‘I was free to recreate myself’: This American woman says that relocating to France at the age of 80 saved her life

The setting sun, framed by the Arc de Triomphe, illuminates the Champs-Élysées during the 2024 Summer Olympics, Friday, Aug. 2, 2024, in Paris, France. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

She’d spent most of her life focusing on other people’s needs, so when Carole Carson’s husband passed away four years ago, the then-80-year-old realized it was time to do something for herself.

After mulling over the prospect of moving to the Midwest to be near her daughter, Carole decided instead that she would leave California behind and move to France, where her son lived with his wife and children.

In 2021, Carole “screwed up” her courage, and flew from California, where she’d spent all of her adult life, to a quaint town on the outskirts of Montpellier in southern France for a new beginning. Four years later, she’s still there.

Life-changing decision

“I think it is no exaggeration to say that I would be dead by now had I not moved to France,” Carole tells CNN Travel, before explaining that she’s now happier than ever in Castelnau-le-Lez, and her health has improved dramatically.

The great-grandmother, who writes for her “hometown newspaper” in Nevada City, has also finally been able to pursue her long-held dream of becoming a novelist, with four novels published.

“Something about being freed from expectations of who I was based on who I’d always been, allowed me to be the writer I’d always wanted to be…” she says. “I was free to recreate myself once again.”

However, making such a huge move at the age of 80 was far from an easy decision for her.

Carole explains she’d visited the European country a few times before and had previously considered moving there with her husband, but he was less keen on the idea.

“He was very much a man of habits,” she explains. “And towards the end of his life, I was his caregiver, and he had dementia, Alzheimer’s and a lung disease that prevented him from moving around. So it wasn’t practical.”

After his death in April 2021, Carole sold her beloved home, got rid of many of her possessions, applied for a visa, and set about the “daunting” process of moving to France.

“What really motivated me to move was the fact that I’d be around family and I’d have a whole fresh start,” she explains.

In order to ensure that she had some independence, Carole, originally from Iowa, opted to move into a studio apartment in the same building as her son and his family.

However, she admits that she found the first few months of life in the country incredibly difficult, as she had gone from living in a large house to a much smaller property.

“I went from living in a palace to living in a studio apartment that was so hot I couldn’t breathe,” she says. “And windows I couldn’t open because they opened onto the street.

“And not a single friend, I was terrified to even go to the boulangerie (bakery) to buy bread, because I wasn’t sure I could manage the change or the communication.”

Carole says that dealing with the “tremendous loss” of her husband, friends, home, the life that she’d known, along with “switching from total independence to dependence,” triggered some abandonment issues from her childhood that she hadn’t really faced before.

“That part was really terrifying,” she adds.

Feeling helpless, Carole channeled her despair into writing, restarting a novel that she’d always wanted to finish, but had never managed to find the time to.

Novel idea

“I think I cried the whole time I was writing,” she recalls. “I had tears streaming down my face writing, but that first book was more dictation than writing.”

Carole explains that she actually wrote the first pages of her first novel, “Blackbird,” back in the 1960s, but never completed it.

“That’s how long the idea had been stored in my head,” she says. “So when I finally could sit down, the words just flowed.”

Carole found that the “cathartic” experience of writing the novel helped her to cope with the upheaval in her life, as well as work through some of the issues she’d been struggling with.

“It was a good thing to work through, because I think now I’m really comfortable being alone,” she adds.

As her independence grew, Carole felt able to go about integrating herself into the local community.

Thankfully, she found that she could connect with people easily, despite struggling with the language.

“I’ve made friends, even though my French is terrible,” she says. “And I’ve made friends that I’m as close to as the ones that I left in the U.S.

“I think friends make life meaningful. I mean, the house could come or go. What you eat can come and go. But it’s your friends, for me, at least, that make your day.”

Carole, who’s had a “range of careers” over the years, including working in education and business, admits that she was a workaholic before, but loves the fact that the lifestyle in France seems to be geared towards socializing.

Nowadays, Carole spends her mornings writing before heading out for walks with her “girlfriends.”

“We take the dog and we have coffee and gossip,” she says. “Then we walk back, and we might have lunch together.”

Carole points out that her health had been declining while she was in the U.S., but says she’s noticed a huge change during her time in France, and has nothing but praise for the French healthcare system.

“I’ve seen some of the best doctors in the world, and I rate the medical care here better,” she says.

“I told Steve (her son) I didn’t think I would be alive if I had not come here and seen different specialists and had different treatments.”

Carole also walks a lot more now, as she doesn’t need a car anymore.

“I needed a car for everything I did in the U.S.,” she says, recalling how she “test drove” a vehicle in France but found that she “couldn’t master the roundabouts.”

“Now I think it’s great that I walk every place because it gets me a little bit of exercise while I’m doing it, I don’t have to be disciplined about exercise. It’s just part of the life.”

Quality of life

Overall, she feels that her quality of life has improved while in France, noting that there’s “a lot less meat and a lot more fresh produce,” in her diet now.

“Of course, if you live in a small house, you don’t purchase much,” she says. “There’s no place to put it. So I suppose that helps too. I’m much healthier, and I’m much happier…

“And I suppose too, I’m living in a sunny climate. I’m sure that helps.”

