our life spread out in front of us:

Work, accumulate things, work some more, retire, then die.

Shit.

My husband and I married fairly young. We married in the middle of a economic recession, which meant we were both without work and the first year of our marriage. We lived with family and struggled to get by on food stamps. We didn’t have much, but we dreamt of where we would be going. We wanted to travel more than anything. And initially, that was the plan.

But life slowly creeps in and around you like a slow growing ivy; binding you to what is expected. Comfortability and security is seductive. You blink and a decade is gone and you are owned by what you’ve accumulated.

Where did the two wide eyed, hopeful kids full of dreams go? Late at night, I’d lay awake wondering if we’d ever return to those people.

Last summer, we took a bucket list trip to southern Italy. It was our first time in Europe as a family. We spent a large portion of our time in a small town called Gorgeofreddo. It was pretty remote, and since we knew about five Italian words total, we had a lot of downtime to process and think.

One evening, I remember sitting outside, admiring the otherworldly colors of the Italian sunset and deep sense of knowing came over me.

We had to leave.

We had to let go.

We had to leap.

It was a strange sensation; release, direction and grief all stirred together in one pot. Leaping requires letting go of what is holding on to you. It means leaving behind everything you know.

My husband, Kyle, and I had been toying with the idea of moving overseas for a year. But that would mean renting out our house, figuring out work, dealing with visas, pulling out the kids out of public schools and enrolling them in online school, shipping two beloved pets across the ocean, and getting rid of 75% of what we own. The two doe eyed kids we once were who could drop everything and go, now had two kids, a mortgage and a ton of responsibility. Was it possible we could pull this off?

All I knew is we had to. We had to go. A deep sense of knowing was calling.

A few years back, I had taken a liking to travel shows. I would sit a cry watching people travel all over the globe; meeting interesting people and cultures, tasting new foods, seeing the wonders of the world. I ached to be a part of this.

During this season, I started watching Rick Steves (which side note: read his book- he’s a complete bad ass). One particular episode caught my attention. The episode was set in Lisbon, Portugal. The multicolored buildings, and steep cobble stoned streets completely captured my imagination. A few days later, I met with my friend Abby for coffee at our favorite local spot, and told her about my new fascination with Portugal.

“I want to go to Portugal”, I told her.

Fast forward a few years, and the thought came back to me. What if we moved to Portugal for a year? What if we completely immersed ourselves in a different culture and language? What would that teach our children? What would it teach us? What would we see? How would we grow?

For nine months, we worked tirelessly to plan this year expedition. It became a part time job in and of itself just figuring out logistics. Several times it looked like it wouldn’t work out. We rented our home in Nashville, and used the money to rent a tiny city apartment in Lisbon. We signed a lease sight unseen.

I should mention here, we had never been to Portugal. Ever. Not once.

People kept asking us why Portugal? Kyle and I would laugh and try to come up with a sensible reply of why on earth we would move across the world with our family. We never found a legit answer to that question.

We just knew we had to leap.

A month ago, we boarded a plane with a one way ticket to Portugal. We brought only what we could carry.

We’ve been here a month now. We are beside ourselves in love with beautiful Portugal. It’s been challenging in ways we could not have anticipated. It’s also exceeded our wildest expectations.

When I was in Italy last summer, part of the knowing was not only leaping, but returning to something I had let go of a long time ago: writing.

So, here we are and here is my little blog, Mandy In Lisbon. Do people even read blogs anymore? Who knows. But this will be my journal of our leap; our adventure into something new.

Maybe it will spark something in you to follow the knowing in you. However that looks or materializes in your life.

Start the business, make the move, writing the book, travel more. It will look different for each of us. But, I am here to cheer you on.

Go leap.

xo

-Mandy in Lisbon