As for the cost of living, Carole says that she’s now able to live on a third of what she used to spend in the United States.

“Food is maybe a little higher here in France,” she explains. “Housing is less, at least for me, because I’m not paying the level of taxes I was in California…

“My utility bill is low. Clothing is inexpensive, relative to what I’ve known. So I’m saving money.

“And it’s funny, because I complained to my friend that I never get to spend much money here. There’s just not much I can spend it on.”

Carole recently dropped her U.S. medical insurance, which she had kept since moving, as she knew that she wouldn’t be able to resume it again.

“In a way, I was saying I was never going to go back to the United States to live.” she says. “I finally went on the French system a couple of months ago, so I no longer have that US$400 a month premium to pay, which is nice…

“I could easily live on my social security here. I never could have in the United States. I would have needed some additional income.”

Carole currently has a one-year residency visa, which she renews each year.

“In a year or two, I’ll be able to stretch the renewal process to every five years,” she says.

While she hasn’t been back home since moving to France, conceding that she feels anxious about dealing with U.S. immigration officials, Carole says that family members in the U.S. are more than happy to travel to France to see her.

“My daughter’s been here,” she says. “My granddaughter is coming with her husband… It’s such a treat for people to come to France.”

She says she can’t imagine ever returning to California now, and feels that her confidence has grown tremendously during her time in France.

“I think when I settled into my home, the sense of being confident in (knowing) that I was in the right place sort of grew,” she says. “I can’t go back now. Can you shrink yourself after you’ve grown?

“No, you can’t. You can’t go back to being who you were.”

Carole recalls how one of her close friends told her to put her furniture and car in storage before leaving the U.S., but she decided against this.

“I said, ‘No, if you leave an exit for yourself, it’s too easy to take it when things get rough,’” she says.

Closing the door

“I’m closing that door, because I’m going to force myself to grow and emerge in this new environment. I believe in growth and change. I really do.”

After four years in France, Carole says her grasp of the language has now reached a point where she can communicate reasonably well.

“I went to the dentist the other day, and I asked if they spoke English, and they said, ‘No.’ So guess what? I had to speak French, so I can get by.

“Now, I’m sure it sounds like pidgin French, but I can get by. I’ll never be as fluent as I want. It’s not my skill set. I can study, but it’s not my skill set.”

Aside from her struggles with the language, Carole says she’s found dealing with French red tape has been difficult.

“The bureaucracy is daunting,” she says. “But I think that’s true also for my friends in Spain, they’ve said the same thing.

“Any foreign country, I think, that accepts immigrants, you’re going to face some bureaucracy.”

Carole also found the apparent “lack of clothes dryers” in the country to “be a bit of a hardship” initially, but has grown used to this over time.

“The fact that stores are closed on Sunday just breaks my heart,” she adds. “Because I’d love to go shopping on Sunday.”

Thankfully, Carole has warmly embraced the French food and wine, which she describes as “pretty darn good,” and the fact that the lifestyle seemed to be more geared towards socializing.

“I never thought I would spend the time socializing in my life that I have spent socializing here,” she says. “Or drunk as much wine or eaten as much food.”

Exhilarating experience

Carole is just about to embark on her fifth novel, which she says will be the final chapter of her fictional autobiography series.

“I thought I was done, and then a second book came,” she says. “It’s kind of like (when people say) ‘I didn’t think I’d have any more kids. Then I had a third, and then I had a fourth.’

“And the other day, I had this awful feeling that there was a fifth one. It’s like, ‘No, not yet,’ because I know how much work it is.”

Since writing the series, which explores mother-daughter abuse, Carole says she’s received messages from other women who’ve had similar experiences.

“I didn’t think I was the only woman who’d gone through some of these things,” she says. “Although I might be one of the few willing to talk about it publicly.”

Her upcoming book will explore the theme of death.

“I’m at the stage of my life where I’m facing death,” she explains. “And I’m really curious about how other people have, what they’ve done, and how they’re dealing with it.

“And I want to, in effect, have this last book be about death and dying. Probably not a best seller, because people don’t want to read about death and dying.

“But it’ll probably be published posthumously.”

Carole, now 83, explains that the books are a way for to tell her own story, and “express some of the things that I had always wanted to express but had never found the time for, or made the time for.”

She points out that her parents “left home” when she was 14, and she “always had a lot of responsibility from that point on,” so having so much freedom is a very new thing for her.

“I was busy raising my sister,” she says, explaining that she later threw herself into job roles and taking care of her husband and children.

“So this was the first time in my life where I was actually free to see who I was, and it’s terrifying and exhilarating.”

While she stresses that designing a new life, and effectively a new career, for herself in a new country was incredibly stressful, Carole is hugely grateful to have been able to “recreate” herself during her twilight years.

“What I’ve learned from this is that it’s never too late to become who you were intended to be,” she says.

“I mean, life has a way of pushing you in that direction and that direction, and you forget along the way who you started out as, who you wanted to be.

“And I just feel really lucky that I lived long enough to realize some of my dreams.”

Tamara Hardingham-Gill, CNN